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RTG Dance
RTG Dance is a pick-up contemporary dance company based in Chicago, IL, directed by indepenent choreographer Rachel Thorne Germond. RTG Dance aims to challenge and engage its audiences in rich and imaginative aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual experiences, and to expand the form of concert dance. In its commitment to bringing an original and contemporary vision to the public and to building appreciation for the performing arts, RTG Dance is dedicated to high standards of innovation in dancing and dance-making. It is our goal to convey through movement, text, and multi-media elements, a world-on-stage that is not dissimilar to everyday life, but which addresses aspects of fantasy, imagination, and memory within the context of the contemporary culture.
Bio: Artistic Director Rachel Thorne Germond
Rachel Thorne Germond has presented her work in Chicago for the past ten years – primarily at Links Hall and also in performances with the Girlie Q Variety Hour, the Chicago Kings, and in festivals such as the Feast of Fools, the Other Dance Festival, Dance Chicago, the Full Circle Festival, the Chicago Calling Festival, the Spareroom, the Around the Coyote Festival, Looptopia!, and the Estrogen Festival. She has presented her work in New York City (from 1990-present) at such venues as the Joyce Soho, Movement Research at Judson Church, WAX, Chashama, The Merce Cunningham Studio, Dixon Place, and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange amongst others. Ms. Germond is a graduate of Cornell University (1986) where she began dancing while obtaining degrees in Fine Arts and Comparative Literature. She achieved an MFA in dance and choreography (2000) at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana where she was a Fellow. Her training includes intensive study of Klein/Mahler technique with Barbara Mahler and with such notable teachers as Mary Anthony, Anna Sokolow, Pedro Alejandro, Tere O’Connor, and Nancy Topf. Since 2003 Rachel has taught dance as arts integration in the Chicago Public Schools as an artist-in- residence through (Chicago Arts Partnership in Education) CAPE at Roberto Clemente High School, Kinzie Elementary and currently works with CAPE’s afterschool SCALE program at Williams Elementary and with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s (HSDC) MAP program. Working for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs from 2006-2009, Rachel helped to build and develop the content for the Chicago Artists Resource Website (CAR) as Dance Researcher and has blogged about dance as the Chicago Dance Examiner for Examiner.com and the online webzine Cultural Chicago from 2007-2009. In 2003, 2005, and 2006 Rachel was the recipient of the city of Chicago’s CAAP grant for independent dance projects in Chicago. Rachel formed her Chicago-based pick up company, RTG Dance in 2004, which became incorporated as a 501©3 Not For Profit Corporation in 2007. RTG Dance has received funding from the Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation for general operating support in 2008 and 2009. See www.rtgdance.com for more info.
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RTG Dance A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far
By Sid Smith
Turns out that the RTG Dance performance over the weekend at the Drucker Center will be the troupe's last for a while--artistic head Rachel Thorne Germond will be moving to Virginia for the next two years, joining her partner, who's earned a fellowship.
Good for them, bad for us. The modest, threadbare presentation over the weekend, dubbed "A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far," ably demonstrated Germond's inimitable talents and appeal. She is a stern, unfancy, intellectually enticing artist, tough in her aesthetic, though in a more muted way than, say, Atalee Judy or Jonathan Meyer. "Dance theater" is a buzz phrase of the past couple of decades, but, at Sunday's performance, I kept thinking instead of "dance drama," in that Germond works in a purely abstract realm and yet mines subtle conflicts and animosities inherent in movement and ensemble configuration. She doesn't tell stories, but she explores battles, alliances, break-ups and betrayals, rarely relying on the traditional beauties of flowing contemporary dance. Who her dancers are touching at any given moment--and why--are questions that keep recurring, just as the ever-changing patterns concern human will, control, isolation and even doom much more than aesthetic confection.
One compliment a writer can pay her: While the viewer remains most of the time compelled, wondering what's next, her work is very difficult to put into words. The four dancers in "A Wild Patience," the only ensemble piece on last weekend's fare, constantly change poses, arrangements and affinities. They begin in two separate pairs. Johannah Wininsky stands beside Celia Weiss Bambara and repeatedly thwarts her ill-fated efforts to move forward. At the other side of the stage, Becky O'Connell watches ominously as Christopher Knowlton threatens to crash himself into the brick wall. Escape, whether real or suicidal, is only ineffectually restrained.
Much later, Germond crafts a nifty sequence in which, one by one, each of the foursome gets isolated, one at a time, so that formations of three vs. one keep forming and changing in make-up--each, in his or her turn, is outsider. That's the type of imagistic drama that inhabits "Patience," which quickly melds from set-up to set-up, from mini-drama to mini-drama, with relentless propulsion. Rarely do these dancers indulge in smooth, sweeping dance, though, when they do, it's a relief akin to an oasis in a desert.
It's not an overstatement to labe Germond uncompromising. Her quartet in "Patience" is a motley crew, by no means an assortment of gorgeous or dainty creatures. In one of two solos on this same program, "Framed," Germond employs her own solid, earthy looks for a kind of "No Exit"-like tone poem involving a woman both partnering with and maybe trapped by an empty picture frame. Here, Germond never utilizes one of her own most appealing aspects, her vulnerable, inviting mien and facial warmth. Instead, her face remains rigid, even defiant, and "Framed," one component of what's intended to be a full-length piece in the future, is austere, vogue-like in its striking poses. She reclines along a diagonal line with the frame at one point, at another she poses with her hand on one hip, executing a brief series of plies. Modest, like much of her work, evolving quickly, changing every moment, it was rarely less than intriguing.
Our arts scene needs more, not less, like Germond. So, we implore her, hurry back. Meanwhile, God speed.
