SeeChicagoDance: News and Reviews

News: February Newsletter

Thu, 02 February 2012 15:19:08 -0500

By Sid Smith
So much for arctic chill. Not only is this turning out to be a winter of our content, weather wise, but, with the arrival of February, the dance scene catches fire with multiple Valentine offerings and plenty of other attractions for a busy and colorful month.
It is by no means all about hearts, flowers and love, however. Events begin Feb . 2 with BONEdanse's "This is a Damage Manual," a piece exploring mental illness and its treatment over multiple decades, playing through Feb. 12 at Theatre Wit. Atalee Judy and company, including guest choreographer Jyl Fehrenkamp, offer a number of works, including some scored to the Chicago-based band Damage Manual.
Most likely on a happier note, the Chicago Human Rhythm Project offers a bill starring various troupes Feb. 2 and 3 at the DuSable Museum, part of the organization's Winter Tap JAMboree. Tamboula Ethnic Dance Company, M.A.D.D Rhythms, the Mexican Folkloric Dance Ensemble, Mr. Taps and CHRP's BAM! are on the line-up. In "10 Years of WAR--Fighting for the Dream," the Alliance Dance Company celebrates its 10th anniversary in a bill featuring seven other companies Feb. 3 and 4 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts.
"The Sweet Goddess Project," a multimedia dance work exploring women's issues in music and culture, returns Feb. 3 and 4 to the Marjorie Ward Marshall Ballroom Theater on the Northwestern University campus in Evanston. On Feb. 4, the Seldoms make their Harris Theater debut with "This Is Not a Dance Concert," featuring two dozen dancers and musicians, held at various locales throughout the Harris (winding up onstage), with three separate curtain times: 7 p.m., 8:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
CHRP's BAM! returns Feb. 6 for two free one-hour performances (at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.) at Elgin Community College in that northwest suburb. Later that week, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company brings Jenkins' ambitious program "Light Moves," combining her choreography, music by Paul Dresher, text by poet Michael Palmer and animation from innovative multimedia artist Naomie Kremer, Feb. 9-11 to the Dance Center of Columbia College. That weekend also inaugurates the round of Valentine's Day festivities. River North Dance Chicago offers a program including new works by Frank Chaves and Italy's Mauro Astolfi Feb. 10-12 at the Harris, the troupe's annual Valentine engagement. "Duets for My Valentine," featuring a potpourri of Chicago dancers, plays Feb. 11 at the Athenaeum Theatre.
In a valentine of another sort, and part of a series of match-ups, the modern-tinged Thodos Dance Chicago and Latino-oriented Luna Negra Dance Theater team up for a shared program Feb. 11 and 12 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. In "Ratio of Mindsey to Kelpin," Mindy Upin and Lindsey Kelley are the choreographer-dancers in this program Feb. 10-12 at Links Hall.
Returning to the Athenaeum Theatre, Dance Chicago presents "Dances from the Heart" Feb. 14, a Valentine's Day compendium of choreographers and troupes who've been associated with the project over the years, including a premiere by Kate Jablonski, featuring more than three dozen dancers, and the return of ballroom superstars Tommye Giacchino and Gregory Day. Then, the Joffrey Ballet unveils its winter line-up of provocative modern works for the engagement to run Feb. 15-26 at the Auditorium Theatre. The impressive bill features the U.S. premiere of Wayne McGregor's "Infra," the company premiere of William Forsythe's "In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated" and the return of Christopher Wheeldon's "After the Rain."
In a nifty cross-pollinating effort, the Trey McIntyre Project teams up with New Orleans' renowned Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a program Feb. 17 at Symphony Center. With no doubt a bit more of a combative spirit, the Chicago Dance Crash offers "KTF 2/17: Love is a (Dance) Battlefield" at the Mayne Stage, 1328 W. Morse Av. in Rogers Park.
Molly Shanahan and Mad Shak bring "The Delicate Hour" Feb. 23-25 to the Dance Center of Columbia College. The Grigorovich Ballet will bring "Spartacus" (Feb. 24) and a program of mixed repertory (Feb. 25) in a two-day engagement at the Auditorium Theatre. The 1968 "Spartacus" is among Grigorovich's famed full-lengths during his decades with the Bolshoi Ballet.
And in a month emblematic of the heart, in metaphorical terms, what better way to end it than with an event focused on the its more biological imperatives? Margi Cole and her Dance COLEctive is partnering with the Big Hearts Fund for their first joint benefit, bolstering both art and wellness. It's set for 5:30 p.m. Feb. 23 at 1530 N. Dayton. Healthy hearts are happy hearts--St. Valentine will no doubt be very pleased.

News: PREVIEW: Bonedanse presents "This Is A Damage Manual"

Fri, 27 January 2012 14:21:22 -0500

By Sid Smith
We won't really know until we see it, of course, but in concept, "This is a Damage Manual" looms as one of the more ambitious undertakings from Atalee Judy and her troupe now known as BONEdanse.
The content explores decades of mental illness and efforts to sweep it under the rug and/or medicate it away, from mid-century tranquilizers and self-help LP recordings through 1980s punk dislocation up to and including contemporary commercials with alluring temptations for magical anti-depressants. As a kind of historical prelude, Judy herself enacts a solo in the guise of Adolph Hitler, a sociopath and serial killer who managed to take over a modern nation.
When told it sounds ambitious, Judy replied, "It may be. You tell me. We're just throwing things out there that stem from what's touched or perplexed me. I am disturbed when I watch a commercial for an anti-depressant in which there's this woman going through her day, followed everywhere by this cartoon black blob that looks sad, has eyeballs and blinks. The point of the commercial is, 'Take this, and your depression goes away.'
"I have friends who take anti-depressants who feel they're in a gray zone all day," she continued. "I come from a family with mental illness issues, and we swept it under the rug, some relatives taking anti-depressants to be normal. We don't have any answers to any of this in our program. We can't cure what ails you. But I do have severe fears and concerns about what we're doing. We have more and more pills catered to more and more things.
"If we have any message, it's that you can liberate yourself or learn to function with the damage you have," she added. "Accept that we're damaged and use it and move with it."
The inspiration comes from vinyl recordings of onetime self-help gurus Judy was introduced to by her partner, who collects old records. Dr. Claire Weekes, a proponent of tranquilizers, and soothingly voiced Earl Nightingale are among them. "We have a solo about a stereotypical '50s housewife dealing with what at the time they called a woman's 'nervous disorder' or a nervous breakdown," Judy explained. It's performed by Mindy Meyers and crafted by guest choreographer Jyl Fehrenkamp.
Much of the score comes from the post-punk troupe, the Damage Manual, made up of musicians with former punk icons who've settled here in Chicago. One section deals with 1980s AIDS hysteria and misinformation, the dancers clad in hazmat suits made out of comforter quilting fabric. Judy herself enacts the solo about Hitler, while there's another about a dysfunctional ballerina, performed by Janna Barta, with one foot in a toe shoe, the other bare.
"This is a Damage Manual" is poised to pop the bubble of overly optimistic fakery and raise a cautionary flag regarding our reliance on drugs as a smart alternative. "We're raising our children on medication," Judy remarked.
BONEdanse has been undergoing a mild transition of late. Its name has been simplified from the old Breakbone Dance Inc. moniker, and there are subtle shifts in performance styles, too.
"It's a paring down and the result of my feeling that we'd become a bit boxed in by categories," Judy said. "Once we got a reputation for a certain style and aggressive, confrontational placement, I started to get uncomfortable."
Her trademark physical approach survives, but with key changes. Is Judy becoming more conventional? "I'm still a physical performer, but I got frustrated with making company members learn to do what I do naturally. I'm still doing my usual physicality, but I'm the oddball. I'm not forcing it on the other company members. So we're touching on a lot more different styles of dance now, and, if you want to call that more conventional, I'm fine with that."
BONEdanse performs "This is a Damage Manual" Feb. 2-12 at Theatre Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Av. For tickets: 773.975.8150 or www.theaterwit.org.

News: REVIEW: "Pina" Wim Wenders' Documentary on Pina Bausch

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Laura Molzahn

Dance fans, you should definitely see Wim Wenders’ “Pina.” Not because it’s the best film ever made, not because it’s shot in up-to-the-minute 3D, and not even because it’s the best possible film on trail-blazing German choreographer Pina Bausch.

But because she’s dead now, having passed unexpectedly in June 2009, two days before the first 3D test shoot was scheduled. Eventually Wenders picked up the pieces --- he’d known Bausch for nearly 25 years --- and started filming in fall 2009. Her dancers were fresh from their knowledge of her and how she worked. In essence “Pina” is an irreplaceable series of snapshots of her, her dances, and her performers. The film opens today, Friday, at two theaters: River East 21 and Century 12/CineArts 6 in Evanston.

Don’t expect a traditional bio-documentary. These are indeed snapshots, and without even any scribbles on the back. There’s no information on Bausch’s life and career --- which didn’t bother me. But basic landmarks are missing, like the titles of the four dances shown: “Le Sacre du Printemps,” “Café Mueller,” “Kontakthof,” and “Vollmond,” mentioned only in passing by the many Bausch dancers who parade across the screen. Yet not one dancer is identified by name. I suspect this mushy, impressionistic pastiche of images and voices is more about Wenders’ delight in the new toy of his cinematic technology than about Bausch herself.

When Wenders spoke at the 2008 ceremony where Bausch received the Goethe Prize, he said that her dancers “moved me as I had never been moved before.” In that case, his choice to edit and chop up the dances he and Bausch jointly chose to shoot is odd. You never get a sense of the whole, ever. I’m just hoping that someday, someone will take the full-length versions of three of the dances, which Wenders reportedly shot onstage at the Wuppertal Opera House, and put them in another film or films.

I couldn’t help thinking of “Pina” as one giant missed opportunity. Most films about Bausch have been European and in languages that English-speakers don’t necessarily understand. Here the dancers’ voiceovers are either in English or translated from an impressive array of languages into English subtitles. And yet we learn so little.

About those voiceovers: way more time is devoted to the dancers, not talking, but sitting and letting their own recorded remarks wash over them than to Bausch’s dances. Same for the performers’ danced interpretations of Bausch and her work, generally solos and duets, which Wenders apparently requested.

I’m all for innovation and creativity. And these movement vignettes, often shot amid everyday life, do give the sense that Bausch’s work will live on. But their quality varies widely. Wenders could have cut one-third to one-half of them, and had plenty good ones remaining. The best are indeed good, especially at conveying Bausch’s sense of humor/horror. An older man, dressed in a tutu, plies on a railway handcar in a tunnel, deadpan. A beautiful woman in a white gown enters a tram --- and walks to her seat making mouth noises that sound like a giant tromping through quicksand.

I also came to think that NO solo, or maybe even duet, could capture the essence of Bausch’s work. Overall the pieces in “Pina” --- at least, the tidbits of them provided --- show that her art was social. What drove her was the nature of human interaction. Watching these works, I felt that she valued solos only insofar as they contributed to her picture of a community.

Famously bleak, famously cynical about male-female relations, Bausch had a point of view. She had passion and a purpose. The excerpts from her pieces we do get to see are amazing --- and who else has shot “Sacre” from the vantage point of the peat-covered floor she used?

At least Wenders presents Bausch’s dances in chronological order, with three clustered in the mid-70s and one, “Vollmond,” from 2006. And he shot “Kontakthof,” which resembles a mega-awkward middle school social dance, in the three forms that Bausch presented it: danced by her own company, by nondancers 65 and older, and by teenagers 14 and up.

The final work, “Vollmond” (“Full Moon”), to me suggested a decline in Bausch’s energy and focus --- though of course it was impossible to know, truly, without seeing the whole thing. Despite its towering boulder, slashing rain, and sloshing sea of onstage water, the often exuberant dancing seemed almost humdrum. At this point the dancers talk about the importance of “the elements” in Bausch’s work, though in the other three pieces they don’t seem so significant.

Wenders then uses this talk as the pretext for scenes shot in nature. More like avant-garde commercials or high-end YouTube videos than dance on film, these seem mostly an opportunity for the director to shoot in 3D in striking outdoor settings than a true reckoning of Bausch’s worth.

Review: "Flight Patterns" at Links Hall by Laura Molzahn

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Laura Molzahn

There’s nothing like a sense of purpose to drive a work of art. Not that a piece should be didactic or overdetermined --- but sometimes it seems the value of passion and focus gets forgotten.

Michael Estanich’s 45-minute sextet “The Attic Room” is single-minded yet plays fast and loose with its options. Despite its variety and length, everything hangs together in a rich, satisfying, and moving way. It’s one of two Chicago premieres in “Flight Patterns” by three-year-old RE|Dance Group, directed by Estanich and Lucy Riner, running through Sunday at Link’s Hall.

Though the music for “The Attic Room” is eclectic (a Franz Biber passacaglia, Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather,” the Cars’ “Magic,” and the Magnetic Fields’ “Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Dead” as well as other, lesser-known numbers), the images create a through line. Boats, telescopes, and a map suggest a wayfaring theme, while books, lamps, and “houses” built of books anchor the piece in the domestic and everyday. Though Estanich told me at a rehearsal that “The Attic Room” began life as a 25-minute dance for his students, nothing in the expanded version feels ad hoc or extraneous --- a feat in itself.

RE|Dance is known for creating detailed physical environments, grounding dance-theater works in the recognizable and the concrete. Your imagination works overtime, if effortlessly, calling up memories and physical sensations. The centerpiece of “Attic Room,” a large oriental rug, makes you smell dust and feel its rough texture. When you hear a book snapped shut, you sense the pages’ softness and age. Bingo.

“The Attic Room” seems a life’s journey, from childhood through old age. One vignette reeks of adolescence: Riner and Estanich stand at either side of the rug, the other four dancers forming a rollicking sea between them, and shout back and forth: “S.O.S.! I’m trapped on a small boat! I need help!” But eventually Riner says, “I don’t want your help anymore.” Teenagers in a nutshell. A claustrophobic “marital bed” section traps couples in an intimacy they seem to be rethinking, as so many young adults do.

But the experience of the piece is more random than this narrative implies, partly because of Estanich’s not necessarily chronological “snapshot” technique. Frequent blackouts and changes in music shift the scene again and again, though in some ways the dancers maintain their characters (Carolyn Marcotte is especially moving in a central role). And Estanich is never afraid to throw a wrench in the works. One section, set to “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” catapults us into a brassy musical-theater number complete with chorus line belting out the lyrics. It’s way out of sync with most of the piece. And yet welcome.

The other factor undermining linearity is a consistent tension in “The Attic Room” between homebound safety and the search for adventure --- a tug-of-war I can attest runs throughout life. Everyone retreats to the secure at times, risking dependence and stasis. Everyone ventures forth to explore, risking failure.

An anecdote near the end of “Attic Room,” about a woman with Alzheimer’s, drives the whole work, Estanich told me. And you can see in retrospect that many of his choices are pieces from the puzzle that is that story. But it’s not the only story possible --- which gives “Attic Room” a welcome openness. Overall it conveys human beings’ fragility, their tenderness for one another, and their occasional passion or violence. More important is the sense it creates of people’s relationships with themselves. How do we know who we are? Is that even possible?

Estanich’s trio “Inhabitants of Tall Grass” seems to have less reason for being. Tall reed grasses he saw waving in the wind near Fargo, North Dakota, inspired the piece, set amid an installation of said grasses, with projected video of them at the rear of the space. The set and the dancing provide an agreeable, abstracted sense of nature’s patterns. And that’s about it.

Review: "Come Fly Away" by Sid Smith

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Sid Smith

Twyla Tharp's Frank Sinatra tribute, "Come Fly Away," has arrived at the Bank of America Theatre in Chicago, briefer and, by many reports, better than its Broadway installment. To be sure, the 80 or so intermission-free minutes fly by, sizzling with sensual, gymnastic choreography, peopled by the sharp, stylish, singular dancers that Tharp somehow seems to find out of thin air.

Just to catch the powerhouse ensemble assembled for this tour is reason enough to see the show. One of its stars, the great John Selya, played here earlier in the "Movin' Out" tryout. He's older, stockier but no less charismatic now, inhabiting the role of a suave but rakish seducer with ease and muscle--something of a dancerly Sinatra stand-in, in a way. His technique still takes your breath away--his barrel turns are one of the show's high points. But his speed and attack are a marvel, too, and his mastery of Tharp's relentless, tricky steps is all the more engaging since he manages it while crafting a sly fox of a character, a guy who charms everybody, no matter his ego and self-love.

But no less impressive is Matthew Stockwell Dibble, a swift, gravity-defying performer with immaculate control and dandy stylistics, all as he plays a character, Marty, whose girl is stolen by Selya's Sid. Ron Todorowski, who serves as resident director on the tour, is also terrific, his full-body flips one of the show's niftier tricks.

But this mounting of "Come Fly Away," for all the strength of its men, is a powerhouse of spectacular women, who bring statuesque glamour and a seductive feminine force to their dancing. These are ladies in the Juliet Prowse lineage, slinking like come-hither showgirls, flaunting their gorgeous legs, all the while energized by powerful form and performance execution. Anyone who sees Ashley Blair Fitzgerald enact the scorching duet to "That's Life" with talented Anthony Burrell will never forget it. Fitzgerald is bold without being lurid, enticing without being coarse, enacting Tharp's great maneuvers with thrilling abandon--crawling atop and underneath Burrell's body at one point in a sequence that ought to be awkward but is instead richly alluring. It's beautiful dance that just happens to be hot stuff.

But Malauri Esquibel, Marielys Molina and Meredith Miles, who were also leads at Wednesday's opening, are also topnotch dancers. The thinnest-of-thin storylines, various couples at a nightclub, in part flashes back to Sinatra's own time, or at least his era's notion of female sexuality, and the women in the cast manage a marvelous balance, reveling in that retro-vision of sexiness while maintaining enough individual zeal to avoid cliche.

From the point of view of the art house devotee, this is Tharp reverting to the populist. "Come Fly Away" has nothing of the refinement, focus or subtle structural development of, say, "Scarlatti," her recent premiere with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, or, for that matter, countless other works with dance troupes over the years. This is flashier, more superficial, earthy in style and basic in ensemble architecture. Everything from "Fugue" to "In the Upper Room" is fraught with architectural evolution and engineering subtlety. This is Tharp in full-throttle show business mode.

That said, "Come Fly Away" is indeed miles above what passes most of the time for choreography on Broadway today. Like Jerome Robbins, Tharp knows ballet and knows how to use its underpinnings to deepen the movement and accelerate the thrills of dance. "Come Fly Away" is not Tharp at her best, but it's among the best Great White Way choreography on view these days, challenging, exciting and plane-loads of fun.

Review: "Generation Bitch" at Links by Sid Smith

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Sid Smith

The subject of "Generation Bitch: Gender Identity and Expectations of 21st Century American Woman" is clear from its title, but, topic aside, the potpourri of offerings now at Links Hall also offers a glimpse at the work of artists based in or associated with Minneapolis, a city long renowned for artistic hospitality.
Curated by April Sellers, who runs her own troupe in the Twin Cities area, "Generation" features work by her, Amanda Timm and Cathy Wright, with some input from the dancers. The evening's theme--the layered role challenges young women faced today in our post-feminist era--provides a nice subtext for explorations indirect and edgy. The quality of the work, however, ranging from occasionally interesting to amateur and inept, is something else. All of the performers, Sellers included, seem likable folks with much to offer and certainly no small amount of boldness in approach.
But "Generation" is scattershot, rambling and unsatisfying as a whole, often amounting to a lot of performance art noise signifying very little.
Sellers herself has a winning stage persona, though we didn't really get to see it Friday until the curtain call at the end of the program. She doesn't perform in the better of her two works, "Instructions to a Fancy Pack and Incredible Doses," while "Acceptable Doses," a performance duet, performed not in the theater but in a bar around the corner, is a mistake in many ways, including the way Sellers plays it. At the bows, she revealed a silken vocal style laced with a bit of menace and mischief--perfect fodder for comedy and weapons she no doubt employs in other works. But, in "Acceptable Doses," she played a formerly famous dancer now gone nuts, outrageously costumed and screeching her way through inanities and vulgarities in a slim routine enacted amongst the patrons at tables in the bar, stoically backed by Kay Kirscht's deadpan therapist. It was underwritten, underdeveloped and mostly annoying.
But give her credit: In both pieces, and this is true of the other two choreographers here as well, she attacks a work by attempting to devise an original world, a truly imaginary realm, one with its own logic, look and vision. Sometimes the vision is ad hoc and a lot like unstructured class improvisation. But at least in "Instructions," moment to moment, you have no idea what will come next.
A male drummer comes out and pounds away on a set to begin the piece, eventually joined by four women bowlers, who go after the pins at the back of the stage and then take you on a dreamscape exploring gender roles, identity, bits of fractious teammate rivalry, the donning of wigs and a mock revue. The individual components tend to go on way too long--Greg Schutte at the drums, for instance, could cut his sessions in half, for my money. But, while unpolished and sometimes unfocused, "Instructions" has its seductions, including the ferocious energy and onstage talent displayed by one of the dancers, Kenna Cottman.
The various performance elements come together a bit better in Timm's "Attached at the Heart." Here the live musical accompaniment is delicious: banjo player and expert whistler Jim "Peninsula" Gorton in a winning cover of Bob Marley's "Is This Love." Three couples enact it--a man and woman in a couple, two female friends and a pair of women lovers--and the trope turns on straps and buckles that tie the twosomes together. At first, the coupling is bouncy, blessed with easygoing sashays and pop dance, but things quickly turn dark. The two friends leave for a while, for instance, and, when they return, one is atop the other's back, as if the living burden of a female Sisyphus. Timm might be advised to keep honing this piece, tighten its focus and evolve a more disciplined structure, applying more imaginative use of the straps that are a pretty obvious metaphor, sometimes too obvious. But this piece does show promise.
Unlike these sometimes vocal works, Wright's "The Demon Familiar" is an imagist dance, beginning with her solo between two large hanging fabrics, a piece eventually taken over by two other dancers in a duet. The moves include anguished poses punctuated by striking individual spins, extended just to the point of chaos. Feverish hand gestures, as the women bend and seem to be desperately tilling the earth, are another image, a reminder that an underlying movement theme of the whole program is frenetic, kinetic anxiety. That portion of the message is loud and clear: Whatever leadership opportunities women in our time now enjoy, they don't always add up to comfort, clarity, ease or peace of mind.

News: January Newsletter

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Sid Smith
The chills of winter limit January's dance offerings, but hardly put the art form on ice. Contemporary dance, ballet, mock ballet and a Twyla Tharp Broadway spectacle are all in the mix--those willing to don mittens and heavy coats will have a nice variety to opt for.
First up, and sounding feisty, is Links Hall's "Generation Bitch: Gender Identity and Expectations of 21st Century American Women," a program exploring the tantalizing topic through dance, sporting work by several Minneapolis choreographers and curated by April Sellers. It runs Jan. 6-8.
Twyla Tharp's Broadway tribute to Frank Sinatra, "Come Fly Away," restaged somewhat since its Great White Way outing, plays Jan. 10-22 at the Bank of America Theatre. Next up, DanceWorks Chicago returns to the Eat to the Beat noontime series Jan 12 at the Harris Theater, with works by three choreographers, including European up-and-comer Nelly van Bommel, whose piece was created with the dance department of Western Michigan University. RE/Dance Group presents "Flight Patterns" Jan. 13-15 at Links, showcasing two works well-received at the 2011 Minnesota Fringe Festival.
The Moscow Festival Ballet returns with "Swan Lake" Jan. 16 at the McAnich Arts Center of the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn.
Those few offerings take us midway through the month, but then things heat up in a slight but unmistakeable harbinger of the always busy Chicago spring. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago shifts gears a tad from its usual winter approach and offers a program of new works by young choreographers, dubbed "Dance(e)volve" and running Jan. 19-29 at the Museum of Contemporary Art-- a piece for Hubbard 2 by resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo among the selections. The inimitable and ever-muscular Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo return for a fun-filled tweak at the art Jan. 24 at the Harris. As if to say "Oh, yeah,?" bedrock traditional practitioners of ballet fight back Jan. 28 and 29, when the State Ballet Theatre of Russia performs "Romeo and Juliet" at the Auditorium Theatre.
The Dance COLEctive presents its annual winter engagement Jan. 26-28 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, including a premiere solo choreographed by former Merce Cunningham dancer Deborah Hay and performed by COLEctive artistic director Margi Cole, along with a new work by Cole herself and a revival. Tif Bullard brings the month to a close with the solo piece, "after that, later, then" Jan. 30 at Links.

Review: Khecari "The Clinking" by By Laura Molzahn

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Laura Molzahn

What's a lowesleaf, anyway? The analytical mind wants to know.

But the poetic mind doesn't care. Instead it's thrilled by the many connections and discoveries, as well as the unsolved mysteries, of Khecari's "The Clinking." This is the "current phase" of an investigation of fairytale tropes that concludes in July at the Storefront Theater with "The Clinking, Clanking Lowesleaf" (also the title of a "Beauty and the Beast"-style 1854 German fairytale). Khecari's fascinating precursor to the full-length work runs only through tonight, Friday, at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse --- whose transformation is yet another reason to catch the show.

Discovery begins with the ingenious program, a flowerlike piece of origami so intricately folded you hate to open and destroy it. It includes the usual info, but also runic glimpses of texts and a long list of opaque section titles --- which do shed light on the experience after you've had it. Or, more accurately, confirm it. Even more striking is the way Khecari has rearranged and transfigured the Hamlin Park space; changes in the seating and the lighting mess with its usual boxy, seemingly immutable structure and confound our concepts of stage and backstage.

"The Clinking" is basically the baby of dancers Julia Rae Antonick and Jonathan Meyer, but musician/composer Joe St. Charles and lighting designer Jacob Snodgrass also play crucial roles. St. Charles, performing live as usual, eschews his often nerve-jangling style in favor of gentler gamelan-influenced repetitions, punctuated by more explosive percussion. There's no loss in eeriness. Snodgrass's breathtaking designs (which he himself sometimes creates with a hand-held light) reinforce that sense of lurking danger. The cinematic play of light and shadow suggests film noir and horror flicks, where what can be seen and what can't be seen are so crucial. "You can see me, but I can't see you" is a hair-raising feeling.

Much of "The Clinking" raises the hair on the back of your neck. Ever had one of those nightmares where someone/something is literally breathing down your back? The feeling of primal terror is way out of proportion to the action --- and again, partly because what's behind you can't be seen. It's my theory these dreams are vestiges of the days when humans were hunted by other animals. But at any rate, here the movement of an arm slowly slicing across the other person's shoulder from behind, or of a hand creeping and curling up the other person's back like the tendril of a poison plant, evokes the same feeling.

Antonick and Meyer have long explored duet forms, including such combative ballroom dances as the tango and the one-on-one stylized combat of capoeira. Their interactions in "The Clinking" often have a hostile edge, or at the least the creepy interplay of romantic approach and aggression. Like boxers, they sometimes retreat to opposite corners only to engage and disengage yet again. The question "who's winning?" becomes "who has agency?" Because generally one or the other person does take control, just as the leader guides the follower in ballroom dance.

In fairytales, that agency takes the form of magical powers. But it's not always clear which people have them, an ambiguity captured in the way Meyer and Antonick switch control back and forth between them. Or create a gestalt, as in the closing moments of "The Clinking," where it's impossible to say who's in control.

The other fairytale element woven like a golden thread through "The Clinking" is magical transformation, of both the performers and the space. In one section ("Snufflopod," I think) Meyer is an insect-like animal, top of the head on the floor, hands clicking into grotesque angular shapes. Antonick follows slowly behind, as if riding in a carriage drawn by the beast. Eventually Meyer curls out of his jagged poses, flips, and stands upright. The creature has become a man. A comical yet creepy section ("Joint Dance"?) displays the same animate/inanimate ambiguity of such fairytale classics as "Coppelia" and "The Nutcracker" as well as pop-culture fairytales like the Disney movies.

Episodic and associational rather than structured, "The Clinking" is perhaps not quite ready for prime time. Nor is it intended to be. And certain elements were completely baffling, at least to me, like the part where what look like dried-up slices of brownish-orange cheese rain down on Meyer. But this is an incredibly promising, magical start to Khecari's project.

News: PREVIEW: Deeply Rooted's 15th Anniversary: "Chicago Women of Song"

Tue, 06 December 2011 13:09:45 -0500

By Sid Smith
The snow monarchs, the fairies and their sugar plums, not to mention those crackers of nuts and towering trees, are upon us--the season in dance is rich in holiday offerings, those tidings in tap not to be forgotten or underrated.
But there will be performances, too, while in no way anti-holiday, busy carrying on the year-round tradition of secular, aesthetic dance--showing off technique without any tinsel. One such entry, and it's a richly promising one, arrives this week when Deeply Rooted Dance Theater winds up its 15th-anniversary year with a concert Friday, Dec. 9 at the Harris Theater boasting, among other works, a new tribute to key superstars of song. "Chicago Women of Song" will get its world premiere, and it's just what its title suggests, a salute to great songstresses of our time either from or sporting important associations with the Windy City.
"Their voices flow through the legacy of the African American experience, helping us connect to our shared values in humanity, to rejoice in those values, feel each other's pain, laugh when we feel like crying and cry when we need to get it out," Jeff noted eloquently in a statement about the work.
Various choreographers have teamed up to take turns honoring five women: Dinah Washington (choreographed by Deeply Rooted artistic director Kevin Iega Jeff), Anita O'Day (Gary Abbott), Mavis Staples (Dereque Whiturs), Minnie Riperton (Nicole Clarke-Springer) and Chaka Khan (Brian Harlan Brooks). In addition, strains from Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson will be heard on the score, while Mahalia Jackson's voice opens "I Am Deeply Rooted," Jeff's signature work that's also part of the bill.
Great singers, great ladies and a great idea. That line up is a choreographer's dream, and the fact that Deeply Rooted is spreading the joy among various dance makers seems to echo the stirring communal spirit behind the idea. It got me to thinking about the crucial role women played in the arts in the 20th Century, efforts preceding the feminist movement by decades in some cases and especially potent in dance. Just consider Isadora Duncan, Katherine Dunham (yet another Chicagoan), Martha Graham, Judith Jamison and Twyla Tharp. Where would dance be without them, not to mention all the ballerinas and dancers who flooded the field all those years, too? I can't think of another art who owes so much to its women.
"The concept was brought to us by two members of our board, Judith Cothran and Maggy Fouche," Jeff said in an interview. "We wanted to celebrate women for a lot of reasons, not least among them is how much women love dance. We did a lot of research and eventually narrowed it down to women who have rich associations with Chicago."
It's an eclectic group, covering decades and different styles. "Gary picked Anita O'Day in part because of her struggles and her survival," Jeff noted. "She died recently, but she had nine lives, so to speak." Minnie Riperton is a Chicago-born singer "with an incredible instrument," Jeff says of her voice, known for her pop hit "Loving You," but included here singing another song, "Return to Forever." Staples, of course, is a gospel legend. And, "Jennifer's singing is a way to bring in a new generation, while her song pays homage to all of these women," Jeff said.
By the way, Deeply Rooted has enjoyed quite a year, returning from the Black Dance Festival in Pittsburgh to be welcomed by banners honoring the troupe, hanging on Michigan Avenue--a memorable milestone by any measure. The company also appeared performing in Millennium Park on "Good Morning America" and its "Just Three Words" segment in September, one of 12 live shots taken all over the world, Deeply Rooted's the only one from the Midwest. Jeff's not looking back. "Next year, we're focusing on choreographers, established ones, legendary ones and younger ones," he said. "It's about being in the same space and sharing conversation, mentoring and sharing thoughts and ideas for the future."
Deeply Rooted performs various works at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 9 at the Harris, 205 E. Randolph Dr. For tickets: 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org.

Review: Luna Negra's 'Monaquilla' by Laura Molzahn

Wed, 31 December 1969 19:00:00 -0500

By Laura Molzahn

Slapstick lives! True, the inaugural show in Luna Negra’s 'Luna Niños' family series has a lot of other things going for it: Gustavo Ramirez Sansano's clear and compassionate original tale, his powerfully conceived and realized characters, Luis Crespo's ingenious animations and set designs, and the barest smidgen of a moral, just enough to satisfy parents. But best of all --- for the kids and, OK, for me --- is the humor, realized in Sansano's musically apt, quicksilver choreography.

Sansano's knack for comedy in the 50-minute "Moniquilla and the Thief of Laughter," running just through Sunday at Stage 773, isn’t a huge surprise for anyone who's seen his two earliest "adult" pieces for Luna Negra: "Flabbergast" (2001) and "Luna de Miel" ("Honeymoon," 2003). But here that knack is married to a simple story and straightforward actions. No need to rack your brains for the meaning.

Nico, a misunderstood and neglected child, grows up to be an evil chemist so jealous of children's laughter that he concocts a potion to take their joy away. When Moniquilla and her best friend, Matias, read in the newspaper about the terror Nico is spreading, they vow to find a way to break his evil spells. A third wheel, Veronica, vies with Moniquilla for Matias's attention, but truth be told, he's not that interested in either of them. He's mostly into eating. A narrator (Veronica Guadalupe) helps audiences through the story, especially the backstory.

So does the score, excerpts of familiar, mostly classical music that provides an engine for the emotion and the action. So does Crespo. His animated drawings, filled with the rush of his hand even when they’re not moving, help establish Nico’s sorrow as a child --- and the sorrow he inflicts on children once he perfects his potion. Somehow it's easier to see that sadness in cartoon form than to watch any of the live performers act it out.

Nico appears in the flesh only in his grown-up incarnation as a full-fledged villain. And he is frightening. Performed by Nigel Campbell at the performance Saturday, the masked and caped Nico was physically intimidating, arms and legs spread wide, hands (in huge gloves) spread wide, turbo leaps high and powerful. In his opening scene, he destroys his own laboratory (very detailed and bizarre in Crespo's set design, which also includes cheery domestic interiors and Nico's creepy castle).

Moniquilla, our heroine, is described as adventurous --- and in tiny Monica Cervantes' performance, she is take-charge, hands on hips, in complete control of every intricate, speedy move. By contrast Matias is a buffoonish sidekick, described as a lazy daydreamer. But there's nothing lazy about Eduardo Zuniga's dancing or energetic faces. When Stacey Aung as Veronica goes over to the dark side in a slow-mo duet with Nico, who teases her with an oversize lollipop, she nails children's occasional all-consuming desire.

In "Moniquilla," no dancer ever speaks a word. But there's no need for words when the movement so perfectly captures character and action.

Moments of physical comedy pop up throughout the show, but the payoff comes in two big scenes near the end. In one, Moniquilla and Matias ride a bike with a sidecar --- er, sidebike --- to Nico's castle, shifting seats regularly in hair-raising daredevil fashion (though the bike never actually moves). Wicked clever choreography makes us see the wind of a wild ride and the careening of the bike around turns. Finally, a neck-snapping chase scene worthy of the Keystone Kops takes viewers around and around the castle's interior. The kids in the audience appeared delighted by the dancers' breakneck speed, pratfalls, and conniving tricks.

In fact, kids seemed immersed in the show pretty much throughout. At least, the ones behind me did: they stopped all the jiggling and kicking going on before the action started. School-age children, especially the early grades, are probably the sweet-spot audience, though a toddler in front of me also seemed to be having a great time. Grown-ups too. "Monaquilla" takes dance neophytes and aficionados alike on an intense yet often comic journey of childish grief, heroism, and redemption.