REVIEWS

RE|Dance Group presents Flight Patterns

""Flight Patterns" at Links Hall"

 

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.

Broadway in Chicago

""Come Fly Away""

 

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.

 

 

GENERATION BITCH: Gender Identity and Expectations of 21st Century American Women

""Generation Bitch" at Links"

 

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.

Khecari Dance Theatre

"Khecari "The Clinking""

 

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.

 

Moniquilla and the Thief of Laughter

"Luna Negra's 'Monaquilla'"

 

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.

Dance Union

"Dance Union hosts two"

 

By Sid Smith
At first blush, no two artists are more unalike. Jonathan Meyer's solos tend to be stark, challenging, angst-ridden and ferociously serious, as if the entire weight of the nuclear age rested on his slender frame.
Jyl Fehrenkamp is comic, campy, irreverent and satirical, sometimes going by her stage alter-ego as "Jyldo" and listing in her program credits "choreographer and nerd-in-residence for 'Alien Queen,' a rock musical version of the 'Alien' movies." How in the world did they wind up sharing a bill together?
Enter Ayako Kato and her Dance Union, which relishes just such assemblies and often includes, as they did Saturday, when the outing took place in the rear North Theatre of the Menomonee center, a brief discussion exploring the result.
Maybe one clue as to what Kato was up to comes from the fact that, as soon as I heard of the pairing, I didn't want to miss it. Indeed, it proved wondrously revelatory, showing off fine work by both performers and evoking probing thoughts and questions about the very nature of performance itself. Meyer admits there are sly comic moments in his own work; Fehrenkamp's snarkfest solo "Corey," about her own teen crush on Corey Haim, slashing at adolescent folly and the drug and money machine of pop culture alike, is the blackest of comedy as it turns weirdly on his sordid, tragic end from multiple addictions.
Any program always depends on the quality of the works, and the 45-minute effort here was entertaining, as these performers tend to be. Meyer's "Spim" is a driving, driven, compulsive and compelling solo impassioned by tortuous writhing and deformity, his hands frequently gnarled in what reminded me of neurological disease and a nurse in the audience of the process of dying.
I liked "Whence," his comparative extravaganza last fall, but the solo, in a confined space, seems in many ways Meyer's forte. "Spim" is a wealth of contradictions and tensions, including, especially in a few early passages, modern dance that looks like stumbles from which he recovers. His swift, speedy control and bodily force often boast the more traditional look of the deliberate modern dancer--the not-a-muscle-out-of-place sense of mastery on view in everything from "Cry" to Christian Denice's remarkable River North solo. But Meyer, more than most dancers, is able to appear to be falling or stubbing his toe or on the brink of losing all control, only to slip back into self-command--the flailing stumble brought hair-raisingly back into harmony.
You also feel you can't blink or you might miss something, the phrasings are so densely packed. He can go from prone position to the upright with extraordinary ease and energy, and Saturday he did so at one point by coming up, his toes curled underneath, a method of standing that both tweaked ballet and would seem to risk breaking the tarsals and metatarsals of his feet.
"Spim," to silence, is tortured, alarming, pained and painful, distortions that recall the great actor David Threlfall in "Nicholas Nickleby," counterbalanced by haunting pauses and poses that hint of a more promising serenity, though one short-lived and not very reliable.
Fehrenkamp opened with a quintet entitled "a boating incident" and a score made up of two songs from 1980s staple Christopher Cross. Fehrenkamp senses that the abandoned loves of our youth still play a role long after we've discarded them. Part of it's nostalgia. Now 35, she seems to be doing for the '80s what earlier satirists did for their teen years mocking "Leave It to Beaver" for one age group and "The Brady Bunch" for a later one.
But something else, too. The follies of innocence change, deepen, but still delight. "a boating incident" is intoxicating silliness, the players deliciously self-satisfied, the dancing mock video antics,  fey as all get out and infectious with its joy. We all, for a moment, flash back to when we secretly hummed along to Cross's catchy melodies, just as we join in the latter-day superiority that we're better, more sophisticated now. Aren't we?
I have a fantasy that "a boating incident" will open next summer's "Dance for Life" benefit. The crowd would go ape, I boldly predict. Saturday's outing was more or less a work in progress, Fehrenkamp suggesting she may add a third Cross selection to the two here, a good idea. I'd also suggest she amp up the Jazzercize vocal instructions. I didn't get that joke, which she explained in the discussion, and I think she can afford to be more demonstratively Richard Simmons-esque to get across the point.
In any event, the program, dubbed somewhat incomprehensibly "Dance & Theme/Non-Theme II," inspired all manner of thoughts about drama, comedy and all intersections and crossovers among them, not to mention meditation on the pristine, close-to-pure and ultimately terrifying job of the soloist.

Chicago Human Rhythm Project's Global Rhythms VII

"Global Rhythms"

 

By Sid Smith

This weekend's "Global Rhythms" installment, the seventh from the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, marries two seemingly disparate dance worlds.
Spanish dance, both flamenco and folk, is a centuries-old standard bearer of the art--for much of the 20th Century and, for all I know, still today, you didn't vacation in Madrid without plentiful guidebook suggestions that you sample it--as culturally emblematic as (and much more wholesome than) a bullfight. But Chicagoans no longer need to go anywhere: Ensemble Espagnol Spanish Dance Theater is second to none worldwide.
The amazing foot-stompers of Step Afrika, meanwhile, practice an art dating from a shorter time period and a subset of U.S. culture--the fraternity and sorority art developed by African-American college kids mid-century. Eons of Spanish history radiate from its folk dance. Stepping is a singular, particular, highly distinct tile in the vast mosaic of African-American contributions to U.S. arts.
Yet, there they were together Saturday at the Harris Theater, and, of course, it's the similarities, the harmonies in aesthetics and passion, that strike you more than the differences. Tap is bread and butter to the Rhythm Project, at least theoretically--founder and guru Lane Alexander is himself a tap dancer.
But one of the things that makes the Rhythm Project so valuable is its inclusive pursuit of the art of stepping and percussive footwork globally and throughout the centuries. These various versions all carry unmistakable stamps of their time and place--Irish steppers with their rigidly placed arms and Gaelic air, for instance. But the instinct to move your feet, clap your hands and make noise that's not just rhythmic but seductive is amazingly universal and still somewhat underappreciated. It's no shock that Step Afrika, along with its sleek and efficient dances, takes the time to invite the audience into its rhythmic world. We're dying throughout to join them.
The Step Afrika visit this time, the Washington, D.C.-based group's third to Chicago, includes works by a variety of choreographers. Jason Nious' "Ke Nako" is a short, shadowy lit series of introductory show-pieces, the dancers almost in disguise as they romp in an assortment of boxes formed by light. "My Man Is Gone Now"--with five choreographers in its credits--is a bluesy, often classically tinged trio for the women, one of them barefoot, with swift pirouettes joining more sultry undulations and dramatic falls to the floor, set to the Nina Simone song. The men take over in "Off the Train," the footwork here deliberately mimicking the patter of a locomotive, the costumes including smart hats and suitcases that end up platforms for some of the dancing.
It's all enjoyable, and fairly diversified, avoiding the each-work-looks-alike syndrome that can plague some step artistry. But none of it prepares you for the festive celebration of "Nxt/Stp," by Jakari Sherman, the troupe's cavalcade of stepping, tapping, hand-clapping and show-stopping percussive fireworks. Accompanied at times by an onstage sax player, "Nxt/Stp" is one-act-play-like in its sweep and punch.
Ensemble Espagnol won't dance at the Harris on Sunday, part of the idea here being to present a two-pronged program--Sunday's line-up pairs Step Afrika with the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company of Chicago instead.
But Saturday, dame Libby Komaiko and troupe demonstrated how they've evolved into one of the most impressive arts organizations here or anywhere else. There was the stark, dignified, largely-danced-in-place opening, "Zapateado," followed by an absolutely electrifying duet from Claudia Pizarro and Jose Torres, embodying the duo archetype of the dance and managing to include flirtation, seduction, feverish footwork and an evolution so coy you hardly noticed you were being swept away.
Few dances, meanwhile, rival Komaiko's "Bolero" for spectacle, drama and romance. Slides project Picasso, but my favorite moments are when the dancers are on a bare stage, inflamed by the lighting effects and their own impassioned feet.

 

Striding Lion presents

"Striding Lion's "On the Make""

 

By Laura Molzahn

It can be disconcerting for a critic to hear it announced, at the end of a concert, that most of the pieces were excerpts and/or works in progress.

But that would account for this rather scattered, slight evening of works whose points were often less than clear. Striding Lion Performance Group’s “On the Make,” running through Sunday at Link’s Hall, on Friday night included three dance-theater pieces by Striding Lion members (all three also on the later programs) and two by guest artists.

Striding Lion artistic director Annie Beserra opened the evening per se with “Nothing More,” a promising foray into the territory of Valeska Gert. In her long and ingeniously broad career, this nose-thumbing German-Jewish radical cabaret dancer and silent-film and stage actress also managed to squeeze in some writing. Among the texts here are excerpts from her monograph “Ich Bin Eine Hexe” (“I Am a Witch”). And Beserra was about as witchy as you could get, 20s style: black hair bobbed, postures extreme, and expressions so much larger-than-life they threatened to blow out the walls of the Link’s Hall space.

Projected clips from silent films further set the scene, as did singer-actress Dana Dardai, towering over a tiny table filled with delicacies delivered by a hovering, obsequious waiter (Adam Gauzza). With her magnificent breasts overflowing her bodice and accordion handily nearby in a small suitcase, she too was larger than life.

The texts that Beserra delivers, presumably from Gert’s own writings, are floridly self-regarding: “My movements are sleek and voluptuous. My white face is almost covered by the strands of my black hair. I bow my head deeply.” Beserra’s movements can be suggestive (and apparently are true to Gert’s uninhibited style, certainly in the 1929 film “Diary of a Lost Girl”). There’s lots of shrieking. The audience didn’t know whether to laugh or keep a straight face. That tension is a good starting place for a theatrical experience, but the scene doesn’t really go anywhere. Maybe at some later date --- I’d be curious to see what becomes of Dardai’s bourgeois character.

Company collaborator Amanda Exley Lower’s “The Egotists” is an excerpt from an earlier piece, “Hunger.”  Four women set up, dismantle, and rearrange the parts of an ingenious table, transforming them into handy pedestals. Projected images of glamorous icons set this scene: the familiar territory of coming to terms with our culture’s superficial, self-centered female role models. As the texts make super-clear, all four women are tediously solipsistic and combative. “The Egotists” makes its point completely clear, in obvious choreography rather clumsily performed.

Thankfully, Striding Lion collaborator Adriana Durant crosses over into political territory with “Jane & Wayne,” first performed in 2008. She even tries to bridge the current chasm between right- and left-leaning politicians and voters: Jane (Beserra) wears a red dress, and Wayne (Gauzza) a blue shirt and tie. Best about this odd “romantic” duet is the way Durant keeps things off-balance and uncomfortable, partly through familiar, incongruous snippets of music: America’s “A Horse With No Name,” Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” Constantly aware of each other, Beserra and Gauzza never connect no matter their physical proximity: when they tumble across the floor, rolling over each other, they’re both looking at something else. It’s funny, in a hopeless kind of way.

Two guests opened the Friday show. Be the Groove performed two newer pieces, a spoken-word solo called “Shot in the Dark” and a danced trio, “Conference Call.” Both were expertly done, especially the rat-a-tat, rhythmically complex solo --- and extraordinarily derivative of Billy Siegenfeld’s unique style in Jump Rhythm Jazz Project.

Montom Arts presented a dance film, “I Am Not an Animal.” With its opening statement to that effect, and closing statement that we learn most about humans by understanding what they say they are not, it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. At the same time, I’m not sure what the point of the dancing or the film was.

“On the make” means greedy for money, for sex, for power. But the mere presence of appetite in the performers does not mean they’re whetting ours.

Zephyr Dance

"Zephyr Dance presents "Smeared Surfaces""

 

By Sid Smith

How we see dance--as in where we sit, where we aim our eyes, what we choose to watch and from what angles we're forced to view it all--greatly affects how we interpret dance. How we receive it and what we decide to think about it.

Whether, for instance, you choose to stare unwaveringly at the feet of the dancer portraying Myrtha in "Giselle" as she glides across the floor in her legendary series of bourrees, or you opt to watch instead her floating body and that overall image, affects your emotional response to the sequence. So does your theater seat--very different images imprint on the mind when glimpsed from close up or far away, at the top of the venue's rafters.

That obvious but nevertheless profound quandary regarding the witnessing of live dance has been a major interest of Zephyr Dance and its artistic director Michelle Kranicke for several years now. It's an abiding subtext and formal topic of what the troupe calls an ever-changing movement poem entitled "Erased Dance," a series of concerts dating back years, mixing old works with new works, changing the old works while exploring the different ways that various audience members choose to perceive the concert.

This week, a new installment of the "Erased Dance" series plays Thursday through Saturday at the Holstein Park Auditorium, 2200 N. Oakley in Chicago. The umbrella title for the two pieces on the program, "Smeared Surfaces," hints at Kranicke's thoughts on this audience vantage point idea.

"The whole series has been conceived as a movement poem that could be shifted or smeared or smudged," she explained. "If you've seen the works previously, this time you might see a small facsimile of what you've seen before, but in a different order, for example. Or the audience is placed differently, and there may be new things injected that I'm exploring right now."

Thus, the repetition and evolution of individual moves and gestures--bedrock to modern dance everywhere--is further explored here in that the works themselves have changed and evolved--and so have their circumstances.

"Both works have been seen before, but never side by side," she said of the two pieces, "Shift" and "The Trace of Her Body Is Barely Visible," that make up "Smeared Surfaces." And the Holstein is a different venue than the Epiphany Church, where Zephyr performed part of "Erased Dance" earlier.

"The seating is different," Kranicke noted. "I've been exploring audience placement, the ability to see dance from both near and far, as well as giving audiences choices to look at one point of the dance while knowing they may be missing another part."

That has been accomplished by other artists elsewhere by inviting the audience to roam about a large space--Jonathan Meyer did just that earlier this season at a south side loft. "Here, they're not roving, but the seating is set up in the round," Kranicke said. "But there will be areas bisected by the dancers. And some of the movement will happen outside the circle. So, if you want to see what's going on behind you, you'll have to choose to turn around and watch, but you'll thus miss what's going on in front of you."

Kranicke readily admits performance art and art installations have been exploring these issues for years. But her take is both highly personal and infinitely subtle--she is reaching deep to touch on the most basic levels of the very definition of dance.

"I've become a bit frustrated over the years with the whole viewing experience of dance, where the audience is forced into a static area to watch a proscenium stage from one particular vantage point," she said. "Compare that to art or architecture, where you can have multiple experiences of a work, depending on how you choose to view it."

Ironically, dance adds another dimension, the fourth, to its art, which actually should multiply alternatives and possibilities, not diminish them. "One of the things I want to explore is the visceral experience of dance. It's a kinetic experience as well as a visual one. Technology today evokes the idea that we're closer to each other, and yet farther away, too. There's always some kind of device between you and others.

"You may find yourself sitting very close to the dancers, in the front row, though often we deliberately avoid that when we can. But, when we're there, right up close, we're removed from the situation where I'm a viewer and I sit apart. I observe you, but don't necessarily come near you. That's different in the front row. How often do you come that close to someone else's foot?"

There is a sly, understated tweak at audience participation here. Not the obvious, in-your-face improv theater kind, but the mere fact that, if you choose to turn your head at Zephyr's performance, to check out what's behind you, you're moving with the dancers, too.

"At one concert, we gave people numbers that assigned them to certain seats," she said. "It was interesting how some people chose to disregard the numbers so they could sit with the person or people they came with. It's a statement that sometimes they just don't want to play my game,"

"I'm not looking to anger the audience," Kranicke added. "I'm just looking to give them different perspectives and allow them to make choices."

"Smeared Surfaces" plays at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday at Holstein. For tickets: 773-489-5069 or zephyrdance.com.

 

The Sweet Goddess Project

"Honey Pot Performance "The Sweet Goddess Project""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Two veins run through Meida Teresa McNeal's "The Sweet Goddess Project" which looks at the role that women play and have played in Chicago's house music and dance scene. Those two veins are strong --- but in conflict.

Running through Sunday at Experimental Station in Hyde Park, the two-act "Sweet Goddess Project" has an analytical side expressed in documentary-style videos and recordings of unnamed people talking about how they view house, its history, and the migration of southern blacks northward. And the other side? Danced embodiments of the history behind house and of its spirit.

No doubt that verbal discourse and dancing can intertwine and reinforce each other. In the first act, the background information and opinions gave me context for what I was seeing. But in the second act, as the opinions began to diverge and the verbal discourse seemed to increase and turn more didactic, I wished it gone. Or reduced. It's not so much a matter of right or wrong ideas. It's that the rhetoric of the piece stops working.

Because the fact is, only the dancing really moved me. And it REALLY moved me. Choreographed by all four performers --- Abra Johnson, Boogie McClarin, McNeal, and Ni'Ja Whitson --- it made me feel I was seeing real people totally in the moment, being themselves and being with others, rather than cogs in a machine constructed by the choreographer. This kind of dancing is perhaps the most difficult to describe because it's so subtle and changeable. The performers' faces are crucial, especially in how they look at one another: fleeting, quicksilver stuff.

The audience isn't a complete afterthought, but, well, we sort of are. Which is OK, given the history of house. It started in Chicago in the early 80s --- and subsequently spread worldwide --- as a form for outsiders: African-Americans, Latinas, queers. House created a home for these outsiders, magically transforming them into the insiders. A theater setting makes us, the audience, the outsiders.

The history of house means its essence is slippery, underground. As one commenter says during the first act, house is "unnameable and unframeable." That compelling idea is driven home by the dancing, whether it's house, juba, stepping, contemporary, or disco prancing. So when, at the end, another person claims that the house community "needs to archive our history," that its practitioners are in many ways mainstream (with kids and professional careers), and that house needs to be "more of a Chicago force," I had a profound negative reaction. The world needs more mystery, more ecstatic revolution, not more mainstreaming.

Though "The Sweet Goddess Project" is a little rough around the edges, the roughness grows out of the piece's spontaneity and out of the inclusiveness of house. Still, a whole 90 minutes of being a fly on the wall of a club would have gotten old. McNeal wisely changes things up on a regular basis. There are solos, duets, and trios with varying members. Of course house music is spun (by DJ Jo de Presser), but there's also Delta blues, disco, and "ethnographic tracks" recorded by McNeal, who has studied Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian performance. One of the piece's 14 sections focuses on a cappella vocalizing in well-orchestrated evolving rhythms. In another section, the dancers seem to pick cotton, delicately twirling their hands near the floor in a supremely feminine gesture.

"Sweet Goddess" is seldom explicitly feminist, except toward the end, when one of the speakers talks about how women were traditionally excluded from the roles of DJ and promoter in the house community. Instead the dancing immerses performers and audience alike in the female.

Oddly --- or not --- McNeal is the most contained of the four dancers, with a diffident but nuanced musicality. She's often paired with Whitson, who's also a bit reserved. But Whitson breaks out in the solo that closes the first act: neat and compact, she moves incisively through a hovering break-dance sequence, whirling her legs out one at a time, then closes her solo with spinal gyrations just as incisive.

Johnson and McClarin, also often paired, are the sensualists. Johnson delivers a poetic reminiscence about migration during her solo, but her moves are what amazed me: luscious, often measured, and unself-consciously self-caressing. McClarin, never one to hold back, really lets go in a solo preceding the final section of "Sweet Goddess." Tensile and steely, she masters the music, merging with it, then defying it as the beat grows faster, louder. With the utmost control, she drops surely to the floor and moves as she pleases, slowly, to the storm of sound.

 

Lucky Plush Productions

"Faustin Linyekula at the MCA"

 

By Sid Smith

Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula and Studios Kabako are making their Chicago debut through Sunday, a multi-disciplinary blend of eight artists rocking the stage at the Museum of Contemporary Art and peppering it with exotic sounds and colors.

In many ways, this production, boasting three dancers, Linyekula himself included, and five musicians and singers, is more impressive for its impact in cultural exchange than its concision as a performance vehicle. Indeed, concise it isn't. For all its flash and contemporary musical appeal, Linyekula's concept of set pieces favors the elongated. Songs feature lyrics by Congolese poet Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, written in French but projected in English translation via supertitles, accompanied by dance. But often each piece and image goes on and on and seems to last an eternity. Many effects are striking and memorable; most of them also overstay their welcome. Linyekula's 100-minute show probably would be more powerful if kept to 50.

Still, this proves a fascinating look at artistry exotic to most of us, while Muhindo's lyrics and Linyekula's themes encompass gripping political commentary on a land beset by war, poverty and despair. The ultimate thrust of the work is a kind of thin thread of hope interwoven into a vast tapestry of pessimism and self-defeating hedonism--frolic now, for tomorrow we die.

"There's this incredible music, it sticks in your head and in this case stays in your body," Peter Taub, director of performances at the MCA, said in an interview prior to the troupe's arrival. "But at the same time, there's an urgency to the message. Over the course of the piece, there's a transformative story expressed, a gauntlet thrown down and held up in the face of what everybody says of the Congo. Everybody says that the invasions, tribal struggles and political corruption leave no hope. No place to start. He says there is a place to start, and it's art. He's saying, 'I do want to live.'"

Linyekula is very much a contemporary international artist, with experiences well beyond the boundaries of his country, and the production offers an inventive fusion mingling African choral chants, punk rock, the Congolese pop music known as ndomobolo and even comic, funky tweaks of Western couture and Las Vegas glitz.

For a time, the three dancers don puffy, layered balls of fabric, flounced, inimitable costumes that resemble rolls of quilts and transform the dancers into candy-colored spheres. One of the two vocalists--a statuesque, limber dancer as well--wears a glittering suit of gold lame, while a guitarist similarly sparkles in red. The dancing is sometimes fey and outrageous, disco-driven and seemingly impromptu. Elsewhere, it's motored by sensuous pelvic thrusts. At key moments, both solemn and funny, the dancers collapse to the floor, as if exhausted or defeated.

But late in the program, the three dancers and two singers gather in a remote corner of the stage, the lighting reduced to sculpt them in a moody orange glow, to form a circle and sing in the harmonic traditions of their culture. It's a kind of back-to-tribal basics and unifying moment of solidarity and community before Linyekula's final push for the future.  At the end, they sit along the edge of the stage, their backs to the audience, and gaze at a vista of the sky intermittently embedding photos of their countrymen.

I watch all this smug in my concert hall comforts. But, back home, Linyekula is a social energizer as well as an artist.

Taub explains, "He was living in exile, but he moved back, first to the capital city and then to the village where he was born. What he has done is not only make his work there, but he has taken on the role of advocate and organizer. He calls it cultural acupuncture and feels that the land is a body that's wounded. By bringing culture to many neighborhoods, he hopes people will begin to have an identification with the land itself again and return to a sense of well being."

For tickets to Sunday's 7:30 p.m. program at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Av.: 312-397-4010 or mcachicago.org.

Natya Dance Theatre

"Natya Dance Theatre's "The Flowering Tree""

 

By Sid Smith

"The Flowering Tree," an ambitious new work unveiled over the weekend by Natya Dance Theatre, is based on an ancient folk tale about an impoverished young woman gifted with a spectacular magical ability.

Spurned by snootier neighbors, she is able to turn into a tree that produces irresistible blossoms, enabling a giant Cinderella leap in social status. As in so many legends, the magic comes with its rules: The blossoms can only be collected after falling, never plucked from the limbs, and the metamorphosed woman must be treated with care and ritualistic guidelines. Harm the tree and you harm her, and by extension the rest of us. Naturally, many violate the rules, unable to resist greed and temptation, and the results are dire. The maxims may be old, but the message highly current.

Natya has staged this classic with both imagination and respect for authenticity. This version is based on a translation of the tale by A. K. Ramanujan, poet and teacher at the University of Chicago until his 1993 death. For its score, Natya turned to Rajkumar Bharathi, a composer with international credentials and an innovative approach, blending past and present--traditional Indian strains mix with wailing saxophone, for instance. The choreography is a collaboration by Natya artistic director Hema Rajagopalan and her daughter, Krithika, who also played the part of the onstage narrator and guide at Saturday's premiere at the Harris Theater.

The production employs no scenery, but that's by no means a loss. Dustin L. Derry's lighting helps create subtle moods and atmosphere, while the choreography, meanwhile, is often suggestive, making a virtue of spare necessity. Instead of clumsy cardboard scenery, a choral cluster, first glimpsed in silhouette behind the backdrop, beautifully conjures up the tree, the arms of the dancers spread out and swaying, a lovely choral design as well as successful motif. Similarly, in a darker segment of the story, Kumudha, the central character, abused and violated, is transformed into what the story suggests is a gnarled half-human tree stump. Priya Nelson, who plays her, writhes in anguish lying on the floor and later appears wriggling and pained enwrapped in a cloak--the transformation is implied and all the more affecting because of it.

At around 75 minutes, "The Flowering Tree" is by no means a long production. Still, it proved too long for its own good. The Rajagopalan choreography is lively, ingeniously designed and illustrative, from the jaunty dances at the temple for the women through the interesting solos compellingly managed by the prince of the story, tall and lanky Vinay Srinivasan. The large, energetic finale is enticing.

But some of the dramatic pacing throughout is too slow and the narration too prolonged--we sometimes stay ahead of the story. All fables are didactic, of course, but this one borders on the preachy, the lines of narration telling instead of showing, in contrast to the more successful choreographic imagery. In her role as narrator, Krithika Rajagopalan repeats key lines that don't need repeating, hammering home the obvious and sometimes seeming more lecturer than storyteller. The text and dramaturgy need pruning--fables are best when brief, their morals somewhat surprising, and "The Flowering Tree," if cut back to a more potent 50 minutes or so, might actually grow in magic and power.

Paradoxically, Nelson, a lovely and majestic heroine, could use more to do, superb in her acting, but not given much dance other than a fine wedding night duet with her prince. All of the performers, Nelson included, however, are capable, including Shuba Bindra, who plays the sly, malevolent sister-in-law, and the 10-member corps, whose designs are well crafted and well danced.

 

The Victory Project at Northerly Island

"Erica Mott Productions "The Victory Project""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Sometimes the freshest, most promising ingredients never quite gel into a satisfying meal. "The Victory Project" --- the culmination of Erica Mott's trilogy investigating the intersection between women and the military --- has a unique and intriguing idea. It has a unique and intriguing venue: the Visitor Center on man-made Northerly Island, whose history of celebrating heroic mastery helps inform the piece. (It was the site of the 1933-1934 Century of Progress exhibition and the home of Meigs Field Airport from 1948 till 2003, when Mayor Daley, in a destructive variation on male chutzpah, bulldozed it in the middle of the night.)

But several factors undermine the impact of Mott's ambulatory site-specific piece, running through Sunday. Two hours long, it consists of about a dozen scenes, set on at least five different "stages." Fragments are fine, but too many of them dissipate attention, especially when not all are clearly motivated. Moving from spot to spot in itself creates lapses in energy --- and in audience concentration. "The Victory Project" begins and ends well and shows a clear devolution into militarism. But the center, as in an undercooked cake, is wobbly.

Six female performers (and, on occasion, composer/sound engineer Ryan Ingebritsen) take distinct roles in scenes with distinct purposes. Joy Davis, Silvita Diaz-Brown, and Karen Faith are always the women in white --- the "statuary," dressed in old-fashioned aviation helmets and bustiers (costumes by Kristin Mariani). The surreal first section, set inside the institutional-feeling Visitor Center, finds the trio buried beneath huge white hoop skirts, extending an arm, a leg, a head, or some little fake appendage through the waist hole. The skirts seem like breathing beings, like jellyfish. Nature meets artifice and fragmentation, prefiguring man's destructive interference.

In the second scene, Suzy Grant and Melissa McNamara are decked out in full-skirted 50s-style dresses with cone bras outside the bodices. Entering with little shrieks, cooing to their "babies," they eventually learn the steps to a dance, guided by old-fashioned recorded instructions. Metal kitchen utensils become building blocks, musical instruments, and the "prizes" in a contest. Grant's gift for comedy enlivens these stereotypes of domestic womanhood.

The third section is set in a big tented area outside the Visitor Center. And despite Thursday's daytime temps in the 80s, it was really cold --- unfortunate for both the piece and the audience. We spent most of the rest of the night here.

This scene introduces Mott's character, who alternates between coy flirtation and robotic stepping and posturing. The 50s jingle "Barbie, You're Beautiful," combined with Mott's little moues and seductive poses atop a wooden console, drive home the point that our culture traps women in sexualized doll-like roles. But when the console becomes a war desk and Mott a general, she's trapped in yet another restrictive role: the blustering masculine automaton.

Mott excels at transforming her body language, and Ingebritsen's manipulation of onstage sounds cleverly suggests air raid sirens and the percussive rhythms of a marching band, gunfire, or bombs. So much thought and ingenuity have gone into these 12 scenes, but there are not only too many of them, they're repetitious. Each one repeats the same movements over and over, and the characters become all too familiar.

They do change over time. The housewives turn into Rosie the Riveters, then back into devoted moms --- though their baby carriages hold bombs and tanks. Mott goes from oversize Barbie to homicidal/suicidal game-show hostess to war victim/apparatus, outfitted with three imposing artificial limbs. The three in white change from jellyfish/southern belles to recruits to object lessons in the dangers of promiscuous behavior. Then they're back to being soldiers, in a section that includes Diaz-Brown's impressive solo in spike-heeled ankle boots. Finally they mutate definitively into the heroic statuary they've resembled throughout.

Problematic tech elements undermine the piece's many, too many, ideas. Voiceovers, some apparently derived from Mott's conversations with female soldiers of the last half-century and the women who kept the home fires burning in the 40s, are often unintelligible. Video projected on the console was too small to see, at least from where I was standing, and the huge video in the next-to-last section was behind me. Such are the perils of finding a vantage point in one scene after another.

More unfortunate, the female-driven "Victory Project" allows men to define women. Tellingly, much of the piece relies on 50s and 60s cultural artifacts. I understand that this was the era that probably most influenced Mott's interview subjects, but these extreme examples of male cultural domination also date the work. I wanted more of a female perspective, a view independent of men's stereotypes of women. The brief, gorgeous closing scene, set outdoors, is too little, too late.

 

MetLife New Stages for Dance

"Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre/Inaside Chicago Dance "Constant Motion""

 

By Laura Molzahn

The first of eight "New Stages" shows in the 2011-2012 season proved adecidedly mixed bag. Yoking two groups at different stages of development on one program, as well as in a single piece, Saturday night at the Harris did not work to the advantage of the troupe not quite ready for prime time.

Richard A. Smith, the new artistic director of Inaside Chicago Dance (a jazz repertory company established in 2003), showed five pieces, four by other choreographers. That choice provided an agreeable variety, but it was difficult to see a true vision at work. Inaside seems focused on training, and the sheer volume of dancers at varying levels of expertise muddied the experience. Most of Inaside's half of the program seemed distant and dated, anonymous and unfocused.

Harrison McEldowney and Tony Savino contributed the four-dance suite "Mink, Jazz and Swing: Dancing to the Music of Miss Peggy Lee." Trading, perhaps, on the popularity of "Mad Men," it features retro costumes and attitudes and the sly non-romance for which McEldowney, at least, is known. His couples, even when deeply entrenched in a duet, always have an eye on the main chance, their fallback position. Witty and cynical, the suite included some fine dancing by swing-dance ringers.

Autumn Eckman's first piece of two on the program was "At Face Value," featuring a small-ish ensemble of seven. Faux-primitive dancing, with lots of wide-legged stamping and bent-over postures, wasn't clearly motivated. And unfortunately, to me neo-flamenco artists Rodrigo y Gabriela suggest Spanish Muzak.

But Eckman's "A Lot Like Love" was a tour de force of sorts. Performed by the Inaside company and the trainee ensemble, this huge piece managed to make the varying levels of performance unimportant. Romantic skirmishes between nerds --- shamelessly flaunting funky-chicken arms --- recapitulate the pretend naivete and awkwardness of the sound track: recent pop songs. It's a gift to create genuinely funny dance, and here Eckman shows she's got it.

A premiere by Smith for eight, "More Than a Conqueror," starts promisingly, with a dramatic tableau. But the choreography eventually loses all connection to the music, by percussive ensemble Les Tambours du Bronx. Perhaps Smith was aiming for the excitement of Robert Battle's "Train," which uses music by the same group. But these dancers' layouts and elegantly extended limbs were on a different planet from the score's wild beats.

"Pique-Nique," created by Jennifer Wycykal for the trainee ensemble of 14, was truly regrettable: bland choreography for undistinguished students.

Switching to Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre in the second act was like stepping into a bracing stream: we were immersed in the personal, the invested. Cerqua Rivera, founded in 1996, draws on the artistry of choreographer Wilfredo Rivera, composer-musician Joe Cerqua, and painter Matt Lamb. It's committed to the integration of live music, dance, and visual art and to the exploration of personal and social issues. Throughout, the CRDT Orchestra, positioned at the rear of the stage, played a variety of music, and very well.

Two guest choreographers changed things up a bit, but in a vein suited to CRDT's mission. Eddy Ocampo's "Innocent Voices" was accompanied by projections of (uncredited) childlike drawings showing homes --- and gun battles. Simple but heartfelt dancing, set to peaceful or festive folk music and the sounds of bombs and gunfire, tell the story of children living with realities they shouldnâ??t have to face. Michelle Manzanales's mildly humorous romantic duet, "Love in a Foreign Language," was well danced by Raphaelle Ziemba and Dustin Crumbaugh.

Carefully selected visuals and music anchored the two older works by Rivera. "Home to Me," set to projected photos of couples of various ages and ethnicities (including Rivera and Cerqua), uses swirling arms and turns punctuated by swiveled hips to communicate both sensuality and comfort. "Let's Speak the Same Language" is more explosive, musically and choreographically, with beautiful vocal accompaniment by Papo Santiago. It gave the dancers their moments to shine.

A jagged musical interlude --- Miles Davis, arranged by CRDT music director Stu Greenspan --- set the mood for Rivera's work in progress, "Of Dreams and Desires." Projections of Matt Lamb's eerie paintings, many of them symmetrical mirror images, create a sense of ritual that reinforces Rivera's choreography: sorceresses exert magical powers, sometimes flattening the crowd of dreamers. Seductive interchanges blend manipulation and support, and singer Bobbi Wilsyn feelingly interpreted Cerqua's evocative composition.

The "collaborative" finale, "Fill It With Love," actually featured side-by-side choreography by Smith and Rivera, performed by their respective troupes. The piece seemed largely an exercise in crowd control; there must have been nearly 50 dancers onstage (including CRDT's youth ensemble, which did fine, blessedly brief work).

An aside: this was perhaps the rudest audience I've ever shared a theater with. Viewers held loud, continuous conversations, apparently under the impression they were in their own living rooms. And really: how do you come in late to the SECOND act, in the middle of the seconddance? I've never seen so much seat changing and late seat taking.

 

The Other Dance Festival 10 year anniversary

"The Other Dance Festival"

 

By Laura Molzahn

The Other Dance Festival threw itself a party last night in honor of its tenth birthday. And despite the economy and the state of arts funding --- or because of them --- it FELT like a party. This sold-out show evinced some of the same glee you sometimes see at funerals: We're still here! And we plan to stay here. Good.

The six works --- three new and three not-so-new --- repeat tonight, Friday. This year the festival is four weeks total, running through September 30, and though each of the four programs is different, all of them mix old and new.

Peter Carpenter's clever, edgy solo "Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times #4: Considering the Pelvis" is new, the fourth in a series that seems to be moving in a more abstract, less overtly political direction. He does give the labor/management split a feminist cast, though, making himself the patriarchal villain. Dancer Ondine Geary regularly states the obvious, couched in terms of this piece only: female dancers do the work while male choreographers supply the ideas. An exquisite performer, both physically and vocally, she comments on her movement phrases as she goes along: This is mine, this is his. Where he fears the pelvis, she celebrates it. She clearly has her own ideas, even when she's carrying out his. Work essentially empowers the laborer, not the capitalist.

Nana Shineflug's elegiac new "Ashen Wing" for her Chicago Moving Company, the fest's host, has a sturdy backbone: Wallace Stevens' late poem "Angel Surrounded by Paysans," which Jeff Abell reads aloud at intervals during the piece. Preceded by the sound of waves crashing (also suggested in the poem), "Ashen Wing" communicates excitement, even a sense of danger, tempered by melancholy. The movement bursts out, straining upward, then quickly recedes. Stevens' angel is "half of a figure," flawed and vulnerable but necessary: he's also "the angel of reality." It's rare, and welcome, to see a dance so infused with the bitter wisdom and unaccountable joys of age.

Raizel Performances, which has been on hiatus since 2007, seemed to have some serious technical difficulties with "Foreign Policy," an excerpt from an upcoming "modern dance musical." Choreographer Jenny Shore Butler deserves credit for what seems a good idea, but I couldn't be sure what it was. In this text-heavy piece, composer-pianist Will Butler drowned out his own singing and the dancers' speeches, which were often whispered. Very frustrating, though it did give the piece an eerie sense of meaning glimpsed, not grasped.

Revisiting works you've already seen can be hugely rewarding --- when they're worth re-seeing. These three definitely were.

This was the fourth time, I think, that I've watched Andrea Miller's jagged, wrenching duet for Hedwig Dances, "Dust (for Jack)." Each time it suggests something new but always delivers a sucker punch. Victor Alexander is a taller, sturdier performer than Justin Deschamps, who originated one of the roles (Michel Rodriguez still performs the other), and maybe because of that I saw "Dust" more as an interaction between parent and child than between equals. In a kind of role reversal, Rodriguez continually chases and seemingly tries to control the bigger man, his "parent." (In fact, the "Jack" of the title was Miller's stepfather.) Yet that man is swiftly, irrevocably, lost.

The pop-cult "Memory Mash," by Julia Rhoads' Lucky Plush Productions, reaches back to "Swan Lake" and up to the minute: it's recently added references to Natalie Portman and to Michelle Obama riffing on Beyonce's moves. Charismatic performances by all five dancer/actors --- apparently speaking extemporaneously, though I know they're not --- anchor a witty, savvy, fast-moving piece with a point to make: it's impossible to create a dance that's absolutely new, uninflected by personal or cultural history.

Last on the program, Darrell Jones's rough-edged, delicate trio "Hoo-Ha (Eat This Remix)" once again proved obscurely moving. This time, I felt even more of an outsider peering into the fragile, threatened world of voguing. With a sound track that includes an ambient recording of last year's south-side "Respect March Madness, Part 2" ball, "Hoo-Ha" allows each performer to have his own way of moving, of embodying the female. A duet --- two dancers kneel, slapping the other's cheek in turn --- communicates reverence, shame, and the ability to stand up to shame. It also suggests that what outsiders think of this insular world doesn't matter. And it doesn't. I've never before felt so good about feeling excluded.

 

Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival

"Chicago Dancing Fest finale"

 

 

By Sid Smith
The milestones were many in terms of this year's fifth outing of the Chicago Dancing Festival, among them the faithful support of the city's new mayor, who embraced the endeavor with persistent enthusiasm.
Part of the impact stems from the length--five days is a pretty long time, six when you count Monday's opening benefit. Because of the programming variety of the week, and the attendant buzz it created, I was reminded of the heyday of the 1970s and early '80s, when major troupes showed up for long stays, invading our ether, taking over our consciousness. American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet, then based in New York, regularly set up residence for nearly two weeks--it was as if a kind of traveling Chautauqua of dance had set up its tent.
It's a bit late now to mourn yet again the gradual cutbacks of the N.E.A. and the negative results, especially dance, in America--European turmoil is likely to lead to their aping us more rather than the reverse, I read. A return to those good old days isn't likely.
Instead, the model set up by Lar Lubovitch and Jay Franke is one not just today but the future--a tireless campaign amongst those who care to find your funding.
This year their efforts unquestionably reached a new apex. The fest was longer, more varied and blessed with bigger stars in some ways then ever before--those stars being the troupes themselves more than individual performers. Saturday's finale was truly a memorable event, an amazing convocation of 20th-Century giants. George Balanchine (represented by both the New York City Ballet and the Joffrey), Martha Graham (her troupe), Paul Taylor (his) and Jiri Kylian (Ballet West) were among the choreographers.
That 20th-Century label may pester some--the "youngest" piece dated from 1980. But what a line-up, from a reminder of Kylian's design-rich early days to icons by Graham and Taylor following Balanchine's "Stravinsky Violin Concerto." Last year's Harris offerings one night proved a provocative sweep of relatively recent choreography--but Saturday was unlike any other I've seen in dance in Chicago in 30 years, an authentic, radiantly assembled treasure trove of major work authentically danced, as if masterpieces by Monet, Matisse and Picasso were collected for a single exhibition.
Jiri Kylian's 1978 "Sinfonietta," from Ballet West, so superbly run by Adam Sklute, and Taylor's "Esplanade" from 1975 framed the program, poetically so it turns out. "Sinfonietta" is Kylian immersed in form and technique, more glorious in some ways than his more recent fascination with conceptual imagery and props. It helped that Hubbard Street Dance Chicago offered "Petite Mort," with its sailing dress forms, as part of the fest earlier in the week--"Sinfonietta" is Kylian at an early stage, ballet with a newfound naturalism, just as Taylor was all but redefining modern dance with the rigidly all-natural movement--and endless invention--of "Esplanade."
In between, we got works by those two 800-lb. gorillas, Balanchine and Graham. The Joffrey's "Stravinsky" is one of the troupe's more wondrous acquisitions, its rich, infinite detail, imagination and freewheeling musical creativity more comfortable on the dancers now, who dived into it with brio and confidence, despite the Pritzker Pavilion's somewhat limited stage. The Graham company's "Diversion of Angels" was incandescent, part of a mini-series of Graham works and explorations (impersonator Richard Move among them) that reveal the festival's intellectual oomph this year--as fatuous as it may sound, the fest awakened feelings that it's time to reconsider Graham, her legacy surviving and resurfacing, her innovations as profound as we once thought, her work less dusty and easing nicely into the mold of established art. She seemed creaky some days during the postmodern heyday. Now, she conjures up an earlier, crucial period of American dance, wonderfully represented by her company, including Blakely White-McGuire, the woman in red and a dancer of fierce speed and sharp execution.
In a kind of Balanchine dessert, Gonzalo Garcia and Tiler Peck glowed in the "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux," redolent with evidence this oft-programmed piece is done so by duos who cut corners. Her articulation, elan and surefire pirouettes were signal part of the pleasure, along with his solid jetes. (His grand pirouette traveled a tad.)
But by far the most enlightening stroke of the evening, which included the added soupcon of the lesser known Charles Moulton's precision ball marathon by River North Dance Chicago, was the choice to conclude with "Esplanade," a rare chance to see the Taylor troupe in this major classic Chicagoans just aren't very familiar with any more. His company's regular visits back in that N.E.A. heyday were major players in our aesthetics, and his innovations in this work--the endless surprise, the playful air, the magic of walking and running all leading to such powerful soloist turns as those from aptly named Michelle Fleet--not only foreshadowed so much to come, but on Saturday seemed to sum up all the cost, energy and enterprise necessary to pull off something like the Chicago Dancing Festival.
Here was hopscotch giving way to women curled, nurtured and carried in their partner's arms. Here was a dance as important as any in the last 100 years. Live, under the stars, a butterfly insinuating itself into the corps for a spell, "Esplanade" dipped, hopped and then soared, the rest of us clutching its wings for a dizzying ride up to the moon.

Leopold Group, The

"Leopold Group offers "Dancing""

 

 

By Sid Smith

In the midst of a busy festival flush with local and visiting stars, landmark works performed in posh downtown venues attracting the likes of the mayor and then some, it's pleasant to venture back out into the neighborhood, to catch dance on that fertile, formative level of studio experiment.
Just such an opportunity presents itself as the Leopold Group performs through Sunday at the Fasseas White Box Theater of the Drucker Center. Lizzie Leopold, the group's head, is presenting two new works, with different guest artists supplementing the bill at each program. (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that Leopold, the group's head, has helped produce this web site until just recently, returning to fulltime graduate work this fall at Northwestern University.)
"Dancing" is an outing with a lot of intellectual subtext. In notes, Leopold explains the elaborate background thoughts on both of her pieces. "Lips of Their Fingers," its title borrowed from disdainful attitudes towards pantomime some centuries back, is a dance in which the dancers gradually peel off "layers of clothing, the cast pits intensely physical movement against the most inanimate of objects, a floor lamp or the false naturalness of Astroturf, to find delineations between the dance and the body." Such conceptual background can be a burden, and both pieces are sometimes burdensome, spells of inspiration followed by stretches of mediocrity.
Still, the work that above analysis describes is much more accessible in look than her words might suggest. "Lips" is indeed built on a kind of striptease, though a strictly PG-rated one, involving a half-dozen women who start in penguin-like tuxedo wear and gradually discard bits of clothing to wind up in leotards that resemble what the Miss America Pageant used to routinely call Catalina swim suits.
Though there are moments of kittenish allure, engaging ones at that, "Lips" is less about eroticism or seduction than self-awareness and personal attitude. The styles employed are deliciously pop, whirls of fast-moving arm work and gyrating hips that Leopold identifies as referencing "the Hustle, Electric Slide and slow dance," among others. A handful of antique armchair lamps rest by the side of the stage, brought into the playing area at times to rest atop the Astroturf and alter the mood and atmosphere. But the feel is one of purified show dance, public denuding an underlying motif of dance today, one potentially revealing, its tackier employments notwithstanding.
The moves themselves stem from what Leopold describes as a translation from "the most dense performance theory text I could find." That said, at its intermittent best, "Lips" is a rollicking good time, a keenly distilled mix of pop and art, alluding to sex and politics without ever bluntly going there. One seemingly shyer member, who takes her coat off the last during the first stage of disrobing, strips to her suit before the others and enacts a wonderfully detailed, varied, pertly executed come-hither virtuoso solo right at the front edge of the playing area. A journey, of sorts, within the larger one of the overall ensemble.
There are ample opportunities for fine-tuning. The complex subtext can probably be telegraphed to the audience more clearly, just as judicious editing could make for a more performance friendly piece. All that's even more the case with the program's other work, "une elephante," too long at more than 30 minutes for a duet and sullied at times by overly long pauses that hammer home the point rather than suggest it.
But the overall trope is enormously promising here, too, that of two women who move through various stages in some sort of relationship, from frolic and playful interaction through conflict, struggle and at least a partial reconciliatory return to the opening pastorale. One prolonged, agonized embrace is especially powerful. Nicole Romano Uribarri holds Melissa Bloch as if Bloch's life depended on it. There's a potency and affect here very different from most such physical confrontations in dance. Leopold has staged it so that Bloch seems feverish with some sort of irrational motivation to do something, awash in grief, say, or tempted to attempt a rescue of a loved one that would only result in her own death. Uribarri seems bent on restraining her not so much as a part of a contest of wills but to save Bloch from herself. It's a nuance, but a profound and absorbing one.
Unfortunately, "elephante" ambles into such discoveries and either hovers there too long or links them with often more pedestrian, ho-hum movement. There's a great piece here, one that's shorterand better focused. But it isn't there yet, an elephant in the room that sometimes just sits there, barely budging.
Friday's guests, Theater Un-Speak-Able, proved mildly amusing, if modest, a standard performance art duet involving two would-be circus performers (Amrita Dhaliwal and Marc Frost), who have no idea how untalented they are, grandly milking applause for the most routine of somersaults.

Chicago Dancing Festival

"Chicago Dancing Festival "Opening Night Gala""

 

By Laura Molzahn

A program of duets provided an eye-opening history of dance on opening night of the fifth annual Chicago Dancing Festival, now bigger, bolder, and brassier than ever. Fest founders/organizers Lar Lubovitch and Jay Franke have definitely branched out from the ballet and balletic companies of yesteryear, though cutting-edge works seem clustered in the first half of the six-day run. Two excellent works on this program, Robert Wilson's "Shaker Interior" and Brian Brooks' "MOTOR," can also be seen Wednesday night at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Faye Driscoll's "Not...Not (part 1)," scheduled for Monday but not performed because of â??technical difficulties,â?? will be shown the same night.

Monday's CDF fund-raiser at the MCA began with the briefest of brief remarks by Franke, Lubovitch, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who quickly mumbled something about 19 companies and a fest that this year is expected to draw 19,000. So that's 1,000 audience members per company, and your point is...? Anyway, at this point all the "tickets," which are free, are "sold out" --- but there are always no-shows and procedures for snapping up leftovers. Check it out: CDF is now the largest free dance festival in the country.

The Joffrey's Victoria Jaiani and Temur Suluashvili set the benchmark for romantic duets by performing Lev Ivanov's White Swan pas at the top of the program. Oddly, though the two are married, it took a while for their passion to emerge. The first half of the duet in particular emphasized its fragility, almost its brittleness, which unfortunately enhanced the sense of its antiquity. In any case, it provided a strong contrast for the program's four other duos.

The duet from Alonzo King's 2000 "Following the Subtle Current Upstream," performed by Hubbard Street's Penny Saunders and Alejandro Cerrudo, only partly updated the mood and look of the 19th-century classic. Though decidedly more sinuous and grounded (it was performed right after the White Swan pas and brought home the significance of bare feet), King's work is almost as solicitous of the female dancer as Ivanov's. Though the man might rudely haul the woman along by a lifted turned-out leg, he's still the one moving her around the stage.

The woman definitely gains the upper hand in experimental theater director Wilson's breathtaking "Shaker Interior" duet, an excerpt from his 1995 hour-long homage to Martha Graham, "Snow on the Mesa." Performed by Graham company members Xiaochuan Xie and Tadej Brdnik, this piece definitely out-Marthas Martha. Ceremonial and ritualistic to the nth degree, it uses mask-like makeup, elegant costumes (by Donna Karan), and deliberate movement to suggest a timeless dream world of desire and loss. A vision of the woman bursts on the man like a thunderclap: when Brdnik first sees Xie, his empty encircling arms suddenly clap, then burst apart and his mouth opens wide in amazement or horror. Such borderline melodrama gets grounded in the late 20th century --- more earthy than the late 19th or mid-20th centuries --- when Wilson has the woman put her nose into the man's stomach, then sniff her way up his belly.

Brooks obviates the whole male-female thing in his 2010 "MOTOR," which he performed with David Scarantino of the Brian Brooks Moving Company. Brooks set himself an unusual ground rule: only one foot on the floor at a time, almost all the time. Practically speaking, this means continuous hopping on one foot for a while, then shifting to the other, then back. The result is hardly romantic, but the piece is as breathtaking in its bizarre way as Wilson's "Shaker Interior." Though the look is a bit comical, Brooks undercuts the impulse to laugh, partly through Jonathan Pratt's serious, sometimes nearly tragic music. Dancing in unison and often close together, sharing their exertion and exhaustion, the two men create a strong, almost romantic sense of union. And once I realized that the movement's hops were like the jumpiness of silent film, I could squint and see how lyrical the men's upper-body motions were.

Walter Dundervill's "Compression Piece (Swan Lake)" was the program's only premiere, a CDF commission. It definitely compressed my eardrums, with Dundervill's soundscape blasting Diana Ross and the Supremes, M.I.A., Public Image, Ltd., Sonic Youth, and distorted takes on Saint-Saens and Tchaikovsky. But, oddly, this repetitive remix of the classic ballet was in many ways not compressed at all. Performed by Dundervill and Jennifer Kjos, with costumes and set by Dundervill, it created a virtual explosion of white fabric onstage. Much of the action consisted of removing clothing, then replacing it, until finally our White Swan was no more than a pile of rags. Talk about deconstructing a dance.

I was intrigued by the set piece, a fringed length of white satin hoisted into the air to suggest an altar with a royal "red" (white) carpet leading up to it. And I'm generally a fan of innovation. But Dundervill's overall opacity --- the prince and swan queen march back and forth across the stage like the Wicked Witch's militia in "The Wizard of Oz" --- eventually left me cold.

 

JUBA! Masters of Tap & Percussive Dance

"JUBA! Masters of Tap & Percussive Dance"

 

By Laura Molzahn

Fresh faces --- and youthful feet, ankles, and hips --- introduced a brave new world of tap on Wednesday, the first program of three in Chicago Human Rhythm Project's annual Rhythm World faculty showcase, "JUBA!" Between the unforced good cheer of happy tap-dancers and the high spirits of the many students in the house, you could have cut the charged air with a knife. (The performance series continues Thursday at the Museum of Contemporary Art with a program honoring Canadian dancer and teacher Heather Cornell and featuring Canadian tappers, and on Saturday in a program honoring director/choreographer Randy Skinner and focused on Chicago groups.)

Chicagoan Nico Rubio, a former Rhythm World scholarship student, directed Wednesday's show, ablaze with innovative touches: beat-boxing, break dancing, even some modern dance. The music alternated between, or at times combined, recorded tracks and live playing by a six-piece band.

But all the young dancing on view, some of it by ensembles in training, was a double-edged sword. We got energy in abundance, but students learn the art form by memorizing steps and repeating them. That means choreography, which can take away some of tapâ??s excitement and individuality. Tappers are musicians, and most learn by the charts before they can improvise --- the lifeblood of tap, revealing the hearts of its dancers.

Naturally some of the more experienced performers onstage, improvising alone or in duos, were the ones who stuck in my mind. Jason Samuels Smith, who's all of 30, knows how to start small and bring things to a rousing conclusion. Looking apprehensive, he came out saying, "I ain't no 20-something" --- but proceeded to set a mood and rhythm for the band, then let loose his hyper-flexible ankles and big feet to tattoo the stage or traverse it with hummingbird steps.

Daniel Borak, from Switzerland, and Starinah ("Star") Dixon, from Chicago, seemed to be late additions to the program but radiated personality in their solos. Borak, who won four gold medals in a 2008 international tap competition, is athletic but loose: you'd never mistake him for a gymnast. Think hip-hop, especially given his ability to dive to the floor and pivot on one hip, or hop while dragging a toe behind him, grinning the entire time. Dixon, the younger sister of M.A.D.D. Rhythms founder Bril Barrett and one of its members, was all business as she unleashed a steady rapid-fire stream of delicate taps to the band's rendition of "Lullaby of Birdland." But when she relaxed, she revealed a completely adorable, slightly awkward vulnerability.

Canada natives Matt Shields and Travis Knights (Tapestry company members who also perform Thursday) shared the stage in a structured but, I think, partially improvised tap-off set to the band's playing of "Blue Skies." Shields is a big, galumph-y kind of guy who looks like he's going to fly apart onstage while Knights is smaller, neater, and tighter in his steps; they made a great contrast. Neither won, and that was the point of this meeting of opposites in a whole greater than its parts.

Michelle Dorrance's "Two to One" was also partly choreographed, partly improvised. The moody opening, a duet for her and barefoot modern dancer Mishay Petronelli, was unlike any other tap/modern mash-up I've seen: it juxtaposed yet rhymed the two. The second part, a solo for Dorrance, let her break out, with a huge grin and flying arms, to duel with the drummer.

Choreographed works included BAM!'s quartet "Ain't No Sunshine," by Jessica Chapuis (also the winner of this year's Virtual Rhythms videography award). And lanky, loopy former M.A.D.D. Rhythms member Nico Rubio offered three innovative choreographed/collaborative pieces, one of them by Sour Apples Crew and featuring DJs, beat-boxers, and several fabulous b-boys/girls. The other two came from Rubio's "#SampleSundays" series, a set of dances (also posted on YouTube) that borrow from the hip-hop concept of sampling. Jus'LisTeN (Chapuis, Rubio, Lisa La Touche, and Martin "Tre" Dumas) performed the "ATCQ Tribute" and "In Walked Midnight."

The youngest youngsters included the winners of the Virtual Rhythms choreography award, Marina Coura and Charles Renato, and their performers. Or so I'd guess by the look of them. Their quintet, set to Alicia Keys's "Heartburn," contrasted the different energy of its four women and one man: Renato, a diminutive Brazilian firecracker.

The three youth ensembles offered a charming mix of enthusiasm and slightly self-conscious vulnerability. Seattle's Northwest Tap Connection, dressed in white shirts and jeans, performed to Outkast's recorded "Love in War." The North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble, founded in 1983, offered Ayodele Casel's "Sing Sing Sing" (which included a few of the truly young, and the truly amazing) and Jason Janas's "Do Your 'Ting," to a song by tap-dancer Joseph Webb.

The thunderclap for me, however, was Chicago's own Mayfair Dance Academy, founded in 1957 by Tommy Sutton. Some 20 fierce, unsmiling girls swarmed the stage in Jakari Sherman's clapping, chanting, stomping "Steppin'Out." These young dancers embodied the old-school roots of their family-and-community organization and of the militaristic stepping tradition, which incorporates African dance and originated among African-American soldiers returning to the U.S. after WWII.

 

 

 

New Dances 2011

"Thodos' "New Dances 2011""

 

By Laura Molzahn

There’s a fine, generous impulse behind Thodos Dance Chicago’s annual “New Dances” showcase, now in its 11th year. But good intentions and good deeds don’t necessarily translate into an enjoyable experience for the audience. This one was not bad, in fact often good, but uneven.

Nine of the ten choreographers who contributed to “New Dances” are TDC company members, handed the opportunity to create work of their own, given mentors along the way, provided with rehearsal space and production elements. The choreographers were free to use performers from outside the company, introducing fresh blood. And insofar as all this new talent is seeded and nurtured, theoretically the whole dance community, both audiences and artists, benefits.

But without a curatorial eye, this two-and-a-half-hour evening of nine works --- running through Sunday at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts --- was something of an endurance test. Worse, too many elements repeated from one dance to the next. No piece had fewer than six performers; the average in each was eight. An overabundance of violin-and-piano music made for occasional aural ennui.

That being said, one of the most impressive works had the most performers (ten!) and, yes, a violin-and-piano score. “Effigy,” by guest choreographer Rebecca Lemme, grabbed me from the start and held me, despite its frequent slowness and stillness and despite being in the middle of the second act, when my attention was fading. Spare, deliberate moves echo spare, deliberate notes: a dipping slide out of a crowd, a swinging foot that can’t quite pull the dancer out of stasis. Lemme makes expert use of her large ensemble, moving them on- and offstage in constantly shifting small groups, so that the whole is perpetually reconfigured, creating a flowing matrix. Loss is the idea behind “Effigy,” and small touches --- a hand passed lightly down another’s back, a hand passed down the dancer’s own belly --- confirm that God is in the details.

Jessica Miller Tomlinson mines a very different vein in the evening’s smallest and only comic piece, “In Tongues.” Riffing on David Byrne’s loopy onstage persona and music, she imagines a revivalist setting with six “preachers” in white pants and shirts, buttoned up to the neck of course. One is tiny Megan Buckley, the only woman in the crowd and a force to reckon with when it comes time for total immersion baptism. Seriously, how can you go wrong with air guitar, lip-syncing, and tulle skirts?

Another standout: Jeremy Blair and Mollie Mock’s “Exurgence.” It’s drop-dead sexy, from the moment the spot comes up on Cristina Suarez’s bare, toned torso. The black costumes, designed by the choreographers, include elbow-length, fingerless gloves for the women --- used to tremendous effect when they snap their forearms in front of their faces. Four couples plus soloist Suarez suggest commentary on male-female relations, though it’s far from obvious; the men manipulate the women a lot, but the women actually seem more powerful. Zoe Keating’s spectacular cello music propels the dancing.

Many of the choreographers had some difficulty handling the large volume of dancers onstage. Not Jacqueline Stewart, who tells a clear story in “The Art of Ice Cream,” set to early-60s pop and plainly harking back to yesteryear. Fortunately, despite the upbeat ending, it’s not all rainbows and balloons in this reminiscence of young love and young friendship, at a time of life when everything is impossibly complicated and out-of-control. Stewart’s affection for her characters carries the piece.

Wade Schaaf’s balletic “Shostakovich Piano Concerto” also moves the dancers expertly, if somewhat tamely, on- and offstage in standard ballet running entrances and exits. But I found the first two-thirds of it almost painful to watch, as the women were carried clumsily toward us, butt first, or made to stumble along, “supported” by the men. The final third, though, caught fire: set to the allegro movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, its high-risk leaps, catches, and falls seemed to inspire the dancers.

Brian Hare’s “tre-/ter-tri” was absolutely the most perplexing experience of the evening for me. Based on the idea of three (described in the program as “an uneasy joining of the two opposites”), it seemed to have a social agenda: the sound track included distant gunfire and distorted snippets of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech on the Vietnam war. The seven women strip off the outermost of the two slips they wear, and finally clasp their hands and form a line, like pious worshippers on their way to church.

John Cartwright’s “Communication Connection” is a fairly elegant, slightly obvious look at an overdone subject, the anxiety produced by the hyper-interconnectivity of the digital age. Michael McDonald’s opaque “Clouded Reflection” has some effective images suggesting pools and trees but, as far as I could tell, no structure. Meanwhile Joshua Manculich’s “I carry it ____” is all too clear: emotional baggage is realized in the long scarves the dancers carry, drop, and inevitably retrieve. I kept thinking of kids’ blankies. Not a good image. Melodramatic music by Quixotic Fusion doesn’t help.

West Side Story

"West Side Story"

 

By Sid Smith

Arthur Laurents told a PBS documentary a few years back that Leonard Bernstein was afraid of only two things: God and Jerome Robbins.

That delicious anecdote features three members of the gargantuan quartet responsible for "West Side Story." Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics, was the fourth.

But, just as he cowed Bernstein in general, Robbins served as bold auteur in particular on the project that would revolutionize American musical theater. It was his idea, first formed in the late '40s, to turn "Romeo and Juliet" into a contemporary piece, and he played shepherd--and sometimes martinet--in making it all happen.

"West Side Story," whose new Broadway revival is now at the Cadillac Theatre in Chicago, set a bar few musicals have neared ever since. While "Oklahoma!" gets credit for bringing serious dance into the picture, Robbins and company managed an amalgamation of the various musical components like none before and few after. Not only is song brilliantly interwoven into storytelling, but "West Side Story" also fully integrates dance into the overall aesthetic and theatrical mise en scene. Take any component away--the glorious score, the gripping Shakespearean archetypes, the dazzling blend of ballet and jazz dance--and you have a lukewarm revival.

What makes the current version so compelling is the exhilarating return to Robbins' choreography, visible only (in parts) in the film version and pale in so many revivals, including another tour that passed through Chicago some years ago. The choreography, I'd argue, is the best feature of this revival, Robbins' challenging leaps and kicks and his cool, mid-century stylistics practically a revelation. Say what you will about the quality of the acting or singing, but this "West Side" dances with an authenticity and verve rarely seen in a Broadway show.

How authentic is it? Impossible to say, of course. None of us can hop on a time machine and go back to 1957, and that includes Joey McKneely, charged with reproducing Robbins' designs. McKneely was not a member of the "West Side Story" original cast. But he dates, as a performer and Robbins' protege, from "Jerome Robbins' Broadway," a terrific compendium of the master's selections. McKneely works from his own first-hand experience of the choreographer and from the guide book Robbins left behind. He has staged the choreography multiple times. And at the very least here he gives us a juicy curator's take on the Robbins' dancing, stunning ballet-tinged spectacle after spectacle, febrile and electrifying celebrations of Robbins' showmanship so confident in its classical base. To watch these numbers now is to mourn what Broadway has lost. Today's musicals so often seem pre-packaged and slick by comparison, no heart in the art, tinker-toy, really, a quick onrush to serve as dance interlude, the very lack of integration "West Side Story" so magnificently shattered.

Among the high points here are "America," naturally, a blistering ensemble binge for the women, unlike the mixed gender chorus of the movie, terrifically lead by Michelle Aravena as Anita, her long legs and dynamite presence a plus, even if she and the whole cast look more college age than high school; the seductive allure, finger snaps and intricate structure of "Cool," a dance so of its time and yet dazzling in its agelessness; and the "Dance at the Gym," hyperkinetic here but worthy of our gratitude, since it was one of the few numbers staged for the movie after Robbins was fired. (He still got credit as co-director and thus won an Oscar.)

As with any reconstitution on Broadway, there are visible tricks where McKneely plays his own hand, urged by Laurents' nudging. His hilarious, obscene shtick for "Gee, Officer Krupke," while appropriate to the sense of the scene, wouldn't have been allowed in the late '50s: one character mimics masturbating and another pretends to be splattered by his invisible seed. Other liberties include the sharp, almost harsh attacks enacted by the dancers--more ballistic than ballet-refined. This is a 21st Century approach, the aggressiveness striking and bold, but sometimes lacking the grace and polished ease Robbins affects so incredibly in the movie. Or, for that matter, the scintillating subtleties Jean-Pierre Frohlich managed when he recently revived Robbins' "The Concert (or, the Perils of Everybody)" for the Joffrey Ballet.

But McKneely has the luxury here of working with topnotch dancers, and Laurents, who wrote the original book, directed this revival before his death in May and probably retained a few nagging fears of Robbins himself, just like Bernstein. He nonetheless gave his okay to the changes designed to keep the musical fresh. That's enough for me, the result easily the most authentic and revealing Robbins-esque "West Side Story" of our time.

 

Chicago Tap Theatre presentes Tap & Tastings

"Chicago Tap Theatre's Tap & Tastings"

 

By Sid Smith

Dance is a be-here-now art, every move passing into memory with each passing minute, with each second, really, a blink-and-you-miss-it treasure.

That said, and maybe because of it, dance artists are typically passionate and determined when it comes to saluting their art's legacy. Consider Chicago Tap Theatre's benefit, Tap and Tastings, which this week will include among its performances a pointed tribute to Joel Hall, one of the pioneer's of Chicago's current dance scene.

"I've lived here for 11 years, and I guess when I came I assumed Chicago had always had this huge, vibrant dance community, one with the breadth and depth it has now," Mark Yonally, Chicago Tap artistic director, says. "But it wasn't always the case, and it's important to remember and honor those who made it happen. Joel is unquestionably one of them."

What's more, Yonally, now 37, and other dance artists like him, have close ties to Hall and his company's studio, which has proven a godsend for the Chicago Tappers and other troupes over the years. "We've been in residence at the Joel Hall Dance Center for the past eight years," first at its former headquarters at Clark and Berywn and more recently at Hall's new digs at 5965 N. Clark St. "They've given us a really reasonable rate," Yonally says . "To put it more elegantly, they've given us a home."

"Joel is really an amazing man," Yonally continues. "He has done so much for the Chicago community, helping it to thrive and supporting so many young artists. He's an important educator, too."

The Tap and Tastings benefit, set to begin at 7:30 p.m. at May I Have This Dance, 5246 N. Elston Av., is seemingly occurring in the doldrums of summer, though this particular weekend is jampacked, with the winding down of the Dance/USA confab, Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago at the Harris Theatre Saturday and the ongoing engagement of Aerial Dance at Ruth Page Center for the Arts.

Still, it's a chance to relax and enjoy some of the troupe's classic works. "Same But Different" is an a cappella piece starring dancers who're all singly doing very different steps, but at a unified rhythm, so that, if you close your eyes, you'll swear they're all dancing in sync. The second piece, "Glory Box," is set to Portishead and a showcase for the women. "It's sexy, sultry, strong tap dance, and the group is one of the great trip hop bands of the '90s," Yonally notes. "I'm a huge fan of torch music, Julie London and Peggy Lee, for example, and Portishead is basically torch music for the late 20th Century. It combines torch and what's called crime jazz, a dark, noir-ish mixture overall involving some hip hop."

The third piece, "Epistrophy," scored by the Thelonius Monk work of the same name, is "one that has no meaning, no concept, but about the pure joy of dance, straightforward bebop and a trio to show off the pure rhythmic side of what we do." Yonally is choreographer of all three works, though there's some improvisation in "Epistrophy."

"The whole theme is tap and tastings, so the performances are bite-sized, and there will be drinks from local distilleries, wine, coffee and food," Yonally promises. "One thing's that cool is that it's all local, the food, the drinks, the performers, the dance and the businesses supporting us. My wife and I try to be as local-vore as possible."

Down to and including well-wishing to a local giant: Joel Hall.

So tap and taste away.

Tap and Tastings takes place from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, July 16, at May I Have This Dance, 5246 N. Elston Av. The cost is $75. For more information or buy tickets, 800-838-3006 or brownpapertickets.com.

Chicago Tap Theatre presents TAP!(ish)

"Chicago Tap Theatre Tap!(ish)"

 

By Laura Molzahn

Just three months after he debuted a new version of "Changes: A Science Fiction Tap Opera," ball of fire Mark Yonally orchestrated and presented yet another, very different evening of Chicago Tap Theatre Saturday at the Athenaeum. The 15(!) pieces included premieres, revised works, improvised dances, and repertory pieces, most by company members, though Caitlin Haywood, Jessica Deahr of Chicago Dance Crash, and flamenco dancer Rosetta Magdalen also contributed. Some of the music was played live by pianist/singer Andrew Edwards, violinist Samantha O'Connell, bassist Scott Dickinson, and vocalist Tressa Thomas.

Rhythm tap isn't generally CTT's thing, as you might know or guess from the troupe's many evening-length story shows. Even work that's primarily musical still has a strong theatrical side --- a big part of what makes the company enjoyable and accessible. Not everything on this program was bang-up, and it was a little long, especially with all the onstage talk between pieces. But overall this was an adventurous, often clever program.

Magdalen's "Flamencology," choreographed with Yonally, blended her specialty with tap --- not flamenco at its finest, but that wasn't really the point. And give the 11 dancers props for trying a new form. As Yonally noted afterward, Magdalen was very patient with them. The palmas were no problem, but flamenco carriage sometimes seemed elusive. It was a hoot to watch Yonally trying to look serious and haughty (he usually grins) and to see his sizzling tango-flamenco duet with his new wife, Jennifer Pfaff Yonally.

Yonally pitted boys against the girls in his new a cappella quartet, "Same But Different," for Rich Ashworth, Phil Brooks, and apprentices Molly Stoltz and Kirsten Williams. Musically interesting for the contrast between the men's heavy beats and the women's inevitably lighter ones, this friendly competition heated up as it went along, with the help of Brooks's clowning. Yonally's new trio, "Epistrophy," set to a recording of Thelonius Monk, had a typical jazz structure: playing together, soloing, and returning to the group.

Company member Kendra Jorstad ran with a weird concept in her new "Perception," a humorous female quintet. Jorstad said online that she "wanted to create a piece using footwork that has upper body movement to match the notes of the tapping. It morphed into something completely different than I thought it would." She literally split her concept in two: tappers on one side of the stage provide the percussion while dancers on the other perform frisky, funny moves for the head, arms, and torso. Add a warped Middle Eastern look and sound --- the women wear hijab-like scarves with shorts, and recordings by Black Violin suggest classical meets world music --- and "Perception" really takes off (though the repeated sight gags get old). Jorstad's "Sorrow," a revised piece with red balloons, was much more convincing emotionally than it was a year ago.

Haywood won a spot on the program through CTT's Innovation in Choreography Award. Her "Wade," set to a live take on "Wade in the Water," featured platforms, a ramp, a concoction of white fabric, and a chunk of metal the women sometimes kicked. Deahr's "Out Through Chaos," choreographed with Yonally and set to baby-voiced Lykki Li, combined hip-hop and tap in rather ho-hum ways. Eddy Ocampo's jazz-tap collaboration with Yonally --- "LAB," which reappeared on this program --- is a much more successful fusion.

"Improvographies" are one of Yonally's specialties. Best of the three here was Yonally's apparently improvised tapping to poetry by slam guru Marc Smith (their "Green Mill schtick"), another occasion for lively interaction. "Enjoy the Silence," set to a live gypsy jazz take on the Depeche Mode song, was less successful: the music dragged while Yonally sped on in an apparent effort to accelerate the tempo. "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," sung by the truly sweet-voiced Thomas with beat-boxing by Brooks, proved a great vehicle for the light, quick tapping of Yonally and Brooks, who sometimes staggered comically; later, Yonally managed to echo the breathy beat-boxing with a scraped shoe.

Rounding out the program (which hardly needed rounding out) were Brenda Bufalino's "Flying Turtles"and Yonally's "Destinations," "Dis(Connected)" (an excerpt from "Love Taps"), and new "Community Dance Project." Unfortunately, this piece for 16 amateurs and the company couldn't hold a candle to last year's extravaganza, "The Queen Suite," which portioned out Queen classics to a choir, an opera singer, and a marching band, among other musicians; the cap was a heartfelt community performance. I imagine that Yonally simply ran out of time.

The Escapes

"Danszloop's "The Escapes""

 

By Sid Smith
The odd little diphthong, "sz," in Danszloop comes from its artistic head and choreographer, Paula Fransz, who related in a curtain speech Friday how some years ago she employed a large dumpster in one dance.
She played a homeless person, and, as part of a statewide tour, ended up "lugging the thing" all over Illinois. Enterprising, ambitious--and a pain in the neck. "People actually threw real garbage in it" at times, she said. It taught her to keep it simple, a nod to the bare stage of the engagement through Sunday at Stage 773.
Fortunately, Frasz does not keep it simple in terms of content. Anything but. Much of this engagement, "The Escapes," boasts literary or painterly sources of inspiration. "The Death of Marat" echoes the famous David painting, and two works, "The Escape" and "Summer at the Lake," stem from two Tennessee Williams' plays that will join a third as part of a dance-theater match-up next March at the American Theatre Company here.
In her down-to-earth, brief speeches before each work, you get a glimpse of her greatest weapon: curiosity. She saw a painting of Marat at the Art Institute, researched what it was about and hence the dance. But Frasz is by no means a narrative choreographer--she uses these stories as backdrop while remaining within the bounds of abstract modern dance. In "Marat," and thank god, no one wields a dagger--his death by stabbing is a subtext. But Frasz does lean toward the histrionic, for both better and worse, and, curiously, one difficulty that haunts almost all of these works is a sense of narrative structure. Modern dance doesn't tell a story like narrative fiction, of course, but it does involve dramatic progression, and sometimes the work here just seems to segue from image to image without any sense of building or evolving, of taking you on a clearcut journey.
This isn't a fatal flaw, by any means. Frasz's subject matter is fascinating, and she's not at all alone in a haziness of structure within Chicago's modern dance community. It's just that injecting the stuff of fiction brings the issue into more prominence. She also clearly has the talent and vision to resolve this, made infinitely clear in the sharpest and best designed work of this program, a solo, as it happens, entitled "Entrainment," and a glorious showcase for Natalie Williams.
Here, working with costume designer Melanie Parks, Frasz luxuriates in a smart and powerful metaphor, one layered with rich meaning beautifully explored throughout. Williams wears a long, red train attached to her otherwise simple attire, and it is a delicious image of the complex, mixed roles of women today, enabling the dance in the end to ingeniously conjoin both femininity and feminism. Williams, whose statuesque frame and ferociously powerful legs allow her to convey the moments of majesty, as if a woman at a grand ball, alternates these scenes with contorted, grotesque jerks and spasms of a woman trapped, tormented and enslaved. The result is full of tension and beauty in both the piece and the performance, circling around structurally from an arresting opening stance that returns right before the keen ending that's a simple but perfectly envisioned walk of liberation.
Frasz has also come up with one unifying image for "The Escape" (described as a work-in-progress) and "Summer at the Lake." Both end with one of the dancers running around the rest of the cast, four more in "Escape" and one in "Summer." "Escape" is fraught with plenty of other effective images, the torture and terror of chain gang members in the South manifest in the opening, with performers crawling in on hands and feet, or in an evocative, freefalling motif in which the dancers seem plunging, helpless and flailing. "Summer" is rife with edgy echoes of the borderline incestuous overtones of a mother and son, Margaret Reynolds briefly brushing Paul Christiano's cheek, for instance, only for him to dart and jerk away in horror. There's one especially promising sequence whereby he starts to solemnly walk across the stage, she following desperately, clutching away. But like many images, it's too short and cries out for development. One more richly employed involves Christiano lying on his back, his legs stretching in the air, and Reynolds gently insinuating herself onto his frame, sitting on his thighs as if he were a garden swing.
It's always a pleasure, by the way, to watch Christiano dance. His mix of clean form and passionate intensity is truly singular. In this program, Frasz revives "Mr. White Keys," created for him, a funny-sad solo about a nerdy loser who stumbles often and grabs his crotch in worry his fly is down but manages some sly, lyrical moments to the George Gershwin music, too. Frasz is fascinated by the conflicts, contradictions and generally mixed bag that is the human experience, and there is nothing simple about that.
"The Escapes" plays through Sunday, June 19, at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Av. For tickets: For tickets: 773-327-5252 or stage773.org.

Duet with a Piece of String

"Dance Improvisation Fest "Duet with a Piece of String"

 

By Laura Molzahn

Though improvised dance is all about freedom, sometimes freedom is enhanced by rules - consider the haiku and sonnet. Props, sound scores, predetermined guidelines, and stage talk give this highly fluid dance form the skeletal structures it needs to take shape as the particularly intimate, exciting kind of theater it is.

At Thursday night's showcase of six pieces (named after the title of Bebe Miller's solo), fest curator Lisa Gonzales told me she'd invited these particular artists because of their interest in work with a beginning, middle, and end. An eager overflow crowd packed Link's Hall for the second, often hilarious, always intriguing evening of performance in Chicago's first weeklong celebration of danced improv. That evening won't be repeated, but you can catch the flickering life of movement created on the spot through Sunday, at the Dance Center, then Holstein Park.

Suzy Grant and Donnell Williams's rollicking "< space left >" epitomized the way improvisers can plan for the interplay of risk and safety. Like many of this program's works, it combined movement and talk, here in a structure with clear rules: though the performance was completely G-rated, the two had plainly established something like BDSM safewords. An ancient slide projector provided a home-movie feel and became a hand-held spotlight as Grant and Williams, who've been good friends for eight years, took turns revealing details of each other's pasts, narratives that the mostly silent dancing partner could stop at any time by counting "5, 6, 7, 8" Trading the roles of emotional bottoms and tops back and forth, Williams and Grant provided a funny, intensely intimate peek into their real-life relationship.

Adding performers opens up exponentially more options. The five-member Factor Ricochet Ensemble (formed by Rachel Damon of Synapse Arts) moved without props of any kind in the freewheeling, exhilarating if inconclusive "Morphology." Brief bursts of talk helped give the experience direction, as did the frequent resolution into a single focal duet and the use of the back wall as a physical "quiet" zone. Damon, Adriana Durant, Marc Macaranas, Michael Rioux, and Ni'Ja Whitson expertly established (and sometimes dissolved) their own distinctive personas, anchoring the group, standing outside it, creating a joshing intimacy. The wide range of onstage personalities, which the dancers were free to subvert, produced an emotionally volatile, physically unpredictable, really fun in-the-moment experience.

Rebecca Bryant isolated the poles of hilarity and sadness in two pieces with highly defined, if nuanced, points to make. "A Moment of Danger," performed with percussionist Don Nichols, was a comic riff on the risks of intimacy. Approaching the audience, Nichols donned safety goggles as he assured us that the piece would not be dangerous --- while brandishing two circular saws (visual echoes of the cymbals he plays). Phallic bright-orange warning cones decorated the stage and, later, got moved around in a chess game of establishing and dissolving emotional boundaries. Bryant's angular movement and infrequent eye contact limned a defended but sympathetic character.

Bryant's "Suite Female: Part I" suggested the reason for the reserve, defined by Bryant's score. A rat-a-tat voiceover of "The woman who..." phrases coming fast and furious resolved into a kind of music hinting at an indefinable everywoman. In her moving feminist parable, Bryant's restricted, repetitive, wavelike motions grew bigger and bigger as she gave way to her impulses again and again. But those impulses were always contained --- and ultimately curtailed.

"Present: Time, Gift" by recent Columbia College grad Carly Czach, was another solo defined by the dancer's own sound design. Recorded snippets began with images of urban life, then shifted to images of the country. Czach's gentle, self-involved motions and frequent focus on a teakettle suggested a longing to return to another, more habitable place and time. Unfortunately, Czach's inwardness, self-caressing gestures, and seemingly random use of props didn't do much to draw the audience in.

Bebe Miller, of course, is a master at drawing people in. Experience does help. Her "Duet With Piece of String" employed minimal props to develop a mood, a character, an evolution. Entering, she set down a stool, then busied herself tying one end of the string to a radiator, unwrapping part of the ball, and rolling it across the stage. Expertly erasing the line between "real life" and performance, Miller transformed what seemed a cursory stagehand moment into art by "drawing" with string on the floor.

Miller's stage presence, her absolute command of a shifting persona, made "Duet" a true theatrical event. Whether she was sitting quietly, hands clasped in her lap like a little girl, or regarding the audience slyly or with bemused condescension, Miller understood and employed the power of the minute. She knows that a glance, a lifted eyebrow, lips tucked up in a small smile, hands so expressive they can stand in for the entire body --- all read, even in semidarkness. With the minimal definition of a few carefully selected props and Christian Marclay's and Michael Walls occasional static-y music, Miller somehow fashioned a strong character with a healthy skepticism about herself, us, and art: evanescent things that exist only to disappear.

 

Ruth Page Festival of Dance

"Preview of CDI/Concert Dance Inc."

 

By Sid Smith

The milestones are multiple as Venetia Stifler and her CDI/Concert Dance, Inc. prepare another outing this week at the Ravinia Festival.

The troupe is in the midst of an ongoing 30th-anniversary celebration, while the Ruth Page Foundation, where Stifler's executive director, is now 40. Though not typically an anniversary number, her company's eighth year at Ravinia is pretty impressive as well. Stifler herself, meanwhile, is an articulate proponent of the existential, transitory nature of dance itself--an art form of live performance fading from our midst with every execution and gesture.

"What can I say about making it to 30 years? I can honestly admit there are some dances I'm glad we'll never see again," she says with typical dry wit. More seriously, "I think the key to staying in this process is to make sure it is a process. The dancers talk about that all the time. We never perform a single work the same way twice, it's never the same dance. You have to approach each dance, each remounting and each performance as if they're happening for the first and only time. Otherwise, it's stale."

In a revealing progression, one experienced by countless dance artists for centuries, Stifler found her own journey gradually less and less rigid in terms of studio approach. At some point in the three decades running her troupe, (her current dancers weren't born when she started), Stifler eased from the idea of choreographer as doctrinaire dictator into a more collaborative working method. "I went through the standard training, taught that the choreographer comes into the room, makes up every step beforehand and then puts those images on the dancers with exact counts. You do what the choreographer says. He or she is a god."

But, as she aged (she's now 60) and segued from dancing herself, she increasingly found she wanted to create moves she couldn't enact, and, partly as a result, a more fluid method worked into her approach. "I wanted to see certain things, so I'd put two dancers together and say, think about a pumpkin upside down and consider that you're the ridges, for instance. And they responded. And they started to talk back.

"I learned to use everything, to allow us to be in this wonderful bath of creativity together while I get to be the head. Sometimes, if one of the dancers makes a mistake, you use that."

The Ravinia outing Thursday and Friday will serve as a mini-retrospective of pieces the troupe has performed there in the past, along with a new one, "Une Ame Evillee," set to Franz Lizst. That's an example of a process typical with Ravinia, whereby the festival requests a work be set to a composer being celebrated in a particular season, a challenge Stifler wryly takes on and seems to begrudgingly enjoy.

"Often, they don't happen to be my favorite composers," she says, "and Lizst is an example. The music is a little programmatic and melodramatic, better suited to dancers on toe shoes. For this, I listened to tons and tons and found a selection, 'Oh! Quand je dors,' that's less florid and stunningly pure."

One of the glories of the Ravinia engagements, on the other hand, is the devotion to live music, and this year is no exception. "Une Ame" will feature mezzo-soprano Tracy Watson and pianist Mikhail Yanovitsky. "El Salon Mexico" to Aaron Copland's great score will be performed in its duet piano version by Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kaufman and Jonathan Cruz. And "Dvorak Suite" will boast Yanovitsky and violinist Henry Criz. The outing also features "Chaos," the bright and funny piece to Ella Fitzgerald unveiled earlier this year.

The Ruth Page organization, of course, also provides a home and performance space for Chicago troupes year round, a vital center for rehearsal, training and showcasing the work of local artists, often young ones. Stifler has reason to celebrate--and take pride.

"Whoever thought I'd still be doing this, but I'm glad I stuck with it," she says. "There are better and better dancers to work with, and I'm therefore having more fun. I love it more than ever."

CDI plays Thursday and Friday. For tickets: 847-266-5100 or ravinia.org.

 

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet

"Aspen Santa Fe Ballet"

 

By Laura Molzahn

What is dance for? Sometimes I know for sure even when I can't explain it. Other times, despite a reasonable level of enjoyment, I still ask myself what I was meant to take away.

Such was the case with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, which returned to town after its debut here four years ago to perform a one-night stand of three Chicago premieres by three choreographers at the Harris. True, it's hard to build a unified effect with a mixed bill --- but these pieces were, if anything, too much alike.

Nicolo Fonte's 2011 "Where We Left Off" his eighth commissioned work for ASFB, opened the show. A piece for ten, it seemed poised on the brink of something that never quite happened. Meanwhile my anticipation turned to ennui. Philip Glass's rippling "Mad Rush" and "Metamorphosis No. 2" were (duh) repetitive, but also seemed to be without beginning or end. The music stopped and started, the dancers ran on and off, the lights brightened or darkened with the mood or tempo of whatever music was playing.

Though "Where We Left Off" seems to be about flux, Fonte does establish a few patterns. Duets are often contrasted with a solo or ensemble dance, and sometimes both, which makes for a very busy stage. He uses strong diagonals and broken lines in the choreography, which is filled with forcibly cocked hips and scissoring legs en l'air. The effect suggests drama, but no actual drama develops. Ultimately the piece suggested sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Jorma Elo's 2008 "Red Sweet" another commissioned work, has a similar structure. Set to snippets of Vivaldi and Biber string compositions, it shifts moods slightly with each new nugget of music, though the tempi and dancing remain swift. The movement is far more inventive and understated than Fonte's, like scrubbing the floor with the feet to underscore the sawing of strings. And Elo excels at quirky gestural passages (as he did in "Bitter Suite" created for Hubbard Street). One hand slaps the head, then the dancer looks into his palm as if into a mirror or crystal ball. Or one dancer stares at another, then gets caught and looks away, then looks again in split-second turns of the head. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of inventive movement becomes a problem, creating a raging torrent of seemingly unconnected images.

Fortunately, there's respite in the piece's significant patches of silence. "Red Sweet" develops emotionally during these quieter sections, which seem the dark, sweet undercurrent of hectic urban life. The payoff comes in the affecting finale: set to melancholy strings, it's grounded and severe yet expands on a graceful motif of supported slow-mo running, the woman borne smoothly along as she pedals her legs, a toe just grazing the floor at times. When multiple duos perform this move in a tight circle just before the final section, they form a carousel, a vision of joy and release. I found "Red Sweet" a slog much of the time, but it did come at the end of a two-hour show. It may well reward another viewing.

Compared to the other two works, Jiri Kylian's "Stamping Ground" was refreshingly ungenteel. Performed first in 1983 by his home troupe, Nederlands Dans Theater, it's inspired by the Aboriginal dancing Kylian saw on a trip to Australia. But if you didn't know that, you'd never guess. What it calls to mind, given the feats of stage magic and kooky Gumby-oid contortions, is Pilobolus. Carlos Chavez's "Tocata para Instrumentos de Percusion," which kicks in about halfway through, provides an upbeat aural backdrop for all the stomping and slapping --- more easily heard, of course, in the half danced in silence.

A child in the audience giggled early and often during â??Stamping Ground,â?? which was a completely appropriate response. If you didnâ??t know the danceâ??s origins. As viewers of Kylianâ??s works, sometimes performed by Hubbard Street, can attest, he has an antic side that breaks out unaccountably at times, as in the ball gowns on wheels that adorn "Petite Mort." I don't know if that's what's happening here, but Kylian does transform these six dancers into animals, clockwork machines, or cartoons --- funny, but also an offensive take on a "primitive" culture. "Stamping Ground" is rarely seen these days, we're told, and perhaps this is why. I laughed, but I didn't feel good about it. What was he thinking?

When I'm scratching my head three times over the intent of three works, it makes me wonder too whether the company lacks direction. Or maybe, with its heavy touring schedule, ASFB is just worn-out. In any case, these reasonably entertaining and well-performed works left me cold.

 

The Llanarth Group's Told by the Wind

"The Llanarth Group"

 

By Sid Smith

The Llanarth Group is visiting the Dance Center of Columbia College from Wales, bringing "Told By the Wind," a one-hour two-hander that's not only interdisciplinary, but cross-cultural as well.

Three individuals are listed as co-creators: playwright and poet Kaite O'Reilly, choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist Jo Shapland and actor-director Phillip Zarrilli. (The latter two make up the cast.) Dance and theater obviously meet. But two consultants, Mari Boyd from Tokyo and Peader Kirk from London, assisted throughout the one-and-a-half year process that led to the work's production, which is described as being informed by both String Theory and Japanese Theatre of Quietude.

Practically speaking, the result on view through Saturday marries Western dramatic imagery with a style reminiscent of butoh. Zarrilli and Shapland inhabit a spartan set of an old chair, desk and basket, atop a tarp-like mat layered with dirt, and only Zarrilli speaks, his lines never more than cryptic, spare poetry, talk of "memory in the leaves" or "the 7th day of the 9th month." Their movement is just as minimal, the duo sitting in stillness much of the time, moving one limb slowly or whispering with a barely visible and audible flapping of their lips. Though there are plenty of eventual eruptions of more animated activity, some of it vaguely ominous and frantic, "Told By the Wind" is often about stillness, meditation, a transcendental trip embarked on a very lean, threadbare skiff.

At the outset, "Wind" is fascinating as a hybrid, one grafting Eastern technique onto Western trappings. Shapland has something of the mien and manner of an actress playing Mary in "Long Day's Journey Into Night," her salt-and-pepper hair slightly unkempt, her plain blouse and full skirt echoing any number of decades throughout the 20th Century. Early on, there's a mesmerizing spell where she oh-so-gradually raises her head, a barely perceptible tide of emotion moving across her face like shadows on the moon--visual whispers of concern, heartache and despair. Elsewhere, she stretches out her arms and weaves as if a scarecrow caught in a very strong wind.

The mood throughout is somber and anguished, Zarrilli staring into space with a visage of torment, reciting his clipped lines of poetry that manage to evoke both later T.S. Eliot and haiku. Sometimes, as he stands more or less center stage, she suddenly darts about, racing through his plane of activity in a brief whirlwind, while elsewhere she commands attention with sessions of haunting slo-mo endeavor. In one of them, she carefully moves a shorn evergreen branch across the air, while later she scoops up a shirt buried in the dirt, dusts it off and then dons it. Similarly, Zarrilli enacts what amounts to a waltz punctuated with strokes of a pen enacted in the air--written as well as told by the wind, as it were.

I've always struggled with the Eastern aesthetic so fundamental here. But there are unmistakable parallels in the exploration of movement with the work of Merce Cunningham and so many other Western dance pioneers. In that regard, the most valuable effect of "Wind," in addition to showing off two memorable live performers, is its insight brought to this all too rare art. Just watching Westerners play out this piece opens up a window, presenting an exotic art with a less foreign look and attire. It's a little bit like a Kabuki version of "Death of a Salesman," but in reverse. The style remains removed, unfamiliar and hyper-real. But the meaning--which involves the viewer's own active mental participation to define and inhabit the event--is all the more accessible.

"Told By the Wind" plays through Saturday at the Dance Center. For tickets: 312-369-8330 or colum.edu/dancecenter.

 

 

"Kate Corby at Links Hall"

 

KATE CORBY & DANCERS “CATCH”
 
By Laura Molzahn
 
Genocide might not sound like a promising avenue for dance, but Kate Corby is undaunted in “Catch,” a provocative program of four pieces, some (or all?) of which will find their way into an evening-length work on the subject, “In Whole or in Part.” The main impetus for the project, Corby told me, was her 2006 visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland, which deeply affected her. Later she began researching the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, but her work isn’t political or academic. She never wags her finger; in fact she implicates the audience, digging for the root of atrocities in the human soul, or in human neurons, or wherever it is that human impulses live. The show runs through Sunday at Link’s Hall.
 
Corby splits her kinetic approaches in two, which can be disconcerting. She juxtaposes mimetic movement bordering on a distilled form of acting with formally motivated, more abstract motions whose emotional content isn’t obvious. Emotion can clobber you over the head, then vanish. Add to this the uncertain relation between the four dances, which are teasingly alike but don’t quite fit together or add up, and you’ve got a promising but inconclusive experience.
 
“Brute,” a solo exploring female survivors of genocide developed with dancer Emily Miller, sticks to the overt end of the movement spectrum. Trapped at the center of a ring of red cloth, the dancer alternates between spasmodic muscular tension and loose-limbed passivity. Whirled within this constricted space, tossed by the force of a nightmare we can’t see, Miller eventually collapses into a rigid tomb of spasms, then is pulled up by her heart to fall over her outstretched legs like a rag doll. She can’t awaken from this nightmare because it’s real. Finally, in a series of grunting convulsions that suggest vomiting, defecation, or giving birth, she attempts to rid her body of the injuries it’s suffered.
 
“Deux,” performed by Anna Normann and Michelle Scurlock, begins with overt aggression, then turns swiftly into abstraction and emotional isolation. At first the dancers are like boys on a playground, fired by hostility but continuously, clumsily engaged. Shoving, kicking, and hitting, they chase each other back and forth across the space, driven by the action/reaction rules of aggression and revenge. When they suddenly come face-to-face center stage, one woman makes what might be a conciliatory gesture, grabbing the other’s forearm, but then they explode apart. From that point each is sealed off in her own little world, and though they traverse the same diagonal as before across the space, they do it slowly, dreamily, at a great emotional if not physical distance, without affect, in disparate abstract moves oddly in synch. Is this the bloodless, codified aggression of political policy?
 
“Go,” a 2009 trio performed by Erin Kilmurray, Miller, and Normann, wasn’t as funny to me as it was at the A.W.A.R.D. Show! last summer, maybe because of the context. Reversing the progression of “Deux,” Corby starts with the three dancers in abrupt abstract moves, isolated from one another yet clearly a unit, then adds meaningful glances and glares that acknowledge and include the audience.
 
Corby’s quartet “Catch” crystallizes some of the currents running through “Go.” It even ends the same, with the same dancer standing at the rear of the space, legs planted, ratcheting her torso in machinelike repetitions. Inspired by Corby’s research into empathy in monkeys and apes, “Catch” plays on group psychology, both within the ensemble and in the ensemble’s relation to the audience. At first the dancers move, clustered together, each doing something different. Slowly they come into unison and move faster and faster in whirling circles around the space, stepping and leaping together. It’s far more satisfying than the twiddling little clump of disparate movers. Why? In the context of Corby’s project, I started thinking about how divisions in a group cause anxiety, while cohesion is soothing or exhilarating. (Cubs fans, I’m talking to you.)
 
The next section explores group psychology more explicitly. The lights come up, and the dancers seem surprised to see us; we’re not members of their tribe, and their gestures and looks betray worry, self-consciousness, feigned boredom, suspicion, fear. Suddenly one runs toward us pugnaciously, then the others, one by one --- and since they’re arrayed across the stage, it’s like they’re taking some horribly misbegotten bow. Then a wave of mirth catches them and sends them staggering around the stage screaming with laughter. At first I smiled, but finally felt repulsed by what bonded them and excluded me.
 
The quartet moves on from there, but the engagement between the dancers, and their connection with us, dwindles. This ebb and flow, pounce and retreat, runs throughout the show, both within pieces and between pieces. That may be intentional, but at this point in Corby’s developing project, I’m not sure what purpose it serves. Still, she’s onto something, something that links genocide with the interactions of audience and performers.

Joffrey Ballet presents

"Rising Stars"

 

By Sid Smith

The Joffrey Ballet's "Rising Stars" program, the troupe's final engagement of the season, plays this Wednesday, May 4, through May 15 and features works by a trio of contemporary choreographers.

Two of the pieces are by choreographers Joffrey artistic director Ashley Wheater grew to know out West in his days with the San Francisco Ballet. Yuri Possokhov, a onetime dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, has been associated with the San Francisco troupe for many years, but he is creating a brand new work for the Joffrey: "Bells" set to Sergei Rachmaninoff. Julia Adam trained in Canada, danced with San Francisco, and first premiered her "Night" with that company in 2000. She came to town to re-stage it for the Joffrey.

But for all this Golden Gate glitter, "Rising Stars" has a work very much tinged by the country's East Coast ballet aesthetic as well. Edwaard Liang, the talented dance maker who created his earlier complex and richly designed "Age of Innocence" for the Joffrey, is a former New York City Ballet performer. "Woven Dreams" is his second original work for the Joffrey, this one set to music by four different composers.

"Innocence" throbbed with a subtext, its ballroom trappings part of Liang's empathy for the plight of women in an earlier, more repressive time.

"I think with this new one I wanted to do something different," Liang said in an interview last week. "It has ideas, but it's definitely more abstract."

The title says it all. "For a long time, since I was little, I've had recurring dreams, and I wanted to make a ballet about those feelings, about changes in consciousness. When you dream, images come in different segments, kind of connected, but not really," he continued. "In one, you're flying across a cornfield. In the next, you're in Paris having dinner. Or at home having a conversation. Every piece is different, and yet they're the same, too, maybe the same friend is in all three dreams. Maybe the person in the dream actually stands for someone else, I've read in books. The premise here is what is reality and what are projections."

Certainly a great idea for a ballet. Just as interesting is the plucky mix of composers: Benjamin Britten, Maurice Ravel, Henryk Gorecki and Michael Galasso, a multi-disciplinary music maker whose credits include theater and the movies. "I've loved his music for a long time," Liang said. "The overall mix of this score is quirky, but, when I listen to it, it feels right."

 

One thing "Woven Dreams" shares with "Innocence": a large cast. There are 18 dancers this time around, suggesting a choreographer comfortable working on a large canvas. Also, Liang worked in collaboration with set designer Jeff Bauer, in a way that converts the "woven' in the title into something of a pun. "The set is a woven fabric, connected to the rigging system and moving up, down and sideways," Liang noted. "It's black, but with this iridescence, so the lighting can bring it out or make it dull."

Odds are, given Liang's brief-but-brilliant track record, those segments of blandly lit fabric will be the only dull thing in "Dreams."

"Rising Stars" plays May 4-15 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy. For tickets: (800) 982-2787, or online at www.ticketmaster.com.

Mordine & Co. Dance Theater presents

"Mordine & Company"

 

By Sid Smith
The "NEXT 2011" offering from Mordine & Co. Dance Theater plays through Saturday, April 30, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, showing off a quartet of works, three of them brand new.
One of two works by Shirley Mordine, "LifeSpeak," involves collaboration by the dancers and has an air of both improvisation and disturbing curiosity, even hints of alarm. Throughout, the dancers take turns sitting it out and watching each other, but with moods and miens as much about suspicion as wonder or support. It's a little dark, though consistently abstract and formal in the end, and after the dancers emerge from the deep recesses of the theater and dance together for a time, it then turns on what might best be called solos and not solos at the same time. Various dancers take turns moving into the spotlight, but then they're joined while there by some of the others, by one dancer turning the segment into a duet for a while, or one or two more creating different mini-ensembles--always with a mysterious flow and ebb, so that "LifeSpeak" toys throughout with our very concept of ensemble make-up. The geometry is as fluid and un-reassuring as the glances the dancers cast at each other or the eerie, ominous electronic meanderings of Shawn Decker's powerful original score, which at times incorporates a kind of mechanized vocalization from lines recited by the dancers, suggestive phrases such as "I'm angry, and you need to listen."
Some of the segments are more engrossing than others. The meandering, ad hoc nature of the piece can be unsatisfying. But there are some striking stretches, building to one powerful duet starring Adriana Durant and Atalee Judy, maximizing the sharp differences in their styles. The piece concludes with the dancers edging toward the front of the stage, Durant moving subtly but arrestingly as a kind of final soloist in a now more resigned choral group. 
Mordine's "Illuminations," from 2009, is an important piece, maybe a signature work, indeed illuminating her modern dance sensibility at this stage of her career. There's a beauty and lyricism to it, even as the moves and configurations are classic, even basic at times, so that its unmistakable lyricism is oxymoronically sparse, threadbare and thrifty. That's counterbalanced by its unstoppable rush--the seven dancers hurry into and through their solos, partnerships and sometimes gymnastic constructions with endless energy and quick-change locomotion. Blink, and the whole scene has changed while you weren't watching, each phrase and stretch short-lived. In its stark way, it celebrates contemporary dance by means of a high-speed catalog, especially in the first movement to Steve Reich.
Despite her deceptively youthful looks, Mordine has been on our scene for four decades, and it's no stretch to say she's one of a handful of Chicagoans without whom we wouldn't have a modern dance community. (Nana Shineflug, who attended Friday, is another.) "Illuminations" seems to blithely celebrate that, the purity and ease of its first movement echoing the modern era, the second movement quietly recalling Mordine's later, more postmodern flirtations. Like a lot of her work in recent years, it's a collaboration, a pristine and beautiful one, this time with the great visual designer John Boesche, whose silvery projections gently up the ante from the first movement and create gorgeous, spare, gleaming abstract images behind the dancers, some of them just barely devised from the dancer's own form.
"NEXT 2011" includes two new pieces by guest artists. "The Mysterious Disappearance of the Second Youngest Sister" is enormously enjoyable, a crafty bit of dance-theater with a decided accent on the dance and in the end as deliciously puzzling as its title. It's a kind of tone poem vaguely clad in Victorian trappings, but a Victorian setting clearly in the grips of someone like Gertrude Stein. Michael Estanich, Lauren Bisio and, most especially, tall and luminously ferocious Lucy Riner evoke and tease more than tells a story, conveying a dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish world of bookish studios, disturbing family relationships and suggestive drama conveyed through at times explosive dance.
Alitra Cartman's "Kaleidoscope" stems from the Mordine mentoring program and shows off a promising young choreographer whose piece, from start to finish, explores and challenges the very nature of the ensemble construction, in line in that regard with "LifeSpeak." Cartman's approach is more direct, but quite fascinating, the four women moving backward at times and constantly dissolving their quartet, only to magically recreate it. One of their number is often left out in isolation. What might sound a tad belabored on paper is actually quite smooth and engaging in execution and construction, almost casual and natural much more than puzzling. Cartman might well want to expand it. It's short and could easily go on for another movement or two, an idea well worth further investigation.
"NEXT 2011" plays at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at Ruth Page, 1016 N. Dearborn St.  For tickets: brownpapertickets.com or 1-800-838-3006.

Commissura

"Julia Rae Antonick's "Commissura""

 

Magic made it worthwhile. Driving downtown in a cold, lashing rain; paying big bucks for parking (tightwads like me: try for a metered spot on Wabash); braving high winds; hanging out in a nearly deserted building wondering how to call the elevator, then roasting on the tenth floor: all worthwhile, thanks to the ingenuity and loving care lavished on Julia Rae Antonick's astonishing new "Commissura." Even the program is a work of art.

 

A trip to the ancient, crumbling Fine Arts Building is an adventure in itself. ("Commissura" runs through April 30 there). The lone working elevator shudders and bounces. I had to ask a cleaning lady, who looked very displeased at so many strangers invading her territory, to let me into a bathroom, which smelled of dead mice. Flushing produced a deep, rumbling growl from the bowels of the building.

 

"Commissura" means a juncture between two things, and by focusing on the intricate visible actions of duet partners, Antonick unveils the ineluctable connection between them. In fact the whole piece is an exercise in guessing the unseen from the seen as Antonick plays tricks with the lighting, the configuration of the space, the audience's perspectives. I've never seen a dance with so many moving parts. And never before felt it was so hopeless to see a dance in its entirety.

 

A preshow consists of the four dancers and two musicians moving between the sixth and tenth floors; audience members are invited to range over the stairs too. I joined dancer Jonathan Meyer on the eighth floor landing, but when I turned to gape at an ornate door with a For Rent sign on it, then turned back, he'd disappeared. I thought he'd left for another floor, only to have him materialize down the hall from me, a living, moving god possessed. (Meyer also built the elaborate wood-and-pulley framework by which five canisters, each emitting a different sound track keyed to an individual performer, can be dropped and pulled back up through the stairwell.)

 

Once the audience enters the big, open space that is Curtiss Hall, they can choose to sit on the small stage or the main floor --- the site of most of the action --- on platforms periodically moved by stagehands and the dancers; the chairs are bolted down (imagine having to explain how you fell off your seat at a performance and broke your arm) and swivel so that you need never lose sight of anything you want to see. But the fact is, it's impossible to see everything. Viewers, especially those on the platforms, must constantly make head-spinning choices. Still, some things remain out of your control: how close the dancers and musicians, who shift all over the space, are to your seat; how brightly or dimly they're lit.

 

My one quarrel with "Commissura" is the way it fractures focus and sometimes impairs vision (the backlighting can be blinding), making it difficult to see the gorgeous dancing. You might feel you're seated in the middle of a six-ring circus, but the payoff --- aided by Francesca Bourgault's floor-mounted and hand-held golden lights --- is a tribal feeling of community based on participation in a mystery. Since there's no such thing as offstage, the stagehands and nondancing dancers circle the space like wolves at the edges of campfire light.

 

Antonick's expressive, unself-consciously erotic choreography varies the pace, the mood, the intricacy, and the abandon of the movement across a wide spectrum. Sometimes partners roughly haul and hoist; sometimes they entwine their limbs and fingers with breathtaking care and intimacy. You might catch a glimpse of the tango or even the humble box step. But despite a section near the end, when the platforms close ranks and the sweep of the movement can make you think you've been transported to "Dancing With the Stars" (an effect enhanced by Katrin Schnabl's lovely bell-skirted gowns), Antonick's choreography is light-years from the ballroom. She's even created a quiet, reverential solo for herself that suggests her background in Indonesian dance.

 

The accompaniment is entirely new but often echoes traditional Asian music. Percussionist Joseph St. Charles sometimes recapitulates the sounds of a gong, gamelan, or singing bowl, and pianist Dan Mohr is a virtuosic vocalist equally at ease with throat singing and the guttural barks of a Noh actor.

 

The four dancers launch themselves into various partnering combinations with equal zeal and nearly equal rapport, though some are also real-life partners: Antonick with Meyer, and Jessie Marasa with Benjamin Law. This is one of those dances where the performers' commitment and effort are everything. The constantly shifting partnerships and choreographic moods, together with the closed unearthly space, make "Commissura" seem a world unto itself, complete yet infinite despite its purposeful isolation from the everyday.

 

Cirque Eloize iD

"Cirque Eloize iD"

 

By Sid Smith

"I'm really curious," Jeannot Painchaud, founder and artistic director of Cirque Eloize, says. "Since I was a kid, I went to see everything, every kind of show I could, including contemporary dance, classical music, hip hop, underground theater. This new show in particular stems from a desire to find new directions."

"Cirque Eloize iD," the show to which he refers, takes the 18-year-old Montreal-based enterprise forcefully into the world of modern dance. Inspired by what he saw going on separately in South Korea and France in terms of young choreographers and dancers, Painchaud decided to incorporate more dance into this show than ever before. What's more, breaking with a pattern of many years, he took on the chores of directing it himself.

"For the last show, I worked with the Italian director Daniele Finizi Pasca, where acting took a main role," he explains. "It was very theatrical. For the new show, I wanted to catch up with the younger generation, to remind myself of the first days of Cirque Eloize 18 years ago. While we were in Korea, I looked at the hip hop scene there, and the breakdancers in Korea are just the best, amazing, boasting an energy that wants to change the world."

Meanwhile, in Lyons, France, he met dancers who began 10 years ago outside the opera theater there, dancing on the sidewalks for coins, who've now been brought inside to perform on the main stage. "Then, it came to me, what all these young people are going through," Painchaud says. "It's what we circus performers went through 25 years ago. They're fighting for their art to be recognized, the way we fought to get recognition for the circus. Now, in Europe, hip hop and urban dancers are starting to mix with contemporary dancers and choreographers who use street urban dance more and more for new pieces of art. This energy has a lot of similarity to how we began, and they're similar in the way they work. They function as traveling families, in clans, and form relationships with people all over the world."

"Cirque Eloize iD," which opens Tuesday (April 26) at the Cadillac Palace Theatre--Cirque Eloize's Chicago debut as well--is set in a kind of city of the mind, invoked by means of video projections on the back wall. "You have live acting, acrobatics and dance in a set that looks like a cartoon," he says. "The idea is that the camera zooms into this city and spies on two gangs vying at a corner, then zooms out and back in again on the next corner, where there's a love story."

"Cirque Eloize iD" is very much still a circus. "The main discipline is the acrobatics, the bicycle, the trampoline," he says. "But it's a circus show with a strong presence of dance."

As director, Painchaud served as impresario working with various choreographers, who brought him options that he selected and then incorporated into the mix. Part of the idea is to blend circus and dance for a new hybrid. "There's a scene in which a guy on roller blades encounters a girl doing the aerial silk," he notes. "He has a unique way of moving, but often he moves like a contemporary dancer. This one is my Romeo and Juliet. There's a b-boy who spins on his head, and we built a duet with a contortionist, a guy who moves on the floor and a woman who movies like a spider. It's as if two animals meet, and you have choreography that you've never seen before."

The show's 16 performers are young, traveling like a gypsy family in ways that recalls Painchaud's own origins as a youthful circus gadabout. "It's hard, don't every let a choreographer tell you it's fun and easy," he says. But, now 45, the father of three, he still is in love with the romance.

"I fell in love with the travel and fun and finding a way to express myself," he says. "Gradually, I discovered you, have to have responsibilities, too, when it comes to the business side, when so many depend on you providing paychecks. But the dream is intact, every time I jump on a plane, every time we arrive in a new city. Then, I'm a naif."

"Cirque Eloize iD" opens Tuesday at the Cadillac Palace, 151 W. Randolph St. For tickets: 800-775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com.

 

 

Chicago Moving Company

"Chicago Moving Company "Dance Shelter""

 

By Laura Molzahn

There’s a very un-meek Christian hymn that celebrates “loud boiling test tubes” (among other vigorous things like “loud clashing cymbals” and “loud building workers”).

The Chicago Moving Company’s “Dance Shelter,” a showcase for its artists-in-residence and special guests, is a loud boiling test tube. Running only through Friday night at the Hamlin Park field house, “Dance Shelter” is a haven for new directions and ongoing experiments that this year features six new works. Sometimes they’re put on simmer, sometimes they boil over. But they don’t just sit there, they percolate.

Former Chicago Bob Eisen, a guest artist who now lives in New York and Saint Petersburg, always eschewed any trace of pomp or ceremony. His solo “Cascades” is no exception. Set to a feedback loop by Lou Reed that’s more noise than music, the piece is bathed in unchanging clear white light. No tricks. Influenced by Merce Cunningham, Eisen juxtaposes random articulations of the body; influenced by Judson Church, he riffles through permutations of pedestrian phrases. But he himself is the center of the work. Eisen always has a little tongue-in-cheek edge, making fun of himself, joshing with us. At the same time, he’s completely dedicated to his exhausting craft: stomping, galloping, flapping. Propeller arms threaten to tear his 64-year-old body apart --- could they break off, I wondered? I was left with a sense of the body’s fragility and the spirit’s strength. 

Ayako Kato works in a similarly abstract, no-frills way --- but her delicate, polished trio “Incidents II” seems to have been made for porcelain dolls. Something of a departure for her, it’s not improvised. And though she performs, it’s not a solo. Rachel Bunting and Kelly Kane are vigorous and engrossing dancers, and plenty polished. But when they perform Kato’s movement --- the suspended arms, the invisible shifts in weight producing sudden flickers of motion --- they can’t do it the way she does. That has the unfortunate effect of making them seem distractions. As the piece goes on, Bunting and Kane begin to go their own ways. But the sense of a teasingly dissimilar collection remains. None of these things is quite like the others. Why are they together?

Bunting’s own work, represented here by an excerpt from the evening-length “Paper Shoes,” is wildly visual and savagely kinetic, untamed and unrestrained. It’s laden with theatrical devices: vivid lighting effects and odd props, like horse heads, chairs (one of which glows in the dark), a radio, a loud blowing fan, black gloves. The repeated move of two dancers running hand in hand, then one of them falling and being dragged along by the other, accumulates emotion but for no apparent reason. Maybe all will become clear when the entire work is performed.

Atalee Judy debuts BoneDanse (Breakbone DanceCo that was…) in a clever, entertaining quartet called “This Is a Damage Manual.” Dance theater has always been Judy’s métier, and here she lets fly her dark sense of humor. (That same lightheartedness, with an ominous undertow, lit up her 2009 “Excavation of Remains.”) Judy uses audio selections from what sound like 50s-era self-improvement records to underscore the humor and heartbreak of human striving; a skull puppet, manipulated by bored puppeteer Mindy Meyers, mouths the lines. Later Judy sets these earnest, often hypnotic exhortations to dance music, rendering them bizarrely upbeat. The movement, devised with the dancers, transforms them into rag dolls or parodies of backup singers, super-serious and silly.

Music is the focus of the other two pieces. Barry Bennett’s Impending Behavior Orchestra consists of Bennett singing and manipulating an audio mixer, projected video by Kristin Reeves, and four dancers improvising. “River, Woods, In Medias Res” is an odd blend of raucous sound, soothing nature imagery, and movement seemingly unrelated to either. This is a piece that never seems to ask, “Why?” Instead it asks, “Why not?” With sketchy results.

One-man band Stone (Winston Damon), playing up to four percussion instruments at once while singing and harmonizing with his own recorded voice, manages to combine the freak-show with the lovely. The sheer physical coordination required to produce all the sounds at the appropriate times is in itself thrilling. So is the song, “Devotional for Oshun.” The refrain of the hymn I mentioned up top goes “I, too, will praise him with a new song.” New songs are good.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series

"Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series"

 

By Laura Molzahn

Israeli choreographers seem to go their own way. "Headstrong" might be the word. And strength is the result: gale-force, contradictory, completely individual energy.

That's on the basis of a small sample: Ohad Naharin and Sharon Eyal of Tel Aviv's Batsheva Dance Company and the equally fierce Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal Company, which I saw in 1993. Naharin is Batsheva artistic director, Eyal house choreographer. She grew up professionally under his tutelage, and there are a few family resemblances. But overall their two full-ensemble pieces, one apiece, on Hubbard Street's spring program --- running through Sunday at the Harris Theater --- seem renegade fantasias each with a different look and purpose, taking dancers and audiences alike on demanding head trips.

Naharin's dances don't seem to be about anything --- except how the human mind works. Watching his choreography is like listening to a lecture in phenomenology, but a lot more fun. I've seen two of his collaged dances before, HSDC's "Minus 16" many times and Batsheva's "Deca Dance" once. The 2009 Batsheva run at the Auditorium Theatre also included "Three" (2005), which makes up roughly half the new collage Naharin has created for Hubbard Street, "THREE TO MAX." The 2007 "MAX" is, of course, the other.

I confess to being thoroughly confused at this point about what comes from what earlier work and whether, or how much, Naharin has changed it. But the genealogy doesn't matter; what matters is that all the collaging creates the impression, unique to this choreographer, that his work is all one work. It's just fractured and refracted through the context of each dance.

"THREE TO MAX" plays with lines, counting, accumulation, ritual, self-expression and self-revelation, nudity, jolting juxtapositions, and the mesmerizing effects of repetition with minimal change. Just negotiating the shifts is an exercise in itself, though some sections also lull the mind into meditation. Vastly different music defines the sections, but they're connected by the subtlety, variety, and invention of the movement, based on workshops Naharin has pioneered in what he calls Gaga. ("We are listening, seeing, measuring, playing with the texture of our flesh, we might be silly, decorating our insides, we can laugh at ourselves," he wrote about the approach in 2008.)

Oh, and Naharin's choreography is highly musical. In fact, he created the music for "MAX" himself under a pseudonym, Maxim Waratt. I suspect that the deep voice counting rhythmically to ten, over and over, was him.

The first section, set to Glenn Gould's playing of Bach's Goldberg Variations, is an exercise in quiet nuance, with different bodies taking on the subtly shifting colors of Gould's piano. Heavy-footed running signals a change, though Bach's music continues. Quiet, spare electronic notes lie behind the next, all-female section: slow, delicate, girly, with a lovely, sensual repeated and varied passage of tracing slow circles on the floor with their butts. Though I could imagine men in these moves, I knew they'd come across very differently: less vulnerable, more silly. Later, a male duet trades on romantic movement cliches to switch the male/female roles back and forth between the two dancers.

The final section, set to the Beach Boys' a cappella "You're Welcome," ends with the lights coming down on the dancers bent over, circling and leaping like a pack of wolves. What a long, strange trip it was.

Eyal's was another. The fiendishly difficult "Too Beaucoup," co-created with Gai Behar and DJ Ori Lichtik, marks her U.S. debut, a world premiere that, like "THREE TO MAX," explodes cliches and trusts the audience to embrace incremental change. But the tight, mechanical movement here isn't much like Naharin's unpredictable fluidity, and the costumes --- wigs and bodysuits that erase identity --- make the dancers look like video game avatars. That slinky, slick unisex/unitard look takes us back to the 80s. But the movement takes us on a clubbing time trip, beginning roughly now and ending in the 1920s.

Lichtik's beat-heavy, seamless mix of nine pop and jazz pieces threatens monotony. But Avi Yona Bueno's saturated lighting, which travels all over the stage, shifts the colors and mood often, varying the dance’s look, and Lichtik's layered and evolving beats tell their own story.

Though all the choreography is robotic, it does change over the piece's 35 minutes. At first, popping and tic-cy twitching suggest hip-hop. Later the dancing looks like 60s-era Giordano-style jazz, and, finally, it suggests elaborately serpentine Jazz Age poses, flapper-style. Two-thirds through, Leonard Cohen's "Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye," in an upbeat cover version by Beck, MGMT, and Devendra Banhart, takes us swiftly to unexpected emotion. The end does too, with a woman’s brittle posing, alone at center stage, while three couples slow-dance in the wings, clinging to each other as avidly as middle schoolers. Suddenly it seems all the machine-tooled moves are mere armor, a reaction to vulnerability, isolation, and longing.

HAIR

""HAIR" Review. Sid Smith Reviews Broadway in Chicago's "HAIR""

 

By Sid Smith
If you're the choreographer, how do you solve a problem like "Hair"?
Not that this self-described tribal rock musical isn't a sensational show. In an era of juke box fatigue, it still endures as the best and most thunderous marriage of rock and Broadway. The list of great songs, as you add them up, one by one, rivals Rodgers and Hammerstein for population density:  "Aquarius," "Hair," "I Got Life," "Frank Mills," "Where Do I Go?", "Good Morning Starshine" and, grandma of them all, "Easy to Be Hard." Just a concert rendering of all that makes for terrific entertainment.
But the choreographer assigned the task of making dances for a revival has a tricky job. Anarchy and Dionysian revelry are the mood here, hardly friendly to choreographic precision or preciousness. "Hair" prides itself as a kind of anti-Broadway musical, tossing in such innovations in its day as an assault on the fourth wall, four-letter language, full-frontal nudity and segments sneering at the traditional show tune fan. The dance maker has to make dance, in a way, that doesn't look like dance.
The zesty revival of the classis is now in Chicago on tour at the Oriental Theatre, and Karole Armitage's sly, backdoor dances are indeed one reason to see it. True, Armitage, who hails, by the way, from nearby Madison, Wisc., can't let loose and show off the artistic breadth and subtleties of the work she has crafted for her own troupe, Armitage Gone! Dance, which displayed her intelligent mix of ballet and modernism here in 2008 at the Dance Center of Columbia College.
Her work for "Hair" is all the more impressive because she has to hide it. For starters, "Hair" is a show with one rousing chorale after another and plenty of eye-popping vocal solo pyrotechnics. I'd guess these folks are cast as singers first. But clearly Armitage has some talent to work with, and she uses it nicely.
Much of the time, she does so by leaning on the tribal imagery that infuses the piece. A lot of Broadway choreography these days is so sugary and flashy, Las Vegas-like acrobatics that have a more look-at-me zeal than subtle organization. Armitage restores the balance, her seemingly effortless tribal circles and zippy athletics artful and natural--long enough to catch the eye but short-lived enough not to seem like a feathery drill. It's speedier, I'd guess, compared to the original, but just as organic.
It seems likely she worked in tandem with director Diane Paulus to inject exciting dance, but keep it muted. There's not, in my recollection, any particular spell where you think, "Oh, this is a dance number," which is quite the feat, really, when such spectacles are bread-and-butter to most musicals.
"Hair" instead is an homage to movement, to the power of choral arrangements, to the magic of groups clustered in glowing light, a stage imagery that naturally evokes the communal theme at the heart of the show. Two figures, by my count, are lifted by these clusters, the Afro-crowned Phyre Hawkins and Paris Remillard as the hapless Claude, the hero who winds up going to Vietnam in spite of his hippie predilections. Some  of Armitage's best work is in the cagey group arrangements and staging she comes up with for such unusual numbers as "Being in Space," deliciously floor-bound and yet floating choreography for people on drugs, and "Three-Five-Zero-Zero," a raucous, anti-war chorale Armitage reinforces by what amounts to a march to the front of the stage, an I-dare-you assault on the audience, enormously effective--and this in a production where actors run up and down the aisles almost (but not quite) to the point of tedium.
The movie "Hair" is graced by great dance from a woman at the time still up and coming: Twyla Tharp. Armitage took on this task with that shadow overlooking her.
But she earns her stripes and then some, and even has great fun in the process. Her lavish, seemingly impromptu spectacular to the hybrid number about "Black Boys" and "White Boys" is sexy, joyous and a lively hoedown with soaring hijinks. In an age when Broadway dance so often looks synthetic, in-your-face and cheesy, Armitage, who cut her teeth on the innovative "Passing Strange," is emerging as the adult in the room, someone whose gifts keep coming and always bear watching.

Khecari Dance Theatre presents Y

"Khecari "Y""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Jonathan Meyer does not color inside the lines. He colors outside the lines, creating new lines, then colors outside those. More lines, more rebel coloring, more lines, more coloring, until the whole is smudged and mysterious. 

Meyer, founder of Khecari, specializes in brave, intelligent, self-challenging and audience-challenging work. His new "Y," the second in a series of three solos, is true to form. Continuing through Saturday at atmospheric Overdier Hall, an adjunct to the United Church of Rogers Park, this self-reflective piece worries the bone of identity relentlessly. Yet by the end, the sense of an integrated self seems further out of reach than ever.

Chopped into brief sections, "Y" gets knitted together partly by Christopher Preissing's score; he plays its electronic portions live while three singers (and sometimes Preissing) vocalize, harmonize, gasp, burp into mics. Throat singing and keening at high volume, with ringing overtones, sound animal-like yet are intensely human, just as Meyer’s movement can look as cramped, unself-conscious, and self-involved as a cat's --- yet actually enhance the sense of his humanity. Frequent electronic explosions sometimes drown out what he's saying.

Because Meyer does talk. But instead of clarifying things, his words repeatedly explode the rules and concepts that define theater as well as identity. As in his first, untitled solo last September at the Other Dance Festival, Meyer’s talk can be funny. He breaks the dancer's usual silence by muttering, then blurts, "I'm sorry, is this embarrassing? But talking just makes it worse. I’ll stop talking and do a dance." With that, he enters the stage that's at one end of the Overdier space and promptly falls down. After exiting and pompously explaining that he believes there’s an art to falling, that it’s "a dance with gravity toward grace," he goes up onstage and falls again, but a little more theatrically, with more of a buildup. Finally, he takes a heroic pose as he describes his own heroic pose, revising the description as he goes along, making it more florid.

At the opposite extreme of the histrionic is the candid. Near the end, Meyer sits on some steps to take a breather, gulping water, while explaining that "we have another eight and a half minutes to kill" so that he can call this "an evening-length piece." He invites us to contemplate the work's themes and motifs and even suggests a few to consider. Working the crowd like some off-kilter comedian, Meyer makes us his buddies, enemies, uneasy allies. His intermittent apologies don’t build bridges. Instead they suggest aggression, deception, and despair at the inadequacy, the impossibility, of connection.

Meyer also moves. Words may be misleading and inadequate, but movement, as Martha Graham so famously said, doesn't lie. Meyer's motions don't seem mediated by thought or language; they come from the gut. They exemplify honesty.

Tall and long-limbed, Meyer begins "Y" with legs and arms whirling around his torso, martial-arts style. But confident, forceful moves are the exception, not the rule; more often he slowly crumples, collapsing onto the sides of his feet or letting his arms fold and drop, hands limp and curled. Or jittery hands buzz his own head like bees while he convulses and gasps. His dancing has a consistent rhythm: quiet, charged, slowly building sections alternate with release into spasms or explosions. Swift alternations also govern the piece’s structure, as it strikes off in one direction, then another, over and over again, taking a jagged path toward ... what?

I'm not sure. But in the final section of "Y," Meyer unfolds a piece of paper and reads a short anecdote about an accidental encounter with an old man. It's the first time that he doesn't seem trapped in the moment and in his own house-of-mirrors psyche. Recalling his father's father, someone he doesn’t actually recall, Meyer steps outside himself and into the past. A window opens as beautiful as the mullioned windows of Overdier, revealing a world beyond the self, beyond theater.

16 ARTISTS, THIRSTY WELL

"LUCKY PLUSH PRODUCTIONS "16 ARTISTS, THIRSTY WELL""

 

By Laura Molzahn

At their best, the pieces on this program are chaotic, funny, and very much alive, still carrying a whiff of the studio hothouses that produced them. Curated by Lucky Plush, "16 Artists, Thirsty Well" showcases five works by four choreographers (and one theater director) in their prime. Last night the crowd at the Hamlin Park field house overflowed, leaving some people to perch on stools or the floor. Friday night, the last show of this short run, is sold out. (But you can check on "carpet square" seating by e-mailing Julia@luckyplush.com.)

Collaboration --- nothing new, of course --- rules here. Lucky Plush's "The Better Half," choreographed by Julia Rhoads and directed by 500 Clown's Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, really feels like people are making things up as they go along. And they might be: the program credits some text to the ensemble, noting that "they just say stuff." Hilarious stuff. The "trailer version" of a full-length work scheduled at the MCA next fall, this piece made me feel like a fly on the wall of the studio. And I mean that in the best possible way. Last on the bill, it was the most riotous of the bunch.

Though they've only recently started working together, Danzig and Rhoads are a natural match: both favor the meta-theatrical. Their premise in "The Better Half" is that we're watching a theater audition or rehearsal, with Tim Heck the stage manager/director --- who morphs into a detective when the play veers into murder mystery. Rhoads is the wife and Adrian Danzig the husband in a crumbling marriage; Meghann Wilkinson a "stout, amiable, subservient woman of 50," as Heck describes her; and Kim Goldman a "cheeky" 19-year-old servant. The apparently improvised play intertwines with backstage comedy to plant the seeds of a rowdy, witty dance-theater piece.

The show opens with "Traitor," a 2009 duet created and performed --- somewhat differently each time --- by Lisa Gonzales and Darrell Jones, who seem constantly connected no matter how far apart they might be. It begins with Jones running backward in a big circle around Gonzales while she stands still, though her head and torso rotate as if tracking his moves. Rambling, rolling, and crawling all over the stage, they talk a lot, sometimes in set texts but more often in seemingly off-the-cuff, very funny commentary on what they're doing: "I love this part," "This will hurt!" The floor keeps giving way beneath them emotionally. But it doesn't seem to matter. They’re like kids at a sleep-over, playing so hard they exhaust themselves, completely lost in their world of imagination and recollection.

Peter Carpenter's premiere, "Ritual of Abundance for Lean Times #2: Beyond What Is Possible," which tackles intensely serious subjects in a serious way, isn’t well served by its placement after the rambunctious "Traitor." Part of a cycle, it would also undoubtedly benefit from additional context. Carpenter’s adaptation of writings by Presbyterian pastor Joy Douglas Strome plus some of his own texts, created in collaboration with performers Lia Bonfilio and Wilkinson, are expertly snipped apart and repeated to gradually reveal their meaning. "Ritual of Abundance" does come to seem a ritual, and a moving one, mourning 21 youths killed on Chicago's streets. But Carpenter appears ambivalent about how potent his ritual might be, which makes the piece uncomfortably tentative.

Jones's "HooHa" is strange, mysterious, and touching in ways I'm not sure I can track. Set to an ambient recording of last year's "Respect March Madness Part 2" voguing ball on Chicago's south side, this trio for African-American men --- Jones, Damon Greene, and J'Sun Howard --- at first re-creates the atmosphere of a club. Then it takes a left turn into a quiet duet for Jones and Howard, who come downstage and slowly fall to their knees to face us or each other. The feeling is reverential, even when they slowly, deliberately take turns slapping each other's faces, producing a delicate melody.

Gonzales’s work in progress, "The Study of Last Things," seems far more traditional than the other pieces; for one thing, there are no texts or other utterances. New York dancers Maggie Bennett, Carly Czach, and Dale O'Reilly perform it --- very carefully, as if walking on eggshells. Though this dance is said to be about "the aftermath of an irrevocable decision," I couldn’t necessarily see that. Like Carpenter's piece, this one may have suffered from the surrounding matrix of often humorous, freewheeling work.

You can expect a bit of potluck, of awkward juxtapositions and transitions, on a mixed bill. This program is fascinating, though, for its peek at the process and promise of better, fuller things to come.

Stupormarket

"The Seldoms "Stupormarket""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Carrie Hanson takes us on a roller coaster ride that recapitulates --- and reinvents --- the roller coaster the economy has been on for the last few years. We lurch up the hills of greed, selfishness, and ignorance; slide, shrieking, down into reckless, abandoned, ridiculous laughter; clasp each other in desperation, need, and shared terror.

The Seldoms' "Stupormarket" --- directed and choreographed by Hanson, with movement contributions from the eight dancers --- is a witty, muscular, must-see commentary on our accursed "interesting times." Running through Sunday at Stage 773, this dense, intricately structured hour-long work is defined by Richard Woodbury's dead-on musical selections and sound as well as Julie Ballard's sometimes incrementally subtle, sometimes boldly dramatic lighting. This isn't a narrative dance, but the aural and visual environments let you know where you are. Projected and recorded texts --- from Alan Greenspan, new Keynesian economist Paul Krugman, former presidents Bush and Reagan --- further define the sections and shape the piece.

Hanson has been mulling over the causes and consequences of the economic "downturn" for a few years: "Stupormarket" has absorbed edited versions of two 2009 dances. The alternately steely and literally listing female duet "Thrift" is excerpted near the beginning in three stark rectangles of light; snippets reappear later. Hanson sets this somber section against an almost flippant recorded lecture by Krugman ("There's some stuff going on out there," "It's the Wild West!") and Bush's nattering on about "market adjustments." Though Hanson alludes to economic theories, her piece --- even at its most satirical and theoretical --- is invested in flesh-and-blood lives.

In the very funny shortened version of 2009's "Death of a (Prada) Salesman," Philip Elson as the whiny yet sympathetic salesman unable to meet his quota has a conversation with his bearskin rug. Get it? The "bear market"? Fortunately Hanson has the wit to make fun of her own obvious joke while riding its coattails. She also creates witty visuals that encapsulate the whole downsizing experience: glamorous heels are exchanged for broken-down Hush Puppies, brandished by multiple disembodied arms in an evocation of the goddess of destruction, Kali.

“Stupormarket” is packed with scenes that amuse, instruct, and sometimes move us. Dancers embody diamonds and Hummers; they slap ever-escalating prices on everyday moves like chucking a chin or itching a nose or putting out a jazzy or indifferent Fosse twitch. They create their own mundane, fragile, and ultimately icky bubbles.

Hanson weaves the piece together in part by literally enacting the clichés of business and finance. The dancers roll up their sleeves, they tough it out, they eat their shirts. They go belly up. They take it on the chin. They chase the money and manipulate the markets (or try to). And in the single most evocative gesture in “Stupormarket,” they pat themselves on the back. At first this act seems to be the booby prize for laid-off workers. But by the end --- when the dancers twine and untwine their limbs, endlessly undoing and initiating the act of patting on the back --- it stands for shared frailty and strength.

Even without its sturdy satirical spine, "Stupormarket" would be a delight for its inventive, vigorous movement and engaging performances. The eight dancers are clear individuals --- not characters, exactly, though each plays a strong, consistent role. Seldoms stalwarts Christina Gonzalez-Gillett and Paige Cunningham, as the "Thrift" duo, look very different but convey the same weighted, severe sculptural quality. Elson's lightweight salesman turns on a dime to become the object of compassion, and Damon Green, wearing a spangled leotard, has a blast as the seductive diamond. Slim Cara Sabin is flinty and forbidding under all circumstances, and Amanda McAlister shows expressive gifts for comedy and anxiety alike. Javier Ramos reveals a quiet, slippery strength, and Trevor Szuba-Schneider unexpected depths of rage.

My husband, after watching the piece, said something about a return to the WPA. And there is something determinedly upbeat and hardy about "Stupormarket" despite its acknowledgement of our errors and flaws, our greed and self-centeredness, the roles that people high and low have played in our country’s downfall. Its boot-straps toughness and smarts and its rooted insistence on the reality of everyday people made me walk out of the theater confident that, no matter what happens, everything will be OK.

River North's

"River North sends Valentines"

 

By Sid Smith
River North Dance Chicago's outing through Sunday at the Harris Theater is the perfect Valentine Day treat--romantic and sexy, sure, bound to please dance novices, but layered at the same time with intriguing takes on partnership, dance style and both the joys and pitfalls of relationships.
Of course, programming the brand new piece inspired by the tango, "Al Sur Del Sur," by Sabrina and Rubin Veliz, is a shrewd Valentine move. Few styles are more sexy or evocative, and yet tango is anything but a schmaltzy, sentimental Hallmark Card. It's tough, fierce, fraught with tension and mystery while just about every moment is a story about the world of the couple. Its men and women are in love, yes, but in combat, too, it seems, and their sensual hands and languorous looks are complemented by such energetic, fiercely acrobatic swivels and footwork--love as a kind of electrified athletic field.
The Veliz's, who are both onstage partners and man and wife, do a creditable job employing the style for a multi-part repertory dance piece, luxuriating in its highly theatrical moves and music, but offering components that take on the substantive aspects of concert dance. There's a sly motif whereby the larger ensemble linger on stage and choreographically set up the smaller casts to come, so that there's a kind of chorus not so much accompanying as giving birth to the sections. There's a terrific, classic duet superbly managed by Melanie Manale-Hortin and Jeff Wolfe; a nifty menage a trois made up of Brandon DiCriscio, Christian Denice and Jessica Wolfrum; and a cleverly designed menage a quatre for Hanna Brictson, Kelly Michael Brunk, Michael Gross and Cassandra Porter. I like the evocative, haunting duet for two women (Lauren Kias and Lizzie MacKenzie), though it says something that it seemed to pass by Saturday's audience--the choreographers are trying to employ the tango here in ways maybe too subtle at times for traditional fans.
There was also a lack of precision in timing during the large ensemble segments, couples mastering their own moves but not always in letter-perfect sync. That will improve as the piece ages, no doubt, and age it surely will: This is a great fit for River North's populist strain, a work that prods and puzzles over ballroom form while glorying in its allure.
Artistic director Frank Chaves stitched together three duos from separate works, and "Duets" proves a fine program piece, showing off his versatility and the dancers: Brunk and Manale-Hortin in "Fixe," other worldly and abstract, replete with her spectacular toe to head finish; "At Last," sweeping, romantic and funny, particularly when MacKenze drops Denice so unceremoniously; and Wolfrum and Michael Gross in "The Mourning," moody, enticing, as satiny and exotic as Jordan Ross' wine-colored, drapery-like costumes.
Chaves' "Love Will Follow" was a nice opener for this program, swirling and elegant, though never sentimental or hokey--a nice Americana ballroom intro, in a way, for the later tango. Two of River North's more spectacular solos, Denice in "Beat" and Brictson from "Train," made the bill, a nod that single people deserve valentines, too, I took it. And I noticed for the first time that Sherry Zunker's feverish, snappy pop ensemble piece, "Evolution of a Dream," manages its appeal without a single dancer ever touching another--call this the romance of the whole community.
I remain not a fan of the underwear tug-of-war trio from "Hidden Truth," but its presence as excerpt suggests it's popular with audiences, and it certainly provides a showcase for MacKenzie's striking extensions, strength and singular beauty.
River North plays at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Harris, 205 E. Randolph Dr. For tickets: 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org.

Every house has a door

"Every house has a door"

 

By Sid Smith

Even in serious artistic pursuits, dance is sometimes a player instead of a star, one component in an interdisciplinary work embracing other arts.
Lin Hixson, longtime guru of the now defunct Goat Island ensemble, employs movement, but has always been more interested in rigorous intellectual pursuit than in the niceties of form. Her new troupe, Every house has a door, which includes former Goat Islander Matthew Goulish, is offering "Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never," through Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and it can be described as a dance-theater piece with the heaviest accent on theater--dance and movement here are an occasional accompaniment
Indeed, cinema is a part of the package, too, though never in the form of actual film clips or projections. "Let us think" uses cinema as its launching pad, in particular the films of Ingmar Bergman and Serbian director Dusan Makavejev, turning on a Harvard University session in which Makavejev made use of Bergman films for his own purposes, including a one-hour montage of silent segments from the Swede's great movies.
After a spare beginning involving a voiceover and three empty stools on a bare stage, the four performers--Goulish, Selma Banich, Stephen Fiehn and Mislav Cavajda--serve up a theatrical stew minimalist in its trappings but epic in import and thunderously messy, even though a folding table, a few lap tops, apples, chocolate syrup and artificial flowers make up most of the props. Early on, the four re-create Makavejev's montage in condensed form, and they do so elliptically: They cluster together and describe scenes from the Bergman films with only spare evocations of actual imagery, though their version of the iconic dance of from the finish of "The Seventh Seal" is masterfully on target, film greatness in cagey redux.
Indeed, among the things we learn in this partly academic film class is that that famous image was a kind of accident, hurried together after shooting was supposed to end, to take advantage of a cloud formation, Bergman resorting to the renowned silhouette because actors had left and he had to use costumed stage hands, truck drivers, you name it. Art comes off as a happy, imperfect accident in "Let us think." Human cruelty, maybe the real topic, seems more deliberately fashioned.
Often with noises and id-like activities, with a minimum of dialogue, movement and song, Every house takes us on a troubling, moody journey, full of unhelpful detours, but managing to touch on everything from the beauties of foreign tongues and folk music to the horrors of 20th-Century genocide. The title is a poetic quote from a statesman about discovered genocide, but "Let us think" levies the charge that it's part of a kind of worldwide human copout. Not just powerful images from Bergman's films are evoked; eventually Makavejev's images are called to mind, too, especially the harrowing, grotesque and moving events in "Sweet Movie." Man's inhumanity to man gets a thorough outing, though the piece runs for only 80 minutes.
The movement is mostly simplistic, though that's not to suggest in any way that it's ineffective. Banich manages powerful moments of human pathos simply by slowly wiping her mouth with her hand. Goulish performs a madcap mock ballet solo in a gripping tragicomic stretch near the end, and though the piece meanders, suffers annoying indulgences and often perplexes more than it enlightens, this is director Hixson and company crafting quite the inimical trek. Though I hated the actual ending, a dumb routine where two of the guys keep going and coming back and yelling outside until Banich can't hear them anymore--her solo moment just before that would make a better finale--I was intrigued by what I learned and moved by its haunting implications.
Most conceptual dance uses drama and dialogue as intermittent props. Here, the balance is reversed, and while dance enthusiasts may be disappointed in the miserly choreography, "Let us think" has some gigantic and universally generous things to say.
"Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never." plays through Sunday at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Av. For tickets: 312-397-4010 or mcachicago.org.

The Dance COLEctive presents Balancing Act

"The Dance Colective "Balancing Act""

 

By Laura Molzahn
Posted January 21, 2011 at 10am

To talk or not to talk? That is the question. Margi Cole speaks up, and asks her dancers to do the same, in the first half of the Dance COLEctive's intriguing 15th-anniversary program. In the second half of "Balancing Act," --- running at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts through Saturday --- she abandons speaking.

The disadvantage of words is that they create divisions, laying out boundaries that, once set, are difficult to breach or transcend. They can also seriously distract from the movement; we’re better trained to listen than observe. Those are the dangers, but the upside is that language provides structure and focus, a sense of being rooted in the everyday, that’s harder to achieve with movement alone.

Cole’s very funny duet with Jeff Hancock, which they jointly created and cleverly perform, is so close to the everyday it’s like sketch comedy --- though no one at Second City could or would move like this. Cole and Hancock keep things low-key at first in “Chocolates and Dynamite,” picking and jawing over a heart-shaped box of treats. But these are no ordinary candies. After spitting one out, Hancock declares: “Oooh, oh, I’ve had this one before, it’s so uncomfortable… it’s a blind date!” Their cozy confab conflates pigging out on candy, the affectations of wine snobs, and the delectation of hopeful, doomed attempts at love.

Then "Chocolates and Dynamite" explodes, stretching out across the stage as Cole and Hancock establish the four stages of romantic adventures. Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship will recognize the plotting, the armoring, the desperate pursuits and stupid battles of having, or wanting, a significant other. Snatches of Henry Mancini drive home the imbecility and universality of the romantic urge.

"I," a quintet by guest choreographer Liz Burritt, uses texts (garnered from the dancers) and simple movement to examine how women experience and respond to failure. It opens strongly with the dancers on tiptoe, one arm reaching upward, hands and heads waving. They're like excited kids, eager to be called on. Suddenly, they deflate, dropping their heels, their arms, and collapsing backward in a clear, poignant picture of disappointment. Chanted texts then give the piece a sense of ritual power and community. But once individual characters emerge, some are thin. And given the volume of words, the movement can't be overly detailed or complex; mostly it illustrates what the words express. Onstage, the work lacked the impact it had had in rehearsal, in a smaller space. 

On the program's second half, when the fences of words disappear, the two pieces by Cole alone --- streaming rather than structured, evolving rather than determined --- flow, split, tumble.

"Maelstrom," a sextet Cole created for New Trier High School's Menz Dance, exploits rough male energy --- a rare commodity on programs by the all-female Dance COLEctive. Todd Reynolds’s popping stop-start remix of Terry Riley's "In C" underscores the unpredictability of the dancing, as walking and running in different directions evolves into wild leaps and brazen falls. It was wonderful to see these young men’s physical and emotional courage, their investment in the moment and in their interactions.

Cole’s “Pull Taut” closed the program with a jittery bang. Ten dancers, all women, spend most of the piece entering and exiting to form rapidly coalescing and dissolving duets, appearing onstage and disappearing just as quickly in a bubbling stew. Individuals’ movements are so unlike and so brief that to follow the line of any one dancer would be as crazy-making and unproductive as trying to follow a single twisting string of paint in a Jackson Pollack.

What's important is the overall texture and design. Cole used some of Malcolm Gladwell's ideas about intuitive behavior in "Blink" to get her dancers into movement conversations, she told me, in which they sometimes listened, sometimes bantered, sometimes talked over each other. But no matter what, the sense of confrontation --- sometimes as random and unmotivated as billiard balls colliding --- is constant. Except at the beginning and the end, which are oases not so much of calm as detente.

Philip Elson's sputtering sound design builds almost imperceptibly to the conclusion. Largely percussive, the early passages establish rhythms only to abandon them. Static further jangles the nerves. But by the end the music gains a sense of urgency and suspense that underlines the shifts in Cole's choreographic design. Instead of duets, there are more and more trios, then even larger groups onstage. It's like seeing armies amass before a battle, culminating in a stare-off between two dancers that crumbles into an equivocal embrace.

Sometimes I grew impatient with the incremental evolution, or devolution, of "Pull Taut." But perhaps the piece's stream of itchy, irritating, possibly arbitrary collisions is what ultimately gives the work its power as it builds to a climax that never really happens --- then starts over.

Dance Union

"Dance Union "Politics and Dance""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Was the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others on Saturday a political act? Probably more political than the four pieces presented Saturday night at the Drucker Center in Dance Union’s fourth showcase, "Politics & Dance." These works defined politics broadly and variously, as cultural injustices, a couple’s internecine battles, an individual’s conflicting impulses, and the human tools used in combat.

Adam Rose's solo, "IAR 93 Vultur," is strangely prescient on the subject of killers like Jared Lee Loughner. Rose told me in an interview that "what's interesting about the military is that it's a form of politics that transcends all politics. It's about technology and force." And for Loughner, the political cause seems to have been almost arbitrary while the violent act was crucial.

Rose is frighteningly present and invested in "IAR 93 Vultur," which he named after a Romanian military aircraft partly because the number 93 is crucial in Thelema, the religious-magical system devised by Aleister Crowley. Rose's company, Antibody Dance, according to its website uses "occult research" to "create antibodies --- agents of resistance and transformation within culture." And fanatical belief in the power of magic to transform must lie behind Rose's own transformation, from shy and diffident offstage to a completely uninhibited freak on the boards. His eyes roll back in his head, his mouth contorts into ghoulish frowns or smiles, and he hops around the space like a mad frog or whirls like some combination of dervish and military target search device. He's reminiscent of Jeremy Renner's suicidal thrill seeker in the film "The Hurt Locker," or the bloodied beast in Goya's painting "Saturn Devouring His Son."

Ayako Kato was likewise transformed in her solo "Z," though the result was very different: elegant and introspective rather than demonically possessed. The self-effacing founder of the Dance Union series becomes entirely self-assured onstage. Kato writes that her piece is about "the contradictory characters of the personnel who seeks salvation," and I saw those warring impulses as ego and self-abnegation. Reaching outward with a yearning yet crabbed hand might suggest the creeping tendrils of egotism, while Kato's hidden face --- which she turns away from us or veils with her hair --- might indicate self-repression. Or not. Whatever, Kato galvanized the concept of inner conflict in her charged, nuanced performance.

"Abbot & Viv: The Prelude" externalized conflict. Choreographed and performed by Michael Estanich and Lucy Riner (aka Re|Dance), this duet embodies the direct confrontations, sneaky skirmishes, and loving embraces of a couple fighting and bonding over a glass bowl, which they alternately snatch from or give to each other or ignore. The word "again" signals a new variation on the theme, reinforcing the nightmarish sense of doomed, neurotic repetition. A version of "Abbot & Viv" at Link's Hall last January had a more fleshed-out set that enhanced the eerily warm domestic feeling. But it's difficult to see how the bowl --- which seems to represent "the world around them" in Re|Dance's description of the piece --- could be political. Instead it seems a psychological force or concept unique to this couple.

An excerpt from "Ladies Ring Shout," a work in progress, was the most overtly political work. Created and performed by Felicia Holman, Abra M. Johnson, and Meida Teresa McNeal, this multimedia piece is described online as "a sounding ground and witness space acknowledging the roadblocks and pressures experienced by females of color." Two of the three performers are academics, and the piece is dominated by its texts. Discordant humming at the beginning is promising, then there's a half-funny, half-bitter treatment of slaves on the block that reveals contemporary stereotypes of black women and their supposed usefulness to white men, white women, and black men. Slide projections bring to vivid life the negative stereotypes of black women, especially as seen in Tyler Perry's Madea movies.

"Ladies Ring Shout" gains some sympathy through its depiction of the "pressures" inflicted on women of color; Johnson's dancing is especially heartfelt. But the piece seems mostly focused on healing for the performers, a fact acknowledged online and in the title’s reference to 19th-century religious rituals. I hope the experience worked for them, but for the audience, something less blatantly discursive and more ecstatic would probably work better.

Corpo Dance Company

""Coppelius""

 

By Sid Smith
Corpo Dance Company's "Coppelius" is too long, too meandering, too unfocused and that's too bad--it's a terrific idea with lots of potential and already bursts of fine dancing.
We haven't seen a full-fledged production of the classic "Coppelia" in quite a while now. But Corpo's smart to sense in this venerable trope--stemming from writings by E.T.A. Hoffmann that also inspired a segment of the opera "Tales of Hoffmann"--a theme as apt now as in 1870, when the ballet "Coppelia" premiered. There was already a sense of industrial revolution woe then, and now, of course, technology has again revolutionized how we relate. In "Coppelius," much of the drama involves the creepy relationship of a human being and a mechanical doll--a substitute for real love not so far-fetched in a time of text messaging nd disembodied Facebook interchange.
That's not to suggest that Corpo updates the setting--the handful of set pieces at Links Hall and the costumes clearly cast this piece well into the past. A tall antique clock rests inside a decorative case, a gramophone sits to the side and the fashions of Dr. Coppelius, his puppets and his disinterested love, Belle, are 19th-Century. In fact, "Coppelius" is a prequel, setting forth events Corpo imagines happens before the events of the "Coppelia" story. 
Here, Dr. Coppelius, played by the lean, lanky, rubbery Christopher Courtney, tinkers with various gadgets in his mechanical lab and trots out a small horde of life-size human puppets, boasting various names such as Spindle, Cala and Grey, entertaining him when he charges them up with Dr. Frankenstein-like ingenuity.
Artistic director Christopher M. McCray and his team have great fun starting with the jerky doll-like movement of not just "Coppelia" but segments of "The Nutcracker," too, eventually enabling the talented dancers to mix mechanistic images and wrist play with all manner of dance. The robotics, in other words, are a starting point, and the styles soon embrace a wide variety of contemporary dancing, evoking the 1960s frug in one large ensemble bit, and accommodating everything from a kind of rock and roll ballet to hip hop, which is a Courtney specialty. Act I ends with a sensational solo turn for Christina Chen as a spiky, Goth-tinged ballerina, and the idea of heaping all sorts of postmodern luxury onto the classic "Coppelia" riff is a delight. The best dance illustration of the theme comes in Act II, when Belle, invited to be wooed by Coppelius, falls instead for the puppet Grey, who keeps sputtering out, dependent for his very semi-humanity on Coppelius, who's forced to keep re-starting his own "rival." Nice irony. 
But as a theatrical presentation, "Coppelius" is a dud. The creators seem to have no sense as to how to shape a story that's taut and compelling. Again and again they hover over meaningless details to the point of tedium--Dr. Coppelius dutifully fiddles with each of the window shades in the opening and then maddeningly does so again after the grand finale--and after the program should have ended. The occasional opening night flub Friday didn't help--at the end of Act I, for instance, there was a music miscue, part of a generally sloppy closing image.
Corpo is sure-footed in theme and dance, but hasn't yet found a way to encapsulate that in successful dance drama. Probably condensing to one act would help. The broad, drunken comic duet in Act II for Coppelius and Grey suggests the Corpo folks need to get out more--to visit some of the city's improvisational theater shops, for instance, or to catch a performance of the Joffrey Ballet's new revival of Jerome Robbins' "The Concert." Corpo's sense of comic dance is pretty rudimentary.
But I don't really mean to be all that discouraging. I think they're on to something that could work very well, and I love the idea of recycling classic dance myths to unearth new truths and relevance, the sort of thing the theater does all the time. Anytime someone dances in "Coppelius," it's nicely entertaining. It's the lax stage business between that causes trouble.
"Coppelius" plays at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18 at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield Av. 773-281-0824 or linkshall.org.

The Joffrey Ballet's

"Joffrey Ballet "The Nutcracker""

 

By Laura Molzahn

The Joffrey’s “Nutcracker" is the 800-lb. gorilla of Chicago dance. Last year alone it drew nearly 33,000 people to the Auditorium. How many must there have been over the years? And who are they?

Probably they can be broken down into three categories: children, the ticket-buying adults who shepherd the kids, and die-hard dance fans. Each audience is looking for something different from this chestnut, so I’ll address them separately.

THE CHILD’S-EYE VIEW
The Joffrey’s “Nutcracker,” which Robert Joffrey set in America in the 1850s, begins with a bang. The opening scene, a Christmas party in a Victorian parlor, features an avalanche of toys, presents, fancy candy-colored costumes, and kid-friendly shenanigans. Clara, our heroine, is preoccupied with dolls and, maybe, boys. High-spirited hooligan Fritz, her brother, breaks the nutcracker given to Clara by the forbidding, magical Drosselmeyer.

Later scenes take Clara to an epic battle between giant mice and toys in her parlor; to an enchanted forest blanketed by snow; and to the Kingdom of Sweets, where she’s seated on a throne and entertained by dances from around the world, a dance by flowers, and a pas de deux by the Sugar Plum Fairy and Nutcracker Prince.

What child would object to this fantasy fulfilled? The fantasy of Christmas, in which parental love and prosperity are infinite and lavished on their children. The Joffrey’s production makes it all vividly real.

THE CONSUMER’S-EYE VIEW
If you can afford the tickets (which range from $30 to $115), the Joffrey’s “Nutcracker” does deliver. First off, you’ve got the Auditorium Theatre itself, completed in 1889 and loaded with the charm of the Gilded Age. You’ve got a live orchestra, the Chicago Sinfonietta, playing Tchaikovsky’s familiar music. You can even take your child at intermission to peer into the orchestra pit --- a huge draw on opening night.

The production values are impeccable. The costumes and sets are gorgeous throughout, but especially in the first scene. The snow falls endlessly, and the flower petals are limitless.

And the Joffrey dancers are top-of-the-line. Even the children onstage are the best that Chicagoland ballet studios have to offer.

THE DIE-HARD DANCE FAN’S VIEW
That would be me, more or less.

There’s no question that the Joffrey dancers do a magnificent job with the acting and choreography. On opening night, Anastacia Holden was a wonderfully soft, innocent Clara, with a smile in the second act that shone brightly on every performance and every single child/Polichinelle who sat at her feet. As the Snow Queen and King, Victoria Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels recapitulated the technical brilliance of their smashing duet in Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain,” which they performed in October. Yumelia Garcia was a tough little wind-up doll as the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Mauro Villanueva a slender, tensile foil for her in the final grand pas.

But the high point of the dancing for me, always, is the Arabian coffee duet, sinuously performed on opening night by Jaiani and the sturdy, attentive Miguel Angel Blanco. A little dance sizzle never hurts, and all the muscular departures from traditional ballet in the second act’s Divertissements are truly diverting. The Russian quartet in particular was a hit.

And, on a final, Scrooge-like note, I have to say that “The Nutcracker” is not my favorite story ballet. It’s no accident that it became hugely popular here in the 1950s, that era of burgeoning U.S. prosperity. In 1987, Joffrey changed the setting from a German household to a bourgeois parlor in America --- but that parlor is infused with the same sense of privilege and magically unlimited resources as the second act’s Kingdom of Sweets. To me, this “Nutcracker” in particular is a consumerist work of, by, and for the wealthy.

Chicago Tap Theatre's

"Chicago Tap Theatre 'Tidings of Tap""

 

By Sid Smith

There's always a multitude of holiday programming outside "The Nutcracker," but, in dance, few have shown the persistence of "Tidings of Tap!", Chicago Tap Theatre's un-Nutcracker array, now in its seventh year and returning Friday through Sunday to the UIC Theatre.
When asked about what first led to launching the program, artistic director Mark Yonally says he was motivated by diversity--but not so much by the stylistic diversity of incorporating his more populist art. His first instincts actually involved embracing religious variety.
"I remember thinking that in a city this big, it was disappointing that there were no holiday dance shows geared specifically to embracing a range of religions," Yonally recalls. It wasn't so much that "The Nutcracker" and ballet meant a formal monopoly; there's plenty of tap already in the Rockettes' production, which has been visiting the Chicago area frequently in recent seasons.
"But even the Rockettes, which provide a great spectacle, end on a heavy religious and Christmas note," Yonally points out. "We wanted a holiday show that included Hanukah and in general would be open to all audiences."
Early on, a piece to a fairly obscure klezmer tune was an important part of the line-up, and, for four years now, the program has also featured a dance to "Hava Nagila."
This year there's a brand new entry in that vein, entitled "Hope," by ensemble veteran Kendra Jorstad, "a beautiful piece, and a moving one, to 'Hatikvah,' the national anthem of Israel," Yonally says.
And in a loving nod to his competition down the Eisenhower at the Auditorium Theatre, "The Nutcracker," which, of course, plays in multiple productions at other far-flung venues as well, for the second year Yonally is including the ensemble's own five-minute "Nutcracker," a version flush with hip hop and beat boxing.
"There are two beat boxers and five dancers, who reference iconic tunes from the ballet by means of a capella tap rhythms evoking the Tchaikovsky," Yonally says. "We've decided to open the show with it this year as a means of making a statement. As in, 'This is what you'd typically see. Now, here's our version.'"
He's also touting a new piece called "The First Snowflake" and boasting a brief narrative. "We like to tell stories in our pieces, and this one is about snowflakes waiting in the clouds, looking down and working up the courage to actually fall. The first jumps by himself, alone for a while, blown by the wind, and sad until the others start to follow."
An audience favorite, "Carol of the Bells A Capella," will be back.
Like "Nutcracker" for the ballet set, "Tidings" is a program that appeals to family audiences. "I'd say 60 to 75 percent of the fans are families," Yonally says. But the troupe strives to maintain appeal to adult dance fans, too. "It's important that the show have a sophisticated feel for any adults who come," he says. "There are moments that are contemplative and thoughtful. This year, we'll also have a live band for two of the pieces."
In its eight years, Chicago Tap has been of those organizations that nudged the tap revival and found new modes of expression for this classic American art. Yonally says the past few years have been tough economically--but inspiring in some ways, too.
"It has been especially hard to see the effect our economy has had on our patrons," he says. "Individual donations have been down for every non-profit organization. But it's also inspiring that a lot of them, rather than shrinking or cutting programming, are trying to be more aggressive and donate tickets so that audiences can still keep coming.
"That's a big part of our philosophy," Yonally continues. "Art doesn't just belong to the rich."
"Tidings of Tap!" plays at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 10 and 11, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12 at the UIC Theatre, 1044 W. Harrison St. For tickets: 800-838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com.

Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape

"DANCE UNION "SIMPLY SHOWING""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Ayako Kato's Dance Union series gives artists the freedom to experiment before a small but knowledgeable crowd. True, on Saturday night there was a bit of scrambling with the tech aspects at the Drucker Center’s Fasseas White Box Theater. Video setup (and breakdown) happened in full view of the audience, and we moved our own chairs around.  

That's all in the spirit of Kato's DIY showcases. Each of the four pieces in "Simply Showing," the series' third one-night-only event, succeeded insofar as the performers seized the opportunity they’d been given. The personal was paramount.

And what could be more personal than putting yourself on the line moment by moment? Music-and-dance improv ensemble OosImaginary took a risk with a pretty huge "orchestra" of nine musicians, including one on toy xylophone. They provided a cheerful wall of sound, interspersed with an eerie recording of wolves howling, as the backdrop to movement by company members Lisa Frank and Sam Goodman and add-on Matthew McMunn.

The trio setup yielded the narrative tension. The two men, evenly matched in size and strength, engaged in vigorous contact improv, creating an odd woman out in Frank. She did wrangle her way into the action eventually but never achieved the emotional connection evident between the two men. The dancing was expert: soft, soundless rolls and daring balances, the delicate use of fingers and hands. But I wish Frank and Goodman had dropped the stony modern-dance stares and allowed their faces to reflect the movement and their feeling. McMunn's solo was brightened, invigorated, by a face as alive as his body.  

Suzy Grant's text-and-movement solo, "Even Sometimes When I Can't See You," takes a more openly autobiographical direction than previous work. Her drag persona, Rocco Granite, appears in a videotape to close the piece, lip-sync crooning "Unforgettable" with Grant (live) in a recording by Natalie and Nat King Cole. I knew in advance that Grant would be wearing a dress of bubble wrap --- but surprise! It provided the sound score. Every time she collapsed there were dozens of tiny explosions, as if a miniature World War III had broken out around her.

That warlike undercurrent also suited the text, though not in any obvious way. Grant was humorously self-effacing, not angry, as she talked about how she's dealt with feeling "different" --- from her family, from other girls, even from other dancers. Rocco Granite seems to be her last, best hope for expressing who she is. Yet to me he seemed something of an obstacle. When I’d seen the piece earlier, in rehearsal, I'd been very moved by Grant's vulnerability. At the performance, it was largely covered over with ironic layers of costume and persona. I missed it.

Erin Carlisle Norton's "March of the Oys" for the Moving Architects was the evening's most conventional dance experience. Four women begin with doll-like poses and movements: stiffly curved arms, lock-kneed legs, rocking motions to perambulate. Given the season, the title, and the toy references, it's impossible not to think of ballet and "The Nutcracker." Near the beginning, two dancers lock wrists (their fingers are immoveable) and waltz together mechanically. But by the end, as everyone begins to move more freely, all four face off and glare at one another. With self-consciousness and freedom comes competition.

Rachel Bunting, a current CDF Lab Artist, showed an excerpt from her work in progress, "Paper Shoes." It was impossible to know how all the elements here would relate in the full piece, but for sure Bunting was experimenting. There were tons of elements: two mismatched boots, five dancers, white gloves, black or white costumes (by Collin Bunting), three metal folding chairs, a metronome, what appeared to be Kleenex, and sheets of paper unfolded, snapped open, refolded, torn up.

Whatever the message might be, the tone was chilly, as the dancers were trapped under the chairs or teetered on them, crumpled the paper or blew the flimsy Kleenex across the floor. Bunting’s solo --- especially a tense, angular, sustained spasm up from flat-on-her-back --- expressed alienated anguish. There were, if anything, too many ideas tumbling around the stage. But in this setting, profusion should trump polish.

Chicago Human Rhythm Project Global Rhythms

""Global Rhythm" at the Harris"

 

By Sid Smith
The Chicago Human Rhythm Project's three-day "Global Rhythms" mixed bag of concerts got off to a decidedly mixed start on Friday.
The line-up will vary throughout the festival, with more than a dozen troupes alternating and making up the rest of the programs. But, despite some fine performance moments and some companies with terrific talent, Friday's line-up resulted in a show leaden at times in pacing, perplexing in content and generally uneven. The problem wasn't so much the participants as the production itself, unaided by a vague playbill booklet that provided only sketchy information about the artists and their works.
Complaining about a program's info may seem a nitpicker's whine, and indeed it is. But CHRP, enterprising in bringing disparate and far-flung groups and styles to Chicago over the years, has also always excelled at the instructional side of a program. Its leader, Lane Alexander, in brief curtain lectures, has managed mini-courses on tap history, sometimes revealing how little we know about this seemingly well known American art. But Friday, Alexander gave simpler, more peremptory remarks instead. Fine and good, but the paper program should have stepped in to fill in the gap. Certainly, that might have helped illuminate the otherwise confounding performance of Diabolus in Musica, who specialize in 13th-Century French music and whose lengthy set proved tedious and a tad perplexing. The four women singer/musicians and the one man who joins them as instrumentalist provided a series of songs with Celtic-like melodies, sung presumably in 13th-Century French, a language that sounds  as removed from modern French as our own vernacular now seems from that of Chaucer.
The musical selections themselves were sound-alike, straightforward and blandly harmonic, backed by simple, not very interesting instruments--a drum resembling a large tambourine and a small harp, for instance. The long, straight hair of the women and their paisley-like patterned scarves and attire evoked the unfortunate image of latter-day hippies who've wandered too far from the commune. Piece by piece, operatic-like flourish after flourish, they seemed almost unintentionally a satire on bad folk music .
I'm no music expert, and this group may well be worthwhile pros at their exegetical craft. But I also struggled to see how their effort really fits in with Human Rhythm's overall zeitgeist--they're global, to be sure, in location and heritage, but they're not particularly rhythmic or percussive, nor are they inventively visual. They're a straightforward musical ensemble, no more nor less. Again, better program info might have made them less monotonous--no where were we enlightened as to the subjects or lyrics of any of their selections. Maybe if we knew what the heck they were singing about, as much as the songs resembled each other, we might have cared more and garnered more from this somewhat snore of a history lesson.
Two other groups gave much more exciting performances. Be the Groove, a young troupe with roots at Northwestern University and deserved winners of an earlier CHRP video contest, is an immensely promising dance and percussion ensemble. Sure, they're latter-day "Stomp" practitioners, but "Stomp" is more than 20 years old now, launched when some of these players were barely born, the origins of its own now everlasting genre. And while Be the Groove  mixes percussion, street objects and dance, they do so with a clean, pleasing eye for choreographic arrangement and stage presentation. In one selection, employing tall walking staffs, they wind up in a row facing the audience, and the way the staffs are shifted and employed makes for a visual tease, just as its sounds make for a percussive feast. In a pure dance trio for the women, they reveal sharp choreographic instincts, blending spiky pop moves with pleasing, intelligent modern dance. They're great, but, again, their production instincts Friday slowed them down a bit and dulled their effect. There were too many selections, probably, and they need to work on making them follow each other more seamlessly--the spells between slow down their momentum.
And about that momentum: They also need to shape and build the pieces in a way that builds the selections into a more cascading and increasingly exciting onslaught. Right now, they offer one piece after another, somewhat straightforwardly, slowing down here and there, not really growing from piece to piece with forceful dramatic impact or an irresistible avalanche hurling to its finish--bread and butter to this interdisciplinary genre.
The BAM! performance Friday was easily the best of the lot, in part because the troupe showed off an unusually large contingent of nine dancers and, taking a cue from Be the Groove, included one large, dynamite number of body slapping, ferociously fast footwork and intricately designed sequences of all-out body percussion. But even the BAM! stretch could have been pruned. Nico Rubio and Tre Dumas, along as guests, are terrific tappers with highly different styles they shrewdly brought into harmony. But one face-off between the duo probably would have worked better than the two presented here, a case of programming deja vu, and even the overall BAM! segment thus dragged a bit. For a program celebrating a rapid-fire art, this one could have used a touch more speed.

 

DanceWorks Chicago

"DANCEWORKS CHICAGO "DANCE FLIGHT""

 

By Laura Molzahn

DanceWorks Chicago is a strange animal. Intriguing, but unclassifiable. Is it a school? Or a performing arts organization?

The globe-trotting DWC has the kind of touring schedule most artistic directors would kill for. They returned from Mexico City just a day or two before their one-night-only "Dance Flight" Tuesday at the Ruth Page Center. Then everyone left for Germany on Wednesday.

But DWC bills itself not as a dance company but as a "laboratory" for "early career artists." It's always made up of six dancers, who rotate in and out of the troupe. And though they may have trained, apprenticed, and even performed with well-known companies, in DWC they're implicitly preparing for, being groomed for, bigger things.

Founded by husband and wife Andreas Bottcher and Julie Nakagawa in 2007, shortly after their ten-year stint ended as the heads of Hubbard Street 2, DWC also pursues public dance education far more aggressively than most troupes. Accessibility and transparency are its watchwords; early on, DWC opened its auditions to the public, and during "Dance Flights" Nakagawa comes onstage briefly between works to wittily discuss them.

All very refreshing and admirable. In fact classification wouldn't matter --- if I weren't reviewing this evening of six pieces, presented in two hour-long parts. I'd go easy on a school. But DWC is so tantalizingly good, so expert in so many ways, that I have to treat it like any other company.

Maybe I've been around too long. Many of the pieces here reminded me of other choreography --- by Sherry Zunker for River North and by Lou Conte, David Parsons, Daniel Ezralow, and Jiri Kylian for or by Hubbard Street. It's not a matter of lifting anything; it's taking familiar approaches. And am I being overly cranky to complain that the program aimed too hard for entertainment?

Former Hubbard Street dancer and choreographer Brian Enos has created a fast-paced, sophisticated piece in "Ajorca," a world premiere set to Vivaldi's Concerto in B Minor. The title is Spanish for "bangle," and this glittering quartet often amuses with a sudden absurd gesture: a run of a few steps into a quick, awkward, childish embrace; waggling forearms to crazily speedy notes; legs kicking in frenzy while the rest of the dancer is draped over someone's shoulder. But Enos also does well with Vivaldi’s slower, more serious second movement, marked by a simple rocking step from side to side, arms and legs extended starlike. Playing with taut extension and abrupt droops, Enos follows the ebb and flow of the cascading music.

"Ajorca" must be a tremendous challenge to perform, but Kimberly Bleich, Amber Jackson, James Johnson, and Joseph Kudra did yeoman's work. And the piece moved so swiftly that no one had time to wear an appropriate face.

Gina Patterson's "My Witness," a full-company work created for DWC in 2009, was another standout. This suite set to half a dozen songs by the Sons of the Never Wrong flirts with but never succumbs to cliche. It's also that extreme rarity, a dance that pays tribute to marriage. Or at least long-term relationships. Beginning with the third section, whose song has the refrain "the stronger the wind, the stronger the tree," this sextet leaves stereotypes behind. A nuanced male duet was especially powerful, as was Johnson's dancing --- with his strong, pliant torso, he became the tree bent but not flattened by the wind. All the dancers, but notably Sarah Cecile Goldstone, looked fully invested in the emotion of Patterson's piece yet didn't oversell it.

Christian Spuck contributed two company premieres. "Paradigm," set to a percussion score by Chicagoan Gary Fry, was fun but so brief as to leave almost no impression. Spuck's duet "Die Blume" ("The Flower"), set to Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik," was so cute it made my teeth hurt. Ouch. I don’t mind variations on a silly theme, but there weren't many variations here. The piece was also an open invitation to mugging.

Edgar Zendejas's 2008 quintet for DWC, "Sada," is as urgent as its music. But I couldn't figure out a reason for all the high-pitched emotion.

Harrison McEldowney's "Blues for Ann," a tribute to critic Ann Barzel set to Chess Records cuts from the 50s and 60s, is another cute dance with insufficient variations on a theme --- in this case, male-female relations. But I did perk up when Johnson started his outrageously wavy vamping to Muddy Waters’s "I Got My Mojo Working."

Overall the DWC dancers delivered the stuff. But by the end of the two hours they looked too tired for the partnering in "Blues for Ann" (though Louis James Jackson maintained his quickness). I understand the value of frequent performing and of building stamina, but these dancers seemed worn down to nubbins. And that's not good for them or for us, watching.

Chicago Dance Crash

"Chicago Dance Crash offers "RadioStars""

 

By Sid Smith
There's an old movie title from the '60s that goes, "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?"
When it comes to the Chicago Dance Crash, the question might be logically rephrased to ask, "What's so bad about being entertaining?" This buoyant band of young artists, with their exuberant approach to performance and their passionate following, are reminiscent of the likes of the Annoyance Theater or the Neo-Futurists on our stage scene. They're  brash, funky, bright and street friendly in style, but they're increasingly serious about choreography, too. Many of the eight short works on view in "RadioStars," part of the Dance Chicago festival this month at Stage 773, are intricately designed and artfully stage. They're breezy in phrasing and delightfully accessible. But there's an intelligence behind the good times of the Crash, and today's top Broadway choreographers could learn a thing or two about crafty pop and jazz dance making from this more economically humble outfit.
"RadioStars" starts especially strong with Jessica Deahr's "Busy Signal," to Lady Gaga's "Telephone," an outing for six women in tight, silver lame pants and boasting exactly the kind of sly design that buoys this concert, which plays again at 5 p.m. Sunday. Deahr has a nice eye for manipulating this modestly sized ensemble to maximize its appeal. Two dancers, for instance, initiate cartwheels in unison at one point, but it's the way Deahr selects and places them that make the bit such a grace note. Blink and you miss it. That casual architecture is on view again in the sassy, strut-rich antics of "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," Jarrett Kelly's pert answer to the Temptations classic, an ensemble of six,  clad in sleek black, whose well-timed bows and one dramatic circling of the stage invoke the Motown zest of the music instead of the more dour lyrics.
Mark Hackman, now serving as interim artistic director of the troupe, once again proved an amiable host as well as a smart, appealing choreographer in his "Death of a House Party," wherein flashy moves and silky, discotheque stylistics prove anything but:  A party dance you want to hop up and join. Pia Hamilton's interesting use of umbrellas in "Ella, Ella" and Brian Hare's kicky designs--I especially love the bit where three women spin across the stage while managing a kind of body slant--are also immensely enjoyable.
In a move in line with Dance Chicago's all-comers-are-welcome, cross-pollinating mantra over the years, "RadioStars" invites two additional troupes along for the ride, FrameWork Dance Chicago and Ronn Stewart & Dancers. The latter deliver a remarkable suite to various covers of hits by the Police, one that includes a kilowatt solo by lanky, rubbery and seemingly double-jointed Stewart and a series of three duets that show off the terrific dancers he's working with, many of whom he met as a teacher at the Joffrey Ballet's academy.
Nits? Oh, sure. I enjoyed the face-off concept of "Untitled," wherein Lyndsey Rhoads pits gymnastic wunderkind Chantelle Mrowka vs. hip hopper Chris Courtney. But I longed for them to do a little more than just dance in their separate universes--the piece cried out for some sort of get-together, both physical and stylistic. And the crowd of all three troupes together on stage for the finale, hand-clapping to Queen's "We Will Rock" while various soloists improvise star turns, sort of fritters away and loses steam--something of a ho-hum finish for an impressive roster of mini-works.
But you'd be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable hour of dance anywhere. Stars of the radio? Nah. These are stars of our stage.
 

Big Dance Theater

"BIG DANCE THEATER "COMME TOUJOURS HERE I STAND""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Why would anyone stage a 50-year-old movie script? It seems a bizarre, fruitless exercise.

But it has provocative results in Big Dance Theater's "Comme Toujours Here I Stand," which recently completed its run at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This often comic remix of "Cleo From 5 to 7," shot in 1961 by French New Wave director Agnes Varda, ups the ante on the film's dark themes, like solipsism and mortality, as the young Cleo waits to hear the results of a cancer biopsy.

But the character's hypochondria undercuts any concerns about dying. In both the film and staging, Cleo is a self-centered, vain pop singer with what Freud would have called a hysterical tendency toward self-dramatization. She's the heir to Madame Bovary, and just as Gustave Flaubert took a complex attitude toward the star of his 1856 novel --- mixing harsh irony with genuine compassion --- Varda both sympathizes with and belittles her heroine.

BDT artistic directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar actually boost our sense of Cleo's foolishness, intentionally widening the sympathy gap. They chose middle-aged BDT cofounder Molly Hickok to play Cleo (portrayed in the film by 24-year-old Marilyn Monroe look-alike Corinne Marchand), then stuck her in unflattering heavy-rimmed glasses and ridiculously frumpy outfits that alternate between 60s chic and 60s takes on 19th-century dresses. And if you think petulance and entitlement are unattractive in the young, well, they're even less attractive in someone old enough to know better.

Parson and Lazar add another layer by providing backstage scenes for the actors, one of whom is taking French lessons via Skype and having long-distance cooing and bickering conversations with her boyfriend. By contrast the actress playing Cleo has no real offstage life; instead, this diva focuses on her performance, bursting into tantrums and issuing peremptory commands. She's actually much more histrionic --- and much funnier --- than the fretful Cleo, a persona that seems to have infiltrated the actress's very being and burgeoned there.

"Comme Toujours" revels in all the opportunities to reinvent and reconsider Varda's film. It makes efficient, creative use of props and set pieces, changing a big, furry hatbox into a drum and a mirror and making a movable staircase do quadruple duty. Necessarily selective, it reproduces only some lines and scenes from the film, sometimes also taped and projected in live-feed video or captured in "overhead" shots created through prerecorded video. Where Varda selected moments from a stream of lived experience, Parson and Lazar must select moments from Varda's moments, resulting in a fractured take on this inconsequential story, as Cleo shops, talks with her neglectful lover, visits a friend at an art class.

The result is a seriously entertaining, often very funny, blessedly concentrated 65-minute work celebrating and embracing theater's flaws and foibles. There isn't much dance, but what there is (choreographed by Parson) resonates, amuses, or both. A male-female duet that Cleo insists must be "modern" expresses the feminism of the time, with the woman taking triumphant stances, standing like a hunter with one foot atop her kill. Frustrated at being left out, Cleo instigates an old-style group number in which she stars, grinning and mugging while the other dancers grimly back up her inept hoofing.

After an hour's worth of fun and food for thought, the ending drops the mood with a thud. Remaining faithful to Cleo's psychic rebirth in the film, BDT dramatizes her chance meeting and connection with a stranger --- and her connection with a sense of curiosity about things outside herself. But because Parson and Lazar have heightened our sense of Cleo as a self-absorbed child, her transformation is even less convincing than in the film. Aiming at the eleventh hour for the serious and moving, "Comme Toujours" falls short.

Why did the directors drop the idea of Cleo as an aging, incorrigible enfant terrible? While the vapid, beautiful young thing in the film may complain about being taken for a doll or a child, the actress lives the results of buying that assumption. In a way, it's a more devastating fate than dying young.

 

Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago:

"Giordano unveils three new works"

 

By Sid Smith

Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago's engagement through Saturday at the Harris Theater is both enjoyable and promising in expanding the troupe's stylistic horizons and continuing to add to its choreographic line-up.

Karen Mareck Grundy, whose "Journey In" is one of three premieres on the bill, is artistic head of the Missouri Contemporary Ballet, and she offers yet more evidence of the broad range of approaches Nan Giordano has managed to attract for the troupe. "Journey In" is both velveteen in look and sharp in abstract drama--grounded, to be sure, but lilting, smooth, flowing modern dance that whispers at times of the "ballet" in the name of Grundy's own organization. At the outset, it should be noted that a key winning ingredient of "Journey In" is the spotlight it puts on Chicago composer Kevin Mileski, who joins musician Herman Winkler to play the score live at one side of the stage.

Almost New Age-melodic in creaminess and appeal, at first, Mileski is a sly music maker. The various parts of the score move from harmonic prettiness, ear treats that whiff of sentiment and sweetness, to a rousing rock guitar finale that boasts gentle echoes of country twang.

But what Grundy does with the score is equally impressive. The first section is ingeniously lit by Kam Hobbs and helps define the drama. Two intersecting planes of light create a kind of luminary set, and on it Grundy introduces the dancers, slowly, with a mini-drama all about love, but punctuated with brief scenes of female bonding. Though men hover and attract, the women take time out to unite, entwining their arms and offering hints of nurture and support. The attire is suburban cocktail party; the mood is more resonating and even slightly ominous--at times the dancers stand in place and gaze as if in rapture.

Eventually, the more circumscribed look gives way to openness and a raucous finale, but through it all Grundy orchestrates an attractive and uplifting piece, riddled with tiny bits of postmodern zeal. One of my favorites is a short-lived sequence wherein several dancers hop on one foot--a little like ballet's hops en pointe, only here the feet are bare.

Meanwhile, with two impressive and completely different pieces, Autumn Eckman proves how wise the Giordano folks were to recently name her artistic associate and director of Giordano II. "Yes, And..." is a fun-filled, funky crowd spectacle, combining both the main and junior Giordano troupes and a jungle-like fantasia pertly and prickly set to the percussive finery of Barbatuques. Eckman plays a lot here with image, the costumes revealing and swimsuit-like, the arrangements ever-changing constructions of geometric form--the traditional choral circle in one phase, an odd, stooping, arched-back look as a few of the dancers lope across the stage in another. It's a great program piece, though it will at times be reduced in number, which might change its effect--the mass of bodies seems part of its zeitgeist. And the ending is a little weak, one dancer tossed on high above the clustered rest in an image that Friday seemed tentative and a tad underwhelming.

But there is nothing weak about the beguiling, seductive duet called "A Little Moonlight," a miniature gem showing off Eckman's talent and, on Friday, the delightful partnership of Maeghan McHale and Jarrett Kelly. On its surface, this is a charming, fast-moving, rambunctious and joyful duet, to be relished--dance as pure entertainment. But it also shows off Eckman's very developed sense of movement logic, that invaluable choreographic tool some dance makers just seem to be born with. Eckman devises her own generic vocabulary of pop dance here, jitterbug-like, but never really jitterbug, Astaire-and-Rogers evocative and yet something all Eckman's own. But part of what makes it work is her sense of what should come next, what should follow, what moves along smoothly--that's the difference between a romantic duet that just seems to lump from one move to the next and one that intoxicates you, as "Moonlight" does so easily. Tiny motifs are one clue, as when McHale several times points her leg in an angle and then follows instantly with a full, skyward extension. It's the deceptively relaxed, actually tricky and intricate interactions that delight, while Kelly's natural suavity doesn't hurt, either.

The Joffrey Ballet presents All Stars

"The Joffrey Ballet "All Stars""

 

By Laura Molzahn

The Joffrey just keeps pulling rabbits out of its hat. Under the direction of Ashley Wheater, it has rarely repeated even the most successful pieces it's commissioned or acquired.

The fall "All Stars" program, which opened on Wednesday, must have been a bitch to put together, though. Of the four works, all by New York City Ballet choreographers, three were company premieres. But overall the Joffrey dancers met the challenge --- and they'll be pulling this particular rabbit out of their hat (aided by the Chicago Sinfonietta) at the Auditorium through October 24.

With a dance apiece from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 2000s, "All Stars" invites a historical perspective. Yet George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Christopher Wheeldon are such unique, versatile choreographers that comparisons are odious.

Still, there's an implied evolution to Balanchine's "Stravinsky Violin Concerto," choreographed in 1972. Though he'd used the same Stravinsky music for 1941's "Balustrade," he couldn't remember the choreography and came up with completely new stuff for NYCB's '72 Stravinsky festival --- and pointedly commented that this was a dance for the 70s. Though at first Balanchine seems to accede to the egalitarian feminism of the era, perhaps with tongue in cheek, eventually he embraces his own unrepentant way of loving women. A sexy way, I'd add, but not particularly PC.

The first two sections of "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" set up the highly emotional third. The piece begins with two men and two women dancing one at a time against various geometrical formations of eight male and eight female dancers severely outfitted in black and white. Stravinsky's "Toccata" may be whimsical, but the dancers are all business, briskly hopping, skipping, or running with arms extended airplane-style. The next section, to the more sinuous, melancholy "Aria 1," is a duet showing signs of trouble. The woman takes the lead at times, turning the man, and he makes her the center of the universe in a supported full-circle pivot in arabesque. Then, with their legs entwined but facing away from each other, they run their hands up invisible walls. They’re trapped.

The third section is another duet, set to the even more melancholy "Aria 2." But despite a few signs of alienation --- the couple take a ballroom stance but look away from each other --- once they unite, they stay united. When this man turns this woman, she's ensconced within his arms, his hands firm yet light at her waist and ribs; when they look out together, it's over his extended arm and within the embracing circumference of the other. When he puts his hand over her eyes at the end, then supports her in a backbend that makes her face invisible to us, the obliteration is consensual and erotic. On opening night, husband-and-wife Victoria Jaiani and Temur Suluashvili gave charged performances.

The fourth section, to Stravinsky's "Capriccio" finale, returns us to the ensemble but lightens the mood with a little jokey step to the blat of a tuba, folk-dance hops and taps that prefigure Mark Morris, and allusions to Cossack dance, folded arms held high.

Balanchine's 1964 "Tarantella" is also based on folkloric dance, in this case Italian, but mines a more theatrical vein. With cheesy grins and sly glances, the two dancers stage a courtship competition of swift turns and blazing steps. You don’t believe in the romance for a second, but on opening night Yumelia Garcia was suitably pert and Derrick Agnoletti strong and taut.

Wheeldon, NYCB's resident choreographer from 2001 to 2008, shows his kinship to Balanchine in his 2005 "After the Rain," especially in the final duet. Writing in the New York Times in 2005, John Rockwell mentioned that the title "refers somehow to Mr. Wheeldon’s sadness at working for the last time with Jock Soto." The piece does seem elegiac. Its opening --- with the three couples lined up front to back facing us, the women in a deep arabesque penchee --- suggests the inexorable sweep of a second hand (remember those?) around a clock face, especially given the occasional chiming in Arvo Part's spare, moving "Tabula Rasa." Backward entrances are like a rewind.

I found the opening ensemble section, previously performed only by NYCB and Wheeldon's company Morphoses, more interesting choreographically than the frequently done closing duet, set to Part’s less compelling "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror"). But on opening night Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels blew the place apart in the final duet, her wispy, pliable frame a striking contrast with his power. He's the ship, she's the figurehead; Balanchine would have loved it.

The program closes with Robbins's 1956 comic ballet, "The Concert (Or, The Perils of Everybody)," set to Chopin excerpts played in part by a gloomy, self-important onstage pianist (impressively whiskered Paul James Lewis). Though some of the character-based humor gets old, other bits seem indestructible: a female sextet beset by mistakes and belligerent individualism, a dance with umbrellas that winds down to dismal cowering, a butterfly battle complete with fisticuffs.

Emily Johnson/Catalyst: The Thank-you Bar

"EMILY JOHNSON/CATALYST "THE THANK-YOU BAR""

 

 

By Laura Molzahn

Emily Johnson scoops you up and plunks you down in the living, breathing lap of displacement in her hour-long dance-theater piece, "The Thank-you Bar." Both disorienting and inclusive, it creates an instant community of itinerant strangers in a strange land.

The experience is something like visiting a haunted house. Eerie music, spooky stories, and weird lighting bring each snapshot, each new tableau, to vivid life. Imaginative, unsettling, unique, "The Thank-you Bar" is limited to 40 viewers per show, and the first three evenings at the Dance Center sold out quickly. But two performances have been added on Sunday afternoon, and seats are still available as of this writing.

Catalyst, Johnson's Minneapolis-based company, in this piece is made up of Johnson herself, who does most of the dancing and talking, and the two musicians of Blackfish, James Everest and Joel Pickard (presenting a music show at the Dance Center Saturday at 9). After audience members have shuffled onto the darkened stage and seated themselves on cushions or folding chairs, Blackfish begins painstakingly building an aural environment, each musician ambling on and off to sing, talk, or play a few notes or create a bit of noise on amplified guitar or pedal steel --- sounds and phrases that are then electronically looped. The layering takes forever.

Just when you start to think, Oh, this is how hard it is to create a home on the fly, the home vanishes.

That abrupt start-stop rhythm is the drumbeat underlying the discrete scenes of "The Thank-you Bar," each of which creates a little home only to destroy it. Johnson's approach can give the piece a meandering, episodic quality, each segment standing alone and not always contributing to a dramatic arc. But these isolated scenes do jerk the viewer from one theatrical home to another. And in the fashion of postmodern visual art, all the gadgets that make the bizarre lighting and sound effects possible are visibly employed. The performers assemble and stage-manage the scenes right before our eyes, then dismantle or erase them matter-of-factly. It's like setting up and striking camp over and over again.

Audience members are required to do the same, turning their seats around, then moving them to the other side of the stage. I'd recommend traveling light if you attend a performance, as it's deeply annoying to have to juggle a coat, a bag, whatever else you've brought, your metal chair, and the little lit-up prop that Johnson hands out to each viewer. But it's probably not as annoying as having to pick up and move your entire household.

Johnson is of Yup'ik Eskimo descent and grew up in Alaska, where her grandmother's bar was called the Que-Ana ("thank you") bar. The piece pays tribute to her Native American upbringing, mourns its loss, and alludes to the bias that indigenous peoples have experienced. In some ways those allusions are the least successful parts of the work; they're expected. They were also part of Johnson's experience, presumably --- but what carries the piece and unifies our experience is the delight that "The Thank-you Bar" creates in magic.

Johnson takes a transformative approach to movement. Aware of how easily the body can create and erase emotional impressions, she plays with illusion. In a short projected video, she staggers bow-legged down a city sidewalk at night, holding her hands up in front of her chest in what looks like pugnacious defensiveness. But as she gets closer, we see that her hands are not fists but loose and curved toward her, as if dripping blood. Then we realize she's gripping an invisible object, which she later describes as "a very heavy tree."

Johnson also both levels and elevates the role that dancing can play. In her first dance she mimics animal motions, walking on palms and feet. Later, repeated motions that evolve into other repeated motions suggest that the roots of all dance lie in mimicking life forms that are not us. Ecstatic ritual lies at the heart of some segments. Yet Johnson insists on ritual's roots in the everyday, creating sometimes pedestrian choreography for herself and employing nondancers. The two musicians and Dance Center technical director Kevin Rechner are clearly not trained, but their dignity and investment illuminate them and their movements.

Partly because Johnson is a magnetic performer, the stories she tells are always arresting. But the last one is the most poetic, the most complete. She talks about the Alaskan blackfish, an amazing yet humble creature with superb survival skills; it seems a metaphor for people who "disappear," burrowing into the mud belly down, in order to subsist. But that easy metaphor disappears too, when blackfish get eaten and Johnson burrows, belly up, into her nest.

 

 

Merchants of Bollywood

"The Merchants of Bollywood"

 

By Sid Smith

The acting is weak, the songs are lip-synced and the story, despite its ethnic spice, is both rudimentary and trite.

But "The Merchants of Bollywood" has an overriding strength that just about erases all those shortcomings. On view through Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre, this energetic touring production is a cavalcade of dance, a ferocious and lively theatrical rendition of the crowd spectacles and rainbow stylistics that have helped make the Bollywood musical an unusual but irresistible international craze.

Vaibhavi Merchant, the show's choreographer whose biography provides the arc of the story, is an absolute master when it comes to ensemble dazzle, injecting this two-hour onslaught with enough zip, acrobatics and animation to fuel a dozen Broadway musicals. The show employs an unusual choral structure that is one reason it sometimes evokes Las Vegas: Half of the dancers rush out in one set of costumes for a romp, only to be followed midway through by the other half, in different attire, the choreographic approach altering slightly. The effect, number after number, is that the viewer feels cascaded by ongoing dance as if watching some sort of Terpsichorean waterfall--there seem so many more dancers on stage than the 21 in the cast, while at the same time it fights against that inevitable Broadway choral ennui, those moments when you're watching a show and sense before hand where the mass hoedown is heading. If nothing else, the Bollywood approach provides a new dynamic, gimmicky, and short-attention-span crazed, but lots of fun.

Working with songs by Salim and Sulaiman Merchant, who aren't related to the choreographer, but, who, like her, share top reputations in the world of Bollywood films, choreographer Merchant devises number after number that blends hints of classic Indian dance, costuming and aesthetics with all-out nods, sometimes luridly so, to contemporary tastes. There's one lavish salute to disco (disco!), with sexy thrusts and come-ons that would make John Travolta blush, and a colorful, jampacked wedding celebration, dotted with costumes and footwork that at times recall Georgian folk dance.

That's part of the Bollywood joy: No style is too alien, remote or cheesy to be rejected as fodder to toss into the kathak-tinged mix. Heads that slide magically back and forth, hands held reverentially, are moves soon followed by hip hop sass or utter Vegas flummery. Props are a big part of this, some of them spartan and traditional, such as colorful scarves employed for swirling fabric designs, or traditional instruments like drums or cymbals. Large sticks provide limbo-like acrobatic antics, cherished imagery in folk dance worldwide.

But, then, there's a number wherein couples sail out behind cardboard jeeps, an homage to the freedom of the roadway and a hint at the naughtiness a car can conceal. One 1970s homage includes black and white umbrellas and derby-like hats suggesting Bob Fosse. Giant chartreuse guitars show up somewhere, along with strawberry-and-silver pom poms.

The speedy, quick-change zeitgeist of the staging means that whatever the look, whatever the prop, nothing's ever on stage long enough to weary. This is totally MTV-inspired, and yet Merchant is cagey enough at stage choreography to not to just bombard and move on, but to build to a pleasing finish and employ all manner of short-lived inner designs and changes in choral arrangement that you have differing choreographic gems to ponder with each dance, not just its looks and colors.

Director Toby Gough gets some credit for staging the production, but also some of the blame, as its writer, for the simplistic treatment of a young girl struggling with a stern grandfather who, like her, succeeded as a film mastermind, but abandoned it in contemporary times for its sellout and its trashing of tradition. It's both a professional and personal rite of passage and generational shift, though one told with all-too-obvious dramatics, heavy-handedness and bathos.

Still, Gough manages some pert comedy, including this line delivered by a bit featuring clowns in a comment on marriage: First comes the engagement ring, then the wedding ring--and then the suffering.

Cute. And even with its flaws, "Bollywood" is a raucous, enjoyable dance time, any specks of suffering quickly blown from the eye by its barreling rush of entertainment, its sure-footed and sparkling embrace of spectacle.

 

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's Fall Series

"Hubbard Street's fall engagement "

 

By Laura Molzahn

The ranks have shrunk, the demands have grown, and yet Hubbard Street's dancers continue to meet them.

Like other small businesses in our harsh new economy, dance companies must cut costs and ask more of employees. The HSDC dancers are up to the task. More than up. They perform the four new (or almost new) pieces on the company’s fall program with incredible devotion and pinpoint expertise. Their stewardship of these nuanced, physically demanding, all very different pieces is on view through Sunday at the Harris Theater.

All the works play with polarities and paradoxes. Preconceptions and expectations are challenged. Courses are charted --- and changed.

For instance, the two new-ish dances by HSDC resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, described as companion pieces, offer unexpected takes on opposed subjects. The two interact so provocatively it’s hard to imagine them apart.

In “Blanco,” which premiered a few weeks ago at Jacob’s Pillow, drifting clouds envelop the stage, sliced by cones of light from above --- four of them, one for each dancer. You’d expect this sky-land to be conducive to freedom. But the four women seem trapped in their light shafts, or they drift into the shadows. They rarely approach or touch one another, and their movements are so deliberate and chiseled, their looks so severe, that they seem statues of goddesses, chilly residents of some higher, not very happy realm. With movement that’s sculptured, solid, and slow moving, Cerrudo wittily undercuts the impression created by Nicholas Phillips’s ethereal set and lighting design.

The paradoxes multiply when, next, you see his “Deep Down Dos,” premiered last April with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s rendering of the score, “Music From Underground Spaces.” Composer Mason Bates was inspired to write it by a visit to the Berkeley Seismology Lab, where he heard recordings of earthquakes. And “Deep Down Dos” seems set in the underworld. Yet its movements are light, quick, risky, and highly interactive, the nine dancers apparently energized by the roaring, rippling music, the dark stage lit at times by what appears to be a miner’s headlamp. Flying arms and coats and lots of exits and entrances create the sense that this underground world is, contrary to expectations, filled with movement and change.

The last section, a grave duet, switches things up. Ana Lopez orbits Pablo Piantino; spinning like a gyroscope, they are small and human yet seem the source of all the underground movement, driving the action of vast tectonic plates. A final foreboding pose erases the cheery impression left by most of the dance.

Victor Quijada’s world premiere, “Physikal Linguistiks,” is also unpredictable but in a very different way. Often funny, it creates community both on and off the stage, threatening and eventually breaching the traditional boundaries and conventions of the theater.

The 34-year-old Quijada, head of Montreal-based Rubberbandance, started out as a break-dancing kid in LA, later moved into spots in Twyla Tharp’s and Eliot Feld’s companies, and eventually performed choreography by Balanchine. He’s covered a lot of ground personally, and “Physical Linguistiks” seems to illustrate the learning of new languages, achieved through the manipulation of one dancer by another or by several others. Physical manipulation can come across as menacing, but here it seems more helpful than coercive. By the end, however, attempts at manipulation fail, as dancers slip out of one another’s arms and away. Finally the protagonist (nimble Christian Broomhall) sheds his manipulators --- his teachers --- thereby isolating himself from his community. It’s a downbeat ending to a mostly upbeat piece.

Jasper Gahunia’s ingenious score for “Physikal Linguistiks” cuts up classical recordings into looped bits whose rhythms recapitulate those of hip-hop. Quijada’s choreography likewise creates something new out of established forms. Hip-hop moves are subtly transformed when performed this slowly and elegantly, with an impetus not entirely driven by the music, and the element of manipulation adds an unexpected theatrical dimension. Some hallmarks of hip-hop --- competition, confrontation, wavelike actions and reactions --- remain intact while the moves themselves are subtly changed.

Where Quijada’s ensemble of nine continually creates odd men (and women) out, Nacho Duato’s “Arcangelo” is admirably balanced and serene, presenting four stable couples in a series of duets. This 2000 piece, which Hubbard Street is giving its U.S. premiere, is one of those works that passes like a dream, in a stream of riveting moments. Choreography for the couples alternates straight and crooked, flexed and extended, to suggest two interlocked souls, puzzle pieces joined in ways capable of infinite variation.

Set to Corelli’s Concerti Grossi Op. 6 and finally an aria from Scarlatti, “Arcangelo” starts out in heaven and ends in hell. But the two places don’t look much different --- except that a billowing curtain separates one dancer from the other in the final duet. Though the two move together, they can’t see or touch one another in Duato’s sucker-punch metaphor for endless separation from God.

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company

"Lar Lubovitch Dance Company"

 

By Sid Smith

There was a long spell when we saw too little of native son Lar Lubovitch's work, but no more.

For a variety of reasons, the Chicago Dancing Festival just one of them, we've been treated in the past year to a virtual retrospective, to exaggerate just a tad. Fortunately, familiarity is breeding anything but contempt. The Joffrey Ballet's "Othello" brought new life and audiences to a classic we'd never seen and demonstrated his deftness at full-length work. This week's repertory offerings from his eponymous troupe at the Harris Theater offered fascinating insight into his musical sensibilities.

A stated purpose of the line-up was to revive his early work with minimalists Steve Reich and Philip Glass, pieces he created when those composers weren't nearly as familiar--or non-controversial. But, then, the programs offered a look at a musical style comparatively on another musical planet: jazz. Despite their polarities, both musical forms proved seemingly easy, welcoming homes for Lubovitch, whose choreography has a breezy, gossamer, appealing human touch, a flowing delicacy and what-the-heck impromptu appeal whose prettiness shouldn't be mistaken for superficiality. Lubovitch is hard at one signature choreographic task: illuminating the mysteries of music by offering up complementary dance. That's an obvious chore for the dance maker, but not as universal in our day as you might think at first glance: the highly influential Merce Cunningham approached the art from a different angle, with a different mission.

The galactic, star-like world of minimalism is a kind of open landscape Lubovitch invades and takes over. On Thursday, the company performed two classics, "North Star" (1978) to Glass and "Calvacade" (1980) to Reich, and they are exquisite, seductive and very different. In their way, they distinguish the styles of the two related but still highly individual composers.

"North Star" is fluid, magically so, it's hypnotic opening section a wave of bodies linked and moving in tandem, the dancer's individuality smoothed away by the undulating design. At times the dancers seem to float, as if swimming, yet as swimmers happily free of any water resistance. It was revealing to see the first movement again in the larger Harris, after its performance during the festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art, because, in the larger space, you get a better look at Lubovitch's intricate designs. As choreographers eventually came to do repeatedly later, Lubovitch responded to Glass by injecting little grace note moves and images, as when two dancers are alternately lifted in the midst of their quartet like human dolls, ever so quicksilver-like, noteworthy but then gone in a flash. But, in the Glass, Lubovitch turns somewhat darker, as does the music itself, as it picks up both drama and choral voices, harmonically moving toward something more momentous and maybe ominous. This is a trademark of the composer, and for Lubovitch, the shift inspires a jerky, madhouse solo, performed intensely by Jenna Fakhoury, and then a moving finale in which statuesque, lanky Reid Bartelme is an everyman standout, lifted above the troupe at times, signaling the theme of abiding struggle, of daunting human conflict met with airborn defiance, of an effort to survive and triumph--deep, resonant stuff despite a surface lightness of melody and movement.

In contrast, Reich's "Octet" is a bubbly, tinkling celebration of joy, and so is the dance in "Calvacade." By 1980, Lubovitch's affinity with minimalist aesthetics was sturdy and natural, and the designs are even more captivating here. The flowing ensemble work, interrupted here and there by a graceful breakout, eventually gets a striking, contrapuntal image by way of a male pair who emerge from the side and contravene much of the rest of the dancers with silky, vaudeville sportiness--a duet that gradually blends in with the rest. Helped by Craig Miller's ingenious lighting to make maximum use of the work's ubiquitous streamers, "Cavalcade" becomes a garland extravaganza, a buoyant folk festival infused with dance and set pieces as spartan as the music.

In arresting contrast, Thursday also included the 2005 "Nature Boy: Kurt Elling," as loving and bright in its treatment of jazz as the more recent "Coltrane's Favorite Things." Christopher Vo is a fantastic emcee and Cupid-like soloist, involved in a mysterious way with three couples, whose duets form the bulk of the work. In "Prelude to a Kiss," Lubovitch provides one of the sexiest kisses in all of the art, Katarzyna Skarpetowska facing away from the stage at the end, when Brian McGinnis pulls down her top, baring her back, and then puckers away.

But throughout, especially in the sequence starring Nicole Corea and the ever-wondrous Jonathan E. Alsberry--"Jo-Jo", I'm told, they call him--Lubovitch provides joyous, sensuous jazz imagery never obvious or overly soliciting. But it's utterly expert in riffing swing and pop while remaining intelligent modern dance and saucy romance.

"Dogs of War," to Sergei Prokofiev, is so-so in terms of its anti-war mini-drama, its narrative and imagery obvious and even hokey: Two soldiers in hand-to-hand combat show pictures of each other's beloved back home in brief bonding before their duel.

But "Dogs" is an appealing study in acrobatics and male partnering, flush with sharp moves and interplays that suggest combat rather than mimic it, a great romp for Vo and Attila Joey Csiki. Its final silent howl is thematically irresistible. The message may be heavy-handed, but it's undeniably true as well.

 

Other Dance Festival, The

"The Other Dance Festival"

 

By Laura Molzahn

The name implies outlaws, but this festival is ground zero for Chicago modern dance. It's home, it's good company. Very good company: our town’s best modern choreographers and dancers.

That being said, not one piece out of the five on the opening program (which repeats tonight, Friday) looked like any of the others. It was like a family reunion where you know everyone's related, but you're not sure how. (The three-week fest continues for another two weeks at the Hamlin Park field house; go to the Chicago Moving Company for full details.)

What held these distinct pieces together for me was observing the range of voyeuristic and theatrical appeal. Of course the two coexist, feed each other. But watching some things onstage feels like spying --- which can be good, of course --- while others seem brazen invitations to stare.

The first two works on this program were at opposite ends of that spectrum. Liz Burritt's "Chasm," danced by Same Planet Different World artistic director Joanna Rosenthal and company member Charlie Cutler, virtually requires you to stare. The first time I saw "Chasm," I felt the full emotional impact of its repeated conflicts. This time, I saw how Burritt cunningly combines everyday gestural language (a kiss attempted and evaded), isolated bits of distorted speech, and gasp-inducing dancing to reveal text and subtext, the endless night of a horrifying breakup. Her full-out theatrical assault, which includes a tinge of hysterical humor, recapitulates the characters’ assaults on each other.

Jonathan Meyer's untitled work in progress, a solo he dances himself, gains its power in a very different way. Riveting in his inwardness, Meyer creates the sense that his motions are unpremeditated, evolving as we watch, and maybe not meant to be seen. He begins standing, looking down, arms and hands curving forward --- then almost imperceptibly his torso pulls back, gently, slowly, as if pushed by a tiny invisible punch. The contorted, clawlike fingers of one hand begin to creep up the opposite arm.

A masterful use of the space creates variety and contrast. Meyer interrupts his danced reveries periodically to advance far downstage and address the audience with what seems complete candor. (Whether dancing or talking, Meyer is a mesmerizing performer.) These little talks are emotionally chameleonic and often funny, breaking the guilty tension of our voyeurism by pointing it out. They also cast doubt on the value of words, as Meyer names the sections of his dance, changes the names, lectures himself. He keeps dropping us down the rabbit hole --- unsettling but delicious. Christopher Preissing's recorded score of ticks, tocks, booms, and other mysterious noises underlines the dance’s emotional arc.

Nana Shineflug's "April," performed by five members of her Chicago Moving Company, seems highly theatrical by contrast. She doesn't intend the emotional punch that Burritt delivers in "Chasm," instead aiming for ritual, for a mythology without defined characters. Dancers "fly," hoisted by the others, like gods, buoyed and driven by classical Indian music. They’re also fungible, not individuals but representatives of spiritual concepts.

The solo "Emma Remixed" is, well, just what it sounds like: a remix of roles Emma Draves has played over the last six years with Mordine & Company Dance Theater. Choreographed by Draves and Shirley Mordine, this piece too is theatrical, providing a concise, stylized portrait of Draves as a dancer. Sturdy yet light in her movements, she’s openhearted and resilient whether stepping to syncopated beats or turning in a grounded arabesque, a compass indicating true north, true everything. I felt secure and happy in her hands.

When I first saw Molly Shanahan’s solo "My Name Is a Blackbird," in 2007, it gave me the same uncomfortable but compelling feeling of voyeurism I experienced watching Meyer. I felt less guilty about watching when she expanded the "Blackbird" technique in the ensemble pieces of her “Stamina of Curiosity” series. Maybe there’s safety in numbers.

Creating intimacy, or violating privacy, can read very differently in different spaces. The iteration of "Stamina" on this program, "Gossamer Dominion," came across much better than it had at this year's A.W.A.R.D. Show. Vulnerability and intuitive evolution seemed out of place on the Dance Center’s cold and rather distant stage. But in the smaller Hamlin Park theater, the connections between dancer and dancer, between dancer and audience, electrified the rather simple, "undancerly" movements, investing them with an obscure meaning. Shanahan is truly democratic in her approach to the dancers' gazes: they're as likely to look at a mote of dust as to look at each other or us. The result is an accepting, inclusive vision that destroys the hierarchies and divisions of traditional performance, creating a new kind of theatricality.

 

Chicago Dancing Festival

"Chicago Dancing Festival "Modern Masters""

 

By Laura Molzahn

If there’s one good way to see a range of great dance in one fell swoop, it's the Chicago Dancing Festival, now in its fourth year. And in the city's most incredible bargain, it's free.

The "Modern Masters" program on Thursday night at the Harris Theater made me ask, Who knew there were this many ways to be masterful? Despite the six works' overall stand-out choreography and performance, a program like this one invites viewers to compare, to pick and choose, to assess degrees of mastery.

Thursday's program won't be repeated, but take heart those of you who’d like to sample what some of these companies and choreographers are doing. Several are presenting works at Saturday's "Celebration of Dance" at the Pritzker Pavilion, open to all comers. You may have to sit on the grass, but huge projection screens show the dancing to outliers. You can check out Mark Morris Dance Group, two works by Robert Battle, and the Joffrey Ballet in Gerald Arpino’s 1970 "Trinity."

On Thursday, I was surprised to find that less was often more, even in the huge Harris. Christopher Wheeldon's 2003 duet "Liturgy," performed by New York City Ballet dancers Wendy Whelan and former Chicagoan Craig Hall, burst the bonds of reserve and impassivity Wheeldon wrapped around it, with the help of Arvo Part's "Fratres." The dancers are flooded by the keening notes of the music yet remain deliciously cool, methodical, precise. Joining hands, they pull back and apart, then Whelan’s toe floats up to gently tap an outstretched arm, a delicate, odd, yet deliberate touch, making a connection.

Battle's 1995 solo "Takademe," in an unscheduled appearance Thursday, also glittered onstage, every motion distinct and clearly motivated. Performer Kanji Segawa owns this dance, which interprets --- often humorously --- the stuttering rhythms of Indian chanting of bols, as expressed by singer Sheila Chandra.

It can be hard for viewers to shift gears, watching a mixed bill like this. And compared to such tightly wound pieces, Lar Lubovitch’s “Coltrane’s Favorite Things” looked loose, heads flopping. Performed by the Lubovitch company (which returns, solo, to the Harris September 22-23), this piece for nine at first seemed coy. But eventually the dancing’s relationship to the music --- a 1963 live recording of the Coltrane Quartet riffing on Richard Rodgers’s “My Favorite Things” --- becomes paramount. The dancers don’t hit on the sharp beats of McCoy Tyner’s percussive piano notes and Elvin Jones’s drumming; instead they connect the dots with lazy ease. It’s all about getting into a groove.

Paul Taylor’s 1985 “Last Look” is at the far ugly end of the vast spectrum of feeling Taylor has mastered. Watching it in 1993, I despised it for its over-the-top rhetoric on the subject of human solipsism. This time, I saw an unsettling resemblance to “Rite of Spring,” Vaslav Nijinsky’s brutal take on social structures; Donald York’s commissioned score even sounds a bit like Stravinsky’s. But “Last Look” is the poor man’s version, littered with obvious props and movement. It’s not chilling --- it’s ludicrous. The young Juilliard Dance performers put their all into Taylor’s compulsive twitches and spasms.

Like “Last Look,” Mark Morris’s “V” is highly repetitive. But where Taylor’s piece is emotionally monotonous, Morris’s comes across as soothing, a mathematical meditation on Schumann’s Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings (played live). Seven performers in brilliant blue dance together, then seven in pale green. Then they all dance together, their sharply different costumes underlining the different roles they play in relation to the familiar notes. There are tons of exits and entrances, and I found myself counting dancers --- plus three, minus one, divide by four, multiply by three --- in a vain attempt to keep up with what Morris was doing. But gradually I fell in with the piece’s agreeably anti-heroic mood, the low trajectory of creeping lunges, the unself-conscious bowed heads and embraces accomplished on the run.

The Joffrey performed Jessica Lang’s “Crossed,” which it premiered just four months ago. In Lang’s dramatic set design, looming vertical and horizontal panels get moved around the space to form crosses --- or not. But there’s a furniture-moving aspect to the choreography too, an unmotivated alternation between joy and sorrow dictated by Lang’s selections of religious music from the 15th to 18th centuries. Too often the movement in “Crossed” is standard issue, overwhelmed by the massive design and stirring music. Thank God --- and I mean this in the least religious sense --- there are moving, meaningful passages in the male quintet and female duet.

Dance for Life Chicago

"Dance For Life "

 

By Sid Smith

"Dance for Life," that annual admixture of artistic accomplishment and community good will, has once again come and gone, its 19th installment nicely managed and executed over the weekend at the Harris Theater.

This year's selections were unusually choice and varied, from Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theatre's bravura benefit debut--opening the show with gorgeous, swirling, red-drenched costumes and dynamite flamenco--up through and including "I've Got a Life," the original closer from Harrison McEldowney, replacing Randy Duncan and providing his own special signature on the finale's typical themes of struggle, grief, hope and determination.

Along the way, the participating troupes chose a nicely complimentary assortment. Thodos Dance Chicago, for instance, offered one look at the trio (three trios, actually), via "Fosse Trilogy," culled from Bob Fosse's late-'60s TV stylistics. A more mod threesome wriggling with rhythmic antics and squiggly higgledy-piggledy arrived later in "Three," Robert Battle's work for River North Chicago Dance Company.

The Joffrey Ballet demonstrated what a slightly larger ensemble can accomplish with the exciting third movement from James Kudelka's exciting "Pretty BALLET," this movement a male quintet that's fast, sharp and here and there funky, and yet all the while, too--a celebration of form and its possibilities. For spectacle, in addition to Ensemble Espagnol and McEldowney's finale, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago glowed with a terrific excerpt from Ohad Naharin's richly textured, dramatically designed "Tabula Rasa"-- often flowing, creamy dance serving as a patina slathered on a disturbing core.

Overall, the focus seemed more on actual dance than in some recent years. The raffle and auction were held offstage, replaced by a brief introduction of the artistic directors of the participating troupes--a welcomed move that put the spotlight on the artists who make the benefit possible. The whole affair seemed a bit more muted and serious, too. True, Dean Richards, the WGN and Tribune personality whose growth in the role of emcee over the years has been one of the benefit's more pleasing developments, cracked a few funny jokes, as always. But he injected some thoughtful notes as well and even offered up one very effective reminder of what's at stake for like-minded "Dance for Life" souls in the upcoming election. His comments carried all the more force after Gov. Patrick Quinn walked on stage to open the show and underscore the importance of preserving Illinois AIDS funding.

Even the audience seemed to sense the mood, not that their ovations were restrained--far from it. But there was a kind of dignity to the occasion, visible at the very outset when the crowd was hushed, as if spellbound, by the sheer glamour and spectacle of Ensemble Espagnol's opening, holding back their huzzahs until Dame Libby Komaiko's incandescent take on "Bolero" had ended.

McEldowney's piece, set to some outright anthemic Annie Lennox vocals, struck me as shrewdly building on elements he used in his ensemble piece last year, employed here more effectively, with better integration and ultimately more impact. The aerial dancing was back, choreographed by Jeremy Plummer and enabled by Flying By Foy. But it merged with the larger choreography more gracefully than last year, a single, a floating cube of metal bars serving not just as a trapeze device, but also as a bit of twirling geometric sculpture. A mobile for life.

The simple black-and-white costumes also helped unify the piece and give a Spartan cloak to a large, crowded, elaborately designed spectacle. "Life" avoided some of the clutter and everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink feel to McEldowney's piece last year, and, in addition, he pulled out the stops on this one, flooding the stage with more than two dozen dancers and devising both intricate choral designs and some gripping, short-lived personal dramas--near the finish two male dancers engage in an aggressive, defiant stolen kiss.

Towards the end, an industrial-like backdrop descended and a row of water buckets were placed in front of it so that the dancers, in small groups, could take turns soaking their hair and splashing droplets skyward. The effect was far from perfect, the buckets positioned towards the back of the stage, so that when the dancers wet their hair and then marched forward, the impact of the water imagery was pretty much dissipated. It's a great gimmick, just not perfectly used here. But again it served McEldowney's purpose, evoking thoughts of baptism and purification.

But by then I didn't care, and neither did the audience. Certainly it served McEldowney's purpose of injecting imagery of baptism and purification. And as a whole, McEldowney delivered the pop dance, feel-good extravaganza that's expected of the finale, a stirring crowd piece not relying at all on his trademark humor. It was a fine close to a get-together of thousands of dancers and enthusiasts celebrating the fact that art not only reflects our lives, but can save them, too.

20th Anniversary Rhythm World

"CHICAGO HUMAN RHYTHM PROJECT'S "JUBA! MASTERS OF TAP AND PERCUSSIVE DANCE""

 

By Laura Molzahn

 

Everybody was welcome at the big party Chicago Human Rhythm Project threw last night. The house was filled with percussive dancers, both students and expert practitioners. And then there was me. What I know about tap-dance you could put on the head of a pin.

Still, I felt at home and happy. We laughed, we cried. Stories and jokes were told, astounding feats of tap-dance magic were performed, standing ovations were enthusiastically conferred. The occasion? The 20th anniversary of Rhythm World, brainchild of CHRP cofounder Lane Alexander and the longest-running festival of American tap in the world. "JUBA!" is its three-day faculty concert, which continues at the Museum of Contemporary Art Thursday and Saturday with two completely different lineups from Wednesday's. The Vijay Tellis-Nayak Trio, blessedly quick on the uptake, provides live music.

"Faculty concert" doesn't quite cover what "JUBA!" is, though. Old hands and newcomers alike are welcome onstage. Thursday's performance features several youth tap ensembles, while on Saturday the MCA itself receives a 2010 JUBA! Award.

On opening night, JUBA! Awards were handed out to tap veterans and master teachers Dianne "Lady Di" Walker and Sam Weber. Video footage of each --- talking, teaching, dancing --- got the same riotous applause as the live acts. And for good reason. Both are clearly gentle souls whose passion for the art of tap drives their no-holds-barred teaching, which honors music and the individual as much as steps.

Weber was still recovering from a double hip replacement and did not dance. Walker did, and it was the most mature and personally expressive performance of the evening. Quiet sounds, slow steps, soft claps, pauses, stillness --- Lady Di had everyone in the palm of her hand. Shaking a finger at us, making a little joke about taking a shortcut on some steps, she took her own sweet time and let us see who she is.

Other old-timers included Jay Fagan and Alexander himself, head of CHRP's resident ensemble, BAM! That sextet (including Alexander) performed his "Prisms," which shatters the ensemble into individuals and duos, male and female. Still, our sense of the whole is primary, created by Alexander's strong and comprehensive choreography (Alexander, Michaels/Future Movement, the precursor of BAM!, blended modern and tap). Fagan proved incredibly entertaining, both standup comic and tap-dance chameleon, demonstrating such fusion forms as tap yoga and, at the audience’s suggestion, "tap-bo" (tap + Tae Bo).

Winners of CHRP’s first-ever Virtual Rhythms contest also got into the act. According to Alexander, the evening's emcee, 20,000 votes from 87 countries were cast online in response to posted videos. Matt Shields, from Austin, Texas, won in the choreography category for his quartet "The Night Before Tomorrow," and Chicago's Be the Groove won the videography award for its snappy, rappy video "Breath."

That leaves the middle generation, whose representatives on opening night were astounding, all in different ways. Ayodele Casel is a lightweight --- in terms of size, not talent. Small and slender and a little reserved (think Audrey Hepburn), she floats over the floor delivering taps so clean, light, and quick they're like a hummingbird's thrumming. By contrast Derick Grant, also featured on the first half of the bill, is a big lug. Taking a far more muscular approach, he could stand up to the trio's more muscular jazz. Freely expressive, he grunted, paused, attacked again. Responsive to the live music, he softened his taps when it quieted.

Jason Janas opened the second act. Oh, the energy of the young. Not yet 30, Janas delivered a barrage of taps at the get-go --- an arpeggio to match the piano's --- and just kept getting louder, harder, faster, and more inventive. He's not a pretty dancer, and I mean that in the best possible way. Instinctive, fierce, with the mannerisms of a hip-hop artist, he cut a strange figure in his dress shirt, tie, and white patent leather shoes, perhaps worn in honor of the occasion. And took the musicians on one hell of a ride.

Closing the program, Jason Samuels Smith covered a broad territory, from the moody and weird to the argumentative definite to the mellow and sparse. Overall his relationship to the live music was the most complex of the evening, a kind of friendly antagonism that challenged the trio to shift gears. In the process he challenged himself.

The "Shim Sham" finale brought all the dancers up onstage, tapping in unison. Seeing and applauding everyone once again was like delivering a round of hugs at the end of a family party. Icing on the cake.

The A.W.A.R.D. Show! Chicago 2010

"THE A.W.A.R.D SHOW 2010!"

 

By Laura Molzahn

The first three nights of this unique four-day competition proved a wild ride. As Dance Center chair Bonnie Brooks said on Friday, every dance created its own world --- so you're negotiating four worlds a night.

The A.W.A.R.D. Show! has ground rules, and I set a few for myself. I didn't stay for much, or usually any, of the postshow discussions. I didn't look at the posted winners on the Dance Center's site until each evening's review was finished. And I haven't rank-ordered the works the way audience members did at the shows, instead discussing them by order in the program, first to last.

Tonight, Saturday the 31st, the three finalists compete for the $10,000 prize; the winner and runners-up will be posted Sunday.

Wednesday, July 28

The battle of the Titans circa 2010 got off to an uneven start on opening night. Those vying for a chance at the big prize, to be used for the creation of new choreography, ranged from a recent Columbia College grad to the artistic director of a five-year-old ballet company.

Jacqueline Stewart's stylish, lyrical duet, "It's Not Enough to Close Your Eyes," is circumscribed by its focus on a downstage Fresnel light. Though the unusual lighting creates some cool effects, overall the stage is too dim during much of the piece to see the dancing. Hands fluttering above and near the light, which is pointed up, inevitably suggest moths drawn to a flame --- and the dancers, just as predictably, snatch each other’s hands away from the fire. Charlie Cutler and Grace Whitworth looked well rehearsed in Stewart’s sometimes challenging choreography.

Alicia Wilson, the recent Dance Center graduate, performed her own promising solo, "Sometimes/Always." Daring to be different, she dramatizes insecurity --- seldom seen in the dance world, which lionizes self-confident, decisive performance. Fiddling one hand at her side, Wilson allows the fussy, nervous motions to reverberate through her entire body until she’s twitching and swaying. Later, standing on half-toe, she reaches her arms forward while gradually leaning back with her hips, literally pulled in two directions. Though psychologically suggestive, Wilson’s solo is also more than a little self-involved. But her courage and emotional instincts are strong.

Mike Gosney, of Elements Contemporary Ballet, contributed an excerpt from "Curiosity." The only work on pointe in the A.W.A.R.D. Show's two years, this septet was also Wednesday’s most ambitious piece. Gosney’s take on contemporary ballet is both respectful of tradition and intriguingly, expressively new; he uses romantic longing as a metaphor for curiosity in a larger sense. A male solo and a duet by a central couple (Joseph Caruana and Gabrielle DelRe Ashley, both up to Gosney's challenges) set the mood of yearning. When a subsidiary couple and three corps dancers join the action halfway through, it does open out the meaning from the personal to the universal --- but it also dilutes the energy.

Kate Corby collaborated with her dancers on "Go," a trio filled with abrupt movements as succinct as the title. The piece essentially dismantles the opening section’s chaos into smaller, more comprehensible pieces --- though "Go" retains an agreeable mystery. Corby plays off the odd-woman-out aspect of a trio, suggesting swift, easily broken alliances and distracted, birdlike animosities. The dancers’ stares and changing expressions are amusing --- and crucial to the work's conclusion, when the audience becomes the odd woman out. With its strong structure, unusual movement, and half-menacing, half-humorous air, "Go" creates its own strange world.

Wednesday's winner: Jacqueline Stewart

*
Thursday, July 29

The second evening sandwiched two duets by relative newcomers between excerpts from longer works by two experienced choreographers. Apples and oranges doesn’t come close to describing the experience. More like escargots and ice cream.

Peter Carpenter's excerpt from "My Fellow Americans," last October's evening-length dance-theater piece, suffered from the drastic cuts he had to make. (A.W.A.R.D. Show! rules don’t allow works longer than 15 minutes.) The highlights winnowed from the longer piece: Carpenter’s rendition of Tommy Womack’s funny song "I Miss Ronald Reagan," cross-dressing performers vamping in Reagan masks, Donnell Williams’s reminiscence about the Reagan years. But this truncated version doesn’t begin to approach the political and dramatic complexity of Carpenter’s original. It feels like an overture, then a jump cut to the conclusion.

Rebecca Lemme offered a very presentable romantic duet whose intricate, occasionally inventive partnering was well performed by Hubbard Street dancers Kellie Epperheimer and Jason Hortin. "Rooms for Them" has a beginning and an end: two lonely, prickly people achieve rapprochement. But it's a rocky road. Conflicts are swiftly established, then resolved, all within seconds. Almost indistinguishable repetitions of the same psychological dynamic don’t create much of an emotional arc.

Conflict is more overt in Michel Rodriguez’s duet "Moi Aussi," which he performs with Jessie Gutierrez. The opening is basically a shoving match, and it too gets monotonous. But then the piece opens out. Something happens to Rodriguez; he turns away from Gutierrez, though she keeps pummeling him. While she watches him, he slides into a series of contorted moves near the floor. It’s no mistake that these resemble capoeira, a much more evolved martial art than adolescent shoving; hostility is sublimated, and each fighter must access the other’s mind. "Moi Aussi" also ends in rapprochement, even an embrace --- but it's equivocal, qualified. The arms drop, lax, and the dancers’ poses suggest the dance's beginning.

Like Carpenter's excerpt, Molly Shanahan's suffered from being forced into the A.W.A.R.D. Show! mold. In May, at the Epiphany church, Shanahan's evening-length "Stamina of Curiosity: Our Strange Elevations" developed her unique movement ideas over almost an hour, and set them in a magical historic space. The quintet "Gossamer Dominion" --- part of a new version of "Stamina" --- did not come across the same way. Shanahan's principles often read as self-indulgence, and her organic approach as a lack of structure. Despite the highlights (a repeated unison collapse and whirl apart, the still consideration of an extended arm, fingers curved), there wasn’t time to absorb Shanahan’s aesthetic or comprehend her storytelling.

Thursday's winner: Michel Rodriguez

*
Friday, July 30

The final free-for-all proved the most eclectic of the bunch. It veered from the utterly conventional to the totally bizarre, with stops at locations less easy to categorize or define.

Mary Tisa's sextet "Ecarg Grace" begins intriguingly, with recorded texts delivering isolated words that then are spoken backward, creating an incomprehensible language. But the songs that follow are all too comprehensible and ordinary, and the dancing is even less remarkable. Inventive movement is clearly not the point, but I'm not sure what is. In combination with the mellow music, the cheery bursts of the choreography begin to deaden the senses.

"Dot and Dash," by dancers Ginger Krebs and Andy Braddock, has a circuslike sci-fi flair. Sporting white shorts, camisoles, bathing caps, and fake-fur stoles, Krebs and Braddock exhibit a tortured symbiotic attachment, manifested most clearly in a complicated, laborious back-to-back roll across the floor. When it all becomes too difficult, Braddock begins propelling himself around on a little hassock on wheels; meanwhile they've attached white paper funnels to their bodies. Clinical, mechanical, puzzling, but with a certain “Godot”-like humor, the duet ends in pathos: the two are separated.

Philip Elson's "Mode of Duration," which he performed with Matthew McMunn, creates a strong emotional undertow. Also a bit mechanical at first, it begins with the limbs snapping open and closed like the blades of a jackknife. Elson’s sound score resembles industrial noise but also sometimes a heartbeat; the motley costumes hint at jesters, though these two are dead serious. Elson’s acrobatic choreography doesn’t look like wrestling, yet weight and counterbalance are crucial, and the men begin to seem respectful, even loving combatants. Elegant and powerful, the dancers create a strong sense of connection that makes their occasional swift attacks even more chilling.

Joanna Rosenthal of Same Planet Different World Dance Theater dives into the half-light of film noir in an excerpt from her "Grey Noise." Extremely well danced by two women and three men, it revels in the power wielded by the femme fatale --- a premise established, in the excerpt anyway, during the opening half-violent, half-tender duet. Rosenthal has a gift for the truly sexy, essential to any treatment of film noir, as well as for highly kinetic, electric, emotionally telling choreography, essential to building character. These characters, though, interact in ways that define them only as film noir archetypes and their world as dangerous, deceptive. The ground keeps giving way under their feet --- and under ours too. I longed for the whole story.

Friday's winner: Joanna Rosenthal


Congratulations to all the finalists! Shake hands, and may the best choreographer win…

Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago

"Muntu Dance Theatre's Cultural Bridges...The Pearl Primus Project"

 

By Sid Smith

Though familiar and venerable, Muntu Dance Theatre is hotter than hot these days. Saturday's gala performance at the Harris Theater showed off a troupe that's never been faster, never been more animated, as it continues to push the limits of its cultural exploration into valuable new terrain.

Does the Harris stage still have a roof? I wouldn't have been all that shocked to wake up Sunday and read it had swirled away into the skies, as untouchable as Dorothy's farm house tornado-ing its way to Oz. Galas, of course, often result in a surprising benefit. To accommodate time, the performances are kept short and frequently intermission-less, as was the case Saturday. That gave Muntu the chance to program works that built to a feverish momentum while allowing for some quiet, reflective moments, too.

But it's the works themselves and the amazing talent of the dancers, in the end, that matter, and the Saturday line-up boasted both impressive newcomers to the troupe's roster, some breathtaking classics and a few guests and surprises. In an important move of cultural preservation, the troupe performed for the first time two classics by Pearl Primus, the dance pioneer and Katherine Dunham contemporary underappreciated and neglected in our era. Muntu performed two searing, fascinating classics, both accompanied by live narration by Cheryl Lynn Bruce, reciting the Langston Hughes' poems that serve as text for both works. Bruce was a fetching choice: her deep and deeply felt delivery is the narrative equivalent of fine singing, powerful in effectiveness and yet tinged with the most delicate pronunciations, particularly of words with the letter "s." The works are fascinating bookends. "A Negro Speaks of Rivers" manages to encapsulate much African and African-American history by means of poetic evocation of waterways, and Primus provides a stunning trio for three women (Errin Berry, Beverly Carrington and Shakeena President-Beckford) that is all by itself a study in mid-century modern dance, fused with African-American sensibility. Not for nothing was Primus an anthropologist, among her many accomplishments. The swoops, bright twirls and haunting hand formations have a mythic, iconic feel. The brightly colored, diamond-glittery costumes, by the way, were designed by Vaune Blalock and Muntu artistic director Amaniyea Payne, whose leadership of Muntu remains one of the strongest and most consistent in our city.

"Hard Time Blues," by contrast, is an exhilarating dance of joy, though one with struggle and defiance slyly laced into its high-flying qualities. It's an exuberant solo, as it happens, for Amansu Eason, who races across the stage diagonal in one signature segment, leaps into the air in noteworthy defiance of gravity and then grabs for invisible particles or maybe lifelines--the whole work is a gorgeous metaphor of human determination to not just battle the odds, but reach for the gods in the process.

"Pearl," as the combined works are titled, was tremendously backed up by Muntu's always delightful musicians, which, this go-round, included the sensational Alyo Children's Dance Theatre in the opening, a raucous, relentless onslaught of percussive solos, acrobatics and one amazing dance performed by an uncanny, demon-red-clad performer on stilts.

I'd not seen Moustapha Bangoura's Muntu works employing Guinea dance tradition, but what a great addition to the repertory they make. There's a relatively subdued quality to this strain of African dance, one flush with subtle design elements, soothing sashays and struts and bursts of lyricism and warmth--the circle becomes an inviting communal image. Frenzy nevertheless results by the end of these pieces, which involves a later circle of astonishing speed, a breathtaking finish and a flourish as colorful as the gingerbread costumes.

Eason provided an effective contemporary dance tribute to Michael Jackson, replete with images from "Thriller" and a moving finale full of gospel spirit and redemption. And then Muntu pulled out what stops were left with "Fangama," a dynamite showpiece with competition-like solos and acrobatics and as invigorating a cry to battle as any imaginable.

Deeply Rooted Dance Theater

"Deeply Rooted at Merle Reskin"

 

By Sid Smith:

Fifteen years of survival in dance is impressive, and Chicago's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater marked the occasion with style and gravitas Thursday at the Merle Reskin Theatre, launching a season of anniversary celebrations.

Artistic director Kevin Iega Jeff wisely chose as the cornerstone of the retrospective of his own work the 1984 "Flack," a powerful, layered elegy on human struggle, bonding and survival. Jeff's is a Broadway-tinged, heart-on-its sleeve aesthetic, more attuned to force and sweep than subtlety or design. Except that with "Flack" he reaches deep inside and provides some of the most detailed and versatile movement and gestures available. Unlike some dance works happily and breezily set to pop favorites, "Flack" employs lesser known, more Jeremiad-like Roberta Flack selections, along with additional material from Quincy Jones and Donny Hathaway. This isn't even remotely about the Flack of pop, but a mournful, agitated expression of life's troubles and turmoil. The half-dozen or so dancers are each clad in everyday street attire, but in such a way as to evoke a kind of everyman community. Flack's "Tryin' Times," meanwhile, one selection, sets a tone that right now plays with extraordinary timeliness. That's one thing that makes "Flack" so stirring. Potent in its own day, it feels up to the minute in depicting a society full of all kinds of dislocation, strife and uncertainty.

This is a wonderful cast, and the men are certainly terrific, both strong and heartbreakingly vulnerable. But special attention must be paid to two women, whose solos in particularl illuminate the piece: Carolina Monnerat, whose easy-seeming arabesques and turns are somehow grounded and smooth without every being light or too dainty, and Tracey Franklin's stirring performance to "I Told Jesus," a dancer who brings drama and edge right up to the brink with her animated intensity.

A program note articulates Deeply Rooted's mission as "based on the African-American traditions of storytelling along with universal themes in contemporary modern dance," and "Flack" is about as worthy an expression of that idea as any, one wherein Jeff forges suggestive clusters of dancers, bits of conflict followed by harmony, and a mixture of lyrical dancing with disturbing, idiosyncratic gestures. One in particular disturbs and lingers: the dancers force their hands toward their mouths as if desperate for food or, maybe, regurgitation. Whatever, the horrific image of fed-up despair is unmistakable, tempered, overall, it should be noted, by Jeff's uplifting, though never sentimental, religious themes. Death arrives, met by the balm of communal mourning.

Associate artistic director Gary Abbott was represented by two works, and they're decidedly different. His 1994 "Desire" is just as its title suggests, a dreamy, ultra-sensual exploration of human sexuality and libido, with a vaguely tribal setting and an eroticism born of the natural beauty of dance as well as that of the troupe--Deeply Rooted always boasts some of the more beautiful dancers in the profession. Various duets, naturally, emerge, danced by Kathleen Turner and Drew Shuler, DeeAnna Hiett and Brian Harlan Brooks and Monnerat again, this time partnered with Joshua Ishmon.

Abbot's more recent "53 Inhale" is a more sculptural, metallic work, set to the sonorous melodies and unusual sounds of Nico Muhly, peopled by an other worldly cast of alien creatures. It's a mysterious and lilting work exploring individual curiosity and intermittent ensemble cohesion, elegant, though mischievous, the dancers for a time crawling on the floor as an ensemble or elsewhere beautifully raising their legs in choral union.

Alas, the area around the Reskin these days is a busy quarter, and the parking lots filled quickly on Thursday. I found one open, but it closed at 10 p.m., so I wasn't able to stay until the end of Jeff's signature piece for the anniversary, "I Am Deeply Rooted." My apologies. However, what I saw of the opening segments is stirring, a large cast clad in fiery scarlet, boasting a powerful solo, backed by the crowd, to Mahalia Jackson's incandescent version of "My Country 'Tis of Thee." It promised to be an epic work with various sections of dance replete with segues of recitations of famous commentary on artistry.

Poonie's Cabaret

"Poonie's Cabaret"

 

By Sid Smith

In these days of comic fests and the danger that mass entertainment is all but neutralizing the gay factor in art (e.g. "Glee), it was a delight to attend "Poonie's Cabaret" Monday at Links Hall and learn that twists on gender can still be anarchic, irreverent and zany.

Rougher than rough, come-as-you-are, the indoor equivalent of the street musician, this benefit isn't about refinement, perfected technique or artful subtlety. The production unfolded with almost rehearsal nonchalance, partly due to the lean theatrics of the venue and partly arising from the bleacher bonhomie as palpable as Monday's heat and humidity. Jyl Fehrenkamp, who hosts in her guise as "Jyldo," dutifully spread mats on the playing area before the program began to provide extra seats for the crowd--usher as well as emcee.

Fehrenkamp's style proved part of the fun. Hers is an almost offhanded comic delivery, not so much a matter of telling jokes as slipping them in as asides. After predicting this would be "the greatest Poonie's ever," she quickly added, as a footnote, that she makes that claim every time. She makes appealing use of her gangly form and rubbery limbs, often appearing about to keel over or trip, but always, in fact, in sly command of her goofy little gestures and physical witticisms. She also provided a fine bit herself, a few song parodies and lots and lots of Tiger Beat-like pictures of the late Corey Haim, a teen idol around the time Fehrenkamp and her contemporaries would have been fans. All generations eventually tweak their tweendom, but Haim is something of a natural guilty pleasure, so promising once ("The Lost Boys"), so ignominious in decline. Mercilessly, Fehrenkamp offered a version of "My Favorite Things" that detailed Haim's drugs of choice, and, looking upward, comforted him that Lindsay Lohan is surely on her way soon to keep him heavenly company.

The other eight acts on the bill, mixing performance art comedy and movement, made for an inconsistent melange, but who cares? Each act was brief, and you didn't wait long until an individual hit a mark or the next act showed up to amp up the excitement. Amanda Crockett, midway or so through the line-up, is an immensely gifted comic movement artist, never saying a word her whole act but daffy and entertaining in scrunching her neck into her torso in such a way as to create a living cartoon character, managing a simple and "Stomp"-like interaction with the audience involving her entrance ovation and gracefully convincing us that she's under water for a time.

The duo from the Under Construction Dance Project delivered an engaging duet, colored by their own ingenious gestures and hand effects as by traditional dance, and Joshua Radcliffe's choreographic entry boasted interesting poses and offbeat arranges for its six women. Samantha Allen's gold-lame-clad diva does a mean, funny dance about a guy she's trying to get, replete with a priceless crawl set to "I Think We're Alone Now." Jessica Hudson took the lyrics to "Mr. Cellophane" from "Chicago" to literal heights.

An artist billed as Rocco Granite delivered a solid finale. Dressed in clownish attire and aided by two helpers who climbed on ladders and operated paper-cutting machines and emptied huge bags of shredded material, he/she danced, preened and survived a snowfall of paper, loving scored by Fats Waller.

Chicago Tap Theatre

"Chicago Tap Theatre "Tap Out Loud""

 

By Laura Molzahn

Think tap is monotonous? If you’re not an aficionado, a long program can seem that way.

But not when it’s in the hands of Mark Yonally, artistic director of eight-year-old Chicago Tap Theatre. "Tap Out Loud" --- a two-hour show of 11 pieces, many brand-new, performed Saturday night only at the Athenaeum Theatre --- didn’t always work. But it was never less than original and ambitious.

"The more, the merrier" seems to be Yonally's motto. He collaborated with three Chicago artists on cross-disciplinary works and opened up the program to company member/choreographer Kendra Jorstad, and to other company dancers in partly improvised pieces. Only one work --- the show's jaw-dropping finale, an extravaganza truly worthy of the name --- was a straight-up Yonally debut.

Dedicated to his brother, David, "The Queen Suite" memorializes the passion they shared for the music of Queen (David passed away three years ago, at the age of 40). This joyous piece often feels more about the music than the dance, but what it lacks in serious dance purpose it more than makes up for in energy and chutzpah. Rather than use recordings, Yonally divvied up the suite’s six songs among singer/pianist and composer-in-residence Anthony Edwards, the Chicago Red Line choir, opera singer Allison Setzke, and the Lakeside Pride Freedom Band, a brass-and-percussion marching band wearing Tweedledum-Tweedledee shorts and baseball caps. The closest the music comes to the originals is a karaoke take on "Under Pressure," while the band’s playing renders "Bicycle Race" almost unrecognizable.

Yonally has never shied away from kitsch, but he's outdone himself in "The Queen Suite," a heart-bursting celebration of love and life. He closes it by bringing dozens of amateur tappers of all ages up on stage, creating an overwhelming sense of joyful community.

"Thug Life" --- Yonally's collaboration with Kyle Vincent Terry, former artistic director of hip-hop-oriented Chicago Dance Crash --- takes a comic view of rap’s implicit violence and ties it to the traditional competitiveness of tap dance. The screaming, shoving, and slugging can get a little old, but Terry's tongue-in-cheek fight choreography neutralizes the antagonism; one dancer hauls off and “hits” another, for instance, while a third --- far downstage and a second too late --- provides the sound effect.

Yonally's joint effort with jazz choreographer Eddy Ocampo, "LAB," was probably the evening’s most ambitious piece in dance terms. Josh Weckesser's fabulous lighting gives this rather cold work a polished, highly dramatic veneer. And its Frankenstein-monster blend of jazz and tap works well --- though the nine dancers sometimes struggled with the balletic side of Ocampo’s Giordano-influenced movement. But I had to admire the attempt and the outcome, while "Trip Ticket," Yonally’s collaborative remake with lighting designer Jesse Klug, was a lost cause. Fussy and mysterious, with lots of lighting and costume changes, it was the program’s one instance of total lack of communication.

Jorstad, who choreographed a couple of humorous pieces for last December's "Tidings of Tap" show, revealed her serious side in two new dances. The clever "Click/Intrinsic" opened the evening with an assembly line of ten tappers who crossed the stage one way, then reappeared at the back going the other. Grave faces and stiff upper bodies suggest cogs in a machine, but their robotic look becomes more appealing as the performers begin to suggest tightrope walkers or birds on a telephone wire. Jorstad's gentle quintet “Sorrow,” performed with red balloons, is less successful: it didn't say sadness to me, and it seems derivative of Valerie Lussac's "Spyrographe," also in the company’s repertoire.

"Improvography" pieces, some of them superenjoyable, made up most of the rest of the program. Soloing to Edwards's cover of the Smiths' melancholy "Asleep," a sort of lullabye whose lyrics suggest going to sleep forever, Yonally responds to the music so freely that this small, simple piece has an oversize impact. Phil Brooks shows how far he’s come as a dancer in "Monk Indigo," "Waiting," and "Beggin'." Tall and spindly, he steals the show with his intricate tapping and long, loose limbs, flung around his torso like satellites orbiting a planet.

Brenda Bufalino's "Flying Turtles," created in the late 80s and first revived by CTT a year ago, is a sort of progenitor for Yonally's own brand of tap-dance experimentation. Choreographed arms might look modern or African, but the overall effect is orchestral as different parts of the body move to different rhythms and the dancers form and re-form into shifting groups. A symphony of visual and aural counterpoint for 12, "Flying Turtles" concludes with an a cappella section nearly as rousing as the close of  "The Queen Suite" --- but much quieter.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Summer Series

"Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2010 Summer Series"

 

By Laura Molzahn

Without being lightweight, Hubbard Street's summer program goes down easy. For one thing, it's exceptionally well balanced --- remarkable considering that the scheduled theatrical premiere of resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo's "Deep Down Dos" was postponed at the last minute (issues with the music rights). Never mind. The current mix, running through Sunday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, takes off in three very different but all very satisfying directions.

Jorma Elo's "Bitter Suite," given its world premiere last October by HSDC, takes the place of "Deep Down Dos." The Finnish choreographer, who joined Netherlands Dans Theater 20 years ago, is now the acclaimed artistic director of Boston Ballet. And his sophisticated, sure handling of music, structure, and emotional tone make “Bitter Suite” this program’s standout.

Nothing about it is bitter; in fact it's often funny. Elo goes crazy with bizarre motions for the hands and arms, some recognizable: wriggling fingers suggest tickling, and a woman "types" on an invisible manual typewriter, even returning the carriage. The dancers often look foolish, prancing or kicking out straight legs, feet flexed, in little backward-leaning runs. When Monteverdi's stirring brass overture for "Orfeo" plays, a woman extends her arms in a cliched gesture of triumph, only to drop them unexpectedly and unceremoniously with a bored schlump.

But though at times Elo presents human beings as limited creatures with the attention spans of gnats, he also demands superhuman strength and speed from his dancers, especially during the pedal-to-the-metal section of Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor. What sort of fiendish mind would simultaneously denigrate and celebrate humankind? Yet Elo’s dual vision pays off in the unexpected close to "Bitter Suite," set to Monteverdi's moving "Pur Ti Miro" duet. Though ludicrous moves are never entirely abandoned --- a woman literally wraps herself around a standing man's head at the end --- Elo flips an emotional switch to make us see them as honorable, innocent, incorruptible.

"Bitter Suite" might be seen as classical, in the sense that form is crucial and human nature is fixed and predictable. By contrast, Aszure Barton's brand-new "Untouched" is awash in romanticism.

That's evident right away in the stage design: long, red velvet curtains are parted at the middle to create a dramatic entryway, and Nicole Pearce's lighting is often chiaroscuro or a deep, alarming red. I found it difficult to get into "Untouched" at first, but as the dance went on I realized I'd been dropped in medias res. The existence of a narrative and characters is eventually clear, but their nature is never obvious. There's a love triangle, I think, presided over by a mistress of ceremonies, but that’s all I’d hazard about the plot. This piece is all about feelings, however illogical or unmotivated.

A choreographer originally from Canada, Barton has risen swiftly from the ranks, with works commissioned by Mikhail Baryshnikov and ABT. And though "Untouched" sometimes seems to lack an anchor, Barton creates gorgeous moments. The dancers' clapping and some of the music allude to flamenco and tango, with all the vivid drama those forms imply. At its best, though, the dancing is not derivative but sharp and new as a thunderclap, and often psychologically suggestive. There's a swift kiss to the neck, more knife attack than affection, or a woman's nervously bobbling hips, an idling engine. Barton can also slow things way down, creating a backdrop for the action with simple walking patterns inflected by slight shifts of the arms and shoulders. It’s like the insistent swelling of a chorus underneath the lines of the soloists, the protagonists.

Toru Shimazaki's 2006 "Bardo" completes the program with a variation on romanticism: the faux-primitive dance. Set to pretend world music by Dead Can Dance, it features raggy costumes and what look like impulsive, instinctual tribal motions.

Despite the slight cheesiness, the dance works. The word "bardo," Tibetan for "intermediate state," is used here to mean the transition between life and death. And the most meaningful, intriguing parts of Shimazaki’s dance are the extended passages of leave-taking, epitomized in a central couple and reiterated in unison sections for five couples. These always seem to me visionary glimpses into the twilight world of Romeo and Juliet as they die and don’t die, saying farewell forever until it’s finally for good.

RTG Dance

"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.

The Dance COLEctive presents COLEctive Notions

"COLECTIVE NOTIONS"

 

By Laura Molzahn

It's a big step for a performer to try on a choreographer’s shoes --- dancing is a much more passive art. (I've heard dancers say, "You never tell a choreographer 'no.' Never.") It's one thing to take direction, and quite another to make yourself responsible for the concept, the development, and the execution of a piece with your name on it.

Margi Cole, artistic director of the all-female Dance COLEctive, says she has dancers now who are interested in choreography, which hasn't always been the case. Mentoring them, she's produced "COLEctive Notions," an interesting but understandably uneven 75-minute program of five new works by company dancers plus Cole's own "Taking Hold." It runs through Sunday at Link’s Hall.

Maggie Koller's "Push" is engagingly eccentric. It has a unified look and retro feel, thanks to the four dancers’ black-and-white cocktail dresses, and an unusual concept: the dancers take turns pushing a button on a little plastic robot who then clicks and clacks briefly. He seems the reset button for AM Brother (Sean and Pat Cassin) as they channel disparate snatches of sound --- blips, old recorded dialogue, laughter, a slow horn playing lazy jazz. The dancers too can look robotic; or they seem reluctant, repressed, clapping their hands over their mouths or eyes. I thought of taxi dancers trapped in a seedy lounge, dime-a-dance girls.

Jessica Post's trio "Harmonic Breath," set to Bach music for solo cello, begins with an evocative motion for one dancer. Seated on the floor, she pedals her legs in and out while flowing forward at the waist and back upright; the movement, which suggests sobbing, goes perfectly with the slow, deep notes of the cello. When the music and dancers speed up, their quickened breathing mingles with the instrument’s “breath.” It’s a simple but effective frame for a dance.

Donnette Cannonie takes on a big ensemble piece in "Mon Confort," set to Adele's pop song "Hometown Glory." In the prologue, performed in silence, one woman seems to wake from a sad or frightening dream and looks around hopelessly, shoulders hunched. But Cannonie's true talent is her use of all eight dancers; when everyone bursts into movement at the song's chorus, the effect is dramatic. Cannonie has experience as a commercial dancer and choreographer for dance teams, and it shows in the close correspondence between music, lyrics, and movement.

Olivia F. May's quintet "Intermezzo" makes assured use of repetition and of the space. Four dancers walk slowly to surround a woman downstage, regarding her like caretakers. She begins to move, then they all start making strong arm gestures --- crossing them at the forearms, pushing them out forcefully. One gesture suggests Diana drawing her bow, or a musician bowing strings. Though the arm movements are distinct, they also rhyme. Set to lively, complex string music by the Kronos Quartet and punctuated by expressive breathing, "Intermezzo" is confidently made and performed. That makes it all the more disappointing it has no real ending --- the music just fades out and the dancers retreat into darkness.

More than any other work, Molly Grimm-Leasure's solo "Shhhhe" has a beginning and proceeds to an end. It's set to Balmorhea's "Barefoot Pilgrims," a piece for piano and strings that starts slow and thoughtful and turns agitated. Grimm-Leasure begins with her back to us, in a party dress complete with petticoat that gives her the look of a little girl though it also emphasizes her womanly shape. She’s sometimes shy, unwilling to show her face or extend her arms; but other times she’s defiant, fists planted on hips and legs wide. When she eventually turns to face us, she puts her hands over her eyes. Grimm-Leasure performs the piece exquisitely, with swift falls and leaps back up as if lightning had struck her down, then shocked her upright. Everything in the piece, even the defiance, suggests shame, and the ending seems to ask forgiveness. Grimm-Leasure makes herself very vulnerable in a piece so sparse and structured that the audience can give in to its feeling.

Sometimes revisiting a dance, as I did watching Cole's octet "Taking Hold," can be humbling. Though I called it "tenuous and unfinished" last January, this time around I recognized its emotional unity, created by anxiety. Cole makes equilibrium impossible, which might have contributed to my impression that the piece was unsettled and directionless. Set to cello music by Zoe Keating, it moves the dancers quickly in and out of various duos and trios full of grasping embraces and sudden rejections; it can be painful to watch. Even the final embrace is not reassuring, since all the other ones dissolved. Cole’s whirlwind of attempted and failed possession is all too effective.

 

Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak presents Blackbird/Stamina

"STAMINA OF CURIOSITY: OUR STRANGE ELEVATIONS"

 

By Laura Molzahn

Against a backdrop of ruined grandeur --- the most decayed and window-deficient wall of the majestic nave in the Epiphany Episcopal Church --- Molly Shanahan both transforms the quotidian into the mystical and pays tribute to such transformation.

Three women wearing knee pads under ordinary dresses and two men in unremarkable shirts and pants walk purposefully out into a big, open space cleared of pews and ringed by a single row of viewers. When the dancers start moving, the sounds of their feet on the floor, thudding, brushing, scraping, compete with the noise of car horns and buses accelerating on Ashland Avenue. The space is murky, filled with dying natural light, lit by just a few artificial slashes of powerful gold.

How is it possible to take these everyday elements and come up with something not at all everyday? It’s not the music, however stirring and appropriate: four pieces by Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir and Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s “Passacaglia for Solo Violin.” The sections danced in silence are just as affecting, sometimes more so.

Shanahan started the process that produced the hour-long "Stamina of Curiosity: Our Strange Elevations," a Chicago premiere, with her 2007 solo, "My Name Is a Blackbird" (begun in 2005). She revisited the solo on the first weekend of this two-week run by Molly Shanahan / Mad Shak, and "Stamina," which opened Thursday, continues through Sunday at the church.

"Stamina" feels like an adventure, a journey. And that's the way time-based art should be. Music, theater, dance --- if they don't go anywhere, why would we want to travel along?

"Stamina" starts with the dancers in a clump, all moving inexorably toward a floor-bound light though each dancer is moving differently. They seem to be a community drawn unconsciously to a common but uncertain goal, each approaching it in his or her own way. As the piece goes on, dancers shift in and out of the action, sometimes taking watchers’ roles at the dark edges of the space, sometimes dancing alone or with others. Their interactions might be soft and spongy, or almost martial, or nearly ordinary. When a man wraps his arm around a woman and places a hand on her hip, and she covers his hand with hers, they might be a girl and her beau out for a stroll. Except for their crouching, watchful posture.

The choreography's stunning shifts into unison seem to come out of nowhere and yet are of a piece with the individual movement that's gone before. Maybe that’s why these unison interludes, which might last a moment or a good stretch of time, are so surprising; there’s no visible preparation, and no warning when the dancing sinks back into the constantly churning sea of individual moves.

Lots of choreographers devise discrete phrases and then attempt, with varying degrees of success, to stitch them together. But in Shanahan's work, for the last several years anyway, each motion grows organically out of the one(s) that preceded it. The body flows seamlessly from some initiating impulse; hips slightly shifted from side to side turn into a belly dancer’s stirring of the pot, trailed by the arms, spine, and head in a soft tornado around the hips. Soon the dancers are lurching like robots.

The body is integrated, but the few recognizable phrases tend to disintegrate, especially when they're sharp, aggressive, and claim the space. A head thrust sharply to the right to gaze like a conquistador over a stiff, straight right arm pointing to the right turns into a less stiffly extended arm and a hand “writing” with the forefinger, trying to decipher a code. In another devolution of the heroic, the arm points right and the head looks left, droopy, uncertain.

The dancing is superb --- and what a pleasure it must be to move simply, expressively, rather than struggling to re-create a choreographer’s steps, to the fill the mold she’s created. Shanahan, who also performs, credits the other dancers as collaborators, and given her slow, intuitive choreographic process, they could hardly be otherwise. Kristina Fluty, Tim Heck, Benjamin Law, and Jessie Marasa all have their own distinctive movement personalities, tried in the fire of this physical marathon.

The lack of pretense in "Stamina" and its insistence on limitation, uncertainty, and the body's subjection to itself are ultimately what elevate the piece. Maybe grandeur can't exist without decay. Shanahan closes "Stamina" by highlighting the dancers' soft, relaxed hands, hands that make no statements or claims. Though they;re almost joined, they're not praying. They're like animal paws, like human humility. They're also just hands.

Joffrey Ballet, The

"Joffrey Ballet's Farewell"

 

By Sid Smith

Watching a dancer's farewell is a little like a shot of Tequila--a quick thrill, a suffuse feeling of warmth and then a nagging doubt that regret will soon follow.

The Joffrey Ballet said goodbye to six dancers at the Auditorium Theatre Sunday, and two of them were given special showcases: Calvin Kitten and Suzanne Lopez. In a way, their retirements--both are in their late 30s--are part of the end of an era, as the dancers hired and honed by Gerald Arpino move on, and the company takes on more and more of Ashley Wheater's stamp. Kitten in particular seemed an Arpino trademark, a speedy acrobat in the tradition of Edward Stierle, whose choreographic and dance careers were cut short by AIDS, and Mark Goldweber, who worked here with the company before joining Adam Sklute at Ballet West, where Kitten himself now heads to work backstage
Certainly in the years the Joffrey has resided in Chicago, Kitten soared as one of the troupe's most delightful and reliable stars. He pretty much patented three roles in "The Nutcracker": Fritz, the Snow Prince and Tea from China, his Fritz delightfully puckish and spoiled, his Snow Prince a velveteen display of pure talent and style.

On Sunday, he danced George Balanchine's "Tarantella," partnering with Yumelia Garcia, and, as if in deference to his popularity, a last-minute schedule shift put his farewell at the end of the program. "Tarantella" proved a pungent choice, joyful and radiant with technical frolic and good taste, ideal for the impish, almost childlike delight Kitten often brought to dance. It was also nice that a dancer whose athletics so often rendered him a soloist on stage got to go out dancing with a partner, and the naughty, stolen kiss the he makes at the end allowed Kitten, pun fully intended here, a kittenish final moment. That tempered some of the bittersweet sorrow unavoidable in knowing we'll no longer have him to watch.

Lopez didn't enjoy Kitten's singularity, his role as a special kind of dancer for the troupe. Instead, she vied with all the other ballerinas in classic parts and nonetheless shone brightly whenever on stage. I marveled as I watched her last performance, with Mauro Villanueva in Helgi Tomasson's silky "Valses Poeticos," how well-rounded a ballerina she is. No particular skill or classic position particularly shines in her execution. Instead, she made them all lovely, she brought them together into a lovely and sensuous whole and she glowed on stage, never more so than in this dreamy, romantic pas de deux.

The Joffrey's treatment of these farewells each season is infectious, with all the dancers marching on stage one by one and giving the retirees single roses until a whole bouquet is assembled--in a way, an apt metaphor for the mix of individuality and communal spirit that defines the art of dance. Lopez was even greeted by her two young children, reinforcing the idea of a dance company as a family. Whatever the differences and disagreements along the way, all of these folks deserve credit for succeeding in a merciless, cutthroat, incredibly idealistic pursuit.

It's also a fine occasion bridging that divide between artists and audiences--not just a chance to say so long, which is important, but a sudden burst of intimacy between watcher and watched, a personal connection in a business where a certain professional detachment is built into the enterprise. We watch these dancers year after year as strangers, removed, never even hearing them speak, for the most part, unlike stage actors. Yet, we feel a kinship, an affection, and that blossoms in these farewells, heightened by the very real emotions on stage that remind us these folks are human, real people with vulnerabilities and heartaches, who give up so much and work so hard to entertain us.

Four other dancers are leaving, and they, too will be missed: David Gombert, Thomas Nicholas, Megan Quiroz and Patrick Simoniello.
Bravo and brava! All deserve thanks for hours of immeasurable pleasure.

The Joffrey Ballet presents Eclectica

"Joffrey Ballet's Eclectica"

 

By Laura Molzahn:

No one expects ballet to stand still, but the Joffrey’s "Eclectica" program made me wonder what now defines the form. Clearly it's not pointe work or the standard steps. Not that I mourned their occasional loss on this refreshing program, which renews the Joffrey's founding promise to rethink classical dance.

The evening's three works, two of them premieres, are arranged in a kind of sandwich. (You can take a bite through May 9 at the Auditorium Theatre.) At least superficially, the opening and closing works are as light and fluffy as Wonder Bread. The meat is stuck in the middle: Jessica Lang's "Crossed," though it's not as heavy as it first seems.

Gerald Arpino's "Reflections," now nearly 40 years old, reveals that departures from the classical are a lot more radical these days. All-American skipping, sometimes with a cheesy smile, pops up often, and it's perfect for most of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, the sole score played live. Only the minor-key andante sixth variation seems to have inspired something uncommon. Arpino’s duet opens with the man alone, executing a turning leap ending on one knee --- and looking down. His somber finish establishes the duet's tone, sustained through legato moves. As the apparently doomed lovers, Victoria Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels were one of the evening's highlights.  

Lang's "Crossed," performed in soft shoes, crosses a line between ballet and modern dance. With its religious music, varied moods, and pared motions, it reminded me of Alvin Ailey's "Revelations." But where he used spirituals and gospel songs, Lang relies on European composers from the 15th to 18th centuries, among them Mozart at his cheeriest and Josquin des Prez at his most lachrymose.

Lang’s design for "Crossed" --- four moving steel panels that often take cruciform shapes --- creates worlds within worlds. Because the panels can be shifted around the stage or removed entirely, they drastically change the look of each of the six sections, from threatening to sunny to a moody mix (with expert help from lighting designer Nicole Pearce). But they can also distract. When a horizontal one being lowered to the floor shuddered and seemed about to fall, the audience gasped. And dancers hopping or being hoisted over a lowered panel often looked clumsy.

"Crossed" can shift emotional gears abruptly. Its heart seems to be the mournful second section, danced by five bare-chested men whose camaraderie, partnering each other and holding hands, would be unthinkable in a classic ballet. Canon movement creates a cascade of feeling gestures, and the section ends movingly, as its key figure (Calmels, whose impressive physique is put to good use) turns away from the others, now in priestly frocks. But the next section looks like a cross between Mark Morris in his folk-dance mode and musical comedy, as one man (a sprightly Aaron Rogers) flirts with a trio of women.

James Kudelka's brand-new "Pretty BALLET" often looks frothy but has a serious intent: to update and caricature romantic ballets. Unlike the other two works, it both explicitly addresses ballet's history and takes it in a new direction informed by humor and tenderness.

With its wispy mists and clouds and wispy girls in long tulle tutus, "Pretty BALLET" screams romanticism. Yet Kudelka makes his first little joke quickly, riffing on the primacy of the romantic ballerina: the men are literally eclipsed by the women, springing up from behind their skirts. Bohuslav Martinu’s second symphony, like the sea of fluff the women sometimes resemble, can seem lightweight, even like musical theater. In fact the choreography to the third movement, for five jester/heroes, is as buoyant as any in Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo" (first performed in 1942, one year before Martinu's symphony).

Kudelka’s occasional angular, metronomic clockwork moves are foreign to the soft fluidity of romantic ballet. But they become poignant in the most distinctive section, a duet set to Martinu’s brooding second movement. When the man lifts the woman by her stiffened arms and swings her from side to side, she looks like a pealing bell, perhaps referring to “Giselle” --- or Martinu’s birth in a Czech church tower. And when he lifts her overhead, rigid and supine, her slowly pumping forearms and paddling feet make her as vulnerable as a sleepwalker.

Kudelka’s bold “Pretty BALLET” deflates classical dance to give it new meaning. In a motif from the duet, the man swiftly lifts the woman, drops her, and holds her in a swan dive. But at one point this grand, sweeping motion ends in the woman simply standing, erect and flat-footed, her back to the man, who seems at a loss. Suddenly standing alone, plain and small, proves more moving than the magnificent gesture.

Inaside Chicago Dance

"Inaside Chicago Dance, Revealed"

 

By Sid Smith:

Slick and snazzy, Inaside Chicago Dance presented a line-up of new works at the Athenaeum Theatre over the weekend, showing off its performance talent and the work of young choreographers in a collection dubbed "Revealed."

The six works shared bits of promise and some of the same shortcomings as essentially works-in-progress. Each offered potential, but could benefit from revisits by their creators. They boasted unusually tart, appealing, offbeat musical scores, from a selection from "Slumdog Millionaire" to the engaging, biting lyrics of the likes of Shemika Copeland and the Magnetic Fields. But all suffered a bit, too, from certain unfinished aspects, from absences of overriding dramatic structures--even abstract works can take on some sort of narrative, mostly missing here--and a curious failure to balance all the fine, large ensemble works with worthwhile solos or duets. When the choreographers did zoom in for close-ups, the results were either disappointing or simply too brief.

Inaside artistic director Richard Smith's "When No Means Maybe" is among the works with enormous potential. Evoking a kind of down-home setting without over doing it, the men in suspenders, the women folksy and radiant with their long hair flowing, the piece has rich music by Copeland and Anthony Hamilton. It began with the men posed in relief, the women employed to the max to mine the riches in Copeland's scrappy, hard-hitting vocals. But at times the dancing seemed a bit too smooth and decorative, given the harsh topics in the songs, and its attitude on love and romance never seems to leave the surface--little of the danger in the music was reflected in the dance.

But Smith is onto something, and could well make this a really successful work, something equally true of Autumn Eckman and her "A Lot Like Love," marvelously underscored by Magnetic Fields, the 6ths and Katherine Whalen. Frolicsome and fun, "Love" features moves that Eckman seems to devise with her own set of rules, jazzy and impish, while fast, inventive and playful. She hasn't settled on a clear narrative or persuasive organizational structure yet--a busy ensemble spectacle, a natural finale, occurs in the middle. It could play as formal mischief, but, the way the dance is arranged now, it just seems weirdly out of order.

I've written that works are too long, that they overstay their welcome, so many times that it's pleasing, for once, to argue the reverse: Jessica Deahr's flowing, sometimes geometric-tinged "At the moment, I knew" cries out for expansion. Its inviting moves for five women would probably benefit from another short movement or two, and it cagily employs the most melodic strains from "Slumdog" as part of its score.

Debra Nanni's ambitiously populated "Influence of 3 = 1" features two dozen dancers and often uses them arrestingly. Large clusters remain almost frozen for a spell, only to race across the stage in a sudden rush, still together, but now a compelling hurricane of a crowd.

Eddy Ocampo's "B-Trothed" and Mary Tisa's "Ecarg" both seemed trap in their overall image, "B-Trothed" too self-conscious and melodramatic, underscored by flowing but dreary costumes, while "Ecarg" is unconvincingly lush and lyrical, almost mushy in its New Age-y enthusiasm.

But, nits notwithstanding, Inaside deserves great credit for offering so much new work, for assembling such a beautiful group of promising dancers and for delivering an event that packed an enthusiastic audience of supporters, who happily filled the Athenaeum for a sunny program on a dark and stormy Saturday.

American Ballet Theatre's One-Night-Only All-American Celebration

"American Ballet Theatre "All American Celebration""

 

By Laura Molzahn:

Time travel proves perilous in American Ballet Theatre's "All-American Celebration" --- and there's a lot of it on this program. Only Jerome Robbins' 1944 "Fancy Free" is firmly, ecstatically rooted in its own time, while Twyla Tharp in "The Brahms-Haydn Variations" and Paul Taylor in "Company B" keep one foot in their own era and plant the other in the past.

The mix made for a slightly queasy experience on Wednesday, the only showing of ABT's "All-American Celebration" during its Chicago run. This one relatively modern program ushered in seven "Swan Lake" performances over the next four days, through Sunday at the Civic Opera House. Chicagoans last saw Kevin McKenzie's version of the classic in 2004, but there's always room for one more production. Or several.

Fortunately Tharp's 2000 "The Brahms-Haydn Variations" was new to Chicago. Brahms did his own time-traveling in his 1873 "Variations on a Theme by Haydn," which he believed was based on music Haydn had composed nearly 100 years earlier. But in the mid-20th century that provenance was called into question, and Brahms' main theme has never been definitively traced.

The mischief-making Tharp must have been intrigued by this confusion of sources and traditions. Her ballet for 30, especially in its opening, looks classical but adds millennial Tharp-ian touches as it goes on --- some successful and others bizarre. In one clever moment, a man stands behind a woman, both in a wide plie, and they tic their shoulders side to side. Blink and you'll miss it, but it's something like the little dance people do when they come face-to-face and, trying to avoid each other, keep going head-to-head. By contrast, in a repeated singularly schlumpy move, the woman hangs forward at the waist over the man's extended arm. Eventually it occurred to me that this might be Tharp's inversion of the much more graceful act of leaning back over a man's arm.

Love them or hate them, Tharp's perversions of classical technique are what set "The Brahms-Haydn Variations" apart from other, straighter neoclassical works. The dance's grand scale is likewise a two-sided coin. The busy stage can distract from duets by the five principal couples, but it can also suggest a rollicking sea, with dancers lifting off the groupâ??s surface like spume off waves. Among the couples, Gillian Murphy and Jose Manuel Carreno were particularly assured.

Taylor's 1991 "Company B" was not new to Chicagoans; the Paul Taylor Dance Company performed it here in 1993 and 1999. Set to Andrews Sisters songs, this suite of period dances often looks cute and nostalgic; it got plenty of warm chuckles. But it's literally shadowed by images of war: silhouetted men marching, shooting, falling. Sometimes a single fallen figure lies amid dancers jitterbugging, and many of the numbers feature man-hungry women in a world where men are scarce. They've gone to war, or they're dead. Or gay.

Opening and closing "Company B" is the Andrews Sisters' first big hit, "Bei Mir Bist du Schoen" --- a feel-good Yiddish/English love song with a fake German title they recorded in 1937, when Hitler was paving the way for the Third Reich. With the benefit of hindsight, Taylor makes the gaiety of the 40s look naive, even venal.

His sly attack feels a little unfair, especially in contrast with Robbins' wholehearted view of the period in "Fancy Free." Instead of Taylor's lurking soldiers, we get Robbins' sailors throwing themselves into a night on the town. If they refer at all to shipping out, it's to get a leg up on the dames. Leonard Bernstein's score perfectly sets the mood for the antics of Robbins' three sailors as they drink, chase tail, and dance up a storm for the ladies' benefit, then lose them during an all-out brawl. Daniil Simkin, making his Chicago debut and debut as the high-flying first sailor, was light and cheery as fluff from a milkweed pod.

Male-female stereotypes abound in "Fancy Free." True, it was a different culture, but Robbins might also have been working overtime to establish that his characters were "real" men. Gay and closeted himself, he wanted to distance his colorful scene from the notoriously homosexual painting it was based on: Paul Cadmus' "The Fleet's In!" Sixty-five years later, that time's stereotype of real men may be indistinguishable from a gay man's conception of them. They were both constructions.

It doesn't matter. Robbins made them real. They're still real. He painted a heartfelt portrait of his own time; he didn't mine the past in order to undermine it. Why can't we do that now? And why is it so risky for ABT to step outside the classics for more than a single evening?

Billy Elliot the Musical

"Billy Elliot the Musical - The Choreography Review"

 

By Sid Smith:

"Billy Elliot: The Musical" is different in key ways from "Billy Elliot," the movie, and that turns out to be a fine thing. The film endures as irresistible, but the stage show, which just launched its national tour at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, is much more an exploration of ballet: madcap, daffy, silly ballet, at times, but ballet nonetheless.

Is this the stage musical for which balletomanes have been waiting a lifetime? Maybe. Certainly it stands as the most involved and intricate attempt by a musical to incorporate ballet since the days of George Balanchine's "On Your Toes" or the pre-eminent work of Jerome Robbins.

Peter Darling, who choreographed both the movie and this later effort, makes a critical shift for the stage. Dance-wise, the film is fueled mostly by Billy's wild, unfettered, unschooled and sometimes delightfully clumsy solos, his unbridled lust to move so wonderfully enacted by title performer Jamie Bell.
But the Elton John-Lee Hall stage show takes a step back and fashions the plot to portray young Billy as stumbling into the art accidentally (like the film), but then gradually, oh so slowly, warming to ballet and acquiring skills bit by bit like so many real students. Billy is not so much driven to dance as blessed with a talent undiscovered, and when he finally lets loose, it's to show off genuine ballet technique, culminating in an extraordinary solo showstopper set at his audition for the school of the Royal Ballet.

At Sunday's opening, Cesar Corrales, one of four youngsters playing this coveted and surely exhausting role, achieved with that scene an excitement rare enough in the concert hall. Corrales, 13, of Cuban descent, born in Mexico and trained in Canada, is one heck of a gifted ballet star. In the solo, he enacts most of the star turns given a male soloist at the peak of the classic full-lengths. Except that Darling, as if to maximize Billy's youth, compacts them in such a way as to leave the theatergoer breathless. Striking pirouettes, a couple of double spins and the requisite jetes in a circle lead to a galvanizing series of tours en l'air that come at you so fast I didn't even think to count them. I only know there were a lot, and by that time I was leaping to my feet like the rest of the audience.

The other three young men may vary in their ability to carry that scene, but Darling deserves a lot of other credit for his work throughout this piece. It's almost as if a schizophrenic bifurcation is at work, albeit one Darling smoothly stitches together, whereby Billy is mostly shown off in solo (and genuine ballet) and a cheesier, goofier hybrid of ballet, pop and theatrical staging defines everyone else. That's not a rule followed religiously--Billy has one infectious vaudeville tap extravaganza that's essentially a duet with his gay friend Michael, eventually backed by giant dress forms, and he's part of one wondrous trio involving his mentor, Mrs. Wilkinson, and her heavyweight but light-footed musical accompanist, Mr. Braithwaite--one of the more delightful dances in the show.

But often Darling employs dance-theater staging, movement that crafts haunting images of the miners sporting their headlights and heading underground near the end, or easing across the stage, carrying and dancing with simple wooden chairs, in a dark, reminiscent fantasy sung by Billy's dotty grandmother.

Darling walks a fine line superbly, employing such serious motifs to underscore the socio-economic hardship that's one half of the story while elsewhere infusing the group bits with just the right smidgen of wacky humor that's bread and butter to Broadway. The two styles pretty much synthesize brilliantly early on, when, during one of Billy's first lessons, the little girls in the class and the miners surrealistically enter into each other's worlds and dance together, the miners taking on some Trockadero-like ballet moves of their own.

But slapstick, funky pop and goofball comedy and here and there postmodern angst define the chorus--ballet, especially in its inimitable excitement for the soloist, belong to Billy and, in one scene, including a bit of aerial dazzle, his imaginary, older alter-ego.

Darling also slyly cheats a bit and saves for the curtain call the kind of blowout, razzmatazz, spectacle tap-and-pop ensemble finish so crucial to the stage musical--he's having his cake and serving the customers a jam-packed, omnibus slice. By then, you've been completely won over by the glories of the story, the bittersweet juxtaposition of Billy's artistry and the gloomier fate of those he leaves behind and Darling's wizardry in matching the complex messages of director Stephen Daldry's production with a complex but beguiling dance fusion abundant in entertainment while an intelligent paean to ballet.

Dance fans' alert: don't miss this amazing achievement.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

"Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater"

 

By Laura Molzahn:

"Take me to church!" yelled the noisy young man behind me on Wednesday night. The occasion? The opening strains of the music for Alvin Ailey's signature work, "Revelations." So what if the curtain was still closed?

That kind of fervor is a natural outcome of Ailey's brand of showy spirituality, epitomized in this 1960 classic. And the two 2009 works also on the program --- one of three in this engagement, which runs through Sunday at the Auditorium Theatre --- each followed a different branch of that Ailey aesthetic.

"Uptown," by company dancer Matthew Rushing, takes the showy route but apologizes for it. Both slight and heavy, this 40-minute piece tours the Harlem Renaissance at breakneck speed, loading up the trip with names, facts, and texts advising us what to think. Our helpful guide explains who Paul Robeson was and what a rent party is as well as informing us that Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith made lasting contributions to society.

Rushing, who wrote the texts with Gregor L. Gibson, clearly assumes a low level of cultural literacy. I could have dealt with that. I was more troubled by the repeated assertions that the accomplishments of the Harlem Renaissance were not just about song and dance but were also intellectual. True, but the declaration seems defensive. And Rushing's evidence --- brief recorded texts by W.E.B. Du Bois and Zora Neale Hurston --- is too skimpy to prove the point. By including so many facets and figures of that era, he devalues all of them.  

Rushing also devalues the best part of "Uptown" --- the dancing --- with his inflated claims about the importance of the mind. His choreography tends to repeat (though he creates the illusion of change with different settings and costumes), but the dancing itself can catch fire. In "Rent Party," one girl tossed up by her partner almost flies out of his grasp. The five street-corner loiterers in "Visual Art" sport an appealingly louche masculinity. And the solo set to Langston Hughes's poem "The Weary Blues" is a cut above the rest of the choreography: its emotional nuances show what Rushing is capable of.

Ronald K. Brown's "Dancing Spirit" follows a more soulful, less showy, much less literal path. Created to celebrate Judith Jamison's 20 years as the Ailey company's artistic director, it begins with spartan simplicity. Dancers cross the stage in a diagonal line, repeating a few pared motions: bursting the arms up and open, for example, then dropping them slowly as the dancer steps in releve. It’s impossible to watch without thinking of the deliberate opening movements of "Revelations."

I also thought of the importance of lineage, of the ancestors, in African and African-American culture. The seven dancers follow one another one by one, but as each reaches the downstage corner, he or she exits, essentially making room for the performer entering upstage. (One woman, however, literally steps out of line and does her own thing: Jamison?)

Brown's eclectic mix of music includes two versions of Duke Ellington's "The Single Petal of a Rose," a couple of pieces by Wynton Marsalis, an urgent string composition by Radiohead, and War’s funky 1978 "Flying Machine (The Chase)." The choreography also traces an unpredictable path. Brown beautifully dissolves his simple opening sequence to create a sense of chaos: each individual moves with complete integrity and continuity, but overall the ensemble doesn’t exhibit much congruence --- until the dancers suddenly surround a single woman (Renee Robinson on opening night). Left alone onstage, she steps forward only to retreat, turns this way and then that, but her fluidity and passion show she knows the way.

Brown incorporates African moves but pares them back, smooths them out. The effect, especially given the flouncy costumes, suggests Caribbean dance --- which in turn suggests the "Wade in the Water" section of "Revelations." Echoing Ailey choreography without recapitulating it, Brown creates but never belabors a sense of history. The repetitions growing out of the African movement create but don’t belabor a sense of ritual. African dance simplified and often slowed suggests a very American, very urban brand of cool perfect for the Ailey troupe.

"Revelations" closes every program. It's a keeper --- though I'm tired of audience members who applaud and hoot at discrete bits as if they were athletic feats. For me this work's heart lies in two quirky rather than anthemic sections. In the excruciating male solo "I Wanna Be Ready," the dancer must exert exquisite control to reveal the sinner's lack of control. Odd. Pinned under God's searchlight, this man is trapped --- and so are the three men in the following section, "Sinner Man." Part of me always wants to laugh at the John Wayne-cowboy excess of this melodramatic song and dance. But another part honors its maleness, its courage and strength, and mourns its characters' despair.

Wayne McGregor | Random Dance: Entity

"Wayne McGregror I Random Dance"

 

By Sid Smith:

Wayne McGregor and his Random Dance are the last of the Dance Center of Columbia College's visitors in its series on science, and while they're the simplest and most conventional technologically, McGregor's choreography is beyond doubt the most exciting--this is work both electrifying and unique.

McGregor is a major force back home in London, where he not only runs this modestly sized troupe, but serves as resident choreographer for the Royal Ballet--a title he earned despite a lack of classical training. Nevertheless, the assault of dance that is "Entity," the work on view through Saturday, boasts casual, unmistakable echoes of classical form, however contemporary and innovative otherwise. Whether that's a reflection of McGregor's days with the Royal or has always been a part of his aesthetic, I can't say--this is the first of his work I've seen.

But I can't wait to see more, and the classic underpinnings--arabesques, pirouettes and taut extensions--are merely a basis for an exceedingly original style energized by a decidedly modern tempo. Two stylistic aspects are striking and reflect his inimitable mastery. The nine dancers frequently and repeatedly employ a series of quasi-grotesque gestures and individual shapes, gnarled hands, twisted in contortion, or here and there a head dip and serpentine undulation not unlike someone briefly imitating a chicken. I found myself recalling David Threlfall and his memorable portrayal of Smike in "Nicholas Nickleby"--this is very much the poetry of the spastic.

McGregor employs these countless moves and twists as part of a cascade of unsettling imagery, the formal beauty at the base of the work counterbalanced, transmogrified and counter-intuitively expanded with moves and executions unique in their oddity.
Secondly, the design and pace of "Entity" overall is one of perpetual motion, ever changing, brief in phrasings and short-lived in the tensions, couplings, aggressive encounters and moments of harmony that generously populate it. Little is long lived, save for a duet here and there, and while there are plenty of conventional interactions, they're so quick in coming that the piece seems an onslaught of pure form and design. There's human drama, to be sure, but architectural that it has a clean, pristine purity.

In the end, what matters, though, is that McGregor is an absolute magician of movement, endlessly inventive in the way he designs and executes his choreography, just as he's cagey in his selection of fine dancers. For all the formal restraint, the energy, agility and endurance of the performers themselves comes through. In no way solicitous, thanks to its aesthetic distance, "Entity" manages to win its audiences' hearts by virtue of the skill and determination by which the performers survive its 65-minute marathon.

The technical details are clean, bright and minimal, though I should note that a flyer in the program explains certain technical changes had to be made to accommodate the piece here. A long horizontal screen hovers over the production, televising the image of a racing dog at the beginning and end of the piece, supported by a giant industrial crane. Otherwise, the lighting effects and the white playing area combine with bare-bones simplicity to create a kind of technological blank space--a plain canvas. Images are telecast on the screen part of the time, basic pictures of dots and the occasional photographic negative.
I can't pretend to be able to wed all this to information outlined in the work's literature, talk of cognitive processes and various experts who contributed their learning. "Entity" succeeds nicely as fairly straightforward contemporary dance, though it may well be that the background and subtext is critical to that success, however subtle and unseen.

As for the series as a whole, I may be in a minority, but my conclusion about the troupes invited to explore technology and dance lead me to think that, even today, technology just doesn't make that much difference. It's window dressing, just as it was during the '60s multimedia heyday, and much of the digital projections on view didn't seem that different from the cinematic clips of that era. Decor's all well and good, and artists are welcome to use any elements to concoct one. But it's the flesh and blood of the dancers that matters most, and the design and imagination of the choreographer, old-fashioned virtues that McGregor, for all his novelty, possesses in spades.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series

"Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series"

 

By Laura Molzahn:

A sense of loss, of human foolishness and mortality, hangs over Hubbard Street's shadowy spring program, running through Sunday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. The costumes are drab and often ordinary; the music is downbeat or strange --- or both.

But the mood suits our times. And though the evening's four works were often somber, I left the theater buoyed by the sense that dance could look so hard and seriously at the dark side of human experience, especially human relationships.

There's an element of romance, or anti-romance, in every piece here. The first two dances on the bill fit together as neatly as two puzzle pieces: Alejandro Cerrudo's new "First Light" and Susan Marshall's familiar "Kiss" both deal with partings, and while Cerrudo's piece ends with a sort of death knell, Marshall's begins with a tolling bell.

"First Light" is set to a piano transcription of Philip Glass's 1993 opera "Orphee," inspired by Jean Cocteau's 1949 film based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, who lost Eurydice to the underworld. Cerrudo has been attracted to the mythic in previous, often cinematic works; "First Light" is on a more modest scale, but its duets --- creditably danced by members of Hubbard Street 2 --- do amplify the theme of lovers separated. Most of the piece sets up the final moment of loss, prefigured by the dancers passing in and out of shadow. Couples swing around each other, orbiting with the easy confidence that nothing will ever stop their perpetual-motion machine. Of course it does stop: to heavy single piano notes, the dancers retreat and disappear.

The three bells that begin "Kiss" are the opening to Arvo Part's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten," whose elegiac tone suffuses Marshall's love duet for suspended dancers. Unlike Cerrudo's parted lovers, these two are almost constantly entwined, yet within the limits of their ropes and harnesses they do separate and reunite, over and over, recapitulating lovers' magnetic attractions and repulsions. Their vacillating unions and separations are on a small, psychological scale while Cerrudo goes for the archetypal.

Terence Marling uses a lighter touch in his world premiere, "At 'em (Atem) Adam," but the moonstruck characters can be pathetic as well as funny. In his first mainstage dance for Hubbard Street, former HSDC dancer Marling, now an artistic associate, shows he has a knack for theater, transforming a red "heart" into a pale moon or lantern and using vastly different music to create vignettes with different moods unified by the sense that, in this world, lovers are bumblers.

Like characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," these ten can seem bewitched, switching partners swiftly during a sort of barn dance to music from the album "Appalachian Waltz." A section set to Ella Fitzgerald's smooth, seductive, devastating rendition of "But Not for Me" expresses both the pain and folly of love in vain. Marling doesn't always seem in complete control of the many elements in "At 'em (Atem) Adam," but he gives it a gleeful variety and freedom.

With Jiri Kylian's "27'52"," the program comes to a mysterious, breathtaking close. Hubbard Street is the first U.S. company to perform this 2002 work, whose stylish lighting and set pieces are trademarks of Kylian, former artistic director and now resident choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater. The six dancers, especially Ana Lopez and Cerrudo, do a masterful job with Kylian's clipped choreography.

Clocking in at 27 minutes and 52 seconds, Kylian's dance manages to be both claustrophobic and expansive, thanks partly to the set design: long swaths of white marley, suspended and laid on the floor, that both confine the playing area and give it a larger resonance. Dirk Haubrich's score, based on two themes by Mahler, is made up of odd noises melodically combined and includes recorded texts in various languages played forward, then backward. The dancers too sometimes reverse their movements, which makes the claim of a straightforward running time odd: Do the rewinds count? Does the opening section, with the dancers warming up?

Often harshly angular, Kylian's movement can give an impression of antiseptic, impersonal brutality. The dance proper is a series of duets that switch out partners and switch in new ones --- and the men in particular can look cruel, manipulating the women, even shaking them. But men and women alike show each other a dancerly disaffected affection that makes the final section of entombment, lit by a murky green, a vision of tragedy that the cataclysmic ending opens out.

In these times, there's been some shrinkage in Hubbard Street's ranks. But artistic director Glenn Edgerton has maximized his resources here, by including the appealing dancers of Hubbard Street 2, using work by two talented company members, and snaring an underexposed masterwork. He's also managed to create a repertory program with a single direction and mood, no small feat.

 

Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago presents Ovations

"Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago "Ovations""

 

By Sid Smith:

Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago is offering up something of a retrospective of popular works from its recent past in an engagement dubbed "Ovations" playing through Saturday at the Harris Theater.

One bright spot is the heavy representation of choreographers associated with Chicago. Randy Duncan remains based here, while Ron De Jesus and Davis Robertson both danced here for some years, at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the Joffrey Ballet respectively. Gus Giordano, whose "Wings" is on the line-up, launched the troupe that bears his name.

The Giordano brand is fast, showy and fun, with an emphasis on entertainment, but the six works on view here also demonstrate that the company, now run by Giordano's daughter, Nan, can accommodate diverse tastes and styles. Robertson's "Entropy" and De Jesus' "Prey" share a moody, somewhat alienated look and harsh musical accompaniment. Christopher Huggins' "Pyrokinesis" boasts a knockout finale that's all fun-loving movement joy and a tinges of disco celebration. Duncan's "Can't Take This Away"(from 1997) is gospel rich in theme and silky in design, as billowy in execution as the costumes that play so much a part of its look. Liz Imperio's duet from her larger "La Raza del Barrio" is Latin sensuality, pep and sass.

The dancers, meanwhile, are all new since these pieces were first premiered. There are tough chores aplenty in these works, demanding breakneck speed and merciless precision. Here and there, that challenged the troupe on Friday. Some of the ensemble timing was off.

But on the whole the troupe masters these works solidly and colorfully, rising to the frequent show-off moments with gusto and pizzazz. For sure, that's true of talented Zachary Heller, statuesque, confident and more than up to such spectacular solos as Huggins' breathtaking series of ballet turns in "Pyrokinesis." Similarly, Ashley Lauren Smith and Martin Ortiz Tapia make the most of their spotlight moment in Imperio's duet. Smith is especially impressive, executing her tricky moves despite wearing heels, employing her striking legs to create both a sensual and dignified presence.

The early, satiny, pleasantly New Age moments to George Winston in "Pyrokinesis" hardly prepare you for Huggins final assault, an extravaganza that manages to employ just about every conceivable dance trick, and yet does so without any sense of a rigged, circus-like catalogue. Each moment, and they all fly by, seems to spring organically from the music or the one that came before, down to and including the cagily lit cakewalk across the front of the stage--the jazziest, cockiest, most exhilarating cakewalk you're likely to see.

Huggins "Pyro"-technics are in sharp contrast to Duncan's preference for style and design. "Can't Take This Away" is abstract, and yet its unusual clusters, the dancers easing across the stage in close contact and one by one raising one of their members, for instance, evoke a sculptural choir. Concert dance is not always comfortable with religious themes, but Duncan embraces them here, a contemporary piece with that rare ability to invite the audience into its world of hope, supplication and moving emotions.

"Entropy" and "Prey" are more enigmatic, slightly off-putting and even odd, but they both boast virtues. "Entropy" has an intricacy of design and movement that helps it stand alone on this program. While four women perform in front in one section, there's a strange gymnastic assortment under way in the back, and the piece boasts striking lifts and an exhilarating finale.

"Prey" is every bit as feral as its title would suggest, an unsettling piece that employs movement to imply seduction, conquest and conflict. De Jesus' own costumes, especially for the women, contribute to the air of primitive and yet elegant sexuality. The collapse of the backdrop for a finish is a stunner, all of it proof Chicago lost more than a dancer when De Jesus left our midst.

 

Akram Khan Company: bahok

"Akram Kahn Company: Bah"

 

Inarguably, London's Akram Khan is an engaging maker of movement. Just about all of the dance in "bahok," in performance through Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art, is intelligent and fresh, and some of it is spellbinding.

Close to the end of this 75-minute work, in what amounts to a climax, Khan and longtime collaborator, composer Nitin Sawhney, manage one of those rare apices marrying music and dance. Sawhney's seductive score, a rambling, intermittent symphony of noise and melody, reaches a soaring point in volume and beauty as the dancers lunge forward, at first, and then come to complete stillness in the sense that their feet stop moving. But their arms swing, like blades of a windmill, accelerating to near jet propulsion, repeating their circular gyrations as if kids gone mad on a playground. You are both moved at the artistic audacity and just slightly worried your own theater seat may take off in flight--there's that much energy.

Meanwhile, Khan's ensemble rearrangements, both before and after this stretch, are graced with a gossamer, minimalist design. As most of the dancers move in unison, one, two, or three break away into something else, but so beautifully dotted throughout the larger grouping, and so quickly changing, that you have to watch feverishly to follow them before giving up and surrendering to Khan's overall magic spell. As audience members, we're intrigued, then excited and finally rendered putty in his hands.

Unfortunately, "bahok," created in 2008, is better throughout in its dance than its dramaturgy. A fairly straightforward dance theater piece, it's set in a train station of the mind, its passengers a diverse hodgepodge of nationalities, its waiting area a Godot-like land of no exit and existential trap. In itself, that's trite now, going all the way back to such forgotten dramas as Sutton Vane's 1923 "Outward Bound," and Khan doesn't really do that much with it. The messages at the end meant as philosophical codas, broadcast on the computerized arrival-departure board that's part of the lean set, are too obvious: "Are you lost?" or "Where are you going?" And Khan relies on such shopworn emblems of sterile modern life as the cell phone. Moments of vaudeville intended as comic relief aren't that funny, as when, after a tower-of-Babel-like brouhaha, the cast goes in for a group hug, one loner left out to crawl around and atop the ensemble to try and force her way in. Second-rate Marx Brothers.

There is a moment of genuinely witty dance, when a somewhat short man, partnering a tall woman in a sequence of rough-hewn ballet, has to jump into the air to manage the classic position of a male partner holding the ballerina in place. There's also one intriguing dramatic sequence, wherein a woman and her Korean friend struggle to communicate with a customs official and each other, a sequence beautifully acted, funny, scary and apt--epitomizing the weariness and fright of traveling internationally today.

And, the disappointing dramatic tropes aside, "bahok" is flush with Khan's rightly respected mastery of choreography, performed here by a smart, daredevil and speedy company on tour. Khan employs classic grounded contemporary dance, tinged with bone-crushing danger and martial art stress, but often prettified paradoxically by the most delicate hand work. Right before or after you watch a dancer collapse painfully to the floor, the wrists will flick like grace notes, or, in the case of one especially liquid-like gentleman, the trunk will undulate with gorgeous serpentine silkiness.

Best of all, during the stretches of eminently viewable dance, Khan and company engage in a typical series of modern moves, backward runs and floor rolls among them, but with that inimitable drive and cohesion that marks truly compelling choreography. Plenty of contemporary choreographers employ the same moves. But it's rare talents, and Khan is assuredly one of them, who manage such a sequence so that, by the end of it, you feel not so much you've witnessed a string of unrelated moves as you've been grabbed unexpectedly and taken on a journey. For my money, Khan has no need of a traveler's setting to accomplish it.

The Joffrey Ballet's Cinderella

"Joffrey Ballet's "Cinderella""

 

By Laura Molzahn:

What's wonderful about Sir Frederick Ashton's sunny "Cinderella" is his heroine's independence; the few men in the ballet are singularly beside the point. Cinderella's father is kindly but weak, and her prince has no more character than the broomstick she dances with in the kitchen. But Cinderella herself knows her value from the get-go.

The Joffrey --- which holds exclusive rights to perform Ashton’s 1948 three-act story ballet --- stages "Cinderella" for the second time only (the first was in 2006, the piece's U.S. premiere), and it is delicious. Running through February 28 at the Auditorium Theatre, it's well danced and theatrically nuanced under the direction of Wendy Ellis Somes and beautifully tricked out with David Walker's vintage sets and costumes, which the Joffrey acquired four years ago. The Chicago Sinfonietta, conducted by Scott Peck, treats Prokofiev’s sometimes angular, sometimes lissome score with great feeling and sensitivity.

Ashton's remixing of standard versions of the fairytale makes this a grrl-power kind of dance. For the libretto, he relied on Charles Perrault's popular 1697 account --- with some significant changes, like eliminating the evil stepmom. This renders the first act a bit odd: the father, a grown man of sound mind, is completely cowed by the silly stepsisters in Ashton’s comic take on the story, embracing and reassuring his daughter only when they’re not looking. Nice guy, but a wimp.

Ashton also borrowed a few features from the 19th-century version of the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm, in which Cinderella's birth mother speaks from the grave through a hazel tree her daughter plants there. Ashton doesn’t go so far as to have Cinderella’s dead mother talk to her, but his heroine does hang her mother’s portrait on the chimney and place a votary candle on the hearth of the cavernous kitchen. Though we never meet the mother, she is literally a light, a beacon, for the oppressed Cinderella.

Who isn't all that oppressed in Ashton's ballet. In the Brothers Grimm tale, Cinderella is weepy, crying at every turn. Consistently described as good, sweet, and patient, she's also good, sweet, and patient in the ballet --- but seldom weepy. Instead Cinderella immediately reveals an innate self-confidence, especially in her dancing.

For Ashton, the stepsisters' moral failings are part and parcel of their excessive, clumsy movement, played for laughs: their moves are as frilly and overdone as their frou-frou costumes, with lots of gesticulating, wobbly running, and flapping of arms. Pulling out all the stops, Ashton prods them into stumbles, collisions, and Three Stooges-style pranks. At the height of one such scene in the first act, Cinderella steps in and --- with a single decisive gesture, spreading her arms wide --- brings everyone to a halt, just as the old hag/fairy godmother makes her entrance.

Those expansive arms are characteristic of Cinderella's first- and third-act solos in the kitchen, when her spirit transcends her circumstances. Her steps are quick and dainty but completely sure, the solid base for a fluid, expressive upper body. When everyone leaves for the ball, she regards the closed door a little sadly, then makes a flippant "so what?" gesture and executes a sky-high extension facing the audience, releasing it only to stab her toe shoe into the floor defiantly, once, twice, right on the music. On opening night, Victoria Jaiani played the role with the right mix of taut strength and easy freedom, self-effacement and self-assurance.

In Ashton's fairytale, all the women are strong and all the men are good-looking. Well, the prince at least. Despite his money and station, he doesn’t confer power on Cinderella --- he recognizes it. The closest any man gets to power in this "Cinderella" is the jester/emcee at the second-act ball (a highly athletic role well danced by a mischievous Derrick Agnoletti). And he's pretty androgynous. His female counterpart in the first act, the fairy godmother, grounds Cinderella in the natural world (another feature lifted from the Brothers Grimm fairytale), then provides the carriage, horses, gown. But the grace and force that Cinderella unveils at the ball are all her own.

What a novelty: plenty of powerful women while none are evil. Even the wicked stepsisters are men in drag (the hilariously foolish David Gombert and Michael Smith). Ashton --- who used to dance the shy younger stepsister himself --- lavished attention on these two, the bossy older sister and her slightly more demure sibling, the Laurel and Hardy of dance. But it’s a sign of this ballet’s gentle spirit that, when the stepsisters are banished at the end, they half tiptoe/half march offstage hand in hand. Even villains catch a break in Ashton’s generous, forgiving vision.

River North's Valentine's Weekend Engagement

"River North Chicago Dance Company Valentine's Weekend Engagement"

 

By Sid Smith:

Choreographer Robert Battle seems blessed with a limitless talent to entertain. The man who gave River North Chicago Dance Company "Train" is back with two more works, a new one called "Three" and a solo, "Ella," first performed earlier by his own troupe.

Both are irresistible and, like "Train," decidedly inimitable. Though it boasts one noteworthy solo, "Train" involves a modest-sized ensemble and a nod to choral imagery. Solos and trios are about something else, a more intimate artistry, and it's here that Battle maybe shows off his innovation, quirkiness and originality best, zeroing in for tight body shots that are the choreographic equivalent of a close-up. He injects both pieces with an almost infinite amount of gestures and modest, short-lived motions that are speedy and crammed, just this side of frenetic. These are feasts of detail, yet each work is distinct from the other.

"Ella" demands this approach by definition. Here Battle attempts the nearly impossible: Charging a dancer with illustrating, dipping inside and replicating the quicksilver wonderland and finesse of Ella Fitzgerald's scat. Vocalists, of course, are challenged to duplicate the great Fitzgerald's skills; dancers, you'd think, wouldn't stand a chance.

And yet Battle and River North's amazing Lauren Kias do just that. The score is a track called "Airmail Special," a scat amalgamating various songs, phrases and notes, and Kias echoes the vocals with an elaborate catalogue including spinning forearms, swoops, cartwheel-like exercises and one spectacular collapse to the floor. No single gesture or trope seems to last for more than a second, so that Kias is rapidly changing, just like Fitzgerald's vocals, few of the images repeated.

With a cagey sense of stagecraft and no small knack for design, Battle makes it possible by alternating the fast, dart-like echoes of the changing notes with slow, more languorous pauses and lilts, built-in retards to give Kias a chance to catch her breath. At one point, two male dancers, goofily attired, cross the rear of the stage, another reprieve for Kias and part of Battle's disarming use of humor to pull this off. Kias herself, while delivering a technical knockout, also manages a light, subdued rakishness, nothing cloying or overly solicitous, but an oh-what-the-heck air that serves both the dance and the spirit of the tribute to Fitzgerald.

"Three," Battle's new work for the troupe, somewhat takes up a similar mission in another direction. Here the music is a seamless mix of various percussive strains from the likes of Eleventh Hour, Art of Noise and Taiko Drums. The soundtrack is pounding, aggressive, like "Train," yet impish and delectable, too, an inviting serenade of techno-noise. The three men are mostly in two separate clusters--Michael Gross and Ricky Ruiz are paired, alternating with Christian Denice, who performs in solo. For all the sophistication, the movement both here and in "Ella" has a carefree, casual, pop and streetwise vocabulary--sass, hip-hop and even one miniature quote of the limbo in "Three" are part of Battle's arsenal. But it shifts so rapidly and so smoothly that the effect is more tour de force than eclectic list. Battle is also witty more than he's outright funny, which is a terrific strength. There's a guiding intelligence that make "Three" not just appealing, but audaciously clever. Almost off-handedly, the dancers find themselves standing on their heads. The tiny, embedded structures minutely ape and illustrate the pulses of the percussive score, whether it's a back and forth tug of war between Ruiz and Gross, or a mock superior strut from Denice. The finale is a carefully wrought bit of geometry whereby the united trio break up again: The Gross-Ruiz combo shoot Denice away, as if he's cannonball to their cannon.

Lauri Stallings' "Suppose" is a bit of a disappointment. Like Battle's "Three," it is redolent with offbeat, alien-like gestures set to a disturbing, other worldy score mixing Deadbeat and Gustavo Santaolalla. Some of the quirks and frenzied spasms for the seven dancers are interesting, as are some elements of the design and Stallings' shifting use of combinations. But "Suppose" somehow doesn't add up or come together, more a finely tuned exercise--or maybe a work in progress.

The engagement, which plays through Saturday at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph Dr. (312-334-7777), includes revivals of Sherry Zunker's "Evolution of a Dream," Monique Haley's "Uhuru" and Frank Chaves' "Tuscan Rift," "Sentir em Nos (Even for Us)" and "Forbidden Boundaries."

Koosil-ja/danceKUMIKO

"KOOSIL-JA/DANCEKUMIKO "BLOCKS OF CONTINUALITY/BODY, IMAGE AND ALGORITHM" "

 

By Laura Molzahn:

If you think the title is daunting, you should see the 75-minute work. Choreographer-director Koosil-ja has created an experience that challenges the ears, the eyes, the mind, and the heart. Her philosophical discussion of the project makes it no clearer; she says, for example, that she wants to "perceive body and movement algorithmically. I want to know about the body from a molecular level...and wash off all politics and stigma."

Problem is, a lot else gets washed off too. There's no doubting the seriousness and discipline of "Blocks of Continuality/Body, Image and Algorithm," running through Saturday, February 6, at the Dance Center of Columbia College. But Koosil-ja's whole enterprise---which involves the dancer "entering another body" through technological means so that she can become "free and pure" --- seems misguided. For me reality lies in the mess, in the individual, in the here and now, not in "underlying principles" or abstractions.

Here's what happens in a nutshell: In the first three-quarters of the piece, three dancers enact a series of solos, duets, and trios while watching banks of screens displaying still and moving images of the human body. These change regularly. Using a process Koosil-ja calls "live processing," the dancers copy and integrate the motions they see on the screens.

Meanwhile the four banks, one on each edge of the performing area, create a private domain for the performers, and the audience is outside, watching: voyeurs. Clearly Koosil-ja is evoking the overload of imagery and information that digital media enable --- "Blocks of Continuality" is like a six-ring circus. Straining to see the screen images, small and distant, I tried to connect them with the live dancers, then thought: why? But looking only at the dancers made me curious about their sources, and my eyes wandered back to the screens. It's the same restless search enacted every day as people struggle to wring every last bit of information from the Internet.

Koosil-ja's abstracting approach produces a denatured body language garnered from anonymous, culturally diverse sources presented in short visual bursts without syntax. Yet at its best it can evoke something, have some human character through Koosil-ja's direction or from the performances of mercurial dancers Melissa Guerrero, Ava Heller, and Elise Knudson. Despite Koosil-ja's aim to create "a new networked body made of real and virtual," for me they were always distinct. Dancers are a cooperative bunch, and watching them watch their screens, I found their intense concentration on the deluge of images intensely human and moving.

Most affecting is the final section of the first part. In a danced diminuendo, a soloist slowly reduces the scope of her movements until all we can see are tiny inflections of the body: slight shifts in weight, a wrist rotated, flicking eyes. She begins to mutter words keyed to her motions: "nod," "palm," "elbow," "move to the side," "hold the center." Her minimalism, perhaps the pared-down effect of mental exhaustion, sharply contrasts with the rapidly shifting excesses of the images onscreen. The music is quiet, a song without words by Koosil-ja and Geoff Gersh that blends with the dancer's muttering, creating a sense of peace and intimacy.

By contrast much of the rest of the score, by Koosil-ja and Geoff Matters, is at best electronic wallpaper and at worst, aural torture. Then, for the piece's final 15 or 20 minutes, the music is --- well, both amazing and monotonous. Gersh is hooked up to a device, designed and engineered by Stephan Moore, that uses brain waves to activate a sound installation: meditating in a chair downstage, Gersh produces alpha waves that translate into a two-note percussive phrase like a heartbeat at irregular intervals, interrupting the machine's loud buzzing.

The whole fleet of tech wizards involved in "Blocks of Continuality" is especially crucial to the second and final part. Each dancer is outfitted with sensors that use Wii technology to translate live movement to digital animations projected on large screens, one for each dancer. This finale is initially impressive, the images chilling in the nightmarish stories they seem to tell and in their eerie video-game movement, both familiarly human and skin-crawlingly alien. But the imagery, going on too long and evolving with excruciating slowness, comes to seem mere gimmickry while the live dancers, still moving to their video screens in the dark onstage, almost disappear. I hated to see them go.

By the end, Koosil-ja has literally made her dancers the "open conduit" for information she aims to achieve: they're processing human movement from the small screens and passing it on, through the sensors, to the big screens and the animated human beings. Sure, it's cool. But all the philosophizing in the world can't make me see a point beyond that.

 

The Dance COLEctive

"The Dance COLEctive "Meet Me There""

 

By Laura Molzahn:

Three generations of women come face-to-face in the Dance COLEctive's winter program, "Meet Me There,” continuing through Saturday, January 30, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. Most of the time these women are looking at themselves, not out of vanity but in the hope of self-discovery.

Artistic director Margi Cole has worked almost exclusively with female dancers since she started the company in 1996. And as a lecturer at the Dance Center of Columbia College, she must know a whole younger generation of mostly female dancers there. Meanwhile Cole’s mentor and former teacher, Shirley Mordine, has contributed a reconstruction of her 1974 “Three Women” to the program.

Cole occupies the middle ground between twentysomethings and sixtysomethings, and that queasy sense of being in-between permeates the new "IMe," which she created with Jeff Hancock. This thoughtful, well-structured dance for ten comes to no conclusions, instead wallowing in the slipperiness of identity and the easy entrapments of self-love masquerading as self-knowledge.

A response to self-definition in the digital age, "IMe" recognizes and even embraces the communities that spring up on sites like Facebook, where people --- especially young people --- assert themselves, express themselves, and in effect try out different roles. But some of the text in "IMe," written by Cole and Hancock, acknowledges the deceptive, confusing side of Internet communication, the potential to obscure identity, adopt false personas, and discover, to your horror, your doppelganger.

Like the Internet, "IMe" is a po-mo jumble. There's music, the sound of dripping or running water, voiceovers and texts delivered live, and above all, reflective surfaces: a tall Mylar "mirror" upstage, hand-held mirrors, mirrors sewn into costumes. A rectangular mirror being constructed from ragged bits of Mylar by a woman downstage also suggests a computer screen --- but the woman is seated on a classical-looking pedestal. In fact ancient mythology grabs more of the stage than the Internet: like Narcissus, the dancers avidly study their own reflections, even lying on their stomachs and smiling into small round mirrors like pools. One section suggests the way Echo stalked Narcissus by repeating his cries: in something like the Marco Polo pool game, a confused crowd of dancers rushes toward whichever person is calling out "I" or "me."

A subtle humor runs through "IMe" and disrupts the lingering threat of navel gazing. You can hear that comic edge in two letters, also referring to Narcissus and, in this case, his unrequited self-love: the first is adoring and addressed to "you," the second dismissive and addressed to "me." And you can see it in lighting designer Jacob Snodgrass's opening --- a portentous path of light to the upstage mirror --- and in the small, redundant photograph of each dancer printed on her T-shirt, courtesy of costume designer Atalee Judy.

In "Three Women," Mordine looks at female identity at three ages: the free child, the young woman discovering her sexuality, and the older woman. A reconstruction of the score includes unidentified voices and snatches of historic folk recordings, which give the piece a populist feel, a sense of well-worn, immutable archetypes. This 36-year-old trio feels both fresh and timeless, thanks in part to strong dancing by Cole, Molly Grimm-Leasure, and Maggie Koller.

The anxiety of "IMe," the sense of continual search for an anchor in a too-fluid world, is foreign to "Three Women." Instead these dancers have the solidity of sculpture --- though they're far from stolid. When they enter, arms around each other's backs, they're like children or beasts from a fairy tale, like the Wild Things in Maurice Sendak’s famous book. They enjoy the noise their feet make, slapping the ground with their full weight, and they clap their hands and snap their fingers to provide their own music. Solos at the end convey the different ages of woman, and the final one for the older woman (originally performed by Mordine and here by Cole) is by far the most powerful, a statement of potency and self-effacement, resignation and violent feeling.

In contrast to the other two pieces, Cole's world premiere octet, "Taking Hold," feels tenuous and unfinished. Though it has some of the evening's most intricate and emotionally laden interactions, they take place in isolated scenes without context or a sense of development. The piece originated with the idea of collecting, but except for a slight edge of obsessive acquisitiveness, you can’t tell that. There are seeds here, and good ones, but they need to be planted in more solid, fertile ground.

The Dance Center presents Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

"CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE OF TAIWAN "MOON WATER""

 

By Laura Molzahn:

The words used to describe the body-ankle, nape, forearm, small of the back-are like well-worn, much-loved stones to me. But even when combined with muscular verbs, they are completely inadequate to describe what the body does, how it moves not as a collection of parts but as an integrated whole.

Clambering over the disjunct between language and the moving body is something I attempt all the time. But "Moon Water," which Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan will reprise Saturday night at the Harris Theater, has left me in a sorry spot for a writer: nearly speechless. How to put clumsy words to this irreducible experience of the ineffable?

My husband fell asleep. Two or three times, he said. But for once that didn't make me mad. Ten years ago, watching a performance of Merce Cunningham's "Biped," I struggled to keep from dozing off. But when my eyes flew open â?? which fortunately they did at times-I felt not just awake but reborn, both tranquil and bedazzled by what I saw onstage. It seemed miraculous.

Cloud Gate artistic director Lin Hwai-Min is the Eastern version of Merce Cunningham. Like the West's dead darling, he articulates the body at every conceivable joint-and adds a few we havenâ??t heard of. But where Cunningham's choreography is all awkward angles, Lin debones his dancers, except for the rare cocked elbow or toe, like a trigger on the rifle of the leg.

And like Cunningham, I think, Lin aims for contemplation, even meditation, both for his dancers and for his watchers. Thatâ??s why sleep is no shame: It is meditation's sibling. It is an honorable response to such a work.

Lin bases the movement in tai chi and sets it to selections from Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello. These selections differ, but many of them sound like breathing as the bow moves back and forth over the strings. The sound moves the same way the body does in tai chi, with an ebb and flow that's unpredictable, intuitive, organic, responsive to the inner and outer worlds.

I can see how the 70-minute "Moon Water" might be perceived as monotonous, amorphous, but it has a strong structure, a skeleton that moves the piece from here to there almost imperceptibly, hidden under the slow transformations of the movement, the flesh. Each of its eight sections is devoted to a discrete piece of the Bach music and separated from the others by short periods of silence. Yet Lin also knits them together, with entrances that transgress on the previous section and exits that linger.

In general "Moon Water" expands and contracts but with a gradual enlargement of scope and interaction. Touching-or rather, not touching-is a motif. The second section, a male-female duet, creates the illusion of touching and suggests the impulse to touch, but it's not until a trio in the fifth section that any man lifts or moves a woman about the stage. And in the sixth section, a quartet for two couples, men and women purposefully wrap their fingers around each other's forearms or join hands. There are no embraces or caresses, but then "Moon Water" isn't about romance.

Three solos punctuate the piece. "Moon Water" opens with a powerful male solo-but not in the usual macho sense. Instead Tsai Ming-yuan uses his man's body to move like a woman, in undulating collapses like a ribbon falling to the floor in slow motion. The fourth section is a female solo, to me the most anomalous part of the piece. Chou Chang-ning is a surprisingly regal, almost confrontational presence â?? and she swims upstream, exiting quickly stage left when everyone else has exited stage right in a slow, relentless procession.

The third solo, the seventh section, was for me the evening's miracle. Set to the prelude of Bach's Suite No. 4, the most moving selection on the program, it isolates dancer Huang Pei-hua in a golden pool of light so bright that it bounces off parts of her body and slams into our eyes. The energy concentrated in her movement, the music, and the light fills this section with a drama foreign to the rest of the piece, especially when she slips out of the light and her face is in shadow.

The final section returns us to a quiet place, the quietest place in "Moon Water" despite the size of the scene, which includes 15 dancers, and the grandeur of the scenic design. Lighting designer Chang Tsan-tao paints every section with simultaneous subtlety and power, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary and back again. And set designer Austin Wang has created an environment of astounding beauty, especially in the last section, when multiple mirrors and dripping, splashing, and silent water unite clouds and pools, sky and earth.

 

Chicago Tap Theatre's

"Chicago Tap Theatre "Tidings of Tap""

 

By Laura Molzahn:

Spreading good cheer? Check. Bringing together folks of different ages and religious persuasions? Check. Doing it all so well that nobody minds the cold? Check.

Unfortunately, a busted heater at the U.I.C. Theater on Friday night meant that everyone at "Tidings of Tap!" was cold – but there was enough goodwill coursing through the place that I could ignore my chilly toes. Chicago Tap Theatre's G-rated, secular, inclusive annual holiday show, a mix of old and new pieces running through Sunday, works for tap-oholics and dance newbies alike.

Artistic director Mark Yonally, who choreographed most of the works on the program, has never been afraid to cross the line into loopy kitsch. At the same time, there's something tidy and cheerful and very midwestern (he's from Kansas) about his vision. Over the company's eight years he's become known for his tap operas: "Masque of the Red Death" was based on Edgar Allan Poe, "Little Dead Riding Hood" on the fairy tale, you get the idea. And "Tidings of Tap!" has some of the same innocent strangeness.

Yonally works hard to make this program of 14 short dances cohesive and entertaining. "Name That Tune" interludes between some of the numbers keep the energy high, as individual dancers tap out a cappella renditions of holiday songs, challenging the audience to recognize them (usually in just a few beats) and sing along (everyone else is doing it, so ... ).

These interludes also prepare the audience for Yonally's a cappella numbers for all 12 company members, "Hava Nagila" and "Carol of the Bells." In these flippant, fun, ingenious dances, the dancers sometimes pass the beat-out "notes" of the songs from one to another in short bursts of one or two taps apiece. They're like kids playing with each other and the music, varying their speed and volume - an approach that honors tap's traditional eccentricity, creativity, and humor.

Other works bounce even further off the wall. In Yonally's new "BeatCracker," dancers Richard Ashworth and Phil Brooks take over a mic and start beat-boxing music from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker," mixing in occasional samples of rap. Turns out the five dancers are considerably more inspired by the hip-hop beats than those chestnuts of ballet - though whatever the music, they just keep tapping. Yonally's odd duet "Baby, It's Cold Outside" could have been steamy given the song. But he makes himself a door-to-door salesman and the delicious Jennifer Pfaff a housewife more interested in his vacuum cleaner than romance. The jokey "Best.Gift.Ever" might be of interest only to Wii aficionados.

Yonally does best when movement is at least as important as concept. And he ends the show with a bang - a trifecta of energetic dances. "Ocho Kandelikas," set to a Ladino song celebrating Hannukah, intriguingly combines flamenco arms with tap-dancing feet. Three men perform the new "Hannukah, Oh Hannukah" in a fusion of tap and Cossack dance whose acrobatic jumping and stamping bring down the house. And "Carol of the Bells" is a visual and aural delight.

 Other numbers are quieter but not sad. In Yonally's brief new "Snowfall," eight dancers cleverly manage to suggest they're snowflakes swept by the wind. And in the solo "Christmas Time Is Here," Yonally reprises his "improvography" to the song (played live by guitarist Brian Citro) from "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Though Yonally has the same large, smooth, round head as the cartoon character, he's considerably less angst-ridden. The saddest thing about this dance is the prop: a very skinny Christmas tree.

Valerie Lussac's "Spyrographe" is similarly easygoing - the conceit is that the dancers are gently tossing Christmas tree ornaments. But it's hampered by its cheesy Cirque du Soleil musique for artistes.

Two pieces by company member Kendra Jorstad reveal a flair for comedy. First performed a year ago, "Jingle 'Belles" is danced to an a cappella swing-punk version of the song by the retro Puppini Sisters, whose super-speedy treatment Jorstad not only matches but exceeds. Her new "Stuck in the Airport" creates a whole comic scenario complete with a conflict, a resolution of sorts, and five different characters representing a spectrum of feelings about the holidays. It's amusing, but I could do with fewer comically exaggerated facial expressions, in this dance and others.

Guest artists InSync Dance Theatre repeat their "Winter Song" on Saturday night, and at the Sunday matinee, Footprints Tap Ensemble dances "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

Never preachy and rarely predictable, "Tidings of Tap!" doesn't provide the sentimental glow of self-approval that so many other holiday shows do. Nor does it trash the season or the human race for enjoying it. Instead it takes us on a mashed-up tour of holiday clichés, borne on the easy, breezy wings of tap-dancing.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Winter Series

"Hubbard Street Dance Chicago"

 

By Laura Molzahn:

Though Hubbard Street has never been all sweetness and light, Lou Conte did start the company off on a musical-theater foot-especially with his signature work, "The 40s." Even when Conte indulged his jones for Twyla Tharp's work in 1990 and brought in three of her early pieces, they showed that she's a hybrid: half Broadway showbiz whiz, half obstreperous modern dancer.

Nuances aside: over its 33 years, Hubbard Street has undergone substantial changes. (But fortunately not in the quality of the dancing, which remains superb.) That much was obvious on Thursday from the three repertory works in its winter series, running through Sunday at the Harris Theater. None is new, but all bear repeating. Notably, Glenn Edgerton-who replaced Jim Vincent as artistic director in August-chose to polish the saddest and most serious of the works Ohad Naharin has set on HSDC, "Tabula Rasa," which the company revisited with the Israeli choreographer on a trip to Israel earlier this year. No dance could be further from "The 40s."

First performed by Hubbard Street in 2005 and created nearly 20 years earlier, "Tabula Rasa" is even different from the often humorous or raucous "Minus 16," Naharin's best-known HSDC piece. Where "Minus 16" is a postmodern hash of vastly different vignettes, "Tabula Rasa"-also the title of the 1977 Arvo Part music-tests the limits of our patience with sameness. But both dances push the envelope of mystery, throwing out difficulties and extremes that the mind struggles to accommodate.

Part's music is crucial. Both sections are repetitive, but the first has a breathing rhythm while the second features constant high strings relieved-and dragged down-at infrequent intervals by a ripple and a very low, drawn-out note on a prepared piano. Naharin is a master at using repetitive music (like the repeated folk song of "Minus 16") to establish an emotional baseline, creating a combined dread and anticipation that underlines the performers' actions.

The most striking dancing of "Tabula Rasa" comes in the second half. Or rather, nondancing: it's as quiet as the music. One by one, each isolated and facing us in a slow-moving line, the dancers cross the stage by rocking from side to side on stiff legs, shifting their feet slightly with each shift of weight. After several aeons, one dancer near the end stops-and another bumps into him. And another bumps into her. The close of the piece is filled with triangulating interactions that are not necessarily love triangles. Instead they express a simultaneous urge to disrupt and reunite, to destroy comfort even as equilibrium is sought again.

Naharin manages to make the dancers look epic even when their movements are minimal. If "Tabula Rasa" is about romance, it makes love huge and tragic. Johan Inger's "Walking Mad," first performed by HSDC a year ago, is at the other end of the spectrum. Set to Ravel's "Bolero," it breaks love down to the lowest common denominator of adolescent madness, seen most clearly in a scene when the five men, decked out in dunce caps, form a girl-chasing pack.

Drawing on clown tricks and possibly Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks, "Walking Mad" makes human beings small and funny. But by equating madness with sexual passion, Inger sets up an intriguing world where it might just be better to be crazy than sane, the life of the party instead of a wallflower. In the piece's more thoughtful moments, the characters make "sane" choices that separate them from others and from life.

Internationally known Naharin and Inger give HSDC resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo some tough competition on this program. The impressive set piece of his "Off Screen," premiered last spring, is a huge length of sparkly, billowy cloth-a frame for the action that certainly suggests the glamour and transformative power of his subject, the movies. But it also nearly overwhelms the dancers and their movements. This time around, I felt I could barely see them. When they disappeared and a lush movie score took over the stage, I hardly missed them, though the music made the moment fraught and sad.

 

Step Afrika

"Step Afrika"

 

By Sid Smith:

In some respects, 20 years is really more than two decades in terms of Chicago dance survival: This was a city so supposedly hostile to troupes that reaching that milestone seemed elusive for almost everybody.

But River North Chicago Dance Company is now 20, and so is the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, the tireless endeavor that played a key role in the percussive dance renaissance of the 1990s. Founder Lane Alexander and his group may have performed at modest or off-the-track places over the years, but Alexander never thought small. His ambitions loom as large as his sunny optimism--he got Savion Glover to visit at the height of that tapper's stardom, just as an example.

The organization launched its 20th-anniversary season Thursday at the Harris Theater, an installment of its Global Rhythms enterprise and occasion for another round of Juba Awards, this time going to Alexander himself and Jam Productions co-founder Arny Granat--well-deserved kudos, to be sure. Meanwhile, the entertainment anchor of the various programs, playing through Saturday, is Step Afrika!, the Washington, D.C.-based company devoted to the art of stepping.

Founder C. Brian Williams runs a topnotch troupe wonderfully adept at this fraternity-sorority African-American tradition, an ensemble of fast, smooth stylists and musicians who take a fun-filled past time and turn it into art. The speed of their hands and feet, in maneuvers which involve both foot-stomping and variations on clapping, comes as no surprise. But the visual design and stage presentation are especially noteworthy. The troupe members ease effortlessly from one choral set-up to another, often mimicking ballet or modern dance in their lines, clusters and mini-kaleidoscopic patterns. In one especially beguiling bit, the group lines up from front to back and pound away with white wooden sticks, creating a sculptural image as well as a feast of percussion.

For my money, two stretches of the program weren't worthy. The comic dramatization of fraternity-sorority life seemed so-so, partly because it's difficult to hear the dialogue--the microphones set at the base of the stage are better at amplifying feet sounds than vocal ones, I guess. But the bit also seemed a tad conventional and silly, coming as it did amidst the delivery of an art so otherwise well-honed, sophisticated and original.

The segment involving audience participation didn't work as well as on some other percussive programs, either, a bit awkward and pro forma, somehow, maybe because we've seen so many other groups do something similar. Truth is, the performers in Step Afrika! command the stage so powerfully, they don't really need this bit.

The engagement features other guests, varying each night. Thursday included a delightful opening from the amazing youngsters with the South Shore Drill Team, who rank among the most exciting parade participants in Chicago you'll ever see. Thursday they proved they're equally impressive onstage, tossing their props and flags high into the air and catching them with phenomenal grace and precision, and offering a sweet salute to their home town that began with a smart soft shoe and other stylistics to Frank Sinatra and included a tip of the hat to Barack Obama.

The CHRP routinely brings in folks you've never heard of and then wonder why. Thursday was no exception. Jason Janas, a young man from Washington, D.C., who, despite wide ears and a slightly nerdy mien, is a firecracker in tap shoes, his lickety-split feet and intricate form matched by his unusually articulate and long-form phrasing--a joy to watch and hear.

It might be time to move the awards and speeches to the benefit portions of the gala, outside of the performance stretch. Thursday seemed long and sometimes slow because of them. True, they're an integral part of the respect for the art and reinvigoration of its educational value CHRP so rightly cherishes. But a lot has been achieved, and while there are miles to go, I'm sure the organization would remind me, the broader audience now being attracted may expect more straightforward entertainment, free of benefit-like ceremony. Oh, well, just a thought, and by no means a suggestion that the vast accomplishments by the CHRP in the past two decades should be minimized, ignored or go uncelebrated.

 

Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre

"Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre "12345""

 

By Laura Molzahn:

The pleasure of a repertory company like Same Planet Different World, which performs "12345" through Saturday, lies in discovering the worldviews of very differ