SeeChicagoDance.com

Chicago Dancing Festival

By Zac Whittenburg:

It may only be in its third year, but the Chicago Dancing Festival has quickly risen to significance on the summer dance calendar. Wendy Whelan, the New York City Ballet principal recently f?ted in Vail with a gala celebrating her career, performed Thursday evening at the Harris in "After the Rain," a work by Christopher Wheeldon created in honor of her gifts. Over four free evenings, three of which I attended, the festival brought an impressive spread to the table and a survey of American dance as provocative as it was engaging.

Tuesday, a "New Voices" program presenting recent works by choreographers currently making national rounds was a seductive kickoff. Calling Robert Battle a new kid on the block may at this point be a stretch but his "Train" (2008), created for River North Chicago Dance Company, is nonetheless a work that feels fresh, lean and exciting, especially in the hands of dancers like Hanna Brictson, Clayton Cross and Monique Haley. Trey McIntyre can hit or miss but "Just," a willfully unusual quartet performed by Oregon Ballet Theatre, is better than much of his repertoire at communicating both his encyclopedic background and musician's ear. With nods to Balanchine black-and-whites and plotless MacMillan, this work finds McIntyre following clues scattered throughout a century of modern ballet into rich anterooms of his own creation; the accompanying suite of short pieces by Henry Cowell obviously sparked his imagination. "Ah! Crudel," a duet by Aszure Barton performed by her sister Cherice and James Gregg, had a simplicity and conviction the evening would have been monotonous without -- to a Handel aria sung by Ren?e Fleming, Barton and Gregg dipped toes into each other's personal space across and atop a plain black table. Witty and light but suggestive of psychological domination and sweet revenge, the scene's potential was teased out to maximum effect, blessedly minus a pat conclusion. Less successful was Jessica Lang's trivial "To Familiar Spaces in Dream," although Richmond Ballet's four men, strong and mutually aware, kept this overlong ballet and its gimmicks as alive as they could ever be.

"Modern Masters," Thursday at the Harris, brought the week its core moments. Whelan and Sebastien Marcovici danced "Rain" with unwavering focus; Whelan's legendarily-refined technique and inhuman facility was effectively concentrated upon the ballet's symbolic minimalism, however short of her talent Wheeldon's creativity falls. Another duet, from William Forsythe's "Slingerland" (2000), found its interpreters (Aspen Santa Fe Ballet's Katherine Eberle and Sam Chittenden) giving it in every way the performance it deserved. A portion of Gavin Bryars' first quartet for strings reaches an apex at which a single chord is drawn out to a raw scream and the dancers, writhing until this point in restless heat, slow for the pregnant tension of a simple promenade. Eberle (in a golden potato chip tutu) and Chittenden were both physically and psychically connected, their movements near-perfect in both execution and intent. Lar Lubovitch's relentlessly-casual men's trio "Little Rhapsodies," impeccably done by Jonathan E. Alsberry, Attila Joey Csiki and Jay Franke felt, for all its finesse of form, like a trifle. Lubovitch, co-founder with Franke of the festival itself, is a master craftsman, utilizing an array of compositional tools without leaning on any too heavily, but his vocabulary tends to look more repetitive than it actually is and the attitude is never far enough from blas? (a second work of his was slated for Saturday's program but was scrapped due to dancer injury). Local representatives Luna Negra Dance Theater and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago are entering their fall seasons in great shape; less so the Joffrey Ballet, who in Robbins' "In The Night" Thursday offered little above an appearance (Edwaard Liang's "Age of Innocence," faring better on Tuesday, seems to have been given priority).

Most will judge the festival by "Celebration of American Dance" at the Pritzker Pavilion, for although the Harris was packed both nights, those audiences combined don't approach the mass of fans that filled the amphitheater above Saturday evening. The night's purest and best dancing came from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell in Ailey's "Cry" and Cory Stearns of American Ballet Theatre who, in the pas de deux from Le Corsaire, was as understated and elegant as his partner Isabella Boylston (a last-minute replacement) was choppy and standard. Boylston and the women of Houston Ballet (dancing another Forsythe piece, 1996's "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude") share a common affliction: Noncommital port de bras sorely lacking structure and poetry. Forsythe dancer Noah Gelber has said the piece is about "reinstating every bit of expertise and differentiation in classical ballet that has been lost over the years -- all the niceties and eccentricities." Nothing in "Vertiginous" was beyond this quintet's skill level, but conceptually they missed the point.

Excitement and anticipation surrounded the Chicago Dancing Festival this year, and for good reason: Attendance shows interest, and this city is filled with people curious about and receptive to pure dance who now have an annual opportunity to take the industry's temperature and discover great work. That it's made free and accessible to all sweetens the deal immeasurably, and the program's inclusion of local venues' calendars is a kind, community-minded touch. Stage-filling collaborators from Chicago Human Rhythm Project and D.C.-based Step Afrika! gave a rousing, syncopated opening to the evening and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company performed Ulysses Dove's "Vespers" with sincerity and abandon. Show closers Les Ballets Grandiva, an all-male ballet troupe from New York, were an odd choice of finale -- I'm not sure their slapstick riff on Balanchine's "Stars and Stripes" is as effective for those unfamiliar with the 1958 ballet, but watching a man dressed as a drum majorette survive a few dozen fouett?s in front of the equivalent of a small town does induce a certain kind of patriotism.

Reviewed by Zac Whittenburg on 08/24/2009 at 10:30 AM