Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago presents Ovations
The critically acclaimed Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago will showcase their greatest hits in “OVATIONS,” GJDC’s Spring 2010 engagement.
The program will include
“Prey” (2003) by former Hubbard Street Dance Chicago member and Movin’ Out alum Ron DeJesus. Seven Dancers perform award-winning choreography to the heart pounding rhythms of the Kodo Drummers of Japan.
“Entropy” (2002) by former Joffery Ballet company principal Davis Robertson. A sensual and rhythmically complex work is performed by ensemble to the music of Astor Piazzolla and Dhol Foundation.
“Pyrokinesis” (2007). This award-winning work was created for GJDC by independent choreographer and former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancer Christopher Huggins. It showcases the unique and specific strengths of the individual company members.
...plus three additional selections from GJDC’s critically acclaimed repertoire to be announced.
Come see a spectacular night of dance infused with power, movement and explosive chemistry!
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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.
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.
