River North's Valentine's Weekend Engagement

Celebrating 20 years this season, River North Chicago Dance Company returns to the Harris Theater for the annual Valentine’s Weekend Engagement, February 12-13. The program features three premieres by in-demand choreographers Robert Battle and Lauri Stallings, plus the return of audience and critic favorites from the sold-out fall engagement by Artistic Director Frank Chaves and Sherry Zunker. Battle’s Chicago premiere, “Ella,” which celebrates the scat vocals of Ella Fitzgerald, sets the perfect Valentine’s mood for this not-to-be-missed engagement.

Location

Harris Theater for Music and Dance

Address 205 E. Randolph St.

Phone # 312-334-2400

Dates / Times

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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."

Reviewed by Sid Smith on 02/13/2010 at 10:09 AM

Dance For Life

By Laura Molzahn:

Dance for Life has always been a hybrid beast-part high-energy bash, part earnest AIDS fund-raiser, part showcase for Chicago dancers and choreographers, who donate their time. At Saturday's sold-out 18th annual show, host Dean Richards brought the fun, prancing out in full disco regalia, including a shoulder-length wig and red sequined jumpsuit. Mark Ishaug, president of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, brought the passion in a speech branching out from supporting HIV/AIDS care to lobbying for general health care reform.

And the dancing? A little too much party, I'd say, and not quite enough professionalism.

Especially at the beginning of the evening. The curtains parted to reveal the Liberace-esque opening tableau of "It's Harrison," the new piece directed by Harrison McEldowney: two beautiful young men posed dramatically, draped in red circus silks flowing from the ceiling. (They reminded me of a postcard I got once, showing a handsome blond draped strategically in Grecian style and labeled "fashion victim.") Later oodles of dancers-I caught bharata natyam, flamenco, tap, ballet, ballroom, and Irish step-joined the two skilled aerial performers and jumbled together their chosen art forms, all set to the unlikely accompaniment of Neil Diamond's "Soolaimon."

At least host Richards got laughs. No one laughed at this Bollywood/Vegas extravaganza, which didn't seem to have much perspective on itself. Michael Jackson impersonator Enrico Hampton, who came on next and fell short of leggy grace, didn't help the opening mix.

Unfortunately, they set the stage for Same Planet Different World, a small company new to DFL who performed Shapiro & Smith's moving, subtle 1989 sextet, "To Have and to Hold." Time was when AIDS activists didn't shy away from death and grieving, but the new tack seems to be uplift. The company performed only an excerpt from the piece, and it chopped off the dance's devastating ending. Preceded by a section of leavetaking that suggests death, it slows the action: dancers lie beneath the three benches onstage, lightly touching and disturbing the "sleepers" on top. Without the ending, "To Have and to Hold" is an enjoyable but rather pointless exercise in soft, tumbling, wavelike choreography that obscures individual identity to create a constant flux of human relationship and interaction.

The Joffrey Ballet's contribution was a masked solo, "Aria," well danced by Matthew Adamczyk. The white mask is soon doffed, but Val Caniparoli's controlled, pretty choreography doesn't bring the "real" person behind it to life. Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago performed Jon Lehrer's upbeat, athletic "A Ritual Dynamic," which for regular dancegoers has been somewhat overexposed in the last year. This fourth performance was not the best I've seen-the work is most satisfying when the dancers hit precisely on the beats of the heavily percussive score. Fortunately the hopping from side to side, which resembles a whole fleet of downhill racers speeding toward us, was perfect.

After intermission, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's resonant "Jardi Tancat" ("Enclosed Garden") brought back the quiet, intense feeling of "To Have and to Hold." Created in 1983 by Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato and set to recorded folk music sung by Maria del Mar Bonet, "Jardi Tancat" surges with repressed passion. Bare wooden sticks set the limits of a barren plot, consign the six dancers to a corner of the stage, and define the worldview of those whose existence is bound by sky and earth. But not completely. The movement is sometimes literally back-breaking: shoulders hunch and the dancers bend at the waist, planting and harvesting. Then, just before the end, three duets turn loss and confinement into love, freedom, and joy. Unexpected low-flying turns and lifts follow the lines of the fluid, deep, yet somehow lighthearted singing.

Company member Monique Haley choreographed the entry by River North Chicago Dance Company-and this relative newcomer shows promise. Her "Uhuru," set to lively percussive music by Akoyo Afrobeat, is so hurried it makes you want to laugh; it registers as upbeat but without the least straining or pretension. Rat-a-tat sassy moves-twitchy hips, uh-huh chest motions, macho strutting with arms flying-come across as sexy but don't take themselves too seriously, while a male solo near the end is seriously sensual. And ends in the blink of an eye. Darn.

Randy Duncan's new "Let It Be" closed the program with a space-filling piece for 18 dancers from ten companies. I'm sorry to say that the pallid choreography couldn't stand up to the music, a gospel rendition of John Lennon's "Let It Be" that had, if anything, a tad too much emotion, wringing its metaphorical hands over certain lines. But it was undeniably powerful. Duncan's choreography, too often reminiscent of Alvin Ailey, simply flowed around its edges.

Reviewed by Laura Molzahn on 08/31/2009 at 10:56 AM

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