I remarked to a friend recently that Chicago’s smaller dance companies often have no choice but to go big or go home during their fall engagements. It’s almost always about time and money, which is a shame. The fact is there just isn’t enough cash out there to make life easy, and that means most engagements last for one weekend (occasionally stretching two), aiming to pack in a boatload of material just to make it worthwhile. It typically amounts to a year’s-worth of effort, all for company members who are likely working side jobs just to support their dance careers. In that sense, I can’t help but admire Elements Contemporary Ballet and Aerial Dance Chicago for what turned out to be a massive undertaking of bodies, acrobatics and a striking display of aerial skill in “AYA: An Aerial Ballet,” an evening-length work that debuted on Saturday at the Athenaeum Theatre (one more performance on Oct. 17), comprised of three acts plus two intermissions that clocked in at just under two and half hours. It was big. It was bold. It was … long.
“AYA,” a premiere work that expanded from a previous 2014 collaboration titled “Surge,” was colossal on all levels; twenty-six dancers total with sequences that forced the cast in and out of congested space at a moment’s notice. When everyone was onstage, it took every square inch of the stage to fit its members on the boards, a point of pride, it seemed, for the creators and the cast. And though my respect runs abundantly for these two companies, my gut tells me that “AYA,” for all its creative vision, was so overpowering that it’s denouement floundered under its own aspirations, spiraling into full- blown vertigo by final curtain.
Alluding to the Greek Goddess of the Dawn, “AYA” begins with our heroine floating high above in the heavens. Wearing red, she finds herself entranced by a male suitor below. The story centers on these two characters, as AYA makes her way to the mortals, both engaged and terrified by what she encounters. Joseph Caruana (Elements), Karen Fisher Doyle (Aerial Dance Chicago), Mike Gosney (Elements) and Chloe Jensen (Aerial Dance Chicago) tackle this story from the perspective of two charmed lovers (or adversaries?) amidst a supporting cast that hovers through the skies, skates the floors of the underworld with broom-like poles, and suspends from the rafters. All of it mixed with a collection of music that ranged from classical virtuosos like Arvo Part to the more pop-centric tunes of Coldplay. Hyperextended limbs, big battements, spry pirouettes: these were things akin to racecars with no breaks.
This isn’t to suggest that “AYA” is not worth our time. Truly, Elements and ADC are innovative, smart and entertaining companies. There was style, imagination, skill. My quip is to suggest that too much of a good thing was, in fact, too much, for as sky high as these players get, the repetition could be grueling. All this is to say that “AYA” is an adventure conjured from the minds of grand thinkers. Elements and Aerial Dance Chicago went big and didn’t hold back. Grueling or not, this massive work commands a good deal of respect.