Kaitlin Webster hails from Chicago Dance Crash, and has been performing in various engagements since her arrival in Chicago a few years ago. Audience members packed in tightly last weekend to support the emerging Cornish grad in her first full-length concert of independent choreography. A cool loft above The Wormhole coffeehouse (just two doors down from Outerspace in Wicker Park) was converted into Hydra’s performance space, making for an intimate evening with a DIY feel. The namesake of the concert, Hydra, is a mythical monster with multiple heads, and in concert form, Hydra is a series of dances featuring various groupings of eight dancers in a raw and sometimes rough-around-the-edges performance. It’s a loose metaphor that gives Webster permission basically to do whatever she wants, under the guise of a dissociative serpent. Allegory aside, Hydra is Dance. Capital D. Webster’s movement is cut from the Chicago Dance Crash cloth: jazz and contemporary movement that’s a little bit funky, a little bit sexy, a little dramatic and a little bit weird. Though she opted out of performing in her work, anyone who’s witnessed Webster “Kill the Floor” with Crash would recognize Hydra.
Each segment of Hydra is quite different from the next, but all stay close to the theme through the use of recurring movement motifs. In the final image, all eight dancers queue from downstage to up, lit all in red, with a canon of undulations that appears on several occasions throughout the evening. While the reference to the monster is clear, the who and the why are deliberately kept from us. “We don’t have a program, because we don’t need them!” Webster said in her opening announcement. So, the dances all run together like a one act (with a 15 minute break in the middle) and audience is given permission to sit back, relax, and not worry so much about applying deep meaning to everything. In the lighter moments, such as a pair of sarcastic contemporary trios set to Fleetwood Mac, that’s refreshing to know.
Hydra is unrelenting in its demand on the dancers; they high kick and pirouette and launch toward the floor despite its hard and unforgiving nature. Knees and toes bloodied, dancers colliding, costumes tangled and dirtied with red lipstick, and yet all remained un-phased. The audience mirrored this level of commitment. There was an energy about the room that can only be felt when something happens for the first time, and if Hydra is indicative of what’s to come, Webster could be on to something. The question now, is whether she can sustain the momentum. It’s easy to get people to come to your first concert. The challenge is getting them to come to the second, and third, and thirty-third. Kaitlin Webster has a long journey ahead of her, but it’s bound to be an exciting one to watch.