The annual Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival has become a staple in the fall calendar, presenting a wide variety of local and regional artists at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. The first of the festival’s two weekends of programs Sept. 16 and 17 introduced Harvest audiences to some new groups, and also brought some familiar faces back to the stage.
Harvest regulars RE|Dance and Giordano II bookended the evening's intermission, with the largest group pieces on the program. As apprentices of the unmistakable Giordano aesthetic, we’d expect a clean, crisp, powerful performance from Giordano II, and it was, opening act II with Joshua Blake Carter’s “Fracture.” RE|Dance offered excerpts from Lucy Vurusic Riner’s latest full-length, “What Brings Me to This Place.” Riner is the central figure, in magenta short shorts accompanied by the ensemble’s six women all in shades of black. The piece is inspired by the club scene - an homage to electronic music - and while it probably wants to be an act of liberation, the absence of facial expressions; muddy unisons; and group-think, thumpa thumpa dancing had the opposite effect.
Long time RE|Dancer Corinne Imberski presented a solo later in the evening, a silky-smooth, delicate and detail oriented ride in an entirely different dance vernacular from Riner's. Titled “This Is It: The Beginning,” I certainly hope Imberski means that, and we haven’t seen the last of her.
Duets were scattered about the evening, with groups from Michigan, NYC, Indiana, and California. Standing out from the lot was Shauna Davis, whose powerhouse duet with fellow Southern Methodist University alum Hattie Haggard (who is currently on the roster with Thodos Dance Chicago) was littered with just enough gesture and content to give breathing room to its serious technical dancing. Ball State University professor Susan Koper set “A Duet” on dancers Mollie Craun and Tyler Rine. Though less impactful than Davis due to its slow build, some gratifying moments take place in the piece, which is performed entirely right of center stage. Perhaps it was conscious choice, or perhaps Koper choreographs in a bowling alley – no matter, it’s interesting either way.
Returning to Chicago for a brief while, Jeremy Blair brought students from Western Michigan University, where the former Thodos Dance Chicago and Chicago Moving Company dancer is a full-time faculty member. The quartet (two seniors, a sophomore and a freshman) are dressed in genderless waistcoats and knickers, embodying the music of Beethoven. It’s a clean, contemporary, somewhat safe work for Blair, and the dancers didn’t seem to find the pulse of the piece until about halfway through. But what better way to build maturity and grow in performance than by coming to a place like Harvest?
Mordine & Company’s “Collisions” and Erin Kilmurray’s “Dive Baby Dive” capped the program by bringing a bit of weird to the Harvest table. Each opted for eccentric, mismatched costuming, which did little to enhance either piece. “Collisions,” set to a contemporary jazz score by Vijay Iyer, has all the makings of a Shirley Mordine piece: low centers of gravity, ripples of energy through the body; and complex, contact-improv based partnering. Kilmurray’s cast of fantastic performers: Ginny Cook, Maggie Koller, Cheryl Nowlin and Sarah Mitchell are misused in this case, flaunting heroin chic and rudimentary jazz dance moves when each is capable of so much more.
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Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival continues Sept. 23 and 24 with an entirely different program at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn. Show time is 8:00 pm; tickets are $18-25, available at the door or online at www.hccdf.com
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