Lou Conte Dance Studio is celebrating Tax Day by offering all classes on Tuesday, April 17th at a “pay-what-you-can” rate. Sweet. A suggested donation of $5 helps cover working costs.
That day the studio offers classes in ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, Pilates, Zumba and yoga. Tuesday’s schedule is here. (I highly recommend Birute’s Intermediate/Advanced Ballet at 1:45. She is awesome!)
For more information call 312.850.9766
BONEdanse. Photo by Chrystyne.com.
Under the muscle and punk rock exterior, Atalee Judy is a true beauty. Piercing pale blue eyes, refreshing honesty and self-awareness tinted with humor are what you get one-on-one. She’s fierce, cool and definitely one-of-a-kind. Her background is as interesting as her look. Judy grew up on a horse ranch in Mansfield, Texas. After her father died when she was 12, she ran away to New York and lived with three punk bands, serving as a techie and housekeeper. Her uncle, a rich Republican that lived in the Chicago suburbs adopted her and she ended up in an all-girl Catholic high school which happened to have a terrific dance program. “I was on the basketball team…and the basketball coach was inspired by the football players taking ballet and dance to get better coordination. We got thrown into dance class and I pitched a fit about not wanting to wear pink tights. I didn’t want to take ballet, so she put me in this modern dance class. I insisted on wearing my basketball jersey. I was such a fucking tomboy. I fell in love. From that point on, I was doing talent shows. The nuns loved me. I had the shaved head, Sinead O’Connor look with my combat boots and little Catholic girl uniform.” A brief stint as a bio chem major led her to realize that dance was her passion.
As Artistic Director of BONEdanse, the new incarnation of her brainchild Breakbone Dance Co, which she started in 1997 after graduating from Columbia College’s dance program, she’s tackled social and political issues with tenacity and creativity. She’s also codified her own technique – the Bodyslam Technique – that she teaches in the Chicago area dance scene. “At Columbia, I realized that this whole falling stuff that I’d been working on was very interesting to them, but also confusing,” Judy says over coffee and some very hot tea. “They didn’t know what to do with me. When given a choice to improvise, instead of using classical technique stuff which I didn’t have an interest or want to do, I’d be doing prat falls and things I thought were exciting or energetic.”
For This is a DAMAGE MANUAL, four dancers (including Judy) and a sock puppet named Earl take the stage for a two-week run at Theater Wit starting Thursday. The evening-length work takes its cues from 1950s self-help records mixed with some 80s themes and a little psycho-analysis and self-reflection. Characters (a stressed out housewife, a dysfunctional ballerina, a Hitler-esque figure with a cold that under hypnosis becomes an Elvis impersonator) born out of last summer’s 12-week video project Danse Skitz are brought to life in problematic glory while trying to “fix” their damage via hypnosis and outdated advice. I sat down with Judy in mid-January to talk about the show.
From punk bands to dance, it seems an unlikely transition.
I was choreographing early on. It felt like something that I needed to get out. I’m a doer. I’d just do, not knowing what I was doing. When I was a kid, I would sketch the horses an try to make them move as opposed to static pictures. I was always watching them, how graceful and gorgeous they are. When you’re up on a balcony and looking down on a mosh pit, that kinetic energy going on and the whirlpool that happens…I’ve always wanted to bring that to the stage. I want a mosh pit on stage. I’ve always said there’s a lot of fall and recovery in the mosh pit. You really have to know where your weight is or else you’re going down to the ground and get a boot in your face.
Why the name change?
A lot of cumulative things. Some are kind of trivial, some are deeper, but I really feel personally trapped when I get categorized too much or defined…even when I feel obligated to be something that I don’t want to be or I’m not all the time. I think Breakbone started defining itself and me as this one thing and that’s all I did. I wanted to fold and just create something else that had a little more leeway and a little more play with it to where I could do anything I want, so I wouldn’t be defined by it. Oh, she falls a lot. I didn’t want to be the one-trick pony. It started getting to get to where I was demanding this of all my dancers. A lot of dancers don’t think they are athletes. I couldn’t keep working on the psychology of their issues. Either you’re an athlete and you believe it and you go to the gym and work out and build your muscles or you atrophy. It’s not enough just to do the movement. I was projecting a lot of my values onto them and I hate when people do that. I dwindled it down to people I really wanted to work with, because they offered different skill sets. And the other thing is the trust issue, making sure that I trusted their skill sets to be more collaborative. I used to come in with all the movement, all the concepts, all the answers – not in a control freak way, well they may have thought it was – they wanted to be fed and I would have all the answers for them. They just had to implement. Things have changed the trajectory. It feels more open, a little bit freer…less defining. One of the other elements is I feel like I said everything I wanted to say with Breakbone. We had a lot of social issues, political stuff that was very ragey, some controversial. I’m not going to top any of that. I think I’m done talking about that. The new trajectory it’s getting into a more psychological level of evaluating my own issues as well as things that I’m sharing with the company right now. It’s deeper versus reactionary.
Tell me about DAMAGE MANUAL.
I don’t know what I’m sitting on with this show. There’s a solo I do that’s so fucked up that I don’t even know if it’s funny. It’s just wrong. The whole show has a mash up feel. I saw Jyl Fehrenkamp perform this solo once for a show with Winifred Haun and it blew me away. It was about Women’s Stress Disorder. When we were working on this show, that idea kept coming up. I commissioned that from her. We’ve been working on a ten-minute chunk from last spring that we did it for the Other Dance Festival. My partner Karl has an old collection of self-help records from the 50s. Oh my, are they creepy. The records have all the glitches and skips. Somehow the 80s was coming in so I just went with it. There’s a therapist’s office, a ballet studio, a bathing suit section with a Crisco can, bathing caps and tanning bed goggles, a bullet bra…a mash up.
WHAT’S YOUR DAMAGE?
BONEdanse presents This is a DAMAGE MANUAL, Feb 2-5 & Feb 9-12, Thurs-Sat at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm
Theater Wit, 1229 W Blemont, 773.975.8150, $15-$24
MCDC dancers Rashaun Mitchell & Andrea Webber in "Antic Meet". Photo by Yi-Chun Wu.
This weekend, Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) comes to Chicago. The two shows, co-presented by the Dance Center at Columbia College and the Harris Theater, mark the second to last stop on the company’s two-year Legacy Tour performing works from Cunningham’s 70-year career. Bonnie Brooks, former chair and current faculty member (on sabbatical) at Columbia College’s Dance Department, has been traveling with the company and will be documenting the company’s experience for the Legacy Plan. Her background and extensive knowledge of his work make her the perfect person for the job. I spoke with Brooks via phone last week about the tour, his legacy and the upcoming performances.
How did you get involved with the Legacy Tour?
I have a long history with Merce and the company. I first met Merce in the 1980s when I was working with the National Endowment for the Arts. I’ve kept up with the company in various ways over the years. When I came to Chicago and we began to present them, that sort of furthered the relationship and I started writing and lecturing on Merce’s work and they started inviting me to go to different engagements with them and do pre-performance talks, interview Merce, help out with various things. After Merce died (2009) and they determined they were going to go on the Legacy Tour, they realized part of what they needed to do was document it, document the whole story of the Legacy Plan. They felt that because of my history with the company, my friendship with Merce and something of the distance that I had because I wasn’t immediately employed by the company, that I would be a good choice to do that. So they invited me to join.
Is this directly related to why you took a sabbatical? Did you take time off so you could be on the tour?
No. Actually, that was another piece of the story that was one of those marvelous coincidences in life. I made the decision in 2008 when I renewed my contract to chair the dept at the Dance Center, that was going to be my final three years as chair. At that time Merce was still living and there was no influence at all between my decision and what has happened. Since then, the college decided to give me a year-long sabbatical when I stepped down and that very neatly coincided with when the company wanted me to start traveling with them on a regular basis. It’s one of those wonderful accidents.
What exactly are you doing on the tour?
It varies from engagement to engagement. Sometimes they ask me to pre or post-performance talks or introduce open rehearsals, things like that. Sometimes I’m just there to observe what’s happening. I’ve taken pictures. It really depends on what the presenter has asked, what residency activities have been put together. One of the things that has happened as a result of me traveling with them, which I think was an intention on their part, it has given me a chance to get the perspective of many, many people on the Legacy Tour, the Legacy Plan, the kind of radical decision the company has made to close its doors…that’s given me a lot to work with in terms of what I’ll be writing after the tour.
Were you instrumental in getting them here?
Yes. When I was chair of the department, I was very actively involved with the program. We had negotiated that they would come two years ago. We negotiated it before Merce died that they would come and do events at our theater, previous to that we’d always presented them at the Harris Theater…and then Merce died. They began to book the Legacy Tour and I said we have to bring them back one more time. We were going to have them in November, but decided to have them in the second part of the tour, which is wonderful because they’re very near the end of the almost 40-city, two-year tour.
Now that it’s so close the end of the tour, are people getting more emotional?
Yes. It’s becoming much more real to everyone now that we’re close to the end. I think the place that hit us the most vividly was in London. We were in London about a month ago and the final night, I think everybody in the entire theater – in the audience and on stage – was in tears. We realized this was the last appearance in a city that historically has been very hospitable to Merce’s work. The audience was on its feet shouting “thank you!” It just really hit us that we wouldn’t be back again, at least not as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The thing that’s been so profound about this is realizing that this is the final generation of dancers that Merce trained and chose himself. These are the people, in my opinion, that are finishing his long, artistic project. There’s such a poignancy and a beauty to that and I think in London we realized, we’re beyond seeing the work, this is now really the goodbyes.
Since you’re so familiar with his work, can you tell me about the pieces that are going to be presented here in Chicago?
Friday night, we’re doing a repertory evening…a piece called “Squaregame”, “Quartet”, which has five people in it, and then “Antic Meet”, which is a piece from 1958 that Merce made. “Squaregame” is a very playful piece. There are beautiful sections, but it’s almost like you’re on a playground with mischievous children in terms of the fun that occurs and there are big duffel bags on the stage that they throw around and hide behind. It’s really a delightful piece. Then you go to a completely different end of the spectrum with “Quartet”, which is kind of dark and moody. There’s a male part in it that Merce danced originally and two other males and two females. You’re watching the interaction between this group of dancers and this individual character. It’s very lyrical, but in a very dark way, but it’s beautiful. It’s easy, because of the complexities of Merce’s work, its easy to lose the fact that there is enormous beauty in it. And this is one of his more beautiful pieces, in my opinion. The last piece on the rep is “Antic Meet”, sort of a spoof. In it’s eight different sections. There’s a central character. It’s an anomaly in Merce’s body of work in some ways because there is some acting involved. There are references to Vaudeville, to every day life, to tap, to ballet…there are fairly clear references to his period with Martha Graham.
The second evening is one of my very favorites of Merce’s piece. It’s called Roaratorio. It’s an hour-long work that was originally envisioned by John Cage. Cage created a soundscape that was an homage to James Joyce and his final works…Finnigan’s Wake. One of the things Cage did was go to Ireland and sample sounds from places that were referenced in Finnigan’s Wake. So this was a rare occasion where the sound information pre-dated everything else. John had hoped Merce would eventually make some kind of dance using the score. For several years, Merce didn’t think that was possible. He has built in a number of what appear to be Irish jigs. There are a lot of relational information in it, couples and groups relating to one another. He described one as a group or family traveling from one place to another, which is what they do if you watch the full arc of the piece. I think it’s the best example of Merce’s sheer love for dancing. It ‘s a joy to watch from start to finish.
In your mind, what is it or was it about Merce and his work that made him such an icon?
I think that Merce represents and, in fact, literally is the single most turning point in 20th century modern dance. Merce took a lot of the existing conventions that were handed to him in both the modern and ballet world…and because of the combination of existing things that he did, he stayed in modern dance, he stayed in a concert dance format, he put together an ensemble of dancers, he trained them and he worked with them consistently for many decades…those are all sort of conventions. In terms of the content of the work itself, he just broke so many rules. He advanced narratives, he separated the dance from the music, he choreographed in silence, he and John (Cage) created this whole new approach to put dance, music and visual information together in a performance context. He just did so much that was inconoclastic. He turned the use of space on its head. He created an egalitarian circumstance for dancers instead of a hierarchy of some kind where there were special people and less special people and the back up people. The list goes on and on. The bottom line is that Merce set a whole new direction of what was possible. It was through him and the gateway of his work that the whole postmodern movement came through. If there hadn’t been a Merce, I don’t know what postmoderism in dance would’ve been. He opened a whole new direction for dance.
Merce Cunningham Dance Company – The Legacy Tour
November 18 & 19, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312.334.7777
Tickets start at $25
It’s seems our beloved Mayor Emanuel has been busy showing his love for dance. On the heels of declaring this past Monday Bill Kurtis & Donna La Pietra Day for their contributions to the city’s arts and non-profit scene, he comes out with another proclamation making Friday, November 18, 2011 MERCE CUNNINGHAM DAY in Chicago!
This is to coincide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company who will be in town November 18 and 19 performing at the Harris Theater (co-presented by the Dance Center at Columbia College) on the second to last stop on their Legacy Tour which kicked off two years ago.
The cast of "The Better Half". Photo by Cheryl Mann.
Tonight at the MCA Stage, Lucky Plush Productions (LPP) opens a two weekend run of its new production The Better Half. A 75-minute collaboration between LLP Artistic Director Julia Rhoads and physical theater troupe 500 Clown Co-Founder Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, this new work puts a modern, interactive twist on the psychological thriller Gaslight (1944 movie based on the Patrick Hamilton play Angel Street) where a husband tries to make his wife believe she’s losing her mind. The Better Half incorporates characters, text, lighting (Heather Gilbert) and sound (Mikhail Fiksel) cues and a heave dose of reality to keep the story evolving in real time on stage. Add in costumes by Jeff Hancock and you have the setting for a fun, creative collaboration living inside a live, artistic whodunit?
I spoke with Rhoads earlier this week about her process and the new work.
I’m embarrassed to say, I think the last thing I saw Lucky Plush perform was Lulu Sleeps (2005). (*Side note: After viewing the repertoire on LPP’s website, I’m happy to say I have seen most of the recent work, although I did miss last year’s hit Punk Yankees.) Back then, you were incorporating theatrical elements, but recently you seem to be adding even more theatrics and humor. Is that a different direction you’ve taken over the years, or is it just because I’ve missed some of your work?
I think it’s both. One of our first works has been our longest standing work which we’ve done over and over is Endplay (2003). That work has a (Samuel) Beckett play inside of it and is very much about human relationships and about the performers on stage and how they’re interacting and negotiating with each other. I think that piece had a real liveliness to it that I’m interested in now in my work. One thing that was a big game-changer for me was Cinderbox 18 (2007). It just was kind of a magical process. That was a process in which I started to think more about the liveness, the immediacy of being in performance and having the performers be in a state of response to each other, so it’s less like every move and detail is set and choreographed…there was a real openness. I did this thing back then where I’d write a little note down for each of them some unknown element that they had to accomplish during the run. Some of them ended up being in the show in a fantastic way and some of them miserably failed, but the best thing is it wasn’t really meant to find new things to add to the show, it was just a bonus if something really landed. What it did was put the performers in a constant state of presence because they had no idea what the changes were going to be and what someone might do to change the game. Even though the sections and the structure and the movement was set, there were things that would happen that they would have to deal with and respond in a very real-time way. It was just such an exciting process for me. Since 2007, and really going back to Endplay, I really want the audience to feel like they are knowing the performer, that it was really about the people and not just the dancers being sort of a non-subjective entity.
This process in The Better Half is even going more in that direction. Accessibility is really important. I think it’s sometimes perceived as a dirty word. I think accessibility is great. You can be incredibly intelligent and accessible. It doesn’t mean you’re diluting the content, it just means you’re allowing the audience to enter into it and to maybe laugh or maybe feel like they’re included. This process has moved more into the dialogue…it’s more narrative. The dialogue is in service to character development. Narrative, at the same time, we’re doing something very familiar to LPP’s body of work. We’re also the performers that arrive at the MCA when we start. We all show up and we get a name of a character. We get character descriptions. We hear this vague synopsis of a play. My character, Mrs. Manningham hears that another person is called Mr. Manningham, so really all we know is presumably, we’re married, so we start to negotiate having a relationship in real time. Things start to happen. There’s kind of a loop structure, like reset button, but each time, the consequences change…grows more into the Gaslight story. The way we hope the work is going to land is kind of fun look at contemporary domestic relationships. It’s about the five of us being in the space together and negotiating roles that we’ve taken on or that have been imposed on us…how we grow into them. The loop structure is about routinization that happens in relationships, sometimes how we bring our habits and our role to a relationship and then it’s like that forever. You can recast yourself in a relationship, but it’s going to take a lot of work. The piece wants to speak to all of those things, how you want to jump script sometimes and how you find the resilience within a marriage or a domestic relationship. It’s fun and it’s funny and it has all of those elements, but it also lands with a real resonance about the question of can two people spend their lives together?
When the characters are getting the descriptions, is someone on stage telling them? How is that interacting happening?
In the beginning we’re sort of being directed by light. Light plays a really important role, light and sound, and we’re directed to a place on stage and one of the characters is directed to a place in the audience where there’s a podium with a binder that has the Gaslight synopsis. He’s privy to information that he’s one of us too. It says there’s another character and he gives himself the role of detective. He comes into the story and is in it for the remaining…being with us on stage as new narratives are proposed. There are about five or six scripts that we’re sort of navigating through. There are real time consequences for introducing those scripts and being inside of them and how it ultimately lands back in this central marriage.
How did the collaboration with Leslie come about? Have you worked together before?
We’ve known each other for a while. The thing that really drew us to each other is that she’s also interested in the immediacy of presence with the audience and having a real time experience. She’s also interested in humor. We’re a really good fit for each other. She came in during Cinderbox 18. I asked her to come in to give feedback to the process. I liked her language and I was really excited by her point of view. She had seen my work and I think she felt the same way. She’s really drawn to physicality. Her work is physical theater and she’s really drawn to dance and physical vocabulary as a way to move a story forward. We started talking about doing something together a couple of years ago. We’re both really excited about this work.
Lucky Plush Productions’ The Better Half, Oct 27-29 & Nov 3, 5, 6
MCA Stage, 220 E. Chicago, 312.397.4010
Post modern guru David Gordon has a way with words. He uses them as a structure, a starting point, an inspiration and then turns them into a complex living creative act right before your eyes on the stage. So it is with his Pick Up Performance Co(s)‘ presentation of Dancing Henry Five this weekend at The Dance Center of Columbia College. This 2004 revival is part theater, part performance art, part dance, part music collage. A deconstructed take on Shakespeare’s Henry V, it not only entertains, but offers a commentary on war that still resonates today.
The program calls it a “reduction” of Shakespeare’s work. Once in the theater, the stage shows what Gordon has reduced it down to – the bare necessities. Everything for the performance is on the stage in plain view. No wings, props strewn about the stage and performers standing around the edges waiting. Costumes of colorful, but faded rugby shirts with shorts suggest uniforms of a different kind of battle, rather than the 1415 Battle of Agincourt that they are about to partially recreate. The performers walk around the stage carrying signs with pertinent information (title, names, please turn off cell phones) passing by like the opening credits of a movie. Valda Setterfield (Gordon’s wife and former dancer with Merce Cunningham) acts as narrator and chorus moving the action along and adding sly, sometimes biting commentary – Gordon’s, not her own, she states – as well as joining in the dance. At 77, she’s still a dynamic performer with impeccable timing. (Go on with your bad self, Valda!)
Dancing Henry Five incorporates spoken word along with audio excerpts from the stage and movie versions of Henry V with musical interjections of William Walton’s score from the film. The first Shakespeare quote heard is “a kingdom for a stage” and Gordon transforms this stage into a kingdom, ocean and battlefield. At times funny, poignant, sad and moving, the one-hour production is a creative, quirky take on a classic historical poem. Shakespeare through the looking glass. Seven dancers make the action happen, most notable former American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet star Robert La Fosse. His trademark mole on his left cheek is barely visible through his make up, but watching him do a low quick jeté shows the technique, if not the flexibility, is still there.
As the plot takes us to war against the French, one can’t help but be reminded of more current events. “War takes minds off deficits”, says the narrator. Indeed. Originally choreographed in 2004, a year after we began the war in Iraq, the words bring a poignant pause to the audience. A quilt carried across the “water” includes an American flag, even though Columbus wouldn’t discover America for another 77 years. One image that sticks is dancers standing on sheets of material being slowly pulled across the stage like ships.
There is one performance left of this interesting post modern take on Shakespeare’s play. Tickets are still available.
Pick Up Performance Co(s) – Dancing Henry Five
The Dance Center at Columbia College, 1306 S, Michigan, 312.369.8330
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in "Uneven". Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.
Tonight was the Chicago Dancing Festival‘s (CDF) Moderns program at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. The packed house was ready for a great show and CDF didn’t disappoint. Opening with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet‘s commissioned work by Spanish choreographer Cayetano Soto Uneven (2010) set the bar high. There was nothing uneven about it. The local audience (and Hubbard St fans) might have noticed some hints of Nacho Duato, Ohad Naharin and Jirí Kylían in this work, as Soto performed some of their works as a dancer. It obviously had a very contemporary European flavor and the ASFB dancers were on top of their game tonight (although it looked like the floor was slippery) as cellist Kimberly Patterson played live on stage.
River North Dance Chicago followed up with Charles Moulton’s Nine Person Precision Ball Passing (1980). I sat in on rehearsals last week after the company spent two days learning it. This speedy coordination game drew giggles and then awe as the dancers kept the balls in sequence for the seven-minute duration. The program notes call it “community art in the form of a living Rubik’s Cube” and that mistakes are inevitable. Leave it to the perfectionists at Rivno to not make a mistake. Doug Varone and Dancers finished up the first act with Varone’s Lux (2006). I really enjoyed this piece. I hadn’t seen Varone’s work or company before and wasn’t sure what to expect. When the announcer said it was set to the music of Philip Glass, the two ladies next to me said, “oh”. I’m not sure if it was meant to be good or bad, but it turned out (for me) to be good. The dancers’ movement quality was luscious and it just looked like it would be fun to dance. With a slowly rising moon on the back drop center stage, it was like a midnight frolic in the moonlight.
Adam Barruch in "Worst Pies in London". Photo by Christopher Duggan.
Adam Barruch‘s solo Worst Pies in London (2008) opened the second act. Set to music of the same name from Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, this was really duet between Barruch and Angela Lansbury singing the vocals on track. Short, sweet and funny, Barruch looked like a young Jim Carrey with rubbery facial expressions and the flexible body to match. Closing the show was Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (HSDC) performing Sharon Eyal’s Too Beaucoup (2011). This was one of my favorite works from their last season. Androgynously clad in flesh-toned body suits with white make up, wigs and contacts, the dancers look like a group of aliens that stumbled upon a mixed cd from earth and decided to have a dance party. Weird, kooky, cool. A fun, entertaining evening. The appreciative audience agreed.
Joffrey Ballet's Victoria Jaiani & Temur Suluashvili in White Swan pas. Photo by Cheryl Mann.
Last night was the opening night gala kicking off the fifth year of the Chicago Dancing Festival (CDF). A short 5-piece program on the MCA Stage was followed by cocktails, a buffet with three ballroom dance couples interspersed upstairs at Puck’s Restaurant and outside on the terrace. The $250-a-head evening was co-chaired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who stayed to mingle after the show along with his wife and daughter. A few short speeches preceded the performance. MCA Director of Performance Programs Peter Taub opened the fest saying, “We are here to celebrate the best of dance from across the country”. CDF co-founder Jay Franke gave some impressive stats including that in the past five years the festival has presented over 35 companies and over 400 dancers and proudly announced that this year CDF sold out approximately 10,000 seats for this week’s performances. Franke turned over the mic to Mayor Emanuel, who celebrated his 100th day in office by attending the gala. The Mayor, a former dancer and huge fan, declared that he wants to double the size of the fest and make sure Chicago is the dance destination for the entire country. He added there are 19 companies performing this week to an estimated 19,000 audience members. Co-founder Lar Lubovitch said, “One cannot describe dance in words, no matter how eloquent,” but then went on to read the most eloquent essay (written by him) on duets, five of which we were about to see.
HSDC's Penny Saunders & Alejandro Cerrudo in Following the Subtle Current Upstream. Photo by Cheryl Mann.
The program of duets featured choreography from 1895 to present and while they represented divergent styles, there was a through-line of choreographic evolution. A pristine classical white ballet to a fluid neoclassical ballet with a contemporary twist. An emotive classic modern offering to a postmodern minimal feat. Then an avant garde performance art work that evoked musical and choreographic themes from the first duet. A mini-history of dance in 60 minutes or less…sort of. Joffrey Ballet‘s husband and wife team, Victoria Jaiani and Temur Suluashvili began with Lev Ivanov’s traditional White Swan pas (1895) from Swan Lake. On a small, bare stage it is difficult to bring the audience into the magical place that is needed for the dance, but what it lacked in mood and setting was made up for by technique. Jaiani’s extraordinary extensions and limberness were on full display. (I’m fairly certain her back is made of a flexible pipe cleaner.) Just as they disappeared into the wings, Hubbard Street‘s (HSDC) Penny Saunders and Alejandro Cerrudo oozed onto the stage in an excerpt from Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream (2000). While similar to the previous pas in technique, flexibility and master partnering (and similar promenades in penché), this duet was the opposite in feel. Fluid, continuous and rich.
Martha Graham's Xiaochuan Xie & Tadej Brdnik in "Snow on the Mesa". Photo by Cheryl Mann.
An excerpt from *Robert Wilson‘s Snow on the Mesa (1995) brought a display of control and drama with Martha Graham Dance Company dancers Xiaochuan Xie and Tadej Brdnik’s gorgeous interpretation. Strong, yet delicate with minimal, but heartbreaking gestures, I found myself holding my breath through the piece. The all white costuming and loving touches again reminded me of the first duet. Brian Brooks Moving Company changed things up with a male duet titled MOTOR (2010). Clad only in black briefs, Brooks and David Scarantino embarked on a thigh-killing, synchronized chugging spree. Set to a driving beat with ominous overtones, MOTOR had the men hopping, jumping and chugging, foward, backward, in changing formations around the stage. It was an exercise in stamina and focus. There were more than a few moments, however, that took me back to the swan theme. Precise chugs in attitude devánt (four cignets) and chugs in fondue arabesque (white swan corps). A stripped down off-kilter Swan Lake.
The final piece Compression Piece (Swan Lake) was a commission by Walter Dundervill , created specifically for CDF this year. If the previous piece was off-kilter, this was Swan Lake on crack! Dundervill (who Lubovitch said could be ” a lunatic”), along with partner Jennifer Kjos, creates a white landscape of distorted beauty in his choreography (warped fouetté turns and bourré sequences), sets (a fabric installation that serves as back drop and eventually part of the choreography) and costumes (interchangeable pieces – they changed on and off stage – layered from baroque to bridal). The soundscape featured swan riffs from Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns, but funked it up with Diana Ross and Sonic Youth. This world premiere proved that the black swan has nothing on the white swan when it comes to crazy (in a good way).
Maybe I have Swan Lake on the brain (a strain of avian flu?), but I caught a definite thread of similarity in the pieces. As if all of the works were distilled from choreography from 120 years ago and ended up being all of these unique moments on stage…and maybe they were. Example: Look at the photos on this page. From very different styles and eras, yet all are an interpretation of a standard supported arabesque. Technical issues prevented Faye Driscoll from performing on the program as scheduled, but I’m looking forward to seeing it later in the week at the MCA Moves program to see how it would’ve fit into this program. As it was presented last evening, it was a testament to the brilliant artistic direction of Lubovitch and Franke.
*This has been updated. I originally had the piece choreographed by Martha Graham. Oops!
RNDC dancer Cassandra Porter. Photography by Sandro.
Today I sat in on a rehearsal with River North Dance Chicago (RNDC) to watch them prep for the Chicago Dancing Festival next week. RNDC will be performing Charles Moulton‘s Nine Person Precision Ball Passing for the Moderns program at the Harris Theater on Aug 23rd and the Celebration of Dance performance at Pritzker Pavilion on Aug 27th. Moulton has been working with the dancers since Monday to set his 1980 postmodern piece for nine dancers (the original was for just three dancers and premiered in 1979). One would think the title says it all, but there is more going here on than just precise handling of spheres.
When you think of postmodern dance, RNDC is not the first company that comes to mind. Known more for their fast, athletic, emotive style, this “departure” is an interesting switch in process and a welcome challenge. The dancers are on risers with three on each level – the bottom sitting, while the top two stand. They do not deviate from these spots for the entire seven-minute piece. What does happen is an ingenious exercise in brain power, counting, intricate patterns and hand-eye coordination. Oh yeah, and there are balls passed. Fast, slow, up, down, over, under, and in patterns with names like “waterfall” and “jaws”. It is like a crazy puzzle come to life.
Understandably, the dancers are still trying to get the movement patterns into their bodies, while staying relaxed and focused. “Keep the playfulness from the beginning,” Moulton instructs. “The playfulness allows us to see the humanness.” That humanness is the essential ingredient in the work. What does one do when faced with an impossible task? It is the reaction to that challenge that is the core of it. “Mistakes are part of it, but it’s how you react,” he says. “It speaks to the absurdity of systems and the human tendency to obsess, to perfect.”
I was thrown off when Mariah Carey’s cover of I Still Believe came on for the first run. What? This was just for a slower tempo to get the flow going at a friendlier pace. Eventually, they upped the speed a bit to Barry White’s Never Gonna Give You Up with mixed (and sometimes funny) results. The actual score by A. Leroy is faster and follows the choreography exactly. “Speed is in your mind,” Moulton says. “If you can do it slow, you can do it fast.” This social experiment using movement (“We haven’t defined it yet. Is it a dance, a game, a metaphor?”) has been reproduced over the years with ballet companies, children and non dancers. I find it interesting to see how it evolves when performed by talented, technically trained dancers that weren’t even born when this project started.
Dancer Adriana Durant. Photo by William Frederking.
The dance form is illusive to many, at times, including me. The maven is Shirley Mordine. With her namesake company performing for an astounding 42 years, plus her creation in ’69 of The Dance Center of Columbia College and the fact that she’s mentored, taught or worked with pretty much everyone in the city’s modern community – Mordine is nothing short of a force of nature. This weekend, Mordine & Co. Dance Theater, along with RE|Dance Group and mentee Alitra Cartman, will be performing its spring concert NEXT 2011 at the Ruth Page Center. On the program: a revival of Mordine’s 2009 work Illuminations, a trio The Mysterious Disappearance of the Second Youngest Sister by RE|Dance’s Michael Estanich, Mordine & Co’s Emerging Artist Mentee for 2011, Alitra Cartman’s new work and the world premiere of Mordine’s LifeSpeak.
Sitting in on rehearsal last week, I was fascinated by how the group worked. There seemed to be an unseen force guiding the process, an energy connecting them all physically, mentally and emotionally, so that everyone was on the same page without saying anything. Of course, the initial source was Mordine herself, quietly interjecting notes while the group ran through the pieces. Speak to us…tell us the story. Use your phrasing, rhythmic sense. If you hear yourself landing, your not absorbing your weight. Play with your weight, don’t force it. The dancers — and this is an impressive group of six – take in the corrections on the fly, evolving as they go. *Side note: It was especially nice to see Atalee Judy, a unique and strong presence, dancing. I haven’t seen her perform in quite a while (my mistake), but I’m still reeling from a duet she create a million years ago with Robbie Cook involving straight jackets.
It was a treat to finally meet the Modern Maven I’d heard so much about over the last 15-or-so years. I have to say, I’m smitten. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.
RB: 42 years – can you give me some insight into why you think this company has lasted this long?
SM: I’ve never been asked this question. I think it’s persistence, for one thing. I always say that when I’m about ¾ of the way through the piece I’m working on, I know what I want to explore next. You explore that area and that stimulates another kind of curiosity. I think that’s the reason. I’ve had some really solid groups of companies…really excellent people. I think they come to understand that there really is an aesthetic operating here that has continuity to it, that has a clear focus to it.
RB: You mentioned “next” and what’s next, is that why you titled the show NEXT?
SM: This started about three years ago and we decided to make it an annual event. We usually premiere some new work and include our mentoring project. I like to invite companies perhaps that haven’t been seen as much, companies that maybe are a little younger and could stand some exposure. It becomes more than just your company. First of all, it’s great for audience development. But you’ve got the mentoring project, and work from another company and our work. We always try to do something new. It’s a little collage of performances and it opens it up, so it’s not just exclusively a company performance.
RB: How did you pick RE|Dance?
SM: Michael was a mentee of mine many years ago when we were at The Dance Center, and he had gone off to Ohio State and got his masters and is working professionally and is now teaching at a college in Wisconsin, but he’s beginning to show work here in this area. I went to see Michael and Lucy’s (Vurusic Riner) performance at Hamlin Park two or three months ago. I just think he’s a really fine young choreographer. He’s the kind of kid I like to give more exposure.
RB: Tell me about the new work, the world premiere.
SM: I’ve done a lot of work that has to do with giving power to your voice…that has to do with a sense of insurgency and that undervoice would always come through. It will out time you eventually. Look at what’s happening in the Middle East. Here are people, that for the first time, can sense that their voice means something. It took me back immediately to what theater is fundamentally. You’ve got a group of people sitting in a circle, whatever culture…and they’re telling stories to each other. It’s completely natural. If one pulls back and gesticulates a little bit, you’ve got theater. That’s what we come from, telling stories to each other. Then you start thinking how stories evolve. (Laughing) We are all the best liars in the world. I was playing with that phenomenon of how stories come about and how information changes and how they evolve into something else. We really worked through a difficult process with the dancers discovering how to tell their own stories. That’s not an easy thing to help them figure out how to embed sensation and information and then work it through gesture that is not literal, but that, to me, is dance. I’m always curious as to what someone has to say. I’m always curious about information, how it transforms and changes. That’s always been my impulse in most of my work.
RB: For Life Speak, what was the process like?
SM: My dropping words, improvising to drop sensation, learning the skill of not interpreting that, but the sensation itself having physical reality. And that, of course, is the ultimate example of abstraction. You’re not demonstrating, but feeling…just trust the feeling coming through. I’m curious how people examine and look at information, especially kinetically because that’s my field.
NEXT 2011, April 29 & 30 at 8 pm
Ruth Page Center for the Arts
Tickets: 800.838.3006 or brownpapertickets.com