Cerqua Rivera New Works 2012

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Vicki

Cerqua Rivera dancers Joey Schuman, Christina Chen & Andrea Deline in "Pedestal".

For the third year, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre (CRDT) presents an intimate show of in-house choreography and musical compositions at the Hubbard Street Dance Center. New Works 2012 features eight artistic collaborations with CRDT musicians, dancers, choreographers (and one guest choreographer) and two musical pieces. The three-hour event will also include a reception with a silent auction CRDT founding member, artist Matt Lamb’s work, who passed away this year. The dances will all be revised and performed in CRDT’s annual Fall Concert. Artistic Director Wilfredo Rivera and Producing Director Joe Cerqua team up again for two pieces on dreams – a romantic duet Dreaming of Home and De Suenos Y Deseos (Of Dreams and Desires) exploring those dreams we have when we’re half asleep. Via email, Rivera tells me about the process of New Works. “CRDT develops works more like a theater. We work as a team developing ideas for a piece. Sometimes the idea comes from a choreographer and/or composer. It’s my job to ‘team’ folks accordingly.” Other choreographers include CRDT Rehearsal Director/dancer Raphaellle Ziemba, dancer Josh Pawelk, guest choreographer Mei-Kuang Chen and Benjamin Marshall a student at the Chicago High School for the Arts (CHIARTS).

Being a political junkie, I was immediately drawn to Pawelk’s work which includes a soundscape designed by CRDT Musical Director Stu Greenspan featuring Robert F. Kennedy’s post MLK assassination speech, The Mindless Menace of Violence, and quotes from President Obama’s 2008 race speech A More Perfect Union. Dance, politics and Obama? That’s like crack to me. I corresponded with Pawelk, a four-year veteran of CRDT, via email from his home in Delano, Minnesota about his work 40 Years Later (originally created for New Works 2011 and for CRDT’s Jubilation Concert celebrating black history month).

Why did you want to make a piece with political themes?

When Wilfredo came and asked me if I would like to set a piece on the company, I wanted to create a piece that they could put in their repertoire that would breathe some new life and new perspective for their Jubilation Concerts. I know and understand that black history is our history too, but to have a piece that is driven from a white person’s perspective that has so much power and thought and concern for everyone’s life in our country who lived through that tough and troublesome time in our nation’s history.

Why did you want to use RFK’s speech?

In 2006, there was a major motion picture titled “Bobby” that was released. It was about the assassination of Bobby at the Ambassador Hotel and how it affected the lives of 22 people who were in the hotel that day. Towards the end of the movie, they have his speech playing as you see a montage of the devastation and sadness that people felt because of the tragic loss of his life. Watching that while hearing his brilliantly spoken words struck a chord in me. I was so moved by it I wanted to combine the emotional movement I felt with physical movement.

When did you decide to include comments from President Obama?

It was actually Stu’s idea to include the comments Obama made in his speech to illustrate how that even 40 years after Bobby gave his speech, we as people are still facing the same social issues in our country today.

Did you come up with the concept first and then ask him to do the sound design?

I did come up with the concept first of wanting to use only Bobby’s speech because even though it’s just his spoken word, I hear a definite rhythm and flow in the way he delivered that speech. I had suggest to Stu that the music I was thinking for in the background be something light and ominous so it wouldn’t take away from the rhythm in his speech. Stu came up with the idea of using Curtis Mayfield’s song “Hard times” in the background. Since it was going to be a rep piece for the Jubilation Concert it was important for him to use a track by an African American musician who was around during that time period with music that definitely reflects the sign of the times.

Did you go into the studio with just the idea or did you set the choreography first?

The majority of all the pieces I create starts with a concept. When the concept, the music and the emotion are all figured out, I go into the studio and allow myself to surrender to the piece completely, letting the music and the story behind it to move me.

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre presents New Works 2012 at the Hubbard Street Dance Center, 1147 W. Jackson Blvd on Saturday, June 23rd at 6 pm. Tickets are $20 ($50 tickets will benefit the CRDT Youth Programs). Reservations are required. Call 312.243.9310 or email crdtoffice@comcast.net.

East Meets West

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Vicki

The Seldoms dancers. Photo by Brian Kuhlmann.

Later this month, local modern company The Seldoms takes the stage with WCdance from Taiwan. Read my preview of the show in Windy City Times here.

The Seldoms with WCdance at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Thurs – Sat, June 28-30 at 8 pm and Sunday, July 1 at 3 pm. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students and seniors). Call 312.337.6543 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/246618

Preview: Luna Nueva

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Vicki

Luna Negra dancer/choreographer Mónica Cervantes. Photo by Jonathan Mackoff.

A man sits on the floor as three women take turns forcing themselves, crawling, pulling and pushing through the space between his body and arms. Beside him another man sits with his arms overhead as three people crawl over his shoulders and down to the floor like a human waterfall. This is a glimpse of the early stages (as in day two!) of a world premiere being created on Luna Negra Dance Theater (LNDT) by Argentinian choreographer Diana Szeinblum. “Elbow, there, fuerte”, she says from the front of the studio. Szeinblum’s new work Brasilia will be featured with a world premiere by Luna Negra dancer/choreographer Mónica Cervantes, Requiem, and the U.S. premiere of Artistic Director Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s 2008 work En Busca de (In Search of) at the MCA Stage this weekend as the company presents Lune Nueva, a new initiative exploring unconventional movement styles.

Sansano originally created his work for IT Dansa in Barcelona in honor of one of his teachers that had recently passed away. “I learned a lot from her and really experimented in that piece,” he says from LNDT’s State Street studios. “You know that feeling when you’re excited of what’s coming, but you don’t know what it is, so you’re anxious? She crafted anxious. En Busca de is about the momentum of your life.” Cervantes premiere for six dancers explores the idea pathways set to a classical score of Mozart and Shostakovich. Read a great preview of her piece by Johnny Nevin at 4dancers.org here.

Szeinblum, a dancer/choreographer/actor who started dancing at age six, studied at the Ballet of San Martin Theater in Buenos Aries and at the Folkwang Tanz Schule in Germany under the direction of Pina Bausch. She founded her own company – Diana Szeinblum Dance Company – in 2000. Sansano helped translate our interview two weeks ago at the beginning of her rehearsal process.

RB: What was it like working with Pina?

DS: It was so nice. (laughing) Interesting.

GRS: What was so impressive for her about Pina, is she’d take every detail like it was the first time.

DS: She was incredible. I worked with her and Susana Linka…this marked me.

RB: I read that you call your dances plays. Can you talk about your process?

DS: I always take things from the people an dI say that this, for me, gives the truthfulness to the work, my work. The thing for me is to find in the dance the kind of truth that actors try to find.

RB: Do you stars with a story you want to tell or a concept and give that to the dancers? Do you use a lot of improv?

DS: Improv. Generally, I need to understand where I am. To create first a place or atmosphere. This gives me my limit to start to put all things in this place. For me, this is the most important thing to find.

RB: I know you’ve only been here one day, but for this specific piece, did you know what it was going to be or do you need to work with the dancers first?

GRS: This is a specific situation, because of time, she has to use a concept.

DS: To find it very fast. I think I live in a strange place, so I think I can…I will do something personal.

GRS: The way she works normally with the dancers…everything comes out of them. The story at the end is them, but because it’s such a short time, it’s going to be something personal.

RB: You only have two weeks. How long do you normally work on a piece?

DS: In Argentina, we don’t have money, we don’t have producers, no one will say ‘ok, come on, do it’ This is the only thing that is great for us – that we really have time to do our work. Sometimes it’s four months, sometimes one year.D

RB: How are you changing the way you work to fit the tight time frame?

DS: I have a lot of images. The thing I have to construct how my images go together in this work. The are very nice dancers, very technical dancers. I’m not used the having such technical dancers. I’d really like to try more technical things, but I don’t have a lot of time.

GRS: It’s a different way of working for the company. That’s part of this program (Luna Nueva), to let the dancers have a completely different experience. The were telling me how much fun they had yesterday. Every time you have a new choreographer, it’s a different process. It’s a wonderful experience for us.

RB: How did you find Diana?

GRS: My search. (laughing) My encyclopedia of Latino choreographers.

DS: Where is this encyclopedia?

GRS: I made it!

RB: Do you have an idea of what this piece will be about, or is it too soon to talk about it?

DS: I’m trying to create things that speaks about layers.

Luna Negra Dance Theater presents Luna Nueva at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Thursday-Sunday, June 7-1- at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $28. Call the MCA Box Office at 312.397.4010 or visit www.mcachicago.org.

Take Five

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Vicki

Elements Contemporary Ballet dancers Yu Suzuki & Joseph Caruana. Photo by John Sisson.

Tomorrow night (Saturday, May 12) in a one-night-only performance, Elements Contemporary Ballet (ECB) celebrates turning five. There was some confusion in the anniversary, since founder/artistic director Mike Gosney actually started the company in 2005, but he explains that the first two pivotal years which produced experimental material were not incorporated. Once incorporated, the clock really started ticking and now ECB is hitting the five year anniversary. Congrats! Gosney and his company are known for solid technique and stylized movement with an unique approach to teaching and choreographing. By incorporating the natural elements (fire, earth, air, water) to represent major points of dance (expression, physicality, focus, freedom) his work takes on an organic quality that allows the dancers to take risks and really shine.

For the Five Year Anniversary Spring Engagement at the Atheneum Theatre this weekend, ECB presents five works – three world premieres, a company premiere and an audience favorite. Gosney revamps a previous work-in-progress set to Mendelssohn titles Songs without words. “I’ve asked the cast to sing as if they were standing in line or waiting for the bus on a summer’s day,” he said. His newer work, Pathos, to Mozart’s Requiem follows a journey through purgatory where a man is guided by the characters “Love”, “Hope” and “Mercy”. ECB dancer Joseph Caruana also has two pieces on the program. His premiere The River deals with two women who are battling cancer and his older work Angel was pickes to compete in 2011’s Dancing Under the Stars festival. Rounding out the show is choreographer and former Hubbard Street dancer Brian Enos’ Dark and Lovely, Mmm, originally set on Houston Ballet. ECB’s core group of eight dancers will be joined with guest artists, which Facebook suggests will include some local favorites including Lizzie MacKenzie and Ricky Ruiz.

Elements Contemporary Ballet at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave., Saturday, May 12 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25-$30. Call 773.935.6860 or visit web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9584725

Inaside Concert

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Vicki

The ladies of Inaside Chicago Dance. Photo by Eddo Photography.

Coming at the tail end of National Dance Week, Inaside Chicago Dance (ICD)* takes the stage at the Athenaeum Theatre for its annual spring concert this Saturday. The one-night-only performance features seven works from a number of choreographers including three from Artistic Director Richard Smith. A little contemporary, some swing, a lot of jazz and tons of personality. You will be hard pressed to find a more energetic and enthusiastic group of dancers. The three ideals that go into the Inaside name and mission are integrity, passion and pride. Smith has passion tenfold – for life, for dance and particularly for jazz. “Jazz is totally a giver,” he said. “It deals with real, human topics. You’re going to leave the theater feeling better than when you came in.” He admits jazz has gotten a bad rap as of late and is looking to steer the company into the future of jazz. “I feel like jazz is the bastard stepchild of the dance world. When people hear jazz, they think jazz music and jazz hands.” His ambitious goal is to redefine the word and define Inaside as a contemporary jazz dance company by focusing on creating different approaches to traditional movement and progressing the vocabulary by challenging the dancer’s center of gravity with an asymmetrical approach. Wherever contemporary jazz is going, he wants Inaside to be leading the way.

Saturday, Smith has three of his works on the program. When No Means Maybe (2010), a full-company piece with a Southern backwoods feel about strong-willed women (“I’m surrounded by them,” he laughs.); an excerpt from his 2011 work More Than A Conqueror, which he will continue to expand; and his newest work, The Sides of Every Story, a trio questioning truth. “There are three sides to every story,” Smith said. “The right side, the wrong side and the truth in the middle, but it doesn’t know it’s in the middle.” Other pieces in the show include a swing dance extravaganza choreographed last season by Harrison McEldowney and Tony Savino, Mink, Jazz, and Swing: Dancing to the music of Miss Peggy Lee; Eddy O’Campo’s The Alarm Will Sound from 2008; a full-company contemporary work by choreographer Sinead Gildea titled capsule; and a piece by work/study intern and ICD performing apprentice Courtney Kozlowski that received the most votes at the company’s recent Choreographic Sponsorship Event. The fast-paced seven-number program is sure to entertain. As Smith said, “Just show up. We’ll do the rest.”

Inaside Chicago Dance, Saturday, April 28th at 8 p.m., Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Tickets are $30. Call 773.935.6860.

*RB previously served on Inaside’s board of directors.

She’s Really Gone!

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Vicki

Pointe shoes, electric guitars, muscle and fierce art collide on the MCA Stage this weekend. Karole Armitage, dubbed the “punk ballerina” in 1984 by Vanity Fair Magazine brings her troupe to Chicago as a compliment to the museum’s exhibition This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. After taking a break from her company Armitage Ballet for 15 years while working in Europe, she came back to revive and rename the group Armitage Gone! Dance in 2005. Why gone? “One of the early pieces I did, almost my first piece was called Gone (A Real Gone Dance – 1982),” Armitage said. “I feel like I’m gone from the mainstream, I’m gone from the predictable, I’m often just plain gone. It’s also a hipster term from the 50’s, like ‘she’s a real gone gal’. I liked the multiple meanings. I just didn’t want to take myself so seriously.” This woman that doesn’t take herself seriously, it seems, has done it all. She’s danced for George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, started her own company, lived in Europe for 15 years choreographing and directing companies, re-started her own company, worked with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolph Nureyev and Michael Jackson, choreographed Madonna’s Vogue video, received a Tony nomination for choreographing the Broadway revival of Hair and is currently choreographing the newest Cirque du Soleil tent show in Montreal. “It’s funny. In my career, I’ve worked with children, singers, dancers a now every kind of acrobat and very shortly I’ll be working with William Wegman on a dog ballet, so I’m adding animals to my list,” she said. “I’ve covered the spectrum now.”

For the MCA appearance, the company’s first since 2008, AGD revives two of Armitage’s 80’s works – Drastic-Classicism (1981) and The Watteau Duets (1985) – and her 2011 piece GAGA-Gaku. The Rogue Ballerina talked with the Punk Ballerina over the phone one Sunday afternoon. Here are some excerpts from our fascinating conversation.

You were born in Wisconsin and grew up in Kansas and Colorado. How did you end up in Switzerland for your first job?

I started taking ballet when I was 4 years old in Kansas with a woman from New York City Ballet, so I was bitten by the magic of the art form. At age 12 or 13, everyone was saying to be really serious, you have to go study full-time, you can’t just take class in Kansas. So I went to the School of American Ballet in NY in the summer. I started going to junior high and high school at the North Carolina School for the Arts. That was the only school in the U.S. both academics and very serious artistic, performing arts training at the time. Summers were in NY. Balanchine fell in love with Suzanne Farrell and she got married to someone else, so he decided to move part-time to Switzerland to escape his lovelorn state and he took all of us from the graduating class with him to Switzerland. That’s how I got there, by a kind of fluke.

And then you went to dance with Merce. What made you want to make that jump?

I always loved doing the leotard ballets by Balanchine ( “Agon”, “The Four Temperaments”) that were really more modern. Psychologically, I was a modern woman. I never felt comfortable, at that age, putting on a tutu and being kind of European. It didn’t make sense to me, so why not do something even more modern, more of my time. I’d never seen Cunningham, I’d never studied modern dance. I went and took a class and I just loved it. It used all of the technique you have in ballet, plus new thinking about movement and music. It was a very exciting place to confront ideas.

Had you always been interested in choreography?

I never really thought about becoming a choreographer or anything. I just thought there was no one doing what I imagined dance to be. There was this oozing gap and I just decided to try and people really liked it. I thought I’d probably only do one piece. It was just an experiment and it just kind of snowballed. I was asked to another piece and another piece, then Paris Opera asked me…it all happened in an organic, unexpected way.

What do you look for in a dancer?

I do love technique. The more skill that way, the better because I think it gives you freedom. You can just carve it and not even think about it. I like virtuosity. I like being able to see the body go to the absolute with new dimensions of movement. Technique is important for that freedom, but only if it is a real person living inside that body that has something to say. I’m not interested in virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake. I really look for personality and imagination. People who are daring, who are willing to participate in a the creative process that the rules are unknown…it takes people who really have courage and are willing to go down these unknown paths. It’s very hard to find dancers who combine all of those qualities. Looking at the whole company, it’s like each person is a different spice and I’m always trying to make a beautiful meal. I don’t want two people that are alike. I want people who are different.

Everything I’ve been reading about Drastic-Classicism says it is an iconic work. Why was it such a big deal in 1981?

There are electric guitars on stage. It used Cunningham technique in the model of Balanchine, so a new vocabulary was born. In addition to that, it really had this raw, theatricality and wildness and jubilation of destruction. That punk feeling. It’s a very youthful piece. It’s very free-spirited. Sometimes the guitars are used as partners. It really was punk, modern dance and ballet put together. That was a very new idea.

With the two revivals, did you change anything?

There’s not a great video, so every step isn’t exactly as it used to be. The dancers in my company weren’t even born yet! That was about the spirit of counter-culture and the joy of being marginal. There is no counter-culture now. Their inner life is different. I don’t know how to recreate literally that spirit and put it into people. They’re different people, so it’s somewhat different. That’s one of the extraordinary things about dance, it’s so of its moment. That’s a great part of its power. It gets you in touch with now. Being in the moment and feeling our time. We change – even though the notes are the same, it comes out different. It’s as close as I knew how to do it. The Watteau Duets is a little easier to revive. It was me and one partner, so it’s quite the same. It’s a relationship from attraction to romance to erotic complicity to neurosis. It’s been fascinating to work with my dancers who technically they’re better than I was on pointe. When they put on their pointe shoes and dance a duet, they take on this “I have to be perfect” ballet mentality. To free them from that and get them to be completely comfortable with who they are and show who they are rather than trying to conform to an idea of what ballet looks like, which was a big process. It’s fascinating to me that it wouldn’t be completely natural to them.

How did you get them to not think that way?

A lot of rehearsal and talking about it from lots of different points of view to help them find it for themselves. It needs a sense of irony and freedom that takes a lot of work to get to be so comfortable and confident and secure in their sense of being a woman. It’s a complicated thing to demand of them. It took quite a bit of work to have them break free from the mold and become completely themselves.

When Vanity Fair dubbed you the “punk ballerina”, what was your initial reaction? Was your career helped by the exposure or did you not want to be labeled?

I think I liked the label. To me it really captured that I was interested in the most fine articulate balletic side of dance, but also the raw, visceral and unpredictable side that comes from rock-and-roll culture. I thought it summed up the spirit of my work in a great way. Honestly, I think it caused a lot of jealousy. I wasn’t in the ballet world, I wasn’t in the modern world and I think it was disturbing to the traditional dance world. But, of course, that’s who I was and who I think I still am. I don’t really fit into these categories. It’s some other different kind of thing. I’m still this odd-ball person. Of course, the publicity was fantastic. If only Vanity Fair was doing more dance. Dance has become more marginalized in mainstream America. It’s just not part of mass culture. We need that exposure. I wish there was more of it.

Armitage Gone! Dance at the MCA Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave. April 26 – 28 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35. Call 312.397.4010 or visit mcachicago.org.

Sneak Peek: Joffrey’s Incantations

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Vicki

Choreographer Val Caniparoli.

RB sat in on a run-thru of Val Caniparoli’s world premiere for Joffrey Ballet this afternoon. Incantations is a whirlwind of movement from start to finish. As lead dancer Matthew Adamczyk* said, “It’s like being shot out of a cannon.” The full-costume run (men shirtless in nude tights w/ sanscrit verse, women in nude leotards with spirals and lines) showed off dancers still a week out from the premiere, but at the top of their game. This work is difficult and non-stop, yet some of the dancers were smiling as if they were delighted (or perhaps delirious) with performing it. Solo passes garnered applause from the dancers watching. Duets are dramatic and fast, with a few partnering moves reminiscent of Mr. A’s Light Rain and William Forsythe’s works. A brief male duet featuring Adamczyk and Rory Hohenstein is…hot! In fact, every dancer in the piece looks great – a tribute to the choreographer.

Caniparoli’s Incantations is joined by Edwaard Liang’s Age of Innocence and Jerome Robbins’ In the Night on the Spring Desire program. Fantastic news! RB also learned that Miguel Angel Blanco, who was sidelined with an Achilles tendon injury last season requiring two surgeries, will be performing a piece on opening night. Welcome back.

Joffrey Ballet Spring Desire runs April 25 – May 6 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy. Tickets: 800.982.2787 or visit ticketmaster.com.

*Click here to read my preview of Incantations in Windy City Times.

Another Daley in Chicago

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Vicki

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre dancers in "Revelations". Photo by Christopher Duggan.

In middle school, Sarah Daley came to Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre (ATRU) to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) perform. She left inspired, but never anticipating that a few years later, at 25, she would be getting ready to perform on that very stage as part of the acclaimed company. “It’s so crazy. It’s very surreal the closer I get to it,” she said. “Especially dancing at the Auditorium, because that’s where growing up I got to see all these amazing companies. To be on that stage is going to be great.” Tomorrow night, Daley will take the stage with her fellow AAADT dancers for opening night of a six performance run. Dreams – with a lot of hard work – really do come true.

Daley grew up in up in South Elgin and started dancing at the Faubourg School of Ballet in Hanover Park. When looking for colleges (her Mom said not going to college was not an option), a dance program was paramount. She ended up at Fordham University which has a partnership with AAADT. After two years dancing with Ailey II, she’s now in her first season with the main company. This is also the first season under new artistic director Robert Battle. While traditional Ailey pieces like Revelations are still in the rep, Battle includes his choreography but is also bringing in different styles of work to challenge the dancers and the audience. On the Chicago programs are works from Ailey, Battle, Rennie Harris, Paul Taylor and Ohad Naharin.

I spoke with Daley over the phone earlier this week. The company arrives in Chicago today.

Did you always want to be in Ailey? Was this your goal?

It was definitely a goal. I wasn’t sure how realistic it was…it seemed like a long shot, but it was always something that I really wanted to do. I was going to do everything I could do to make that happen.

It’s an exciting time with the company going in a new direction. What’s it been like for you?

Like you said, it’s really exciting. There’s this air around Ailey everywhere we tour, everybody knows it’s the beginning of a new chapter. Everyone is excited to see what Mr. Battle is bringing. He’s a great person to be around. He has a really great energy that’s trickled down into the company and how we work with each other. It’s good to be a part of it.

Has it been challenging changing the rep to include a Paul Taylor or Ohad Naharin piece? For instance, Ohad’s work is so particular. Was it hard for your body, since you aren’t used to his technique?

It was difficult in the rehearsal process. Some things came easier for some people. “Arden Court” was a bit more natural for me. It seemed more familiar than “Home”. I’ve never been a hop hop dancer. I love that whole genre of dance, but I’d never done it. “Minus 16” was just totally new for everybody. It was research – a total investigation, pare down of everything you know and start from the beginning with a new language. It was definitely something to get used to, but it was a lot of fun. It made “Minus 16” a lot easier to transition into once we’d started learning his way of moving.

Tell me about the Rennie Harris piece, Home.

We had a three-week workshop when he came in to set the piece. A lot of people weren’t hip hop/house dancers and he wanted it to be authentic and not us just mimicking the moves he would teach us. We learned the basic house language for the whole time he was there. It was inspired by people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. I think it’s more of a celebration of life and music and dance than it is anything else. When you’re inspired by a topic like that, it can get really dark and heavy, but he wanted it to be about the music and the dance. It’s a club setting, so we’re almost in a trance at times. I really enjoy doing it. It’s so much fun and you get to relax on stage. The audiences everywhere we’ve gone really love it.

Can you describe to me what it feels like to do Revelations. It’s such an iconic work. What’s it like to actually be doing it?

It’s definitely an experience, especially the first few times you do it. You’re excited and thinking about the history of the piece and how many people have done it before. I pretty much do it every night, so there’s always another chance to investigate and get deeper into it. Sometimes it’s good to take a break and watch it from the audience, so you remember why everyone loves it so much. You get the full effect of it, so when you go back, you have something to work with. It’s really an experience to do such an historical work.

Recently on the Ailey Facebook page, they asked the question: what is your favorite section of Revelations? What’s yours?

My favorite section to do is “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel”. It’s short and gets right to the point. It’s high energy. I don’t know why – out of all the sections – when I do it, I really feel like I’ve made an impact on the audience when I do it. I really enjoy doing it. My favorite to watch is “I Wanna Be Ready”. It has a lot to do with the people I get to watch do it. Being able to watch Matthew Rushing from off stage do this piece is ridiculous.

Your bio includes this quote: “Dance for me is becoming more and more about discovery and imagination.” Can you explain that?

I started to think about this in Ailey II when we started to tour and perform a lot…to think of ways to keep what I’m doing fresh, not just for me but for the audience. If a dancer is over what they’re doing, the audience totally feels that. I’ve been trying to go a little deeper with everything I do. I can focus on something different in “Minus 16”, every time I do it. That’s been my discovery and revelation in a way.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre – April 11 – 15 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy

Tickets are $30-$90. Call 800.982.2787 or visit ticketmaster.com/auditorium.

The Power of Love

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Vicki

ABT's Yuriko Kajiya in "Giselle". Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

If you like a good love story, then get thee to the Auditorium Theatre this weekend, poste-haste. A romantic tale on par with Romeo and Juliet takes over the stage with some of the top ballet dancers in the world bringing the action to life. Originally created in 1841 for the Paris Opera Ballet (they are coming to Chicago this summer for the first time ever!), Giselle tells the story of a young peasant girl who falls in love with a prince, only to find out he is betrothed to another. She goes mad, dies of a broken heart, then proceeds to come back from the grave to save her love from an untimely death. Drama.

American Ballet Theatre (ABT) brings its version of “the quintessential Romantic ballet” to town for five performance starting tomorrow. The lead roles of Giselle, Prince Albrecht and Myrta, Queen of the Wilis are some of the most sought after in ballet. On top of difficult technical feats, the dancer must add emotion and dramatic acting skills to aid the plot while making it all look easy. And the women are dead in Act II! It takes a tremendous amount of technique to do a series of entré chats and look as if you are other-worldly. Of course, there are artistic choices to be made. Some Albrecht’s play the cad who later tragically regrets his actions. Some Giselle’s commit suicide with her lover’s sword. For real-life couple Yuriko Kajiya and Jared Matthews (both soloists who will be debuting as Giselle and Albrecht in ABT’s version this Sunday, March 25th) they rely on the power of love. Matthew’s Albrecht is truly in love with Giselle and Kajiya’s Giselle dies of a broken heart, yet relies on her love for him to save his life in Act II. “Albrecht is a role you aspire to achieve and work on,” said Matthews. “It’s more than just about dance, you have to bring them into your world.” Kajiya has the dual challenge of the dramatic mad scene at the end of Act I and then switching into Wili-mode for Act II. She’s been working with her coach Irina Kolpakova on the nuances of the character. “In Act II, the upper body has to change,” she said. “You have to be very much forward. That helps with the illusion.” But Matthews adds, “It takes a lot of work to make her look weightless.”

ABT's Jared Matthew's in "Le Corsaire". Photo by MIRA.

The duo have performed together often outside of the company and have even performed Act II of Giselle together, but they have never performed the full-length ballet together until now. The couple met as teenagers while in ABT’s Studio Company (now ABT II) and have been together romantincally for eight years, literally growing up physically and artistically side by side. ( I spoke with them separately from NY on consecutive days off.) “We have a huge passion for ballet,” Kajiya said. “We love and know each other so well. We work really well together in and out of the studio.” Matthews agreed, “We both want the same things and we’re both willing to put in the time…refining and honing, growing and changing…to become better artists. We have the same goals.” With vastly different backgrounds – she is from Japan and moved to China to study ballet at age ten, he grew up in Texas – they both came to know of ABT via the screen. Matthews remembers watching Baryshnikov on television and Kajiya saw videos of the company at school and on the big screen in the movie Centerstage. It is another love story that has them ending up at the same place together now.

They have fond memories of Chicago having danced in the first two years of the Chicago Dancing Festival at Pritzker Pavilion. Some may remember them as well from a July 2010 guest appearance on So You Think You Can Dance, where they performed the second act pas de deux from Don Quixote. “Every few minutes, someone would come by to remind us that the show was live,” said Kajiya. Executive Producer and judge Nigel Lithgoe had seen her perform at a gala and asked her if she’d like to perform on the show. Matthews said, “The air conditioning was on high, which made the floor slick like ice. Once we were out there dancing, it was fun.”

Come see Kajiya and Matthews fall in love again on stage this Sunday with live music by the Chicago Sinfonietta. This story of romance, love, betrayal and forgiveness, set to the achingly gorgeous score by Adolphe Adam is not to be missed.

American Ballet Theatre performs Giselle at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy.

Thurs & Friday, March 22-23 at 7:30 pm, Saturday, March 24 at 2 & 8 pm, and Sunday, March 25 at 2 pm.

Tickets are $32-$137. Call 800.982.2787 or visit ticketmaster.com.

Sneak Peek: HSDC’s Little mortal jump

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Vicki

Last week I sat in on rehearsal at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s (HSDC) West Loop studios. The well-respected group is prepping for a spring run of shows at the Harris Theater, March 15 – 18. Two of the three pieces they are presenting are audience favorites (and two of my favorites) from last season that pushed the dancers to new limits. Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream takes classical technique and tilts it off balance, skewing lines and testing the boundaries of center. Sharon Eyal’s Too Beaucoup challenges detail, sensory and memory capacity while stripping away virtually any sign of individuality. They are a study in contrast. It’s the third work on the program that proves to be an enigma. HSDC Resident Choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, always a man of mystery, presents the world premiere of Little mortal jump at the top of the show. He will then dance in the remaining two pieces.

His new work for ten dancers has little bits of his older works Off Screen (2008), Extremely Close (2007) and Lickety Split (2006) and is set to an eclectic score that pieces together a collage of musical ranges from Tom Waits to Max Richter. “I think the piece has a twist,” Cerrudo said before a run-thru at rehearsal. “It starts one way and finishes in a completely different world. I tried to do that as smooth as possible. To me, the mood of the piece starts very theatrical and finishes…more dance, more intense.” Although he begins every new work with a fresh perspective, Little mortal jump shows glimpses of his evolution as a choreographer, while also proving he is a master of both extremes – humorous theatricality to intense beauty. Incorporating interactive set pieces adds an intriguing touch that will surprise all. A duet with Ana Lopez and Jesse Bechard includes a slow-motion sequence that is a tender, private moment in a fast-paced piece.

It’s an exciting time for Cerrudo. In late February, it was announced that HSDC’s 35th anniversary season would open with a full-length work by Cerrudo inspired by Marc Chagall’s America Windows at the Art Institute of Chicago. After this week’s premiere, he has a week off then travels to Milwaukee for final rehearsals of Extremely Close, then to set a new work on Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. The rest of the summer will be working on the Chagall piece in the studio. He, of course already is planning it in his head. “I’ll try to make it fun,” he said. “I know what I want a full-evening to look like or feel like, but it doesn’t mean I can make it work that way. I’m going to try my best.” If his past work is any indication, his best will surely delight and enthrall.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph. Tickets are $25-$94. Call 312.850.9744 or visit hubbardstreetdance.com

Thursday, March 15 at 7:30 pm, Friday & Saturday, March 16 & 17 at 8 pm and Sunday, March 18 at 3 pm.

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