ELEVATED EXPERIMENTS
Now in its 14th season, New Dances 2014, Thodos Dance Chicago’s weekend-long premiere at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts is a grueling, ambitious, and often successful showcase for nine company members. Instead of marching to another’s rhythms, they’re here allowed to design their own dances.
Maybe it’s because these performers are so used to dancing together, but the range of movement among these nine works was less than a random recital might produce. Still, the results were entertaining to impressive. And there can be no question of the stamina of these all-enduring artists. Few of these twelve ever got time off except during one intermission. Talk about dancing till you (almost) drop.
The most interesting items came at the end of the first act. Annie Deutz’ choreographed “Light, Gain and Gloaming” used music from the last group to create a surging, twirling play of couples caught in the stops and starts of struggle, as well as one languorous duet that virtually turned sex vertical. Equally absorbing was Diana Winfree’s ecstatic quartet in “Faultless,” a work that began with an apparent music miscue (or, given the title, was that intentional irony?). It was filled with mystical yearning, a free flowing, mood-changing propulsion of intelligent energy.
Performed to Yo Yo Ma’s “Primacy of Numbers,” Kyle Hadenfeldt’s “Asparas” used a kind of reverse mating to show the five women engaged in a frantic and urgent courtship choreography while two men engaged in their own elegant escapism.
Opening the second half, Jon Sloven’s “Unattended Baggage” was full of spinning elegance, a kind of stately aerobics (and no lost luggage). The wryly named “Flawed,” created by John Cartwright, employed fog and an eclectic score to create a rhapsodic duet for perfect partners Maiana Sena and Brandon Harneck.
“Fare Thee Well,” a downhome-decent debut by Alissa Tollefson, used three folk songs about parting to create solos, duets, and a group romp that ranged from exuberant to communal.
Marred by less than tight dancing in unison, Brandon Harneck’s “Co-“ undulated into mysticism as six dancers in monochromatic costumes indulged in what seemed to be florid robotics. Equally cryptic, the all-female “Night Windows” by Tenley Dorrill used John Adams’ romantic but minimalist musical to engage in a jagged, jerky, and very mercurial combination of swirling turns and placating supplication.
Finally, the dozen performers united in the surging finale “Innerscapes” by Kristina Isabelle. Using spotlights to focus the movement, some more fog, and a strange fusion of Mitchell Akiyama’s modernist sounds and Bach’s traditional ones, this group effort created fascinating shifts in speed and scale that proved as dramatic (as in theatrical) as anything on the program.
All in all, here’s proof that those who dance can also dream, step by step.
photos by Cheryl Mann
New Dances 2014
Thodos Dance Chicago
Ruth Page Center for the Arts
1016 N. Dearborn Street
scheduled to end on July 20, 2014
for tickets, call 312.266.6255
or visit www.thodosdancechicago.org
for info on other Chicago Theater, visit www.TheatreinChicago.com
