Review by Lynn Colburn Shapiro
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It’s not often that dance company members are invited to explore their nascent choreographic impulses under the watchful eyes of career mentors, and in collaboration with seasoned professional designers, composers and technicians, but that’s just what Thodos Dance Chicago’s (TDC) “New Dances” program has been doing for the past 15 years.
What’s more, they have their fellow company dancers at their disposal, three months of rehearsal space, funding, and two fully-produced performances for the public at high-profile dance venues like the Athenaeum Theatre, where last weekend’s 15th installment of “New Dances” presented the premiere of works by 8 company members and guest artist, Brian McGinnis.
TDC Artistic Director Melissa Thodos initiated “New Dances” in 1990 as a response to the opportunity she had as a dancer in The Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble to develop her choreographic skills and ideas.
This year’s launch of “New Dances” produced some notable standouts and varying degrees of promise and misfires, but, unlike a regular company season, that’s the whole point–to see what works, what doesn’t, and why, and to learn from it, no strings attached. What a unique and wonderful way to nurture developing choreographers!
In large part, the pieces that worked best did so uniquely, while less mature choreography tended to be problematic in similar ways.
Tenley Dorrill’s program opener, “Waiting For What” commanded attention from the get-go, with the dancers’ stark spatial arrangements of folding chairs playing out against Antonio Sanchez’s arresting percussion sound-scape. Short, discrete episodes book-ended in blackout each explored a different movement dynamic, from the slow ooze of the impulse-driven first segment, to a bouncy duet beat, sharp focus changes of four couples in shifting relationships with chairs, to a sexy girl duet of opposition and mirroring, joining and pulling apart like ink blots in a Rorschach test. Alternating groupings of all eight dancers with smaller ensemble segments gave the work a rich textured energy that sustained throughout. Dorrill’s distinctive movement vocabulary combined a very stated and specific treatment of spatial design and time to dovetail perfectly with Sanchez’s jazzy drums and guest lighting designer Slick Jorgensen’s light pyramids and black and white silhouettes.
Jessica Miller Tomlinson tapped into deep emotional threads through the music of Lead Belly, Memphis Jug Band, and Casey Bill Weldon in her all-men’s quintet, “Something To Do With Five.” Group segments alternated with duets and a quartet of two couples, with strong male partnering and gestural material wrung from the gut.
Taylor Mitchell’s “All You Need Is” burst open with a wild comic antidote to John Cartwright’s darkly serious “Somatic” which preceded it. In addition to serving a zany melodrama of longing for love, Mitchell parlayed a tapestry of old time jazz and French cafe music into a circus of the absurd, to the utter delight of the audience. Dancers, clad in Moriah Turner’s variations on black and white striped t-shirts and black pants, channeled a quirky Martian abstraction of Marcel Marceau and Charlie Chaplin, tossing handfuls of red paper hearts around a forlorn woman pushing an industrial broom in a futile effort to sweep up everyone else’s good cheer. Mitchell’s snappy movement mixed genres of period social dance forms and his own brand of high energy animation with a keen sense of comic timing and structural expertise, bringing the whole thing off with a bang.
Guest choreographer McGinnis’ “Miriam” capitalized on the lyrical poignancy of Miriam Makeba’s music, opening with a poetic solo study of a woman in white to Makeba’s “Where does it lead, this strange young love of mine.” Balletic style infused impulse-driven movement in a winsome solo. The ensuing duet played out an illicit tryst to Makeba’s sardonic remake of the folk ballad dialogue, “There’s a Hole In The Bucket,” with infectious recorded laughter of the singing couple adding to the fun of McGinnis’ inventive partnering. A concluding duet used social dance forms in sweeping arcs and romantic lifts, pretty if not strikingly original.
The remainder of the program suffered from an overabundance of repetitive, techno-beat music and perpetual motion machine movement mechanics, well-danced but generic and uneventful. A common theme of the urban angst of the isolated individual, alienation, disconnection or misconnection offered nothing new to the overwrought subject.
In Abby Ellison’s “A Fragile Acceptance” smoke and electronic buzz underscore anonymity in a repetitive gesture of hands covering eyes. Briana Robinson’s “Go Ahead And Turn Back,” opens with six dancers in fetal position on the floor writhing in embryonic contortions to the dissonant slurs of ukulele. High energy group crossings follow with puzzling objective. Cartwright’s “Somatic” took its time finding its own relentless way through Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s music, and Bach’s Suite for Cello #1, the main message of which was discomfort in Nathan Rohrer’s military-inspired costumes, movement suggesting the dancers’ urgent need to escape their own skin. Alissa Tollefson’s “Go.” offered some contrast with an exploration of women’s relationships through energy exchanges for reaching and pulling, the dancers propelled as if by some external wind. A chorus of lovely women danced flowing combinations of dips and swirls in a cannon of whipping arms that showed off the dancers with an unpretentious sense of discovery and awakening. Brittany Hassler’s electric turquoise body suits energized Kyle Hadenfeldt’s “So Young, It Runs.” Couples having trouble and children playing games badly fueled a suggestion of story, with reaching and grabbing, slapping hands, and the frustration of break-ups, but the piece is missing the cohesiveness of a fully-developed narrative, as well as a real ending.