Dance review by Laura Molzahn
Read full review on Chicago Tribune
Among Melissa Thodos’ accomplishments — beyond guiding her company to its 23rd season, no small feat — is expanding its universe with the American Dance Legacy Project in 2009 and the “New Dances” company showcases in 2000.
Those initiatives paid off in Thodos Dance Chicago’s “Chicago Inspired” program, performed Saturday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts and repeating March 7 at the Harris Theater. Its seven works, often only tenuously associated with the city of big shoulders, include a world premiere, a Chicago premiere and Sybil Shearer’s wonderfully musical, witty two-piece “A Salute to Old Friends,” first performed by Thodos last November.
Though Shearer started her career in New York — the “old friends” are the late New York dance critic Walter Terry and choreographer Agnes De Mille — she moved to Chicago in the 1940s. Former Shearer dancer Toby Nicholson has restaged “Salute,” created in the mid-50s.
Chicagoans are the beneficiaries. The Terry solo, a real treat, offers a detailed, quirky portrait of a complex man, set to W.C. Handy’s rocking 1914 hit, “St. Louis Blues.” Powerful, elegant Alissa Tollefson reveled in the music’s syncopations and in the choreography’s piercing looks, perilous leans, and eccentric staggers and wriggles.
Pliant, expressive feet — seemingly a Shearer trademark — also empower the buoyant jitterbug inflections of the De Mille ensemble work, enhanced by a swinging Dave Brubeck track.
A few years later Bob Fosse was creating his takes on the new “jazz dance.” But next to Shearer’s gleeful capering, they’re sterile, commercial, in “Fosse Trilogy,” three early-’60s trios created for TV. First performed by Thodos Dance in 2009, they’re no more winning now despite the dancers’ efforts and talent.
Melissa Thodos’ new “Near Light” and Garfield Lemonius’ Chicago premiere, “Memoirs,” are kissing cousins. Both ensemble works, for 10 and 12 respectively, are filled with lifts, turns, towering extensions and swift changes of level, from the floor to overhead. These take power and skill, challenges the dancers mostly met.
“Near Light,” which Thodos explained in a video was about support and healing, has some nice touches, especially in the duets for Tollefson and Kyle Hadenfeldt, who twice touch palms tenderly and take an abstract ballroom stance; the second time, she slips away. But Olafur Arnalds’ techno-beat overlays can produce metronomic rhythms in the dancing.
Unisex costumes — everyone wears long skirts — create dazzling pinwheel effects in Lemonius’ swirly “Memoirs,” powered by weight shifts and momentum, especially near the end in converging and separating lines.
Tenley Dorrill’s “Night Windows,” John Cartwright’s “Flawed” and Brian Enos’ beautiful “Lullaby” — all products of “New Dances” past — clearly demonstrate the value of young blood.
ctc-arts@tribune.com
3 STARS
When: 7:30 p.m. March 7
Where: Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $15-$65 at 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.com