Tomorrow, September 15 Moby-Dick: The audience is confined onboard with the crew of the Pequod as this new version of “Moby-Dick” focuses on the contagious nature of obsession. Evolving from The Building Stage’s highly physical 2006 adaptation, this production reaches beyond the story of Captain Ahab to capture the shifting currents of the novel itself. Melville’s prose mixes with movement and miniature ships as a trio of percussionists propel Ahab’s obsession with the white whale to its fateful conclusion.

Tomorrow, September 15 The Other Dance Festival 2011, Week Two: Celebrate the 10th anniversary of the modern dance festival with this week’s performances from BONEdanse, Jyl Fehrenkamp, Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak, The Moving Architects, Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Janet Schmid.

Saturday, September 17 The City That Drinks: The City That Drinks, written by Neo-Futurists Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda and newcomer Jamie Budzick,is a show all about the history of drinking & writing in Chicago (as well as the non-drinking history).

Monday, September 19 Dumb Angel: Part transcript, part collage and part explosion of the American image of happiness, Dumb Angel explores madness, meaning and the torment of an artist on a quest for auditory joy beginning with the tumultuous recording session for The Beach Boys’ 1965 number-one hit single “Help Me, Rhonda.”

Wednesday, September 21 Locavore Picnic Supper: Picnic supper featuring local food from the Honest Meal Project, Limelight Catering and Green City Market. The dinner celebrates the conclusion of Green City Market’s annual Locavore Challenge.

Know of any other events happening in the Chicago area this week? Post them in the comments section. ]]> http://trailerpilot.com/2010/05/18/random-house-origins-live-review/ Tue, 18 May 2010 22:04:01 +0000 trailerpilot http://trailerpilot.com/2010/05/18/random-house-origins-live-review/ Last summer, upon emerging from Taylor Mac’s five-hour theatrical extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge at HERE in New York, I was charged with more than just the thrill of seeing a great show. The experience demanded I forge ahead, for the rest of my days, in a way that honored the why of my reaction. Basking in the aura of aesthetic perfection, transcendent command of technique, or crystal-clarity of vision is a pleasure worth paying for, to be sure, but one that often asks only to be received and appreciated—maybe also for you to insist that everyone you know buy a ticket, ASAP. These performances never ask—or care—whether you keep your promises, treat people with respect, or separate your recyclables. Revenge did, though—outright—and “Origins,” a music/theater/video/campfire/pizza party I attended Sunday, strongly concurred.

Poster design by Alanna Bailey.

This third annual show at Random House—literally a house, in Humboldt Park—began in the attic. An audience of about 20 gathered on the floor, on small mats. We were faced on both sides by eight canvas shades which rose, one by one, for brief pieces. Kate Sheehy, one of the event’s organizing forces (a trio that goes by Schjweet Troika), sang a little song praising the virtues of failure called “no brakes” while trying to balance on a child’s bicycle. (Later I found out Sheehy rides unicycles, and those tall bikes you’ll start seeing around again soon.) Cобака (Dog for A.M.), a scene for three written by Sharon Lanza, followed with a smart spoof on meta-theatrical self-consciousness played by two girls in a tent, at twilight at a summer camp, interrupted periodically by a stern, mirthless counselor demanding “lights out!” There was a sweetly-odd dance solo in a cramped corner (by becca hopson), a high-camp ode to chewing gum jingles and ’80s aerobics (Donnell Williams and Jyl Fehrenkamp’s Stuck on You), and a frank short story about a first trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms read by Sara Kerastas. Meredith Miller sang “Mack the Knife” with a thousand-yard stare during blood and bile/brecht and weill, unfolding swatches of burlap stained with silhouettes in blood—it was like a graphic-novella-as-crime-scene, the worms and beetles that scurry out if you peek at the mud under Sinatra’s rendition. Closing the attic show, Random House resident Jessica Hudson and Kyle Casey performed “the space between,” a song they co-wrote, separated by a miniature cityscape above which tiny hot air balloons drifted slowly toward one another, then up to the peak of the attic roof. “Do you know of a place…where I’ll be, and you’ll be/in the space between longing and relief?” they asked each other. “Come with me,” they sang. “I need you to see what I see.” The performers were illuminated by the audience: Flashlights distributed beforehand were passed around so those with the best angles could keep them lit.

Back on the second floor, we watched the second act, a mini film festival. The clinical control of Logan Kibens’s Prep Room (2009)—shot in a mortuary—paired nicely with Catie Olson and EC Brown’s hilariously-odd Lanolin Dreams (2010), which suggested that zooming closely in on a sheep’s coat would reveal strands of hair singing sambas and bossa novas in Portuguese. Cabela’s, another recent short, by Marilyn Volkman, asked you to draw your own conclusions from footage of kids firing toy rifles and a talking trophy head, probably shot at one of the hunting retailer’s zany destination stores (two of which are nearby, in Hammond, Indiana, and Hoffman Estates). Casey Smallwood’s Bleeding into the Alter drills into the artist’s recurring interest in self-imposed narratives of ideality via improvised interviews with actors playing romance novelists, an apt counterpoint to LETS DO THIS, (2010), Hudson, Sheehy and Danielle Paz’s Plan B of a film. While cutting what seems to have been intended as a Vodka Movie -like goof-off, they found an alternate story: Candid moments of the friends directing one another and negotiating the cooperation necessary to their collaborative venture. I can’t say whether it’s better than the movie they planned to make, but it’s insightful anyhow. Especially satisfying was imagining Plan A left behind on the shoulder of their creative fast lane, its thumb stuck out in vain as it watched this poem of what were supposed to be cast-offs roar into the sunset, pedal to the metal.

On the way downstairs to the house’s yard—for a set by band The Counterpane, pizza, beer and a fire—I walked through Sam Bryer’s installation, Groundwork. Soft-sculpture stalagtite-tentacles hung from the ceiling, teasing glimpses of a small stool. Once seated, I noticed that the forms could also be roots of an imagined tree which, if it existed, would have branches growing straight through the projector screen I’d just been watching, and the attic where I’d sat cross-legged with my flashlight. Two pouches hung from the wall on my left: One was filled with a bunch of black Sharpies, the other with hand-formed pellets containing wildflower seeds. As instructed, I wrote a few words on one, a wish for what I’d like to germinate for the year ahead, and dropped it into a sea sponge -looking bag. After sundown, Bryer emptied the bag into a bowl of water. The remaining audience members and I knelt around the bowl and plunged our hands into the dish, breaking down the pellets until we had a soupy mush, which we then planted in a plot in a corner of the house’s garden. “Mix everyone’s dreams together,” instructed Bryer.

Via email, Hudson writes that she’s “resistant to return to her ‘normal’ life” after three weekend performances of “Origins.” I was surprised to hear her art/life relationship seems like a dichotomy—“Origins” felt to me, as The Lily’s Revenge did, like an invitation to a more caring and creative approach to all choices, and I left Random House assuming Schjweet Troika and friends had made some discovery allowing them to do just that, always, without lapse, interruption or hesitation. Hudson—who is, full disclosure, like a few others involved, a good friend—is of course as vulnerable as any of us to “real” life’s petty annoyances and profound pain. Will the cooperative spirit these shows share, I wondered, always feel apart from daily experience? And, if so, is that telling evidence of a collective jump off our rails (and rockers)? I’m looking at the week ahead, another seven days either at my desk or in a theater. I expect to see some interesting, challenging, intriguing, beautiful and intelligent things. I’ll likely also witness a few moments that fall short of their intent and/or haven’t quite discovered one. Nothing will ask me to get my hands dirty, though, and in the afterglow of an experience like “Origins,” that feels like a problem.

Jessica Hudson. Photo courtesy Walkabout Theater Company.

Hostess and MC Jyl Fehrenkamp does a fine job of spreading the word, but in case you haven’t been checking in over the weekend, another Poonie’s Cabaret lands at Links Hall tonight. Per tradition, it’s $5 or PWYC, starts at 8:00pm, well maybe 8:15, and fills up fast. The lineup esta noche:

Tina Gillis
David Lakein
Silvita Diaz Brown
J’Sun Howard
Ashley Thornton
Clowns Lez BoBo and Na KoKo
The Poonie’s Cabaret Singers
Jessica Hudson

In lieu of time I don’t have to follow-up in detail on shows I’ve previewed over the past few weeks, here’s a grab-bag of impressions and memorable moments of the fall season thus far:

Miami City Ballet’s Chicago debut was, overall, deserving of the fawning praise it received from the Tribune and Sun-Times. “Symphony in Three Movements,” first on the bill, wasn’t trumped by anything that followed but was alone worth the price of admission. Bart Cook and Maria Calegari’s staging thrust all the important information into the foreground and all six soloists embodied their roles clearly and confidently. My most snobbish and nit-picking side comes out when watching Balanchine abstracts, and still nothing about MCB’s interpretation of one of my favorites touched a nerve. The pas de deux, danced by Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg and Carlos Miguel Guerra, and first movement especially won me over with their purity of delivery and disciplined service of the ballet’s intricate spatial and musical geometries. In the second act, “Valse Fantaisie 1953″ fared better than did the Black Swan grand pas, whose Mary Carmen Catoya failed to suggest the duet’s narrative crux. The swift withdrawal of Odile’s hand from Siegfried’s kiss should freeze blood in the vein — Catoya merely pulled it away with no more attention than was paid to her glissades précipités. Rolando Sarabia, however, was powerful and tastefully-restrained in the best Cuban tradition. As for “In the Upper Room,” I’m — sorry — not in the camp that believes Twyla Tharp to be a genius. The “bomb squad” duo was danced to perfection and the energy was kept high enough to keep me engaged, but Tharp’s kitchen-sink vocabulary and forced casualness have always kept me from being swept off my feet the way a piece of that length wagers I will. Still, I hadn’t seen world-class ballet dancing in a long time — I hope Villella is already planning MCB’s next Chicago visit.

Last Friday, The Seldoms held a brief, site-specific triple bill inside the main gallery at the Loyola University Museum of Art. Paige Cunningham’s duet “Inside the House of Simon,” danced by Philip Elson and Amanda McAlister and inspired by the paintings of Simon Gouverneur, ran Merce (no relation) Cunningham’s compositional procedures and forms through a poetic, acceleratory engine to an original score by Jason Geistweidt and the IAM team at Columbia College. McAlister and Elson also created original works, “Numeral Dualities” and “Wen,” respectively, that were a bit more green but considered and open. I appreciated Christina Gonzalez-Gillett and Bruce Ortiz’ centrifugal use of the room in “Dualities” — however expansive, they shared a low-frequency hostility that made the gallery feel like a cell. Diametrically opposite was Elson’s piece, which had three dancers (Damon Green, Cara Sabin and Trevor Szuba-Schneider) running, diving and carving up the space as though it were an Alpine meadow. Afterward, the audience leapt into a huge spread of tempera paints and paper and weapons-grade cocktails from a Violet Hour skeleton crew — it was a great event.

The previous Friday, during Links Hall’s 30-hour 30th anniversary celebration, I was able to swing by Jyl Fehrenkamp’s special late-night Poonie’s Cabaret. Darrell Jones premiered Bootsy, a lover spurned in a ski mask, blonde fall and combat shitkickers whose gut-wrenching solo put my heart in my throat. Tila Von Twirl classed through a burlesque routine historically-accurate enough to make me feel like I was on the set of Mad Men, Suzy Grant gave a James Brown-inspired drag king number a fierce twist ending, and Jessica Hudson read verbatim from her Judy Blume-branded grade-school diary until I damn near pissed my pants.

After interviewing her for Flavorwire, Nora Chipaumire’s gukuruhundi at the MCA was far more abstract and suggestive than the aggressive political statement I was expecting. Still, the sensory journey she and Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited guide the audience through speaks clearly enough. Perhaps the biggest surprise was how major a narrative role the lighting design plays in this work: loaded with tech cues, gukuruhundi uses bulbs as everything from prison doors to assault rifles to an African dawn. Projected animations created for the piece, by Joelle Dietrick and Romain Tardy, were transfixing.

October 4 I attended Epiphany Dance Experiment’s evening dedicated to the interplay between dance and sound; “Alegrias” and “Notes From a Bottle,” performed by dancer Wendy Clinard and musicians Las Guitarras de España, was a diptych of flamenco-inspired solos that both looked and sounded gorgeous in the cavernous space and on its resonant wooden floor. Synapse Arts Collective brought an excerpt from Stridulate, which I loved, that included two new performers (Charlie Univerz and Angela Watkins) in a roaming, migratory score, Cindy Brandle Dance Company performed the kind quintet it contributed to this year’s Other Dance Festival and Heather Hartley, in collaboration with Basil Abbott, Sherry Antonini, Casey Murtaugh, Helen Lee and Erica Mott premiered “O My Innocents,” a transporting, ritualisitic piece that began as a procession and spread out into a delta of penance and ablution.

I can’t really be objective about Luna Negra Dance Theater, who I saw perform Saturday — I’m a regular teacher of its company class — but they looked great last Saturday at the Harris on a triple bill marking their tenth anniversary. I was especially grateful to see Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Nube Blanco” again — nothing of this most recent performance made me feel like taking back any of the gushing praise I slathered upon its world premiere last March.

Finally, this past Sunday I caught up with an old friend at Pam Ann’s Harris show. Caroline Reid’s other character Lily is hardly funny and the show was an indulgent two hours with no intermission, but the first, ad-libbed half was hysterical and her ceaseless stoking of Southwest Airlines’ employees’ presumed inferiority complex (“Do you ever dream of flying over water? Do you own a passport? What’s that place you fly out of here, your hub — it’s a shed in a car park, isn’t it?”) had the largely-industry audience — and the two of us — in stitches.

Peter Carpenter will perform My Fellow Americans, a world premiere work and Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Grant project, this May at Link’s and so I won’t say much about the solo excerpt from that show he danced tonight other than it was another installment of recent activity that demands Americans not be missed once it arrives.  Stay tuned here and you won’t miss a thing–promise.

Photo by William Frederking

Fehrenkamp herself followed up with a bit exposing a deep vein of fandom I can certainly relate to:  An intense, almost congenital Star Wars obsession whose harsh, shocking betrayal nearly ruined the entirety of 1999 and possibly each year since. She did an admirable job of sliding into performance and quickly back out to MC-ing; I would have mutilated both in the process.

Adam Rose of Antibody Dance–in drag as “Elena”–punched the evening in the face with an inspired, beyond-odd dance solo that nearly defies description. Elena is like the corpse of Dorothy Gale dressed as Scarlett O’Hara performing acidic, clownish kabuki in a mute Royce Reed routine involving a gas can, a few worried-to-dust letters, and conviction far beyond his surely-not-all-that-many years. I’m definitely looking forward to more from this intriguing young man.

Adam Rose as Elena

Long overdue was my introduction tonight to Julie Mayo of Dim Sum Dance. There’s a beautiful inquisitiveness to Mayo’s performance that pierced her solo’s many scenes like piano wire beading a strand of investigations and mischievous theatrical buds. Opening with the wrapping of a white box in red paper (which recalled the opening scene of Matthew Barney’s 2005 film Drawing Restraint 9) to match a second box on the other side of the space, Mayo proceeds through a series of tasks neither significant nor throwaway. She expertly sustained an atmosphere of creative mystery; each transition seemed the result of a patient brainstorm on unpredictability. Snapping her fingers with gluttonous glee and flying through clear, curious phrasework, it was obvious Mayo’s internal dialogue was rich and complete. What made her work fascinating was that it remained hidden–the richness of interior experience was simultaneously palpable and out of reach.

Then came The Dance Team. Fehrenkamp introduced them with the tidbit that they’ll be taking themselves to Hell’s Kitchen’s The Tank for a show April 11 and workshop the day after–I expect their mix of extensive planning and close-enough execution will resonate just fine with the J/M/Z crowd.  Taking the space nonchalantly from the floor-seated house overflow, idon’twannabedefeated X 1000 (in progress) consisted on paper of a few dance numbers to Crystal Castles, The Spice Girls and Temple of the Dog (surprising considering they were probably in diapers when “Hunger Strike” hit #4 on the charts) broken only by an interlude of sloppy Styx a capella.  What they have going for them, if they can figure out how to isolate it and maximize its impact, is a sense for the boundary between performance and simply “doing.”  Despite the fact there’s nothing close to radical about their movement or compositions, they’re astute at anticipating what the audience assumes is going on and subverting it.  I’d rather see them explore this territory more than exploit the fact that Steve May is willing to take all his clothes off in public.  It’s brave, sure, and it turns the pedestrian quality of what they do somewhat on its head, but considering no one else on the Team so much as peeled off a t-shirt it read more than anything like Mr. May is merely an exhibitionist in search of a venue.  As an aside, I’ll note that I haven’t seen that many toques on the floor since Ghrai Harrison (far right) left DanceWorks Chicago. Anyway, good luck out there, kids, and for God’s sake keep enjoying yourselves–it’s contagious.

There was a series of Reese’s commercials in the 1990s that I had all but forgotten until Matthew Hollis made it the extremely effective punchline of a characteristically tangential, self-effacing and -aggrandizing solo performance that’s firmly within his realm, namely narrative comedy shrouded in contemporary dance touches and an outsized personality that’s always on stage. He’s talented, smart, and sublimely comfortable in performance. I part ways with Hollis on whether his investigations of cheerleading constitute viable, vital work in contemporary performance, but there’s no arguing with the extent to which he’s honed his chops as a solo artist–the adoration of his fans is not unjustified.

I was frankly blown away by The Moving Architects. Erin Carlisle Norton’s group of dancers (Anna Goldman, Stefanie Karlin, Alison Riazi and Jessie Young) as well as Ian Hatcher in the space on acoustic guitar and xylophone (glockenspiel?), are obviously serious about what they’re doing and how they do it. Clad in puffy vests and chromatically-paired skirts, the quartet they presented, from This Sandy Cube, showed impressive structural invention and sound execution throughout; the vocabulary suited its interpreters well and all points of intersection were thoughtfully and completely worked out. It’s not a happy dance: Melancholy and frustration saturated the dancers’ formalized, almost ritualistic interactions and the closing section especially read as a move toward entropy rather than peaceful resolution. Handfuls of sand emerged from their vest pockets and were poured out onto the space’s floor, turning the entire room into a mournfully-empty hourglass running out of what little time it had to begin with. It was a closer well-suited for a program in a winter I think we all are eager to see end.

The Moving Architects

It’s Le Choix de Sophie for you happ’nin kids out there come Monday the 2nd:  A killer Poonie’s Cabaret and a Silverspace Salon with Julia Rhoads on the same night!  Read on/dive into your existential crisis.

Like I’ve been saying for years, Jyl Fehrenkamp’s Poonie’s Cabarets rock the hizz.  The Poo Cab is gassed up and ready to burn rubber (in a totally environmentally-friendly way) into ’09 with its upcoming installment, which is positively engorged with talent.  Check the lineup:

• Peter Carpenter
• Julie Mayo/Dim Sum Dance
• The Dance Team
• Adam Rose as “Elena”
• Columbia College Renegades
• The Moving Architects
• Matthew Hollis

Along with the fabulous Fehrenkamp herself (who will also perform), Ronald Reagan will be there, Elena is a goth drag queen (!), it costs five measly bucks, it’s for a good cause and somehow, when a week starts off with a Poonie’s Cabaret, nothing bad ever happens on the way to Friday.  Poonie’s:  Get some at 8pm at Link’s Hall.

Lucky Plush Productions mastermind Julia Rhoads is the next to take the (kinda comically small, I have to say) chair at Silverspace for this ongoing CDF Salon Series I keep hollering about.  Lucia Mauro packed the house, Marissa Perel blew my mind, and now Rhoads is set to further stoke the fires of fierceness with a discussion about her obsession de l’année:  Transferring the inescapable questions of sampling and appropriation in contemporary culture to the realm of dance performance.  Silverspace Salons are also 1) free, 2) feature a variety of super-tasty snacks and wine (especially if you bring something too) and 3) held in the wonderland that is Asimina Chremos’ live/work space.  It’s here from 7-9pm and don’t forget to RSVP.  

Which will you choose?  It’s impossible, isn’t it?  Either way, you’ll have an amazing and affordable Monday evening.  Commence consideration.