Mitchell Oldham

Some things you merely enjoy and there are other things you feel very fortunate having experienced.  Entering its final weeks within Wrightwood 659’s captivating galleries, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art, falls firmly in the second category.

The show, which revitalizes our appreciation of the psychological power of art and challenges us to grapple with our notions of what sexuality and sexual identity are, will not be traveling.  It ends August 10^th, eleven weeks and three days after opening.  Considering the breadth of relentless artistic beauty saturating the exhibition spaces four floors, About Face’s limited residence at Wrightwood 695 seems particularly ephemeral. That no other city will be able to experience its tremendous human uplift makes the exhibition’s approaching close even more regrettable.

Timed to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall riots when the marginalized stood together and answered subjugating force with fury; the exhibition seems to follow suite by saying no to rejection and victimization through the prisms of time and art. No one would have expected and many have forgotten that at the forefront of that rebellion stood a black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson.  Her courage and that of the thousands who came to rally behind her helped make America see the invisible.

Those are also the attributes that ultimately link the riots to the About Face exhibit.   A torrent of voices that you’d never expect to hear acknowledging their own beauty and validating their link in the chain of humanity. 

Unlike so much that commemorates Stonewall, the voices in this exhibit are rich in variety and origin.  They come from Africa and Sweden and Indonesia and all the Americas.  They represent people who have and do live their lives in harmony with what they know themselves to be.  Queer.  A word that encompasses the familiar and the freaks and accepts them all through a shared connecting thread.

A confrontation with the bold, the demanding and the exhilarating happens almost immediately with the art of Canadian born Attila Richard Lukacs.  His works have the scale and tonal resonance of the Renaissance but carry messages from the underground.  Maddeningly beautiful, provocative and serenely defiant; most of the pieces in this setting only hint at sexuality and seem more concerned with social hypocrisy and political justice. 

By the time the show ends on the fourth floor, you’ve entered a world of metaphysical heartbreak and excruciating endurance.  The About Face exhibit is broken up in four parts with this last representing transcendence.   Here, the mood changes dramatically.  The art has a spiritual grandeur; a psychic bond connecting the paintings of each artist. Some are poignant and shaded in mystery.  Many of Jerome Caja’s works are wonderfully clever, some scathingly irreverent; the perfect reflection of a mind enraged.  And one with an insight that is nothing less than a sublime gift.  The artist died at 37 and youth permeates the 120 miniatures on display.  Even when many of his pieces openly allude to death and decay, there’s no hint of the macabre.  

To get to this point was a trek though some of the most beautiful artistic terrain imaginable.  Encountering the work of each of the exhibits 43 artists was like traveling through 43 countries where the language and topography is vastly different from the place to place and infinitely fascinating everywhere. Each of the nearly 500 pieces of art can be viewed as its own story. They’re told through photography, collage, surreally transfixing dolls, painting, video imagery, and sculpture.  Together they offer startling new ways to see the world we live in and those who are making this journey through life with us.   Much of the art is unforgettable. 

Seeing how Joan E. Biren’s images of lesbian affirmation compare to the exquisite work Sophia Wallace does in obliterating conventional concepts of masculine and feminine beauty feels revelatory.  And we discover a new Harvey Milk.   The one before he was iconized as a trailblazer and martyr and was working as a photographer in San Francisco.  His photographic skills were exceptional and his images reflected the positive acceptance of self and community we associate with his life.  Looking into the mesmerizing eyes of South African Zanele Muholi’s self-portraits where she transforms herself into a sexual and cultural question mark; regally inviting open scrutiny.  Realizing the staggering range of domestic unions that exists through Leonard Suryajaya’s photographic chronicle of his life as a family centric Indonesian man living with a white partner here in Chicago.

The show’s depth and scope makes it feel like a bottomless trove of treasure.  One that you’d love to plunder over and over.  A triumph from any measure, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art is the kind of arts project that any city of consequence should and would be proud to host.  And here, the message is just as beautiful as the art.

About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art

Through August 10, 2019

Wrightwood 659

659 W. Wrightwood

Chicago, IL  60614

773-437-6601

info@wrightwood659.org

Admissions through reservations only

Museums can sometimes act as portals to rich and complex worlds. The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Figures of Speech, a retrospective on the work of 38-year-old Virgil Abloh, manages to reveal as much about one of the cornerstones of our culture, fashion, as it does about the prolific creative output of a gifted artist.

Because Abloh is black and does not fit conventional narratives of where robust seeds of creativity grow, especially when considering the exclusive world of luxury fashion, much has been written about his background growing up in the south suburbs of Chicago absorbing the many layered and densely textured influences of the south side.   Like many of his peers, skateboarding, music and looking good were obsessions; prompting many excursions downtown to check out what was the hottest look and to buy whenever possible.  Eventually the urge to tweak and twist items that he coveted would pave the way to acclaim.

Somewhere between obtaining an engineering degree and going on to ITT for a graduate degree in architecture, Abloh’s sustained interest in the creative arts led to a meeting with Kanye West and his creative team where he would help develop album covers, design concerts and oversee the look and direction of the burgeoning star’s merchandising.  He and West were to go on to forge a deep and lasting friendship grounded in their mutual passion to create. Abloh worked similarly with MCA to create merchandising that complement the Figures of Speech exhibit.

Although already well established in fashion design, graphic design and music before founding his own Milan based fashion house in 2013, the move brought him mainstream recognition.  Last year he was named the artistic director for Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection.

Organized and overseen by MCA’s Chief Curator Michael Darling who brought the David Bowie Is exhibit to Chicago in 2014, Figures of Speech shows how well Abloh takes looks we see every day on the streets and reinterprets them through the imagination of a visionary. 

As broad as the exhibit is in scope, it’s the dominance of fashion that propels it and sustains its energy.  Through it you see and feel the range of Abloh’s cultural commentary as expressed through clothing.  Sometimes nuanced and more commonly bold, it always manages to captivate with elements of mystery and excitement.  In tune with a black flag flying outside the museum that reads Question Everything, Abloh’s work does exactly that while offering new ways to see possibilities.

Like several members of the museum’s security team, the sneaker array will be a big hit and for many of the visitors attending the exhibit.  Collaborating with Nike in 2016 to put his stamp on the legendary Air Jordan, Abloh deconstructed the iconic Air Force 1 to take it in unexpected and invigorating directions.  It and several prototypes he created for Nike reflect the artist’s endless curiosity and make up an already popular component of the show.

Transforming himself from “consumer to creator”, from buyer to maker, he’s proven himself as savvy as he is talented.  Streetwear has always been more than just functional.  It’s been used to express individuality, style and daring.  Once America loosened up post Woodstock, when ties and heels were no longer de riguer in the workplace and denim displaced chinos on sidewalks, free expression in fashion has been on the rise.  It’s this freedom Abloh celebrates and elevates to luxury. 

The artist’s technical degrees may explain the analytical edge that creeps through some of his work.  His transparent chairs using bright gradient colors on a rigid wire frame testify to his willingness to cast away blinders to recreate the commonplace.  Objects ubiquitous to the urban landscape like gas stations broadcasting the going rate for fuel are scrutinized and recast into an arresting monochromatic narrative of who we are and how we live. 

Messages that reflect an all-encompassing awareness erupt from his creations.  Transmitted through text, color or superimposed images, they, like so much high fashion, insist on your attention and command appreciation.

The exhibit even includes a mini-store where select articles can be purchased.  Limiting some clothing to just 3 items in any given size and priced at a few thousand dollars each, exclusivity is guaranteed.   Given how mesmerizing some of the pieces are, there will be those who find the temptation irresistible.

Virtually alone as a black man thriving at the pinnacle of the global fashion industry, very like Andre Leon Talley, former American editor-at-large of Vogue who began his career in the 70’s, Abloh is dedicating the MCA show to the youth of Chicago.  Believing that “children of color will take center stage in the future of luxury”, he hopes his success will inspire others to believe in themselves and realize their own dream. 

Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech”

Museum of Contemporary Art

June 10, 2019 – September 22, 2019

220 E. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL   60611

312-280-2660

www.mcachicago.org

Back in the day when air transportation didn’t exist and long distance communication was still in the form of the written word, travel wasn’t really travel unless things went wrong.  Not infrequently, catastrophically wrong.  Today, most travel is for pleasure and we plan meticulously to insure nothing goes awry when we head to the airport on our rendezvous with leisure.  Thankfully, there is a category of human being who likes to take the old-fashioned approach. When they take flight, they’re embarking on genuine unadulterated adventures and expeditions.  Although also painstakingly planned, expeditions remain journeys into the unknown; often testing the limits of physical and mental fortitude.  A large and curious audience gathered at Auditorium Theatre Tuesday night to hear a modern-day adventurer talk about what it’s like to put it all on the line for what makes you complete.

In the last of this season’s National Geographic presentations highlighting inspirational women held in conjunction with the Auditorium Theater; everyday people got the chance to walk in the shoes, see through the eyes and glimpse into the soul of a natural born risk taker. 

Hillaree Nelson’s physical presence was the first clue to her uniqueness.  Striding onto the Auditorium stage with the muscular leanness of an Olympian in tall black boots and matching Matrix sleek one piece dress, she appeared a living testament to fitness.  Every inch an elite athlete. Happenstance, curiosity and love of nature and sports led her to France after graduating from college where she discovered ski mountaineering; the portal to extreme mountaineering; her true passion. Testing her grit on mountains and volcanoes around the globe and becoming the first woman to climb consecutive 26,000’ peaks in only one day; National Geographic named her one of the foremost adventurers of our age.  It then extended her a National Geographic Explorer Grant to lead a team on a first ascent of 19,000’ Hkakabo Razi in Burma, now Myanmar.  She would spend a little over an hour dissecting the reality of that expedition.

Considered extremely dangerous and little known to most of the world, Hkakabo Razi has only been successful climbed, using different routes, twice.  The 2015 attempt made by Nelson and the other four members of her team; including National Geographic photographer, Cory Richards, would become the basis of the award-winning documentary, Point of No Return; as well as for Nelson’s Auditorium presentation.

It soon became clear that transcendent toughness, both physical and mental, are essential in the world of incomparable challenges.  During her presentation and equipped with captivating video and stills taken by Richards, the audience was able to not only imagine but to see how harrowing such an expedition is.

Climbing aboard a Burmese passenger train known as the “Death Train” because warped tracks would routinely cause it to fly off rail killing scores of people was a “never again” ordeal. The 148-mile hike that followed from the train to the mountain included winding through snake infested jungles filled with ravenous insects.  Persistent bureaucratic hurdles dramatically slowed their process and even threatened to suffocate their mission. The same delays caused them to lose two-thirds of the porters contracted to help them.  Food, provisions and even clothing had to be sacrificed in order to move forward.  Severe food rationing, significant weight loss, continuous 70 mph wind assaults, and high stakes gender-centered tensions made up the fabric of what became a grueling odyssey.

Speaking candidly and honestly about the very real perils of a passion that demands so much of the human body and one that flirts so openly with death, Nelson admitted that people who do extreme mountaineering (anything over 18,000’) share an uncommon awareness and understanding of death.  One that may or may not be linked to the necessary pain and suffering required to climb massive mountains.  Admitting that only when she was pushing herself to challenge her absolute physical and mental limits does she attain the wholeness she seeks, she reveals how she came to understand and accept herself. 

Detailing the lengthy preparations mandated for such journeys and the excitement of traveling through exotic cultures eventually led her to speak openly about her own encounters with death.  About a woman under her supervision who died suddenly in the midst of an expedition and the many friends she’s lost who shared her need to go where so few have the tenacity, ability or passion to go.

As a mother of two young sons who at 9 and 11 are growing into the ability to comprehend the complexities of what it is to have an irresistible calling in life, she seems relieved that she can finally explain to them why she must do what she does.  In a New York Times Opinion piece last month, Francis Sanzaro of Rock and Ice and Ascent magazines, declared, “alpinists are highly analytical, supremely aware and often tightly controlled” people.  Given the unflinching focus and precise cognitive clarity needed to endure the vast physical and mental demands needed to climb the world’s tallest peaks, mountaineering at Nelson’s level likely demands all of those things.  For her, it is only by sacrificing herself to the suffering mandated in these expeditions does she find the internal peace that everyone craves and the fortunate few find in myriad different ways.

National Geographic Live

Hillaree Nelson

Point of No Return

May 7, 2019     7pm

The Auditorium Theatre

50 E. Ida B. Wells Dr.

Chicago, IL    60605

www.auditoriumtheatre.org

A & A Ballet, a three-year-old dance school currently housed in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave., is one of those places with the gift of turning raw talent into prodigious proficiency.    Actually a combination of experience and skill, that gift comes in the form of the school’s co-founders, Anna Reznik and Alexei Kremnev. Both are recognized for their own distinguished dance careers and both have worked in leadership roles at the Joffrey before combining forces to open their dance center. 

Last weekend’s performances of Sleeping Beauty marks the ninth production the school has mounted for public review and the staging carried all of the hallmarks that make this school so exceptional.    As a premier school of ballet, they take their mission seriously enough to insist on excellence and possess the expertise to mine it and mold it.  At peak moments in the performance, it was difficult to detect the line between the professionals recruited for the production’s lead roles and A & A Ballet’s more accomplished students.  Many of the school’s aspiring artists displayed remarkable theatrical stage presence as well as noteworthy dancing ability.  Abigail Dudich’s turn as the White Cat Saturday night was but one sterling example. The four dancers who performed the Garland Waltz were just as memorable.  They all displayed a level of poise and confidence in their dancing that would parallel some of the best technique found in any great ballet company.

Tradition seems to hold a particularly strong influence on the way A & A Ballet shapes its performances.  Their Art Deco Nutcracker over the Christmas holidays was so effectively evocative of a bygone past that you almost had a sense of how that earlier period felt as well as looked. Sleeping Beauty followed that same aesthetic awareness; this time rendering a rich baroque romanticism to the project.

Using original drawings of renowned 19^th century book illustrator Gustave Dore to set the show’s tone proved a brilliant move.  Projecting huge black and white images to create an expansive and engrossing backdrop instantly transported the audience to another time.  The illustrations of imposing majestically ancient castles and scenes of a Europe 200 years in the past were captivating in their own right and helped to instantly transport the audience to a different world.   Add Tchaikovsky’s beautifully timeless score and the ideal foundation was established to showcase quality dance. 

Allowing that each of Sleeping Beauty’s leads performed beautifully, Michael Sayre’s as Prince Desire was ruthlessly impeccable.  Charged with something beyond skill, he moved with uncanny exactness and precision. He also showed why one should never take anything for granted in dance.  Audience’s come to assume part of dancer’s repertoire must include the ability to leap and perform jumps that are completely without sound.  To hear a thud following either is jarring.  There were thuds Saturday night, but very few.  And all of them were dwarfed by the cascade of developed and developing talent covering the Studebaker stage on a Saturday night in May.

Sleeping Beauty

A & A Ballet

May 4, 2019        2pm/7pm

Studebaker Theater

410 S. Michigan Avenue

Chicago, IL  60605

https://www.aacenterfordance.org/

Just off the main hall of the Art Institute’s Modern Wing, a bold reimagining of the past has resulted in a beautiful collection of photographs that keep you trying to unlock their secrets.  Created by Dawoud Bey, a highly-regarded Chicago artist and now a recent MacArthur genius grant awardee, the artist takes a detour from his signature portraitures to take on history and ask a question.   “What must it have looked like to escape enslavement and make a run for freedom?”  Bey chose the last leg of such a journey to highlight. 

In American history, the Underground Railroad symbolizes this country’s second experience in exodus when members of an enslaved people fled bondage. A series of clandestine routes streaming from south to north, secret pathways leaving states like Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas led to places like Michigan or Buffalo, NY that possessed close proximity to the Canadian border.  Many runaways also made their way to Ohio and Lake Erie where Canada beaconed from the other side.  The artist’s photographs were taken in this geography.

Bey’s Night Coming Tenderly, Black; 18 large scale photographs, lets viewers silently slip into new identities by allowing them to inhabit a radically different world and a vastly different time. Most Americans don’t know the psychological costs of fleeing oppression or have never felt the true weight of life jeopardizing danger.  Bey lets us understand and even grasp their intensity through the use of darkness. 

Every image is lit as if the photograph was taken in late twilight, just before complete darkness erases vision.  Even in the gallery where the exhibition is mounted, your eyes have to adjust.  At first the images appear too dark to even detect a subject.  Slowly, objects and scenes come into view until you recognize them for what they are; an open field in one or a rolling expanse of water that is Lake Erie in another. And with them comes a feeling of apprehension; a lack of surety, a vague notion of possibility.  All made palpable by the absence of clear light.

Is the sleeping house sitting behind the white picket fence the right house, a safe haven?  How long will it take to cross that immense lake where freedom will be waiting on the other shore?

Word is out that the exhibit will be ending soon, April 14th.  Thursday night saw the gallery full of people losing themselves in the photographs and talking quietly to one another about their strength.  A wall leading into the exhibit displays a swarm of period and more contemporary photographs of post-Civil War black America that link Bey’s homage to courage to today’s realities.  As well as being visually captivating, both exhibits exude cautionary hope.

Dawoud Bey –  Night Coming Tenderly, Black

Closes April 14, 2019

The Art Institute of Chicago

Modern Wing

Nichols Bridgeway (Monroe & Michigan)

Chicago, IL   60603

www.artic.edu

About 90 seconds into Sneaky Pete, Giordano Dance Chicago’s opening piece in its 56^th Spring season Saturday night, you knew the evening was going be solid.  The sleek machine founder Gus Giordano created over half a century ago is still purring like a Ferrari as it continues to capitalize on the company’s many strengths. 

Listing Sneaky Pete’s dancers as actors in the show’s program, the composition places them in a world of high stakes seduction where love is a game of titillation.  With Zachary Heller as the charismatic center of a fast-flowing plot told in dance, the sexy back and forth of these love connections might raise eyebrows in Mayberry but couldn’t be more at home here in the urbane confines of Chicago.  Music by Kerry Muzzey, Abel Korzeniowski and Adam Crystal kept anticipation high with a score that never relaxed its grip.

Throughout the dance, a high-energy reimagining of film noir aesthetics that cleverly blends hopeful expectation with menace, it’s the prowess of the dancing that makes the work sparkle.   The many synchronized sequences show off the company’s balletic skill. Mr. Heller’s supreme gifts in his solo runs stunned for their speed and impeccable execution.  And the theatricality of his canny performance added credence to his billing as lead actor.

Original music by Dan Myers and John Ovnik; with Myers himself performing the composition on violin live on stage, kept the intensity high in the second dance, commonthread, as well.  Choreographer Autumn Eckman matched movement to the beat in ways that complemented each with its nod to old school expressions of what beauty looks like in dance form. 

Ron De Jesus’s 2003 inspiration, Prey, proved itself the evening’s juggernaut.  Here opposite worlds came together to blow the audience away.  Masterfully weaving the ancient and the modern into a mosaic of mystery and suspense, every sensory element converged to take you to a place you never knew existed.  One that was as exotic as it was beautiful and as thrilling as it was captivating.  Add to this complex stew power and strength and you have Prey.  In the ever so capable hands of GDC, the work opened with two female dancers in sheer flowing red mirroring one anothers expressions of homage over a sound track echoing antiquity.  From there the piece took form as Kodo drums assumed dominance and the dance became a journey where time is suspended and a fascinating narrative unfolds in movement.  Undeniably exciting, the aggression of the female dancers stood out in high relief and allowed their physical power to share center stage with their grace.  If anything, Prey proves how art only grows and becomes more stimulating as its diversity of input broadens.  Here, it triumphed.

Giordano Dance Chicago’s premier of Miranda Davis’s Flicker saw a tone shift as the dance commemorated her view of life from the prism of someone who’s had to confront mortality through serious illness.  With dancers dressed in clinging white, gestures and motion gave the piece auras of sacrifice and the baptismal.

A work dedicated to the acumen of just two dancers, Alloy, a second work by choreographer Autumn Eckman in the night’s performance brought a pair of its most accomplished dancers to the fore.  Maeghan McHale and Devin Buchanan in combination have been with the company nearly two decades.  Their technical accuracy and natural style stand out in everything they do.  Each will be leaving the company soon to pursue greater opportunities and their performance in Alloy constituted a public farewell.  Heavily romantic and displaying a formality common to pas de deux, the work profiled the silky discipline and smoothness of flow each of these dancers is known for and Saturday’s audience so rapturously appreciated.

Who doesn’t like leaving a performance walking on clouds which is ones only recourse when GDC closes on Soul.  A million miles from the ethereal, choreographer Ray Leeper’s tribute to philanthropist Candace Jordan is all about the earthy honesty and inescapable magnetism of soul music as danced on jazz trained feet.  The combination couldn’t be more ideal; especially when riding on the vocals of Gladys Knight, Al Green and Tina Turner. 

A full company piece that exuded release, every segment incorporated moves adapted from 60’s R &B revues and applied to contemporary dance. The result, a joyful marriage between soulful style and close group precision.  Ultimately spilling out into the aisles of the theater, pony tails snapped like whips and bodies moved in serpentine temptation as they commemorated a Golden Age of American music.

Giordano Dance Chicago

Live in the Momentum

March 22, 23   2019

Harris Theater

Millennium Park

www.giordanodance.org

In 1958, sixty years ago, the United States military had only been integrated for 12 years and the nation was beginning to convulse under the demands of a burgeoning civil rights movement.  In 1958, it would be another seven years for the voting rights act to become law.  It’s also when a little black boy from Texas who grew up to be a dancer and choreographer in New York established his own dance company and introduced the world to modern dance exceptionalism achieved through the prism of the African American experience.

Now 30 years after its founder’s death and on the company’s 60^th anniversary, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater tours the globe eight months out of the year and is toasted as the “best of Americana”.  And for the 50^th time, the company made its annual descent on the Auditorium Theater March 6^th for a five-day celebration of who they are and what they do. 

Always interested in exploring the boundaries of dance to see where creative inspiration might lead, the dance company thrives on artistic infusion and is constantly performing works conceived by a wide range of choreographers.   Several were featured in their recent Chicago stay in addition to two dances created by Mr. Ailey; the eternally popular Revelations and Timeless Ailey.

It was the first work on opening night, a commissioned piece intended as a tribute to Mr. Ailey that proved perplexing.  Crafted by Rennie Harris, a Philadelphian who founded the acclaimed hip-hop dance theatre company, Rennie Harris PureMovement, Lazarus is a complicated two-part allegory.  Dense with spoken word, heavy with the weight of despair, rife with           questions about direction and race consciousness, the work’s front end seemed to be an extended examination of self and society from the vantage point of the suppressed.  Then it shifts from powerlessness to promise.  The change comes late in the sequence with little dance preceding it.   When the transition arrives, its positive energy immediately received a warm reception and we began to see the hallmarks of Mr. Harris’s unique vision of dance.   

Lathered in energetic cool, the dance on display in Lazarus is characterized as much by mood as it is movement.  There’s a lot of “lean” in the dance, the kind of body language tilt that signifies confident self-possession in the black community. Loose WWII era costumes added an air of period suave that harkens back to when Ailey’s creative juices were roiling.

Lazarus’s second half might as well have rolled in on disco balls even though the dance’s aesthetics remained firmly rooted in the hip hop tradition as dancers rocked to a score laden with positive uplift.  Club kids from the 80’s, 90’s and even today would feel right at home with the unbridled spirit of the music whose message to keep rising came packaged in sizzling party music with a heavy dose of theatricality.  The sequence lit the audience’s fire instigating roars of approval.  Bracing, jubilant and intense, it induced chills and a lingering question.  Is this the new Ailey? 

Saturday afternoon proved how foolish such a question is.  Sixty years of success translates into adaptability and versatility.  In addition to continuously searching for and developing talent, the company functions as a heat seeking missile looking for choreographic talent that celebrates its mission and its dance acuity.

Kairos, a work designed by Wayne McGregor five years ago but initially danced by the Ailey company just last year, lives in a universe leagues and leagues from kaleidoscopic Lazarus.  Much more intimate and jagged, a different kind of drama rules here.  There’s illusion with dancers appearing and disappearing as strobe lights flash.  Against a wall of horizontal lines, dancers become musical notes dancing in improvised expression to music that’s in effect a remix of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. 

Although a part of performance repertoire for a year now, Kairos didn’t seem completely absorbed by the dancers.  At times there were brief lags that looked like uncertainty or hesitation.  Rare anomalies in dance at this level.  More traditionally balletic in form and mandating exact precision in order to perpetuate the dance’s continuity, Kairos appeared challenging but never lost its core beauty. 

En suffered from no such distractions.  Visually arresting from the beginning, the stage took on the appearance of a stark futuristic landscape with two spheres prominent in the background.  One high of pure light, the other a large low back lit orb.  They set an austere tone for a work that ultimately paid homage to the destiny of falling in love. 

Modern dance can become so abstract that it’s difficult to read the meaning behind the dance.  That’s why it’s always helpful when the choreographer sheds light on the inspiration for a particular work.  With En, which means fate in Japanese, choreographer Jessica Lang explained she how she was both celebrating the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and her husband, Kanji Segawa, a dancer in the company. 

We get a sense of how time has the capacity to devour us before we ever discover love.  And through dance as conceived in En, we see how satisfying love can be when it’s fulfilled.  Surprisingly, the dance is as full of power as it is of intimacy; ultimately allowing us to appreciate it in the end for its strength.  It also proved an ideal vehicle for portraying the company’s versatility.

But AAADT’s legacy lives in one dance, Revelations.  When a woman leaned over and whispered that she had seen the solo in I Wanna Be Ready danced more skillfully, a shrug could be the only response.  As the most viewed modern dance in the world, Revelations can’t be reduced to any of its individual parts. 

As with dancers who perform the ballet continually, it’s those first chords that open the dance that transport both dancer and audience to Alvin Ailey’s interpretation of self and truth. 

Determined to define his company as a proud reflection of himself and his heritage, it seems only natural a half century after he choreographed it that Revelations’ musical foundation would rest on spirituals. Still true today, the black church is the well you go to for strength, solace and restoration.  It is the essence of community and often a core element of identity.  The common struggles of humanity make an understanding of and appreciation for each of these needs universal. 

Part of the genius of Revelations is how effectively it translate large ideals into the beauty of dance.  As delightful as the music is in Revelations, the lyrics expose the heart of the dance; especially for the African American audience.  Anticipatory rumblings grew into cheers of approval as the curtain rose on the ballet.  The same “blood memories” that inspired Mr. Ailey to create Revelations begin to flood over the audience.  Many Revelations veterans likely have favorite segments that resonate more deeply than others.  Like the purity and elegance in Fix Me, Jesus, so exquisitely danced by Sarah Daley-Perdomo and Jermaine Terry Saturday afternoon.  Or the regal procession across the river in Wade in the Water that reads so clearly as a march of triumph.  The 30-minute baptism in self affirmation rushes by in what feels like seconds, whetting the appetite for another cathartic renewal next year. 

Ailey 60

March 6 -10, 2019

The Auditorium Theatre

50 E. Ida B. Wells Dr.

Chicago, IL    60605

www.auditoriumtheatre.org

Nothing beats a great creative partnership.  When two exceptional talents join forces, wonderful results flow in torrents.   

Veteran contemporary dance stalwart Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and six-year-old Malpaso Dance Company of Cuba went into a huddle last year to immerse themselves in each other’s work.   The objective; learning through sharing.  In the end, their dancers would not only perform together on stage, but each company would present works created by one of the other’s choreographers.   The culmination was a bravura performance conducted by both companies on the Auditorium stage over the weekend, March 2^nd and 3rd. 

On the outset, the evening’s direction wasn’t clear.  The first piece, Cloudline, choreographed by Chicago’s Robyn Mineko Williams and danced exclusively by the company’s own artists, was classic Hubbard Street.  Grace and relaxed confidence fused beautifully with impeccable technical execution.  Cloudline possessed attributes you’d associate with a fine tapestry. The greater the complexity, the more color and depth shine through.  It was fascinating to watch the dance continually erupt into tiny bursts of surprise before shifting down to soft poems of movement.  

More and more contemporary works are raising the ante on where dancers are allowed to go instinctually; leaving the impression that lines are being crossed.  Both male and female dancers are given greater opportunity to express strengths and vulnerabilities that once were the domain of one or the other gender.  When boundaries are removed in the world of dance, you see the kind of solos Cloudline showcased and gain a whole new appreciation for the beauty of the possible.

Ocaso, created by Malpaso’s Artistic Director Osnel Delgado, provided glimpses into how similar these two companies are.  A common creative intelligence seems to be in play as well as a reliance on the keen artistic sense of company dancers.

 Delgado not only choreographed the piece, he designed the costumes and danced the two-person work with Hubbard Street’s Alicia Delgadillo.  A captivating performance achievement, the dance scrutinized the many shades of emotional intimacy from a hundred different angles.  Meaning sunset or twilight in English, Ocaso felt and looked like an unraveling that neither dancer wanted to realize.  With alternating jolts of brawn and fragility, a constant back and forth of tenderness and tension got kneaded into something quite beautiful.  Touches of humor would flash out of nowhere while a thick dramatic thread kept the audience transfixed to see where this story would end.  Opening to the sound of thunder and carried on brilliant scores that included Autechre, the Kronos Quartet and Max Richter, Ocaso became a powerful expression of imagination. One of those rare people whose talents seem boundless, Delgado’s gifts as a dancer are in lock step with his abilities as a choreographer.  Hubbard Street’s Delgadillo matched his stellar performance effortlessly Friday night making the dance a visual joy.

The sounds and movements more clearly attributable to Cuba fully surfaced in the second half of the show.  Grounded in the common universality of romantic intrigue, there were few flashes of Latin America in Ocaso.  Elemental and The Windless Hold, both world premieres, made us feel the tropics both through the beat and the language of the dance. Created by Hubbard Street’s Williams and danced by the Malpaso company, Elemental opened on Africa tinged drums before gliding on heat seared piano.  All the while celebrating the Cuban dancers’ fluid skills. In one of the work’s segments, two people danced in melancholy seduction as a solo vocalist sang acapella from the stage.  Suspending time, it serenely reflected the creativity rampant throughout the entire piece. 

By the end of the show, a dialogue of mutual appreciation existed between the performers and the audience.  The final curtain fell to dancers jamming free style on the stage as contented smiles floated out onto frigid streets.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago/

Malpaso Dance Company

March 2 & 3, 2019

The Auditorium Theatre

50 E. Ida B. Wells Dr.

Chicago, IL    60605

www.auditoriumtheatre.org