Mitchell Oldham

There’s something startlingly unique about a Gus Giordano dance performance.  And it’s not always about what’s happening on stage.  If you’re in the right spot with an ideal vantage point to observe, you’ll see a profusion of contained excitement, simmering anticipation and flat out joy that just doesn’t exist in other arts space.  Hugs and smiles and kisses flow like wine at a bacchanal; fast and free.  There’s impressive fashion, loads of personal style and no shortage of individual beauty everywhere. People are treating each other like members of a very close, very large extended family at an overdue reunion.  And for all appearances, this cauldron of love is genuine.  That’s a lot of energy agitating before the show even starts.  But it’s a typical and arguably an appropriate prelude to a Giordano Dance Chicago show.

If this company knows anything, it’s how to keep its audience “excited and engaged”.  Fifty plus years old and the dance ensemble looks more like a sweet faced vixen of twenty; lean, confident and beautiful.  Opening its Fall season Friday night at the Harris Theater with a rascally 2004 work by Mark Swanhart, Sidecar frothed with dramatic good humor.  Dancers flopped vigorously from both wings of the stage like rudely tossed aside toys before launching into a flirting, courting extravaganza of silly rag dolls.   Individual couples would spin out and create their own tiny vignette of seduction. Costumed in the era of James Dean, an air of nostalgia hung over the performance celebrating youthful romance.

How companies select works to present from season to season is likely driven by a whole host of factors.  Surely an appreciation of levity and gleeful release factored into assembling the works chosen for the company’s Live in the Momentum repertoire this season.  More smiles were in store with Loose Canon, choreographed by Jon Lehrer in 2006 which tapped the skills of five personality rich dancers.  Set to Pachelbel’s Canon in D major as played by Wynton Marsalis; this iteration is at its core burlesque, a comical parody effectively using dance as its medium.

Calling the Giordano troupe a tremendously competent dance company would be a slack compliment indeed.  Because it is foremost a jazz dance company, the promise of thrills served on a platter of surprise is nestled into the core of the company’s DNA.  One of the Giordano Dance Chicago’s hallmarks is to deliver on that surprise with beautiful execution.

To this point the season’s premier had been satisfying.  But excitement needs another ingredient if it’s to ignite.  It could a single dancer whose will or gifts or essence of the moment causes them to shine like an irresistible light as they dance.  It could be the whole troupe in identical mental and physical sync moving as one with spellbinding accuracy.  It could be the exceptional performance of a work that clearly demands much and gives much.  Friday night, that synergy coalesced in Jolt.

A full company piece, the curtain rose to dancers lined up and standing at attention, military style.  Legs apart, faux drinking from hefty mugs and exhaling big sighs of satisfaction; you knew some kind of drinking dance was about to ensue.   This one was paying satirical tribute to America’s, if not the world’s, favorite liquid stimulant. Coffee.  It didn’t take long for the mugs to turn into drums and Evan Bivins’ original score of deep bone tapping percussion to get things jumping.  Kinetic to the point of frenzy, admiringly clever, and completely intolerant of error, Jolt epitomized what it means to push boundaries in the name of art. A display of perfect synchrony may not have been achieved as strongly as some may have wished, but that pace, with its lightning formations and stunning breakouts, enthralled .

The second rush came at the end Soul, choreographed by dance veteran  Ray Leeper.  Created in recognition of the arts advocacy of Chicago philanthropist and Tribune columnist, Candace Jordan, the work used as it musical base exemplars of soulfully throbbing pop tracks from the late 60’s and early 70’s.   Gladys Knight and Al Green lit the wick with dancers performing Leeper’s take on the period’s dance aesthetic.  But it was when those initial strains of  Tina Turner’s classic redo Proud Mary hit the audience’s ear that the crowd erupted with approval.  Those cheers helped unleash a new abandon on the dance floor.  The company became a Tina Turner revue, emulating that Tina snap in twisting hips and her sassy brazenness in their high stepping struts.  Thirty seconds in and dancers were cruising blithely along in fifth gear.  Even without technical exactitude completely locked down, the ovation was adoring and filled the auditorium with the same spirit of elation that defined the start of the evening.

Giordano Dance Chicago

Fall Season 2018

Live in the Momentum

October 26 & 27

Harris Theater

Millennium Park

205 E. Randolph St

Chicago, Illinois

Nothing about the presentation was anticipated.  The speaker, topic and delivery were each unorthodox and radically interesting. Because Cooney’s academic research extends beyond her vast knowledge of Egyptology to include specialized study in craft production and economies of the ancient world, she was able to add tremendous credence to her propositions on the status on women extending back to humankind’s earliest beginnings 20,000 years ago. You wouldn’t expect life to have been “better” for women during the hunter-gatherer period than the agrarian age that followed it.  But the process of aggregating food meant much slower birth cycles; usually every four years.  By the time the agrarian epoch was established and women gave birth every year to generate labor in a farming society, their role became more rigidly relegated to one of dependence.

Using her explanations to draw a direct line to the present day, Dr. Cooney took a long pause to elaborate on how unique and important ancient Egypt is to the history of women.  Her emphasis centered on power.  How did women come to it, hold it and use it.  And her examples were many beginning with Merneith in the first Dynasty and reaching to Cleopatra in the 19^th.  Certain things, like the manner of ascension remained constant.  Women were often named regent over a young male because early Egyptian civilization believed women proved superior proxies.  They rarely ruled alone.   And their contributions were often erased from record.  Research nonetheless has revealed how effective many of them, like the careful strategist Hepshepsut, were.

Liberally peppering her speech with allusions to current political and social realities, Cooney’s feminist stance was open and added a refreshing dynamism to her delivery.  The correlations she drew from the way women reigned in antiquity to how women would govern in contemporary societies, given the opportunity and the will, were remarkably astute and fertile ground for historical projection.

In January, Mireya Mayor will take the Auditorium stage to share her singular experiences as a primatologist and co-discoverer of the world’s smallest primate.

National Geographic Live

When Women Ruled the World

The Auditorium Theatre

September 26, 2018

50 E. Ida B. Wells Dr.

Chicago, IL    60605

www.auditoriumtheatre.org

Chicago’s extremely fortunate to host two highly renowned jazz galas.   Anchoring the month of September, the Chicago Jazz Festival opens the month and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival closes it. But people seem to forget about a third little gem of a celebration smack dab in the middle of the month; a little diamond known as the Englewood Jazz Festival.

There’s usually a small band of volunteers passing out pluggers for the Englewood festival after the last set of the last night of the huge city sponsored event early in the month.  But most Chicagoans don’t get past the name “Englewood” on the invitation.  To local ears, it might as well read “in rebel held territories of Syria”.

Englewood’s disturbing reputation is amplified by seemingly endless reports of violence and killing.  But knowing that a community is made of more than grim statistics, the lop-sidedness of the neighborhood’s reputation didn’t faze esteemed saxophone player Ernest Dawkins from pursuing his desire to bring a jazz festival to the people.  That wish celebrated its nineteenth birthday this year.

Despite it’s nearly two decades of existence, the Englewood Jazz Fest remains a modest affair.  Where the Chicago Jazz Fest extends over several days with local jazz clubs riding the wave and extending the music long into the night after Pritzker bandshell shuts down at 9pm.   The Englewood event is but a single day between noon and six and has the feel of a sprawling picnic with sensational music.  And while both the downtown festival and Hyde Park festival are noted for their breathe of audience diversity, the Englewood festival is nearly exclusively African American in composition.  With jazz’s roots so deeply embedded in the black community, there’s almost a feeling of returning to origins in the Englewood experience.

This year’s festival had providence working on its side.  For years Dawkins has been keen to get virtuoso saxophonist James Carter on the bill and this year it happened.  A Detroit native who performs frequently in New York, Carter may not be well known to a lot of local jazz enthusiasts.  But as soon as he and Dawkins kicked off their set with Central Park West, you knew you were inhabiting the right spot at the right time in the universe.

Carter, who first toured Europe as a professional musician at 16, opened with fireworks with a horn run that had jaws dropping like a heavy rain.  Exceptionally gifted on the baritone and soprano sax, his instrument of choice on the opening number was tenor.   And he played it as if was tailor made for him alone.  The sounds he conjured out of his horn were often percussive, and completely alien from what you’d expect to hear in an instrument you thought you knew.  Two or three songs in, and a voice in the audience was overheard declaring, “Nobody plays the sax like James Carter, man”.  That voice was correct.  Even Dawkins was caught chuckling to himself and audibly musing, “maybe I should give up the saxophone.”

Closing on the quintet’s extended version of Giant Steps, the song evolved into a jam session with east coaster  Greg Murphy slipping in on piano.  The Collier brothers, Ed on sax and Jeremiah on drums, both very young and very gifted went toe to toe with the group’s established lions and let them and everybody else know that their stockpile of talent vied with the heavyweights.  But if this turned out to be a battle of the sax’s, it was probably one of the most congenial “cutting sessions” in the history of jazz.    These guys were playing out of sheer joy in the music.  That it was also a showcase of the dizzying heights of their virtuosity seemed beside the point.

A wonderful transplant from St. Louis preceded them and may have inadvertently set the stage for the band’s brand of play Saturday afternoon.  The timbre of Denise Thimes voice can go low; lending a seductive appeal to her singing.  She also has a way of speckling her audience chat with a lot of homespun earned wisdom.  Hers was a deliciously delivered “grown folks” show that could have been, if the sultry meter was turned just a tad higher, perfectly comfortable in a smoke-filled midnight cabaret.  Often uttering “Oh, I wish I could get somebody to go with me now”, her beautifully nuanced interpretations of Embraceable You and Nina Simone’s Peaches were respectfully rendered and gleamed with the polish of a genuine artist.  She never explained the abbreviated take on Nancy Wilson’s Guess Who I Saw Today but said she’d apologize to the band later.  Too bad.  Wilson’s classic is a superb study in musical storytelling and always a welcome treat when given the delicately suspenseful phrasing it demands and deserves.  But you never even felt the bump.  Thimes just went with the flow and jammed with her very capable band that included the ever so solid Marlene Rosenberg on bass and Isaiah Collier on sax.

Englewood Jazz Festival 2018

September 15

Noon – 6pm

Hamilton Park and Cultural Center

513 W. 72^nd St.

Chicago, Il

englewoodjazzfest.org

For the past three years, Roosevelt University has been presenting discussions on issues that vex the national consciousness as catalysts launching its new academic year. The challenges of providing effective and comprehensive health care, the struggle to insure the nation’s law enforcement agencies institute color blind policing standards, and the unflagging efforts to reform the country’s penal system were a few of the topics this year’s conference addressed.

For the past two years, The American Dream Reconsidered conference has also invited individuals whose life work or current energies bear direct impact on the lives of everyday American citizens.  In 2017, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg talked about the particulars of her life and how they eventually led her to become the second woman to sit on the Supreme Court.  Last night, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. sat in similar conversation with Judge Ann Claire Williams and extended his remarks to encompass the continuing battle to secure broad and inclusive voting rights while also detailing the need to repair a hyper-politicized gerrymandering system.

Tomorrow night, September 13^th, Common, acclaimed musician, actor and founder of the Common Ground Foundation will aim his thoughts on “Activism and Dissent in the Age of Polarization”.

Keenly sensitive to the conversation’s academic setting and its symbolic concentration of youth, Mr. Holder’s comments often drew from assessments of his own highly engaged youth growing up in New York and attending Columbia University as an undergraduate and as a law student.  He often segued to his present role as a father of young adult children and talked extensively about his pride in his own father who instilled a sense of uniquely West Indian self-worth that has acted as an unfailing talisman throughout his life.

Stating that he considers the Voting Rights Act the “crowning jewel’ of the civil rights movement, Mr. Holder’s became increasingly impassioned as he went on to discuss the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision removing federal voting rights protections.  His recent and ongoing work with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, trends in youth activism and the growing disaffection with current government policies make him optimistic however and causes him to believe the 2018 midterms will be see the beginning of a political correction.  When asked will that mean a run for the presidency on his part, his answer clearly indicated doing so was under active consideration.

The American Dream Reconsidered

A Conference Presented by Roosevelt University

September 10 – 14, 2018

roosevelt.edu/americandream