Trollin' Adventures

Showing up to the circus early is a little like doing the same thing at a big, elaborate wedding.  You get to see what a place looks like before its overcome with pomp and spectacle.  With Teatro Zinzanni, the elaborate single ring circus in permanent residence on top of the Cambria hotel high above the Loop’s theater district, that’s mostly a very good thing.  It gives you plenty of time to absorb the scene.

Investors and planners spent months meticulously searching for a space large and tall enough to comfortably hold an opulent vestige of a bygone age; a spiegeltent or mirrored tent.  Having set up similar venues in Seattle and San Francisco, they knew what they were looking for and found it across the street from Block 37 on Randolph in a space once used as a Masonic hall. Common in Europe during the early 1900’s, the tents with their lush appointments and beautifully stenciled mirrors are worlds within themselves.  Despite their impressive size, they feel surprisingly intimate. Like those on the west coast, Chicago’s tent can hold as many as 300 guests as well as a legion of wait staff and performers.  The soaring 29’ tent peak helps to keep things feeling spacious and perpetuates the air of the opulence that fills the enclosure.   Except for the dining chairs.  You’d expect the same gilded aura that permeates the expansive circle to carry over to them too.  Instead they looked as if they were picked up wholesale from a defunct convention center; marring the splendor of the room.  Once filled with bodies, they proved far less distracting.  And they didn’t detract at all from the feeling that you’d traveled back through time when you crossed the threshold into the tent and into a land where anything could happen and cares and concerns are left at the door   As more and more people arrived, two very unusual and unusually dressed people seem to be everywhere.  One was in extravagant drag, crowned in a towering Marie Antoinette wig and sporting a racy tongue with a light southern drawl.  The other, a very tall woman also with a German accent, was dressed as a naughty little Bo Peep who had a penchant for the risqué.  At one moment, they’re across the room and in the next instant they’re standing directly in front of you speaking a language of insinuation.

A “dinner and a show” affair, there’s a lot of bustle at the beginning of a Teatro Zinzanni evening.  Wait staff take orders for dinner that will be presented once the show begins and served continually throughout the night.  Seating takes a lot time and you can sense preparations behind the scenes are going full throttle, too.  Clowns with fire hoses whiz by and jubilant chaos seems to reign.  Genuine excitement builds instinctively and when the show officially kicks off, you find out the drag queen, Doily (Kevin Kent) is the MC with a wit sharp enough to draw blood.  And little Bo Peep transforms into a leggy dominatrix. 

Sporting the theme, Love, Chaos and Dinner, the current Zinzanni production should not be considered suitable for children, even though there were a few presents on a recent weekend night.  The tone is one of a free-wheeling comedy hour with enough sexual innuendo to keep the prudish on edge but never tilts over into lewd.  More characters appeared like Voronin, who also goes by the Maestro, a charismatic illusionist who looked like he was channeling Bela Lugosi.  Replete with cape, classic pinstripe tuxedo pants and spats, he was all presence and no sound as he glided around the room showering impressive magic.

Because of their unique talent needs, Teatro Zinzanni recruits the world, focusing on Europe, and sets its standards high.  By the time the intrepid Rizo made her appearance, you’ve been primed for the exceptional.  Choreographed like a series of building blocks that boost the audience’s subliminal exhilaration in finely measured increments, director Norman Langill injects loads of humor into the suspense that often drips from the acrobatic elements of the show.  Langill, whose career has earned him an Emmy for writing and a lifetime achievement Grammy, specializes in productions with a multi-cultural dimension.  Rizo, a New Yorker, flaunts the grand confidence of a Lizzo/Judy Garland mash up and seems as thrilled with the sound of her mega-voice exploding like a satin bomb as the audience.  Her arrival also signals her takeover as mistress of ceremony and the beginning of the physical aspects of the show.  Where even geriatrics revert to wide eyed children. 

The acrobatics in the Love, Chaos, Dinner show are stunning and made more sumptuous by the relentless grace of their execution.  Elayne Kramer, from Argentina, a flawless sylph in the rings, transformed from the comic charwoman she played earlier in the show to a captivating aerialist.  Frenchman Domitil Aillot, who parodies a Parisian chef at the beginning of the production, defies gravity by floating up and down a vertical beam; his body perfectly perpendicular to the pole.  “A full body workout in five minutes.”  And brothers Fabio and Giuliano Anastasini, the 9^th generation of circus performers in their family, were spellbinding with their unthinkable feats of body juggling.  No matter how cosmopolitan or sophisticated one might feel themselves to be, the kind of entertainment Teatro Zinzanni creates is daunting in its celebration of the feats the human body can achieve.

To keep the productions fresh, the production undergoes a radical revamp approximately every quarter.  The next one is scheduled to roll out in March.  Sometimes changes are incremental when acts leave the show and new ones arrive or they can be more far reaching with multiple change outs occurring simultaneously.  And there are stalwarts like the Anastasini brothers who’ve been with the Chicago operation since its arrival early this year.

Given how memorable the event will undoubtedly be for most of the people who visit it and the pre-eminence of the individual performers and performances, the evening’s price tag, $200 a person, is reasonable.  The dinner that accompanies the show, especially the main entrée, strives to satisfy and it does.  An appetizer, salad and dessert also make their ways to tables when the waitstaff isn’t doing stints as extras in all company skits. 

As delightful as an evening at this version of a circus is, there are lingering concerns.   Harvesting laughs could take a callous and unsavory turn.  Too often those controlling the evening would use bald or balding men as foil for jokes. Choosing such targets is far too easy and unimaginative to the point of callousness.

Also, the audience of a mid-October show could not be considered particularly diverse.  That’s why it was unusual that two of the four or five people chosen to “assist” the evening’s host were African-American.   Generally, the interactions were handled well.  But statements about a person’s perceived difficulty in blushing because of their skin color or comments that slid into sexual allusion could be considered both insensitive and rude.  At the very least, they were unfortunate and made one wonder if they were indicative of the tenor of typical performances.  Another visit, perhaps six months down the road, might provide that answer.

Teatro Zinzanni

Love, Chaos and Dinner

Cambria Hotel

32 W. Randolph St.

Chicago, IL    60601

312-488-0900

Zinzanni.com

Upping its game to the point that now it’s almost posh, Halloween stopped being only about kids years ago.  Which may have helped inspire the Oriental Institute’s classy and patently eclectic re-imagining of what a Halloween celebration could look and feel like.  The brainchild of the Oriental Institute’s Young Professionals Board, who titled their foray into quasi-fright Mummies and Martini’s, they and the highly-regarded museum of antiquities let you hang out with the real deal Thursday night. A DJ threw down dance floor worthy tracks in the background while guests grazed on top drawer appetizers, splendid desserts and sipped Halloween themed cocktails in addition to martinis.

Part of an array of events commemorating the museum’s 100^th anniversary, the event felt like a clandestine and exclusive adventure as Egyptologist and Head of the Research Archives, Foy Scalf, led a rapid and endlessly absorbing tour of ancient coffins and mummies; mixing fascinating details of early Egyptian funerary science along the way.  All in the shadow of a towering and spectacularly beautiful 17’ statute of King Tutankhamun. 

At the end of the evening, you not only walked away with a brand-new respect for one of the world most captivating civilizations, you’ll never think of Halloween in quite the same way.  Mummies and Martini’s proved to be a great idea that can only get better.   

Mummies and Martini’s

October 24, 2019

The Oriental Institute

University of Chicago

1155 W. 58^th St.

Chicago, IL  60637

oi/uchicago.edu

Even with the staggering number of choices Chicagoans have to satisfy our cravings for music, theater, dance and the visual arts, the entertainment playing field can never get too crowded.  Having only been open a year, the city may be just beginning to realize what an asset Wrightwood 659 has already become.  The sedately serene Lincoln Park gallery’s current exhibition, Tetsuya Ishida:  Self Portrait of Other, is so exceptional that it doesn’t stop at just being art. 

The hope of every artist is to not only communicate their vision of the world; but to also make a comment about it.  Each of the 70 paintings in the Self Portrait of Other exhibit is that kind of dialog.  In many ways, the messages are so brazen they could be considered assaultive.  And it’s the message that people respond to first.  Curiosity helps you see and appreciate the art that drives and supports the artist’s visual commentary.

Even though it’s impossible to decipher the absolute source of Ishida’s angst, the pain found in many of his works is the most declarative thing about them.  For some viewers, that’s where their journey with Ishida may stop as they examine repeated images of melancholy overlaid on a highly mechanized relentlessly conformist world. 

Seeing the show in its entirety dispels that singularity.  Estimates vary on the number of paintings Ishida completed.  The official number, corroborated by his brother, Michiaki Ishida  and gallerist, Yumie Wada, stands at 180. Most if not all of them done after his art studies at Musashino Art University.  He may well have been influenced by the work of Ben Shaun, a prominent social realist painter whose work often carried a distinct message of protest.  Shaun’s series of paintings capturing the environmental and human costs of the U.S.’s thermonuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll received global attention.  Those tests had fatal consequences for a small Japanese fishing boat from Ishida’s small hometown on the country’s coast. Ishida saw the images as a child and it’s even claimed that later in his life he said that Shaun’s work inspired him to pursue art.  The paintings and sketches could easily induce fearfulness; especially in the young, which gives credence to his brother’s statement that he feels there is a lot of fear in Tetsuya’s art.  The influence of anime and other Japanese cartoon formats are easily found in his art as well.   

But the times in which an artist lives can also heavily impact their output, as it did with Ishida. Born in 1973, he came of age when Japan, once the innovation powerhouse of Asia and beacon of Asian prosperity, was facing the bleakest of economic reversals.  It’s as if the economy stopped and optimism about the future was obliterated.  Concentrated in the 90’s and known as the lost decade, the heaviest toll fell on the young who felt unneeded and futureless.  The collective shock caused many thousands of them to turn inward; or in extreme cases, completely shut themselves away from the world. 

After art school, Ishida was among the struggling.  He worked at a print shop and as a security guard.  But his devotion to his art never waned allowing him to produce roughly 18 works a year until his death in 2005 at 31.  When considering the amount of precision and detail invested in most of his paintings, that modest number seems remarkably high.  Letting your eyes roam over a work like Recalled (1998), where a man lies disassembled in a box like a high value commodity with people surrounding him as if in ritual, will expose that meticulousness.  A beautiful woven tatami mat used as the flooring for the scene takes up much of the large canvas.  Like so many of Ishida’s works, the painting is subtly spellbinding.  Slowly you notice the elaborate detail needed to execute this wonder; with its exquisite brushwork and celestial sense of color extending down to that tatami mat.  Or Search (2001), the only work that Ishida received notable recognition for, and the validation that goes with it, while he was living.  It’s an oddly un-playful painting given the context.  An extravagantly detailed train set, with a realistic landscape of tree covered hills at its center, sits on display before a large sunny window.  But there’s a human form in the middle of the scene.  Lying in a fetal position, it looks as if his body is in transformation, becoming a part of the train set’s topography.  The human form is frequently altered in Ishida’s worlds.  Usually he uses only the face and places it on the front of airplanes, protruding out of building’s, or on the heads of insects.  But he can also reimagine the entire body as he does here.  A look of incomparable benevolence covers the man’s face.  Search becomes another transfixing scene that defies convenient interpretation but worthy of endless appreciation. Again, careful thought is invested in every object on the canvas.  It’s impossible not to marvel at the conceptual composition or the beauty of his technique.

The Ishida retrospective has only two showing worldwide.  The first held in Madrid’s grand Palacio de Velazquez just closed in September before opening here in Chicago on October 3^rd .  Thanks to curators at Wrightwood 659, we should once again count ourselves fortunate.   The opportunity to see how one extremely gifted artist represents the world he knows through the unsettling lens of a generation without a vision of hope is rare.  Oceans of ink have been used to express the same sentiments in text.  Ishida’s art gives that message infinitely more power. 

Gratefully the retrospective, displaying nearly half of the artist’s total production, includes both his earliest work in addition to paintings he completed at the end of his tragically short nine year career.  It’s startling to see his skills as an artist grow in the span of a few years.  How he came to insert nuances of difference and subtlety to what we initially see as the same facial expression.  

Teresa Velázquez, Head of Exhibitions of Spain’s Museo Nacional Centro Arte, pointed out that Madrid’s Palacio de Velazquez is an imposing and opulent structure inside and out.  Wrightwood 659 was designed for contemplation and intimacy.  The perfect environment for enjoying beauty.  You can walk up to a painting and get close enough to sink inside and explore. The paintings in the Ishida exhibition provide lots of opportunity for that.  You’ll likely walk away with as many revelations as questions.

The size of the exhibit provides enough sweep to expose the thematic richness that Ishida may not be getting enough credit for.  His take on corporate acquiescence in his 1996 Toyota Ipsum could be considered derisive.  Stepping up his attack on the status quo to acts of defilement in an untitled 2001 piece, where a row of young office workers with mountains of hurt and anger in their eyes collectively sit spoiling office equipment seems hardly an expression of resignation. In Abortion (2004), a young woman lies on a narrow bed with her back to you.  A young man sits on the side of the bed, eyes down.  It’s a solemn and personal scene and the fact that the bed straddles what looks to be a dry stream bed is peculiar.  And then the eye falls to a small blue object lying on the ground directly in front of the man that will likely cause you to silently gasp. 

Ishida had a lot to say about a lot of things.  He had also hoped to leave Japan.  Wondering how doing so would have affected his art is of course futile.   That we can at least see how his vision, message and talent manifested into astonishingly memorable art, even through a small decade long window, is still a wonderful gift.

Tetsuya Ishida:  Self-Portrait of Other

October 3 – December 14, 2019

Wrightwood 659

659 W. Wrightwood Ave.

Chicago, IL    60614

773-437-6601

www.wrightwood659.org

Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater made a big splash at Dance for Life in August with its show of artistic flair and ravishing precision. That they would be occupying the Auditorium stage again this month with an extended suite of dances made their show Saturday night highly anticipated.  Based on the what they presented over the weekend, those high expectations were too low.

Ensconced in Chicago for over 40 years, the company’s fascinating approach to the craft of dance adds wonderful color to Chicago’s dance mosaic and warrants much greater name recognition and appreciation for this dynamic company.

Mystery, glamour and drama are words not often sprinkled over dance companies.  With Ensemble Español, they seem to be mandatory.  Founded by dance visionary Dame Libby Komaiko and using Northeastern University as its base, the company reflects Komaiko’s passion for the contributions Spanish dance brings to the arts and her zeal to insure those gifts are both valued and preserved here in the United States.  The seven works presented during the Oct 4^th performance schooled lovers of dance on the countless fascinating facets of flamenco.

Originating in northern Spain and with direct ties to the music and dance heritage of gypsies, flamenco hails from a past full of passion and drama.  Elaborate hand gestures, strong rhythms, and footwork that accentuates its percussiveness with specially designed shoes all point to a dance form that’s bold and highly expressive.  Perhaps some of its genius is the way it also weaves an almost ephemeral grace into its dance; making it even more enthralling.  That grace may obscure flamenco’s folk origins; but its relentless vitality easily aligns flamenco to its beginnings.

Ecos de España (Echoes of Spain) displayed every ounce of that beauty and energy so typical of this distinctive dance form.  Dame Komaiko designed the lighting as well as choreographed the piece that revels in the uniqueness of the Spain’s dance traditions.  A full company production loaded with pageantry, dancers slipped in and out of exhilaration with female dancers, wearing costumes that accentuated the fluidity of the human body, using luxurious silk shawls as instruments of performance.

Another dance, inspired by the running of the bulls, Deshojando Flores (Stripping Flowers) dispensed with spectacle and focused on a different essence of dance.  Performed by Crystal Ruiz and Olivia Serrano, individual solos soon meshed suddenly making it appear as if the pair were dancing as one.  The two became mirror images of one another dancing in perfect synchrony only to later break apart and turn the dance into a duel.

Intensity may simply be an indelible characteristic of Spanish dance and its many variations.  And nowhere was it more evident than in the spectacular Una Obra De Arte (A Work of Art).  Celebrating the Farruca style of flamenco traditionally danced by men, first dancer Claudia Pizarro not only choreographed the classically episodic dance; she also designed the majestic red costume she wore as the work’s featured dancer.   Mimicking the lean clean lines we associate with costumes worn by matadors, Pizarro’s tight waist length jacket and form hugging trousers signaled authority as well as elegance in a dance that rippled with suspense, technical prowess and dramatic vigor.

Lighting, noticeably, played a key role in magnifying the visual pleasure these dances created thanks to Dustin Derry’s bold approach to his craft.  His inventiveness was evident in several works.    Alluring but never dominating, Derry’s ingenious lighting techniques became vital backdrops to the dances.  Much like the right music is essential to create the desired atmosphere and tone.   Derry’s lighting was also indispensably beautiful in the world premiere of Azabache, where spotlights hit the floor encircling dancers in a thin line of pale neon green.   The synergy between dance, lighting and music repeatedly came together to make the ensemble’s performances incessantly striking. 

The company also used unexpected dramatic techniques to toy with the audience’s imagination. In Pasion Oculta (Hidden Passion), the sensual is made more exotic by initially making it blind.  Danced by five couples, women first appeared with gauze covering their entire head like hoods; very similar to those used when hunting with birds of prey.  They called to mind the surreal world of Salvador Dali’s art.  Later in the dance, with head coverings removed, Pasion Oculta turned into a swirling dance of seduction in red. 

Live and on stage with the performers, the evening’s music proved yet another rich highlight on a night that ostensibly had dance as its centerpiece.  Both Ensemble Espanõl Spanish Dance Theater and Cerqua Rivera Dance Theater, who opened the show, were accompanied by superb musicians and vocalists.

For Cerqua Rivera, a contemporary dance company ambitious enough to investigate complex and emotional themes through dance, American Catracho mined the red-hot topic of immigration as viewed through Artistic Director’s Wildredo Rivera’s personal experience. Divided into four parts, American Catracho blended spoken word into the dance’s texture; which can be chancy and not always completely successful.  American Catracho did succeed in displaying the commitment and artistry of its dancers and benefited from a superb jazz band performing music composed by Joe Cerqua, the company’s co-founder.  With stellar Chicago musicians like Paul Cotton, Leandro Lopez Varady and Pharez Whitted contributing their skills to the project, the sweep and importance of the dance’s subject could more deeply be felt through music.

Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater

                                    &

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre

October 4, 2019

The Auditorium Theatre

50 East Ida B. Wells Drive

Chicago, IL  60606

The arts have a way of remaining transcendent even when they indulge in the specific.  The four artists currently on display in the Spertus Institute’s Ground Level Arts Lab are all captivating.  That they share a common heritage may be instrumental in what and how they create, but what they produce is a gift to anyone who finds fulfillment in things that are interesting or beautiful.

Airy, spare and intimate like a glass cocoon, the Institute’s Arts Lab makes an ideal home for the From Here to There exhibit themed to reflect and honor the natural world.  Going beyond simply portraying nature, the artists consciously attempt to go deeper and tap into notions of energy and show how the materials of nature might be incorporated or insinuated in ways that influence our lives.

Much of the pleasure in the show comes from the different ways each artist approached her objective.  And how they used such an array of tools to express their individual vision. Ellen Holtzblatt often straddles worlds by blurring the line between the abstract and the representational.  Her landscapes can have sharp and jagged edges meant to trigger something relatable in our psyches or to make an emotional connection.  There is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart is made up of three panels, a continuation of the same sweeping sky about to erupt in chaos or is healing after a violent storm.  The line between darkness and light looks as if it’s shifting in real time. It’s that process of active change that makes the painting so interesting.  Colors is an essential language in the piece but not in her Reiko series where, using only ink on paper, she also telegraphs motion and a world in flux. 

On an adjoining wall, Linda Robinson Gordon’s paintings are meticulous and highly considered.  Both her paintings and sculptures induce the same sense of soothing meditative calm.  Muted shades of earth tone dominate the paintings. Several are covered with dots or circles that benignly swarm the canvas.  It’s an absorbing effect; like being drawn deeper and deeper into a mystery.  Using chiefly wood and wire in one her three-dimensional pieces displayed in the exhibit, her sculptures are deceptive.  They look so simple and straightforward but just like nature, you marvel at their intricate complexity when you make the investment to stop and look a little more closely.

Michelle Stone works in quiet excitement.  Tempered boldness.  At least in her paintings.  Her sculptures are more unabashed, daring.  Neither had a problem holding your attention; especially her large installation Today was Tomorrow Yesterday with its expansive unfettered hyper-organic flow.  You almost expected it to pulsate and, also like nature, was endlessly fascinating. 

A visitor to the show was so taken with one of Stone’s paintings she seemed relieved to be able to tell someone how thrilling she found it and how much joy it brought her.  There’s a lot in From Here to There that might generate such a response.  Although Lilach Schrag’s video contribution was more visually commanding, and a bit perplexing; it was one of her other representations that kept whispering to and serenading the eye.  A collection of disparate, repurposed and perhaps “found” objects were brought together and assembled to create something discreetly beautiful and disarmingly luxurious.  Schrag entitles the work Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh (Holy, Holy, Holy).  Considering some of the materials she used to compose the piece, it serves as a reminder that the distance between the natural and the divine is always close.

The city can never have too many sources of artistic nourishment.  From Here to There, running through to mid-January next year, is certainly that.

From Here to There

September 23 – January 19, 2019

Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership

Ground Level Arts Lab

610 S. Michigan Ave.

Chicago, IL   60605

www.spertus.edu

It’s surprising what can result from realized passions. For the past ten years, Melissa Mallinson and Nicole Gifford have pooled their creative energy to build and mount the Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival.  Both have extensive backgrounds in dance and their annual event gives Chicago a chance to see trailblazing work being created both locally and around the country.  Held at the Ruth Page Center for Performing Arts, the festival’s setting provides an intimate view of how imaginatively contemporary dance is being interpreted.

One of the most dramatic and radical works, Ripples from the Skin We Shed takes dance off the floor and places it underwater.   Presented on film through the auspices of a university research grant and Take Root films, the screened performance proved that “moving rhythmically to music”, Webster’s definition of dance, can be transferred to an entirely different plane and remain viable and beautiful.  Because of the way water affects movement, the format required dancers to use time differently.  It also allowed the troupe to exploit the concept of buoyancy and use it as a tool to exaggerate grace.  The sequence typifies how the Harvest dance festival ably showcases the way boundaries and limitations can be suspended when taking a fresh look at an ancient art form like dance.

That exploration was extended with Aerial Dance Chicago’s rendition of Stacked.  Here aerial acrobatics are refined and choreographed allowing three dancers to coordinate their movements to create perpendicular rhythmic harmony.

More conventional dance forms found representation too.  Giordano Dance Chicago’s incubator company; Giordano II, chose to veer away from ostentatious and make restraint their centerpiece.  Set to Nils Frahm’s serenely solemn score, Periphery exalted in control, thoughtful fluidity and elegance. 

The stage’s proximity to the audience had a second important advantage. Its closeness allowed you to note the tiny deviations in performance that distinguishes one dancer from another.  It’s those differences that become windows revealing each artist’s unique talents, skills and abilities.

Vadco/Valerie Alpert Dance’s excerpt from Moving through Memphis Project opened slowly on rhythms meant to instill tense anticipation.  With dancers sitting still in a line on the floor, they stir and eventually appear to connect psychically.   Their movements become less and less individualized and synchronize with the other dancers to form a bond transforming them into a single transfixing organism.  Narrative explaining the inspiration for the work adds to the appreciation of it.  Alpert’s visit to several Memphis historical sites including the National Civil Rights Museum and the Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum planted the seeds for the Moving Through Memphis Project which was just representational enough to see and feel the dance’s link to what inspired it.

Physically powerful and psychologically engrossing, J’Sun Howard’s aMoratorium:  at the altar, it may not be my time was an intensely absorbing duet that’s oddly not often seen.  Intended to explore issues surrounding black male identity and visibility, the seriousness of the piece seemed to add to both its appeal and its strength.  Howard’s bold choreography asked much of its dancers.  Both Solomon Bowser and Damon Green seemed to easily master the piece as well as add an elusive spiritual component so essential in material that demands intimacy and a high degree of co-reliance.   Tension, power, strength, vulnerability and resilience all had a palpable presence in aMoratorium.  Fitting attributes for a work that was originally commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago to commemorate the marvelous Charles White retrospective on exhibit last year. 

The festival’s three solo pieces were harder to decipher.  Two felt as if they may have been more suitable in the world of performance art.  One, comedic parody and the other, extravagant and exotic mime.  In the end, it’s the performers and the festival’s producers to decide in which camp they fall.  As dance, some will find them challenging.  If so, the festival’s organizers have succeeded in continuing to make us think about what dance is and how it can be expressed. 

A second weekend of the festival runs September 27^th and 28^th with nine different companies bringing their own engrossing interpretations of what constitutes contemporary dance.   

Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival

September 20 – 28, 2019

Ruth Page Center for the Arts

1016 N. Dearborn

Chicago, IL    60610

www.hccdf.com

We often forget, especially when considering a single individual, that genius can have many dimensions.  Although Chicago can boast of being home to some of famed Mies van der Rohe’s most important architectural contributions, there was another side to this modernist master.  Known for the sleek majesty of masterpieces like 860/880 N. Lake Shore Drive or the quiet splendor of Farnsworth House, a single room retreat in Plano, Illinois that remains a marvel of simplicity and beauty, van der Rohe took on and excelled at other projects too.

From mid-September through January 12^th of 2020, the Elmhurst Art Museum will be showcasing one of only three single family homes the famed architect ever designed. With its exhibition, McCormick House:  Past, Present and Future, the museum looks at the house from the inside and uses the approach to spotlight its livability as well as the exceptionalism of its design.  Offering tours and programming that explain the house’s significance and importance, the four-month event is an extremely rare opportunity to personally experience the vision of a brilliant architect at such an intimate level and understand how a home that exudes so much beauty might function as a household.

Built in 1952, one year after Farnsworth, McCormick House represented a very different goal for Mies.  It was not intended as an isolated jewel or exclusive retreat.  McCormick House was intended to work as a family home with the many practical considerations that entails.  An early adopter of the modernist aesthetic that embraced sleek lines, natural materials and light; these are now precisely the elements that have become synonymous with van der Rohe’s name. 

With its three bedrooms, carport and high end materials, McCormick House was also a deluxe prototype.  Robert McCormick, scion of one of Chicago’s most illustrious families, was one of the developers of van der Rohe’s triumphs on Lake Shore Drive.  According to Elmhurst Art Museum’s Executive Director, John McKinnon, it was during their collaborations on 860/880 that the idea to develop a prefab neighborhood in the western suburbs took root. McCormick House would be their prototype and would also become the home of its namesake, Robert McCormick and his wife, poet Isabella Gardner.

It’s not known why the project didn’t attract the interest needed to progress, but it was not realized.  Mies however would go on a few years later to complete Lafayette Park in downtown Detroit that includes 186 residences, covers 78 acres and enjoys a cachet of enviable exclusivity.   

Since the museum bought the house from its last owners, Ray and Mary Ann Fick in 1992, it’s been both moved and reconfigured.    The current exhibit, focusing on the home’s interior space, is filled with surprises that center on the home’s charisma and its adaptability to a 2019 world.  Prominent Chicago interior architect, Robert Kleinschmidt, who also sits on the board of the Mies van der Rohe Society at the Illinois Institute Technology can be credited for adding the ideal visual complements that draw your attention to the spatial and textural wonders of the house. Interior architecture requires a detailed understanding of the science behind a structure as well as the ability to enhance it aesthetically.  Infrastructure and décor are brought together to complement one another. 

As part of the activities commemorating the separation of McCormick House from the main museum last Fall, Kleinschmidt designed an installation in the children’s wing of the house to highlight the home’s suitability and comfort in a contemporary context.  All the while retaining its mid-century soul.  Executive Director McKinnon confided that because Kleinschmidt’s work received such unsparing praise, he was invited to expand his vision to the whole house.  The results as seen at the exhibit’s reception on the 14^th are splendid.  The blending of 1950’s era modernism with elements reflective of 21^st century tastes is extremely beautiful and retains constancy in every room.  Staged for function as well as beauty, every item and its placement speaks as much to purpose as it does to cosmetic appeal and discreetly emphasizes how inviting a home like this would be to live in.  Textures and colors balance, accentuate or subtly complement steel, wood and stone.  And in every room, those wonderful walls of windows are celebrated by letting them simply be.

The continuity of elm clad walls gives the house pervasive warmth.  Pockets accommodating privacy seem to be everywhere as are tantalizing and comfortable spaces intended for gathering and sharing.  

An unintended consequence of the show may be in the manner it subtly proves how much the way we live today mirrors the modernist principles McCormick House’s honors and embodies. 

An array of docent led tours and programs support the exhibit.  Tours began September 15 and will continue Sunday afternoons between 1pm and 3pm.  One is even being conducted by a former resident.

A doubtless fascinating curated tour by interior architect Robert Kleinschmidt is scheduled for Saturday September 21^st at 1:30pm.

Additional information about intriguing lectures and panel discussions revolving around the impact residential modernist architecture has on metropolitan Chicago can be found on the museum’s website, https://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org/events/.

McCormick House:  Past, Present and Future

Elmhurst Art Museum

150 Cottage Hill Avenue

Elmhurst, IL   60126

630-834-020

https://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org

Whether it’s on a wall or on a stage, altering expectations of what creative imagination can look like is what contemporary art is all about.  Interested in celebrating how such transformations might manifest from the vantage point of black creativity, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s associate curator Tara Aisha Willis organized a dazzling trilogy of performances that gave full expression to how rich the world of black creativity is. Drawing deeply from talent that was either spawned or currently resides in Chicago, the series ended August 30^th with musical performances by two remarkable artists, Thurman Barker and Ben LaMar Gay.  Both translated their memories and emotions about Chicago through the way they create sound.  

Performing individually in two sets and then together briefly in pure improvisation, their shows reflected the same expansive innovation seen throughout the series and were executed with the same exceptional distinction.

Both native Chicagoans, Barker and Gay tapped into their most seminal impressions of the city to express themselves in very different ways.  A splendid drummer, Barker and his quintet chose the orchestral format to paint a beautiful kaleidoscope of feelings.  From somber to poignant to explosive and rapturous, his work in progress, South Side Suite is a fascinating and thoughtful reflection of his complex home town. 

Ben LaMar Gay’s Hecky Naw! Angles! was more resistant to categorization and in many ways better typified the two preceding performances in the series.  Dahlak Brathwaite’s Try/Step/Trip two weeks earlier started life as a solo piece.  Collaborating with director Roberta Uno, it appeared on the MCA stage as an ensemble production so powerful it made the Edlis Neeson Theater quake.  In it, Brathwaite examined a journey that led a child of immigrants into the snares that entrap so many black youth.  For him it led to a prison cell and the scarlet letter of a felon.  He rebuffs the stigma his past entails and chooses to move forward with positive affirmation. Gifted with exceptional powers of expression, his dialog can be breathtakingly scorching and impossibly exquisite. He uses it deliver his take on the balance of power in a country divided along many lines.  Despite last minute personnel changes and severely abbreviated rehearsal schedules, his cast of actors more than met the challenge of cogently delivering riveting dialog at lightning speed. 

It’s that assertiveness that made Try/Step/Trip so much in sync with Ben Lamar Gay’s work.  In addition to the way they both brought in other performance elements to add depth to their productions.  Try/Step/Trip could be called musical theater with heft and combat boots.  And like Gay’s Hecky Naw!  Angles!, he uses dance as a form of emphasis.   Step, a group dance form ingrained in the black community, is laden with ritual and attachment.  Brathwaite employs it to signify unity and self-worth.  Gay goes the interpretive route letting a single female dancer, Raquel Monroe, translate his music through the movement of her body.  He also featured cutting edge video that re-enforced the rhythm of his music and give it visual dimension.  Not only were they mesmerizing and startling in their creativity, Kim Alpert’s image projections were in perfect harmony with the dynamics of the sextet’s unorthodox sound.    

Spellbinding moments kept popping up in all three of the series’ performances.  In Rennie Harris’s Lifted, the second of the three, dance took center stage and featured the unforgettable skills of Joshua Culbreath. Built around a modern-day morality play that sears house to gospel into some kind of astonishing hybrid, Lifted showers the notion of redemption with its own brand of highly relatable relevance.  And, because Harris believes “movement is how we worship life”, his dancers employ an impressive array of styles to demonstrate exactly how that’s done.  Hip hop, break, lock and conventional contemporary stage dance are all pressed into service in the name of divinely bestowed personal salvation. The conceit worked splendidly and live vocals from a local Chicago choir acted as the golden thread that framed the entire piece.

Transformative experiences can pertain to who as well as what.  The dancers performing in Lifted reminded us that many others besides the slim and the svelte can bust a move.  Yet another small example of the inclusive nature of creativity.

Dahlak Brathwaite

Try/Step/Trip

MCA Edlis Neeson Theatre

Friday August 16, 2019

Rennie Harris

Lifted

MCA Edlis Neeson Theatre

Friday August 23, 2019

Saturday August 24, 2019

Thurman Barker/Ben LaMar Gay

South Side Suite/ Hecky Naw! Angles!

MCA Edlis Neeson Theatre

Friday August 30, 2019

Since they mounted their first exhibit in 2016, movin’ in the right direction sums up the boldly ambitious goals of an arts collective known as the Floating Museum.  The group sees the entire city as a museum and treats each neighborhood as a potential gallery.  For the past three years they’ve collaborated with communities and other artists to develop original themes that they use to develop one-of-a-kind concepts.

Last year the collective met with some success and acclaim for their inspired repurposing of a 100’ barge on the Chicago river.  Redefining what it means to transport, they used the barge to “off load” art at various sites along the river delivering original works by local artists, conducting song circles and presenting live dance performance.  By taking art to where people live and work the collective hopes to energize neighborhoods as well as individuals.

Despite of the group’s name and its 2018 Chicago river production, the Floating Museum is not water bound. Floating more like a butterfly than a boat, it can light or land anywhere in town with one of its pioneering outdoor projects.  This year, the Green Line’s route functions as the Floating Museum’s geographical muse with neighborhoods running from Austin to Englewood acting as the collective’s exhibition spaces.

Hoping to turn the Green Line into an arts destination, the collective took to the rails with their current project, Cultural Transit Assembly.  Building historical relevance into the artistic exercise, the Floating Museum aims to highlight “historical figures that elevate the stories of indigenous people and people of color”.  Partnering with the CTA, two train cars have been converted into moving art rooms.   The cars have been melded into the system’s regular schedule and are wrapped in white sheeting carrying portrait renderings.  One car commemorates the recognized founder of Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and the other honors his Potawatomi bride, Kitihawa.  Each car displays local artist interpretations of what du Sable and his wife looked like and provide information about the import each had on the settlement of the city.  Much like the popular CTA Holiday train during the Christmas season, seeing or riding in the Floating Museum’s tribute cars is based on luck or perseverance. 

On the ground a similarly impressive effort extends the tribute with an imposing air-filled sculpture entitled Founders.  Over 25’ tall and in luminescent white, it too carries images Chicago’s first settler and Kitihawa.  They are joined by a likeness of Chicago’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington.  From July 24^th through September 11^th, the four-headed bust “floats” from neighborhood to neighborhood where it remains in residence from 11am to 6pm.  Docents are on hand to talk about the significance of each person as well as the story of the sculpture’s construction.  Tying a more performance based component into the sculpture’s stay at each spot would enliven the experience and make its presence more meaningful. 

To stimulate curiosity and interest, the sculpture is often placed on a site that insures its visibility by passengers riding the line. 

Random CTA stations like the west side’s Pulaski stop also act as unexpected galleries.   There, photographer Nicole Harrison uses portraiture to “honor family bonds and heritage”.

The Floating Museum’s Cultural Transit Assembly culminates with its participation in Expo Chicago on Navy Pier September 19 – 21, 2019.

The Floating Museum

Cultural Transit Assembly

July 24 – September 21, 2019

https://floatingmuseum.org/Calendar

Born out of crisis 28 years ago, Dance for Life has become a beloved and perhaps even indispensable Chicago institution. Created to raise funds that would help address the dire health needs of dance community members stricken with the AIDS virus, it’s evolved to provide invaluable assistance to dancers confronting a variety of other health and living needs.   Drawing from the many tributaries that define the varied styles of dance performed in the city, the annual benefit performance showcases each branch of dance to highlight the depth of impact each has on Chicago’s cultural identity.

Always highly anticipated, the electricity running through the pre-show crowd in the Auditorium’s lobby all but crackles in intensity.  Saturday night was no exception and the intermission-free show proved why.  From ballet, tap, modern, Latin, jazz and hip-hop; nearly every significant genre of dance was on the program’s roster.  And not one of them left their A game at home.

Giordano Dance Chicago opened large with a piece they introduced last year.  Saturday night’s performance of Soul looked as if it may have already been reworked. If so, this version’s a bona fide keeper.  The flow seems cleaner, crisper and the overall look of the dance seems better tailored to the company’s style.  Still riding on the shoulders of R&B giants, Gladys Knight, Al Green and Tina Turner, Soul’s musical foundation is tailor made for fire. In a single instant when the first strains of Proud Mary oozed from speakers, the dancers responded in perfect timing and as one. Click, and the company’s signature seductive dynamism exploded and covered the stage to cheers.

Dance is a language with many beautiful dialects.  It can pulse with that dynamism found in Soul and then move seamlessly to the cool measured syncopation of tap.  Chicago Human Rhythm Project/Stone Soup Rhythms presented Movement 11, a lovely expression of grace and structured rhythm.  Initially the music had sound clues that suggested classical.  But unusual things can happen when you blend electronic music with jazz. Here it achieved an ethereal timelessness that worked beautifully with the percussive cadence of modern forward thinking tap.

Short video clips interspersed through the show called attention to the people who’ve made essential contributions to the city’s dance culture or have benefited from Dance for Life’s assistance.  One tribute recalled the work and life of Claire Bataille before Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists danced an excerpt from Echo Mine; a piece dedicated to Bataille.  In it dancers Jacqueline Burnett, Meredith Dincolo and Robyn Mineko Williams moved with the grace of spirits in a time disdaining universe.  Virtually identical in appearance and dressed in asymmetrical costumes by Hogan McLaughlin, the effect was to push the dance and our minds into a distant future full of alternate exquisite possibilities.

The Joffrey Ballet contributed two works to the program; Lorelei (2018) and Bells (2011).  Both were dances for two and both were beautiful.  Choreography and the talents of a singular dancer set them apart.  Choreographed by Yuri Possokhov, Bells is indeed passionate.  Even in all its subtlety, the work is also hugely complex which adds tremendously to its fascination.  Dancers Victoria Jaiani and Temur Suluashvili have been performing Bells since its inception and their familiarity with it seems to flow from their pores.  The dance is so perfect and Jaiani’s performance is so exemplary that the piece was completely transfixing. Bells has been called a triumph many times and it still is.

Just before Jaiani and Suluashvili took the stage, Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater put a whole new slant on timing, precision and the myriad things you can do with rhythm.  Packed together and in the hands of a strong dance company; they make up the primary ingredients of excitement with a distinct flair.  Mar de Fuego/Sea of Fire, also created in 2018 by Madrid based choreographer Carlos Rodriguez and dedicated to the company’s recently deceased founder Dame Libby Komaiko, fills the stage with dancers loaded with panache dressed in stunning costumes and flaunting that gorgeous timing. It’s exhilarating to experience dance from the perspective of other cultures.  The ensemble funnels its inspirations directly from Spain and focuses on several dance styles that best typify the totality of what Spanish dance is.  Showcasing the expressive vibrancy of flamenco Saturday night, the company’s repertoire also includes contemporary work, both folkloric and classical dance and Escuela Bolera (classical Spanish ballet).   

Immediately following the delicate beauty of Bells, Chicago Dance Crash nearly ripped the building apart with dance as American as Beyoncé and as current as your next text.  Wrapping acrobatics, hip hop, break and concert dance into a tight ball to express thoughts and ideas makes for thrilling dance.   Leap of Faith, choreographed by the company’s artistic director, Jessica Deahr was conceived to validate the taking of risks, particularly highly consequential risks that can ultimately lead to self-actualization.  Leap of Faith is not only magnificent, it broadens the definition of dance by framing for the stage what grew from the streets.

Tapping into a completely different wellspring, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago did much the same thing with their excerpt from Decadance/Chicago.  The blissful marriage of dance and theater, a semi-circle of chairs sweep the length of the stage with dancers standing behind them in the dark clothes and hats of Jewish orthodoxy.  Opening to Hava Nagila before morphing into a very muscular and brazenly assertive rendition of Echad Mi Yodea, the dance moves methodically from staid reserve to joyous frenzy with dancers shedding both their inhibitions and their clothes as they lose themselves in joyous rapture.

That sense of joy and excitement carried right through to the finale as a convergence of dancers from across the city’s contemporary dance community performed the world premiere of Randy Duncan’s Release.  Well named, the work exuded spiritual flight, an absolute absence of restraint with dancers exalting in some secret happiness that they gladly shared with the audience.  Release and everything preceding it proved eloquent reminders of the boundless creativity and staggering talent Chicago’s dance community possesses.  And that we are all very fortunate to enjoy.

Dance for Life

August 17, 2019

Auditorium Theatre

50 East Ida B. Wells Drive

Chicago, IL  60605

www.chicagodancersunited.org