SWEET HOMECOMING CHICAGO
For the record, Self is an ordinary Joe. You could pass him on the street and not look twice. But it just goes to show you: there’s more to good dance than meets the eye. One might say that good dance meets the heart, or meets the soul, or even meets the gut. Self–a local boy who made it big in NYC and came back for the Link’s Hall Homecoming Series–creates choreography that meets the heart. His Sweet Homecoming Chicago is a gentle, open dance, full of good wishes for the future and wistful memories of the past, all wrapped up in an oddly beautiful present.
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In part, the performance is about Self: former dancer with Merce Cunningham, founder of Jim Self and Dancers, choreographer for the Boston Ballet, winner of a 1985 Bessie, a married homosexual deliriously in love with his mate, and a romantic, spiritual creature who’s not afraid to wear his underwear on his head while performing. It’s also about the other dancers: Ron Bieganski, Bob Eisen, Craig LaSota, and Michele Marie White. It’s about Link’s Hall. It’s about homecomings. And last but not least, it’s about each person in the audience.
All this is apparently a ritual preparation for remembering. Self talks about his past–his awards and accolades, comparing the time when he received them to when he was “just a guy in a room over Hamburger King.” He remembers dancing with his lover in Link’s Hall, remembers fucking in the closet, and dedicates the space to his lover. A hodgepodge of activity begins in which all five performers reenact pieces of their memories. And the focus gets lost: their stories are interesting enough, but their unrelated actions thrown together onstage willy-nilly lose any sense of purpose. By the time Self sets up three televisions broadcasting different versions of the film Beehive (his Bessie winner), their performance seems barely worth watching. The four local dancers slide across the floor like worms, picking up Self’s clothing and removing it from the stage. Perhaps it’s a symbol of decay, perhaps it’s all about the wormy jerks who eat away at one’s accomplishments. The meaning behind the movement is lost and doesn’t return until the penultimate ritual, in which everyone onstage shares his or her vision of the future. Self somehow pulls it back together. He talks about how he fell in love, shares his hope “that someday people will realize that the stability of the planet is dependent on dance,” and makes us believe that nothing could be more true than that.
