Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
Fait Accompli also recalls 1982’s apocalyptic Bad Smells. We see smoke and hear explosions and crashing sounds, sirens and Klaxons, voices over a radio perhaps discussing some disaster. The rock score, by David Van Tieghem, often carries a heavy beat, though every once in a while we hear a sweet, breathy woman’s voice. The dancing begins with quartets and works up to all 16 dancers onstage, 8 men and 8 women. At first the choreography is unsettlingly mechanical and circumscribed: if the torso bends at all, it seems hinged at the waist; arms take geometric shapes; legs become the calipers of a compass as the dancer pivots on one foot to mark a circle. Gradually the dancing becomes looser and more violent. But ironically, as the performers become less machinelike and more human in their motions, they maintain and even pick up the driving pace.
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In the second section, set to Roland Kirk’s smoldering “Blue Rol,” a siren (Krista Swenson) seduces De Jesus even as she’s lifted and tossed by four other men. The third section establishes the woman De Jesus really wants (Sandi Cooksey) and his real rival (David Gomez). As the section closes she gives De Jesus the eye, but in the time it takes him to straighten his tie she’s walked off with Gomez. This humiliation is followed by a cruel, dark section set to Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” the beginning a solo for De Jesus that involves lots of turning and spinning and itchy rhythms out of sync with the music, which is moody to begin with. This section ends with De Jesus spazzy and exhausted, battered by his feelings, perhaps drunk.
