Hedwig Dances
at the Harold Washington Library, May 12 and 13
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Sheldon B. Smith often gives his dances inscrutable titles; his newest piece is called Dog-Leg, Drag-Line (Drum Groove Tolerance). The press release says that it’s “a physical exploration of inhibition/introversion and exhibition/extroversion,” but I see it mainly as a wonderful series of physical jokes. The best joke is Smith’s cornucopia of inventive movements, which start out being one thing but take sharp turns into something different. Smith is at center stage, for example, staggering a little between episodes of tiny convulsions rippling through his body, and Alt is behind him arranging the dancers one by one into an artful group; then she tunnels up from inside the arranged group to hang from it like a kid on a jungle gym, diverting attention from Smith and changing “art” to play. The whole group shuffles to the side, dragging a disheveled Alt as they go, while Smith is finishing his convulsions as he walks offstage. Armed with the press release, I could see the contrast between Smith’s inhibitions and Alt’s flamboyance; the theme is repeated later as Bristol does gymnastic tricks, smiling proudly at the audience after each one, in front of a line of dancers who push each other in sequence endlessly. David Pavkovic’s 20-minute drum score helps build to a crescendo the panic of the introverts and the competitiveness of the extroverts. In an appropriate climax, David Kanouse manipulates Smith’s body into a gargoyle shape, creating a portrait of an introvert tortured by insensitive extroverts. It’s a funny shape, too.
Flight/Fight Dance has a great design by Wilhelm Hahn. The stage is set with a projection of a ticky-tacky suburb and three sets of curtains, each imprinted with hands. The curtains pull open to reveal a mother, father, and daughter, their faces covered with cardboard masks–flat cutouts of faces from a 50s family sitcom like My Little Margie. Each dancer is covered from head to toe by his or her clothes, completely isolated from touch. The dance evolves slowly: each character has a solo with many repeated movements, and eventually the repetitions become hypnotic and a recurrent movement brings surprise, recognition, and emotion.
Caroline Walsh’s Storm is a gothic rock fantasy, with dreamy poetry from the Dead Milkmen about shattered glass and shattered people on the mean streets. Mike Biddle designed a splendid ballet bar that looks as if it had been bent out of shape in a fierce fire. Amanda McCann’s solo has abrupt, percussive movement that is a welcome change from the more lyrical movement of most of the other pieces. Walsh conveys well the imagination and sensuality beneath the morbid accoutrements of gothic rock.
In my May 5 review of Robynne Gravenhorst’s Blood on the Moon, I made references to past work experience of the dancers that Gravenhorst tells me were incorrect. She has informed me that all three women in question have had extensive training in forms such as ballet and modern and ethnic dance, and that the dancers were not portraying autobiographical characters in her piece.
