Non-Dances for Dancers and Dances for Non-Dancers at Link’s Hall, February 16 and 17
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When Link’s Hall asked Shineflug to do a joint performance with Jeff Abell as part of its “Strange Bedfellows” series, they decided to take some risks. Abell would write monologues for dancers in which they would talk but not move, and Shineflug would create dances for people who weren’t normally dancers; their friends and colleagues would perform. The result was an evening filled with inside jokes and affectionate portraits, but filled especially with Shineflug’s newfound “herselfness”–madcap, even silly spoofs with intelligent moments sprinkled throughout like punch lines.
For example, Abell and Shineflug created solos for each other. In Pulaski Day Dance (all of Shineflug’s pieces were linked to Chicago holidays), Abell comes onstage wearing a woman’s ballet costume: tutu, turquoise leotard with crisscross straps over the back, and a 40-foot swatch of tulle. It clashes perfectly with his Marxist intellectual look: tiny wire-rimmed glasses and shaggy black beard and hair. The music is a Tchaikovsky ballet played by the Portsmouth Sinfonia, a group of conservatory musicians organized by Brian Eno who play instruments that are the opposites of what they play professionally. The music has a hurdy-gurdy burping quality reminiscent of a lurching drunk who by the grace of God will find his way home. The able Abell expertly mimics a klutz attempting Petipa’s choreography, and the dance lasts just the right amount of time for its one joke.
It was an evening of dancers having a good time–making fun of ballet and of dance photographers, teasing each other, cracking inside jokes. I just hope they don’t decide to poke fun at critics next.
