dance writer

Solidifying its identity as a midwest repertory ballet company, in its varied and well-balanced concert, Madison Ballet's LOVE  spanned history and style in a concise evening of dances highlighted by its bookends—the opening re-staging of Paquita (first performed in 1846) and a rousing 2021 contemporary closer brought in by guest, Stephanie Martinez. Sandwiched between came three brief and light dances contributed by Madison Ballet Artistic/Executive Director, Ja' Malik, and an earthy duet from Richard Walters. Traditional in every sense of the word, Paquita , opened the program, exhibiting the companies classical bravura abilities. Staged by Andrea Long (after the original Makarova and Petipa choreographies), this dance-for-dance-sake for ten was tightly done with a stiff, presentational beauty matching the customary tutu costumes. After a bit of a shaky start with the old-school vocabulary, the corps grew into the demands of speed and dexterity as the piece evolved. Solo sec...

In an evening of diverse works inspired by avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham, Zephyr Dance's S45 presented risk, danger and surprise in a celebration of the mature dancer. Opening with Cunningham's Suite for Five and closing with a chance improvisation by the five seasoned choreographers who participated in the evening, the concert took place in Chicago's intimate and intriguing SITE/less space. The program also featured a grouping of new Cunningham-inspired works. A home for the exploration of architecture and dance, SITE/less functioned as a colorful unique play space for both dancers and audience. Levels of bright green, red and blue wood platforms designed and built by architect David Sundry, created a patchwork quilt-like floor that extended into all areas of the oddly shaped room. Like a giant Alice-in-Wonderland staircase, the performance area angles and edges looked to pose challenges beyond a traditional stage space, especially a few spots where the desi...

Visceral Dance Company opened their Winter Engagement program of four dances at the Ann Barzel Theatre with Minor Threat , a work they first presented in 2017. Despite the title and dark corset costumes, there is nothing threatening nor dark about this piece. Mark Golden's choreography is straight up music visualization with ten dancers physicalizing the nuances and details of a Mozart piano concerto score. Hunched over, hands behind their knees, they slowly advance upstage like injured ducks. Leaping into lifts, dancers' chests slam together then, legs swing back arching away from their partner. Patterns repeat in cannon to mesmerizing effect. In a highlight moment, one dancer runs at another full force and catapults herself into the air to be caught facing backwards in a side split. The movement seems impossible, but the effort appears minimal. Meredith Harrill stands out in a brief solo, smiling softly and playfully articulating the music with command and clarity. The only ...

Envisioning the plays of Tennessee Williams as ballet is not new to Milwaukee-born choreographer John Neumeier. Celebrating 50 years at the helm of the Hamburg Ballet, Neumeier (who studied English Lit and Theatre at Marquette University) took on A Streetcar Named Desire in 1983. Chicago audiences were given the chance to see Neumeier's reimagining of William's classic, The Glass Menagerie, this past weekend at the Harris Theatre for Music and Dance. Neumeier's production starts in a traditional way. Before any action, a collection of glass and crystal animals sits glistening downstage. Slowly, b alconies, ladders and an apartment literally unfold in a gorgeously lit noir-esque opening stage picture. Tennessee (Edvin Revazov) appears on an upper level looking down on his childhood self— a pre-adolescent Tom Wingfield thus establishing the memory viewpoint of the ballet. This striking moment immediately plunges into the world of young Tom, his artistic explorations (he is a ...

Chicago dancemaker of promise, Drew Lewis, is one of three artists selected to participate in the Work Around Series presented by Steppenwolf Theatre. The Work Around residency gives each artist (in this case three choreographers) 40 hours of rehearsal space and a place to perform their creations. Part self-portrait and part inspired by the work of artist/activist David Wojnarowicz, Lewis used the allotted studio time to create Heavy Objects (and light movements) , an hour-long dance mosaic, and shared the results in the 1700 Theatre. A shallow and wide space, seeing dance in the 1700 feels like watching a tennis match with ample space for dancers to move side to side and not much depth.  Among the pieces sections, there is no obvious activism, and none of the stark imagery that might be associated with Wojnarowicz's art, save for a brief soundtrack of presumably Wojnarowicz recounting witnessing the deterioration of friends and acquaintances fallen to AIDS. No matter. We don...

The first image of 77-year-old Bob Eisen is striking, and not the way one would expect a dance concert to begin: with a tall, lean, white haired man, looking every bit his age in a red and blue sweat suit and sneakers, standing at the center of Links Hall stage. But in the opening dance of five on the program,  An Ongoing Solo , Eisen begins to move slowly articulating his spine, and any notion of ageism that was creeping in fades away immediately. In fact, he seems to reverse the aging process and grow more youthful as the dance progresses. Pacing the room, nodding, swinging his arms in impossible directions, one moment summersaulting backwards on the floor, the next standing doubled over and fidgety, wringing his hands like a child needing to use the restroom. The piece is detailed and frenetic with enough repetition to bring understanding to Eisen's strange movement language. If we didn't know him before, we know him very well by the end of the piece. Eisen moves with surpri...

February 14, 2015 Over the last 20 years, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has made several stops in Madison. The company returned last night to Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theatre to perform three older works to a nearly sold-out enthusiastic house. Accompanied by a live string ensemble comprised of UW-Madison music students, each dance featured the full company of nine athletic and diverse performers. Spent Days Out Yonder , choreographed by Jones in 2000 (based on a solo made in 1996), created an ethereal atmosphere to a lively Mozart string quartet. Intriguing, meditative, and curious, the dance seems a comment on the power of community and partnership. In soft light, a trio clad in flowing blue pastels and with backs to the audience, circle their arms from the elbows like strange angelic scarecrows. Clearly isolated from each other, the dancers keep to their own personal space. Punctuated by angular arm gesture and wobbly knees, the group shifts and...

Live performance always happens within some sort of context, so our response to it can vary depending on such things as where the performance takes place, who is sitting in front of us, what we ate or drank for dinner, or the price of a ticket. In the case of the Batsheva Dance Company’s recent Chicago appearance, the venue could not have been better. The spectacular Auditorium Theatre is as ornate and gorgeous as any concert hall. Just to enter the lobby is to experience time and gravity through its effect on the wavy uneven mosaic marble floor. (As one usher told me, “I’d hesitate to drop a marble on this floor—there’s no telling where it would end up!”) Since 1889, the building has settled considerably, and this floor has been walked on by many. Taking in the grandeur of the theatre from a plush wide velvet seat is worth arriving a bit early. But when the show begins 30 minutes later than scheduled, ones perspective is already colored. The mind goes away from the anticipat...

A contemporary ballet titled “Radio and Juliet”, as in the Edward Clug choreography for Slovenia’s Ballet Maribor, conjures images of the theatrical Shakespeare classic love story. Clug’s 40-minute dance piece indeed alludes to a theatrical story by way of a large-scale, slow-moving black and white video projection (uncredited in the program). Footage of huge close-ups of a solitary woman in an empty apartment interspersed with brief interludes of men performing flashy edgy gestures, sets up an intriguing story, and evokes questions, building hope that the upcoming dance might answer them. Who is this isolated woman? Juliet? Where is she? Why is she alone? What is her relationship to these men? The music of Radiohead begins to pulse and the live company of dancers enter one by one introducing themselves with a simple walk downstage. The piece then erupts into full-on energetic dance, exquisitely performed with great precision by seven strong dancers-six men and one woman. C...

When advertising suggests that a dance concert by two university professors-with excellent support and resources-will be of epic proportions, the expectations are high. In this case, professors Robin Becker of Hofstra University and Jin-Wen Yu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison created dances based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America" by David Maraniss. These dances were apparently derived from and inspired by the book's topics of the 1967 bombing of Sterling Hall at UW and the Vietnam war--hefty subject matter, which would have been better served in the hands of master choreographers. In this case, a way-too-long performance (clocking in at 2 hours and 30 minutes) came nowhere near expected hype, and to use the word of the audience member next to me, was "offensive". Becker's piece "Into Sunlight", suffered from dim tiring lighting, designed by Burke Wilmore, and continuous s...