dance writer

April 16, 2015 Hubbard Street Dance Chicago makes periodic stops in Madison. Last night, in preparation for an upcoming Italian tour, the company performed five eclectic works in an almost-full Overture Hall in the Overture Center. HSDC has become a breeding ground for emerging choreographers and of the five dances, two were created by Hubbard Street-bred dance-makers. The evening opened with Jiri Kylian's Falling Angels , a rhythmic percussive powerhouse dance for eight women. This dance c ould stand alone, yet it relies on innovative lighting patterns which isolate dancers and heighten suspense. Chock-full of unison movement and never letting up, in sharp boxes of white light, the women gesture sharply, shake their hands like tambourines, drop abruptly into squat positions, and slide across the floor on their bellies slowly propelled by one elbow at a time like injured seals crawling to safety. Soloists break the unison pattern from time to time, traveling in sharp shaf...

February 18, 2015 As part of their 30 th  anniversary tour, the seven dancers of Urban Bush Women along with pianist, George Caldwell, visited Overture Hall for an evening of three dances in their trademark style, a fusion of African and contemporary dance. Founder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar contributed two of the works, while former “Bush Woman”, nora chipaumire (who does not capitalize her name) choreographed the other. Zollar's Hep Hep Sweet Sweet opened the show. The piece blended voiceover text about Zollar's memories of her mother moving from Texas to Kansas City, with live piano accompaniment, prerecorded songs from the jazz era, and live singing from the cast. It became immediately evident that the scale of the empty-feeling Overture Hall detracted from the intimacy and intricacy of this dance. While the six dancers charged into the space with bold sharp movements, jumping, turning, undulating spines, flailing strong arms, even their bright flashy sequined costu...

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...

In an evening of four dances, Madison's Kanopy Dance Company forged some new territory and unearthed a few Kanopy relics. The company has been around long enough under the direction of Lisa Andrea Thurrell and Robert E. Cleary to establish a repertoire, and it has been their practice to repeat old dances. In a small dance town like Madison, it can be tiresome to see the same dances year after year and many Madison choreographers suffer this fate by placing quantity of concerts presented over quality. But this time in Kanopy's annual Dark Nights concert, which could have been called "Dark Souls", new dancers tackled lead roles in the old works, and the pieces gained some strength with the new blood. That, combined with the intelligent theatrical Monkey see Monkey do created by guest artists Amit Lahav and Natalie Ayton of Britain's Gecko Theatre Company made for and engaging and diverse evening. The concert likened a dance sandwich--two end pieces with a c...