You couldn’t ask for anything more at Wednesday’s sold-out opening of the Athenaeum Theatre’s Dance Chicago series:
Soulful jazz, tap, Irish step-dancers, one abstract soloist and some 30 skeletons lighting bonfires in the streets outside the theater for the finale. There have been more spectacular programs of dance in the city’s history, but none so unforgettable.
The Dance Chicago philosophy of cross-pollination, a Mulligan’s stew matching street stylists and loft artistes, hit pay dirt, partly by playing more to the gallery. Unlike last year’s overly long, artier lineup, the troupes were more allied with pop entertainment, maybe too much so.
But audience appeal isn’t all bad, nor is cagey programming, especially in fan-hungry dance. Troupe after troupe kept getting better, until Jellyeye and Red Moon Theatre literally took to the streets and provided a pounding, tribal, fire-lit war between skeletons and giant puppet creatures who called to mind translucent prehistoric crustaceans.
If the one-time-only program had a theme, it was the rich, varied talent of the city’s African-American choreographers.
For a series all about the new, Dance Chicago opened rather graciously with a 1983 piece by Joel Hall, one of the city’s true survivors. “Changes” is an uninterrupted rush of movement, nicely structured and rich in twirls (and attitude) for its nine speedy, tireless performers.
Hall’s now veritably classic style was in contrast to Elaine McLaurin’s hip-hop “Me & the Boyz,” a straightforwardly sexy romp for McLaurin, as a dominatrix in white latex, and a corps of muscle-bound, writhing backup men.
For texture, Bril Barrett and Don Russell, the toe-twirling tapsters of “Steppin’ Out,” provided a two-man conversation in rhythm, and Randy Duncan’s gospel trio, “Spiritual Triptych,” for Chavva Smith and Arturo Alvarez, glowed through and through with passion, poetry and love for life.
Veteran modern dancer Bob Eisen offered a bold solo, his long, lanky body alive with movement set to the sounds of a honking horn and gunshots– images ranging from the lyrical to the ever-so-slightly deformed.
Frank Chaves’ “Grusin Suite,” for River North Dance Company, is a great riff on Dave Grusin’s great score to “The Firm,” beautifully married to its music and best in the comic, edgy trio for Alberto J. Arias, Jeffery Hancock and Harrison McEldowney.
Yet, after all of it, Mark Howard’s inventive, sensational choreography for the Trinity Irish Dance Company stopped the show, his rows and rows of intricately interacting dancers proof the Irish boom is the dawning of a new kind of American dance day.
