Chicago Moving Company
Nana Shineflug, 65, exemplifies the idea of “moving” in 1972–which is not to say that her ideas are dated but that she’s still invested in social criticism. For the company’s spring concert, “Places of Meeting,” she’s taken a chance on Atalee Judy, a self-proclaimed bad kid whose choreography recalls the tumultuous social climate from which the Chicago Moving Company emerged. When Shineflug asked Judy if she would make a dance for the troupe, Judy worried that they wouldn’t be up to her “bodyslam technique,” but Shineflug said, “I trust you…do whatever. We’re yours.”
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Judy’s dance–Logotype 02, one of a series of confrontational pieces–proved the most riveting on the program. In the solo Logotype 00 Judy associated guns with movement derived from “fall and recovery” techniques she’d learned in the mosh pits of New York City; the duet Logotype 01 featured a video image of a bald head with the top cut away to reveal nothing but static. Logotype 02–the first group dance in her series–uses the image of a bar code being scanned to show the way individuality gets lost in the drive to identify consumers by their purchases. Underneath identical striped work suits, her dancers have bar codes on their backs, as if the scanning process were analogous to the labeling of Jews in Nazi concentration camps–an association confirmed by projections of bombed buildings and gaunt prisoners.
Just as the title of the concert suggests a common ground between late-20th-century countercultures, it also provokes reflection on what’s happened to the revolutionary character of modern dance. Sharing artistic-director duties with Shineflug is Cindy Brandle, whose meditative, carefully patterned dance for ten, Regret, provided a kind of safe haven after the sensory assault of Logotype 02. This premiere features Brandle’s bright red costumes and a sound score (created with the help of Esch Marie) of spoken as well as musical passages. To a litany of synonyms and antonyms for the word “regret,” the dancers engage in repetitive, decidedly decorous movements suggesting forgiveness and release as well as repentance. Regret is a meticulously crafted dance, but its structural devices–canon formations and picturesque gestural motifs–don’t work as well as they used to unless they are themselves the subject of the dance, as in so much postmodern choreography.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Erika DuFour.
