The Other Dance Festival
There were three pieces before intermission on the first program of the Other Dance Festival, and every one of them ended with a dead body. (Yeah, so does Giselle, but there are compensations there.) From these works one would infer that Chicago’s contemporary dance community is interested only in pushing and shoving accompanied by cacophony. After considering the value of one’s time, one would walk out and resolve never to return, dismissing the entire show out of hand.
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The evening’s highlight was the premiere of Deseret by Hi! Performance, made up of choreographer-dancers Sheldon B. Smith and Lisa Wymore. It opens with video showing ocean and rippled sand and the two performers lolling, stretching, and dancing on the waves–literally: they move in unison while floating on their backs. When the lights come up, Smith and Wymore are doing the same set of languid, tender movements on the bare floor of the Hamlin Park field house. Gradually the watery video gives way to scenes in the high desert, and the dancing accordingly gets harsher and less life affirming until the sound of rain softens the mood temporarily. Then, as the video performers disappear into the barren distance, Smith comes downstage, picks up a guitar, and sings what sounds like an Appalachian folk tune whose haunting melody underlies evocative lyrics: “I’m goin’ home to see my father…no more to roam.” His song ends this strongly performed, moving work, with its suggestions of the journey from womb to dust. Video (by Superstar Media) and music (by Mark Nelson, Low, and Dave Pajo) contribute significantly to the piece’s power.
The company also reprised Billy Siegenfeld’s charming Getting There (1994) and Jon Lehrer’s Bridge and Tunnel (2001). The virtues of the latter–set in working-class New York to music by Paul Simon–are even more apparent now that it can be compared to Twyla Tharp’s Movin’ Out, set in working-class New York to music by Billy Joel. Tharp’s show is spectacular–and you’ve got to love a woman who can fill a Broadway house for a dance concert with people who would never go to a dance concert. But Lehrer’s piece has two advantages: its uncondescending use of colloquialism and its taste in music. Bridge and Tunnel betters Movin’ Out the same way Paul Simon outstrips Billy Joel.
