Logotype vs2.1
at Ravinia Festival, August 28-29
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It’s almost literally true that there’s no escaping Logotype vs2.1 once you enter Ideotech, a warehouse converted to a gallery and performance space. (Nor is this an ersatz developer’s “aren’t we like Soho?” soft loft; the space still shows its industrial origins.) When the house opens, a video collage is running, compiled of cartoons, logo-filled ads, excerpts of the dance to come, newsreel footage, and surreal close-ups. The name of the piece appears on-screen, followed by additional mesmerizing video segments. By the time the performance begins, the projections have been going on for a while, and so the encompassing video and stage-filling choreography of the show per se seem to further surround us with imagery. Logotype vs2.1 is like a 1960s happening precisely because it’s not trying to be “like” anything. To crib from a famous slogan, it’s the real thing.
The other artist Judy suggests is Tony Kushner. She concludes the evening with “Logotype 06”–represented by a circuit board–in which the dancers sport the wings that constitute the Angels in America “logo.” As with Kushner’s work, critiquing the components of Judy’s is beside the point: some sections are better than others, but all display the creator’s intelligence and passion, and the only question by the end is whether you can see the world the way the artist does. Long before Logotype vs2.1 closes, the answer is yes.
The run order was poor, though: Enos’s piece bears too much resemblance to O’Day’s to follow it immediately. In both dances two couples move from jaunty flirtatiousness to eroticism to violence, the first piece costumed in white, the second in black. The dancing is unimpeachable, with particularly fine showings from the men, especially Christopher Tierney in Quartet for IV and Massimo Pacilli in Guzophela. Duato stereotypes Catalan dancing while trying to pay it homage in the third piece on the program–unfortunately the third in a row featuring men managing their women partners by straddling them.
