Run through the abstractor of movement composition, not much of The Space/Movement Project‘s Safety in Numbers‘ purported questioning of the nature of urban community shows presence in the finished work. I’m okay with that.
What’s clear is that, whatever the subject, the dancers and creative collaborators of TS/MP found a well of inspiration deep enough to give an hour-long work in five parts richly-varied vocabulary and a sense of completion. Safety in Numbers stops short of having an arc as a whole, but the individual, subtitled sections cohere into distinct environments at the same time they belong together (call it an anthology somewhat inspired by belonging). There are also transitioning scenes (credited to Megan Schneeberger) to reprised snippets from the score but, as they’re not clearly tied in content to either preceding or following sections, they feel like filler.
Photo by Michelle Alba.
Bucking the Chicago dance scene’s most pervasive trend, TS/MP employs neither text nor performer-generated sound in their work, and only a few brief scenes transpire in silence. Bedrock for Numbers is an original score by Seattle composer Jeff Forrest: Stylistically a perfect match for TS/MP’s supple, released choreography, Forrest’s landscape of gently-reverbby guitar strums, long cello pulls and firefly flashes of piano over percussion is absorbing enough to support the visual action but disciplined enough to preclude dismissal by a reviewer whose tolerance for worse examples in this vein is, in a word, thin. Obviously attuned to these dancers and their movement (this is their second collaboration), Forrest ably channels either the softer side of Kinski or Thomas Newman rocking out, depending on your perspective. Read More…
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