Pina Bausch. Photo by Atsushi Iijima.
It was just last month she was making plans with Wim Wenders for a 3D dance film, and now word comes from Wuppertal that choreographer Pina Bausch has passed away.
Deutsche Welle has posted an obituary, as have The Guardian and The New York Times.
May she rest in peace.
Posted in News | Tags: pina bausch, wim wenders
Paul Sanasardo and Dmitri Peskov. Photo by Jennifer Girard.
There are a number of angles from which to approach a review of last weekend’s performances of choreography by Paul Sanasardo and Dmitri Peskov. For me it was an uncomfortable experience but, to be fair, the works shown were intentionally so.
Although a generation apart — Sanasardo is, at eighty, more than twice Peskov’s age — and from divergent backgrounds, their sharing of an evening is a logical alignment of simpatico artists (they’re both in residence at the Joel Hall Dance Center). The two are given to high drama and grand gesture, share a sculptural approach to choreography, and find inspiration in plaintive strings and staccato piano melodies that tick off the seconds of troubled existences. Click here to read the entire article at SeeChicagoDance.com
Posted in Reviews, SeeChicagoDance | Tags: dmitri peskov, joel hall dance center, paul sanasardo, SeeChicagoDance
There’s only one performance remaining of Curious Theatre Branch‘s The Caretaker at the Side Project in Rogers Park, but if you’re free tonight at 7 and care to see a great play, head on over.
Posted in News | Tags: curious theatre branch, harold pinter, rogers park, side project, the caretaker
Posted in Video | Tags: anders hellstrom, nederlands dans theater, youtube
Photo by Cheryl Mann.
Congrats to the choreographer and member of Thodos Dance Chicago on winning the first A.W.A.R.D. Show! and ten thousand dollars to make new work — if you missed Forget What You Came For? on tonight’s and Thursday’s programs, note that a brand-new piece by Tomlinson will be on TDC’s New Dances bill June 17, 18 and 19 at Ruth Page.
Jessica Miller Tomlinson graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in contemporary dance. She has performed works by Warren Conover, Paul Taylor, David Parsons, Neta Pulvermacher, Lucas Crandall, Mark Morris, Lauri Stallings, Lar Lubovitch, Gail Gilbert and Kevin Wynn. Upon moving to Chicago, she was on scholarship for a year at the Lou Conte Dance Studio. Tomlinson has choreographed professionally for the Chautauqua Ballet Company, and her work Forget What You Came For?, which premiered at New Dances 2006, was selected to be included in Thodos Dance Chicago’s repertory for two seasons. In the summer of 2008, she was selected as the NCSA Alumni Choreographer for the Manteo Performance Series, where her work Die Lieder Tanzen was performed. She is currently in her fifth season with Thodos Dance Chicago, performing nationally and internationally. In addition, she teaches dance at several Chicagoland studios.
Hard to say how much I’ll actually use their service, but I figure Pride weekend‘s as good a time as any to fire up an account on Qik, which will let me use my phone as a webcam to broadcast video live from…wherever I bring my phone. I’m also now prepared to fight back Information Age style in case any bullshit government oppression stuff goes down — add me if you have an account.
I suppose what I’ll do is send some sort of notification out when I plan to webcast something so, erm, stay tuned.
(BTW, I thought it was pronounced “kick” but apparently it’s pronounced “quick.”)
An insightful essay about Michael Jackson the dancer, courtesy the Times’ always-entertaining Allie Mac.
Posted in News | Tags: alistair macaulay, michael jackson, new york times
I predicted this lineup would be impossible to predict — turns out I was right! The top three contenders going into tomorrow night’s A.W.A.R.D. Show! final have been confirmed. Thoughts? Get it on in the comments, folks.
500 Clown and the Elephant Deal may have been an odd introduction to this company. Their reputation rests largely on two productions, a Frankenstein and a Macbeth, whose sources are first and foremost narratives, as well as on a Christmas show based on you-can-guess-what débuted in 2005 featuring the same composer and musical collaborator as Elephant‘s, John Fournier. Elephant, as a series of scenes inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s Man is Man (1926), is framed here as an evening of cabaret. Were it to embrace the form’s inherently episodic nature it would be an absurdist joy; each preposterous situation the five performers enact is indeed slick execution of a terribly funny idea. But, especially upon its close, Elephant reveals itself as wanting desperately to comprise a story, despite the number of angles from which its script attacks all attendant assumptions and conventions.
Molly Brennan as Madame Barker. Photo by Michael Brosilow.
As the show’s mercurial, manic emcee, Molly Brennan is Madame Barker like Amy Poehler might play Sally Bowles after a couple of bong hits and too much sun. Like Elephant‘s relationship to narrative, her character is impossible to pin down, intelligently raunchy and quick to snap like all the best forebears of the type. The work’s first half is really a sequence of opportunities to let her splash around in the potential of Fournier’s songs — her delivery wrings most of the smart innuendo and unexpected poignancy out of his swinging melodies and Porteresque lyrics. I suspect she’ll get the most out of the show’s run — I’d gladly come back for one of the closing performances just to see how she’s settled in. Read More…
The Humans. Photo by Carl Wiedemann.
Opening the first of four nights of Chicago’s inaugural A.W.A.R.D. Show! grant competition, Columbia College Dance Department Chair Bonnie Brooks succinctly termed it a “grand experiment in dance democracy.” Taking a necessary moment to explain the program’s history (it’s a Boeing-funded transplant of a successful New York venture in its third year) and acronymous title (Audiences With Artists Responding to Dance), Brooks welcomed the full house with an invitation to vote our consciences not just upon what we saw, but what we felt could be achieved with a $10,000 cash injection. Click here to read the entire article at SeeChicagoDance.com
Posted in Reviews, SeeChicagoDance | Tags: bonnie brooks, columbia college, dance center, see chicago dance, the a.w.a.r.d. show!
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