The Chicago Dancing Festival easily counts as one of the best things in life. With four free performances in five days, it’s the best week of the year for cash-strapped dance enthusiasts.
The first program, on Tuesday, August 18, was titled New Voices. It featured works by what the program calls “a hot new generation of choreographers” at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park.
The evening opened with the Richmond Ballet making their Chicago debut with “To Familiar Spaces in Dream,” choreographed by Jessica Lang. For the first full minute at least, three couples danced in unison to music by Philip Glass. After they established a rhythm of pleasant monotony, it felt exciting when one couple brok away from the other two. From there the work evolved into a complicated piece involving the manipulation of white rectangular props of varying sizes to different musical movements by Craig Armstrong and John Cage. The props served as backdrops, supports, and surfaces to stand, walk, and lie on. The dancers doubled as stage hands, carting the rectangles–and each other–into different formations. Sometimes Lang’s choreography seemed to grow out of pure curiosity, exploring what could be done with, around, and on the props, and the dancers looked like extremely graceful children playing with building blocks. In one musical movement, slow, intense motion and sharp contractions were filled with sadness. But the work never developed a story or emotional theme and, overall, remained an exciting, abstract exploration of space and shape.
River North Chicago Dance Company started the second piece, “Train,” at a slow burn that quickly exploded on the stage. Choreogrpaher Robert Battle paired percussive music by Les Tambours du Bronx with manic dancing punctuated by moments of pause. In pointed contrast to Richmond Ballet’s waif-like ballerinas, the five women on stage were sturdy enough to take the beating given them by the pounding musical score that drove them to dance like madwomen and hurl themselves to the floor. This might sound like a choreographic mess, but though choreography cycled through flailing, leaping, and collapsing movements, it was performed with such recognizable skill and technique that the result was precise and powerful. Despite the speed of the movement, it was easy–and fun–to follow. A solo by one of the five women stood out as particularly fierce, and completely in control, dancing.
Oregon Ballet Theatre‘s “Just,” choreographed by Trey McIntyre, might have been called “Just Okay,” quipped one audienc member. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it followed such fierce competition. The contemporary ballet was performed on a spare stage in white costumes to violin and piano music. There wasn’t much variation in pace, which made the work seem stale in comparison to the previous two works, which contained so much variety.
Aszure Barton & Artists performed “Ah! Crudel” to a Handel opera sung by Renee Fleming. Dancers Cherice Barton and James Gregg sat across from each other at a square black table and performed a negotiation to the rises, falls, and tremulations of Fleming’s voice. First Barton slapped her hands on the table and climbed onto it, gaining the upper hand. Then Gregg rose from his chair and asserted himself. In one memorable moment, Barton captivated Gregg–and the whole audience–by slowly finger-walking her hand across the table. The smallest movements of her dexterous fingers were visible from the farthest seats in the house.
The final work of the evening, “Age of Innocence,” choreographed by Edwaard Liang and performed by the Joffrey Ballet, started with a crowd of 16 dancers on the small Harris Theater stage. The brilliance of the choreography of this contemporary ballet became apparent during the first pas de deux, between Megan Quiroz and Thomas Nicholas. However, Quiroz’s hyperextended knees partially detracted from the beaty of the movement for me. Some people like the line created by hyperextension, but I think it only makes for an uglier S-shaped line. The second pas de deux paired graceful giant Fabrice Calmels with a little bendy straw of a ballerina, Victoria Jaiani. Calmels was a little clumsy getting to and dancing on the floor, but the two were an excellent partnership. They were the perfect pair of strength and grace, leading to some spectacular sequences of lifts and carries.
I left the Harris Theater awed that I had attended a concert of this caliber for free. This accessibility to great art–and new artists–is a testament to the arts city that Chicago is.
While Quito (right), the capital city, has an impressive colonial historic district, Cuenca, I’ve been assured, is a much more charming colonial town. And while Quito also has thriving modern businesses and a restaurant and nightlife scene, Guayaquil, the country’s largest city, is called the soul of modern Ecuador.
The dirt road that tops out at almost 14,800 feet on Cotopaxi (left) allowed us to to achieve a new personal altitude record with a bumpy car ride followed by a 1,000-foot hike to the climbers’ hut at the edge of volcano’s glacial cap. But had we taken the time to travel to the more remote Chimborazo, we could have bragged that we hiked on the tallest volcano in the Andes (perhaps even the 