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Never one to shy away from the provocative, Bill T. Jones tackles murder and morality in the latest production of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, “Chapel/Chapter.” Central to the piece is a question posed by Jones: “How can this event suggest the uneasy distance our mediatized era helps create between the passive observers which we are and the disturbing, sometimes incomprehensible ‘news items’ we encounter every day?” Across a sharply lit white floor-grid surrounded by a red velvet-draped theater, the dancers explore this question in three different repeating narratives both sung and spoken by live performers. The audience sits in pew-like seats surrounding the stage and as jury/congregation watches the three true stories—two of them high-profile murder cases and one a personal narrative from one of the dancers—being enacted before them on the stark, unforgiving stage. (Tamara Matthews)

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“Since first premiering the ballet in New York last spring, we’ve revised some staging and added new costumes which we feel will enhance the overall production, as well as the audiences’ experience,” says American Ballet Theatre’s (ABT) Artistic Director Kevin Mckenzie. The production, a new take on the classic “The Sleeping Beauty” is coming to Chicago’s Civic Opera House, and is staged by McKenzie as well as former ABT ballerina Gelsey Kirkland and Michael Chernov. The timeless fairy tale of the beautiful Princess Aurora comes to life set to Tchaikovsky’s famous score and features sets and costumes by Tony Award-winners Tony Walton and Willa Kim. ABT’s eighty-plus-member company will be accompanied by a live sixty-five-member orchestra. Different dancers will play the prince and princess each night. (William Scott)

At the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, (312)902-1500. This production is now closed.

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The Luna Negra company presents new works by three Latino choreographers at the Harris Theater, under the broad rubric of “Nuevo Folk.” The theme provides plenty of space for interpretation: Edgar Zendejas finds animus in the “beauty and cruelty” of ancient Mayan and Aztec cultures in “Plight,” an abstract piece that has the body-stocking-clad company undulating to an eerie score that features a child reciting barely discernible fragments of Spanish lullabies. The fluid movements are haunting and challenge cerebral interpretation. In contrast is Joel Valentin-Martinez’s cinematic “Tlatelolco Revisited,” a narrative rendering of the Mexican army massacre of protestors in Tlatelolco Square, shortly before the 1968 Olympic Games. Also featured is a duet by Luna Negra director Eduardo Vilaro—a marriage of classical sensibility and round Cuban motions, rendered with Vilaro’s signature whimsy, humor and nostalgia. Expect a variety of flavors, appealing to different palates. (Sharon Hoyer)

 At the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph, (312)334-7777. This production is now closed.

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I am new to Chicago and not yet had I the privilege to see The Joffrey Ballet live. With the company’s Anthony Tudor Centennial, celebrating the work of the legendary dance maker, I finally saw this exquisite company in top form. Consisting of three pieces, “Lilac Garden,” “Dark Elegies” and “Offenbach in the Underworld,” the program serves as a vibrant tribute to Tudor’s canon. Although “Elegies” is said to be one of Tudor’s greatest masterpieces, “Lilac Garden” exemplifies the psychological drama and narrative form that shape his unique genius. This Victorian melodrama chronicles a secret love affair that is torn apart by the ingénue’s impending arranged marriage. The characters are complex and danced with expert clarity. The turn of a head and power of shared glances meet technique well suited to the depth of the material. Your heart will break for the love that cannot be. The sorrows and revelries of the characters in the following pieces are just as riveting. (William Scott)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, (312)902-1500. This production is now closed. 

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Given all of the changes that have occurred at the Joffrey this year, it is good to see that the company’s flagship “Nutcracker” production looks as stunning as it ever did, particularly comforting after the dull and docile new “Giselle” that was unveiled two months ago. Robert Joffrey’s conception, filtered through now retired company co-founder Gerald Arpino, is Victorian America, say Boston circa 1850. The look is Currier & Ives and is always visually compelling, with period costumes and a color scheme of aquas, blues, purples and magentas to match. But what really stands out in the Joffrey version is the transformation to the world of Clara’s imagination: a land of sugar plum fairies and waltzing snowflakes that is as beautiful as it is magical. Both Clara and her Nutcracker prince, which are being danced by alternating performers, are true dancers (the Ruth Page version would cast children in the roles and give them surrogate dancers for their most important scenes together). The snowy winter wonderland is a magical, silver snowscape where we are treated to the “Waltz of the Snowflakes,” complete with the extravagance of having the Chicago Children’s Choir perform the aetherial vocalizations that Tchaikovsky called for at every performance, not to mention the superb orchestral accompaniment provided by the Chicago Sinfonietta under the baton of Leslie Dunner. The dance revue that makes up Act II is gracefully performed, if too slow for the score, yet isn’t afraid to display a sense of humor when appropriate, including a giant gingerbread puppet. This remains the best area “Nutcracker” in a very crowded marketplace for the beloved work. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, (312)902-1500. This production is now closed. 

It’s difficult to know what to make of the new Joffrey “Giselle,” the company’s first in its long history, that was unveiled last week at the Auditorium Theatre. Coming as it does at a time of great transition for the company where co-founder Gerald Alpino is stepping down and new artistic director Ashley Wheater is stepping in, what does it say that this most traditional of all ballets—indeed, the work that is the very precursor to classical ballet as we know it—is being presented in the most traditional manner possible at the beginning of a new era in the Joffrey saga? If you are expecting a rethinking of a classic along the lines of the company’s brilliant and innovative “Nutcracker,” clearly you won’t find it here. What you will find is a staging and sets that could have passed for state-of-the-art decades ago, a “retro” Giselle,” if you will, that makes no attempt whatsoever to take advantage of twenty-first-century stagecraft. Even the sets are borrowed from another company, and the choreographer, 93-year old British choreographer Frederic Franklin, is basing his ideas, we are told, from a Russian version from the 1930s. The dancing is spectacular, to be sure, but derivative, and the gliding “wilis” or ghosts of maidens left jilted on their wedding days, are always a treat. What is missing is the “Joffrey” touch, a stamp that says, “this is ours, this is special,” which is something we have come to expect from this company. If this were a touring production from another company, we would be satisfied. But Joffrey has set the bar higher, and as such, it falls short on the company’s own terms. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, (312)902-1500. This production is now closed.

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The floor is bathed in fluorescent red light. The fifteen dancers, outfitted in designer Laura Hazlett’s monochromatic silver sheer costumes, boast sinewy bodies that writhe with a gesture one moment and instantaneously melt into graceful elongation the next. Then, picking up the hypnotic beat of composer Paul Dresher’s live industrial music, the ensemble burst into an explosion of wonderfully restrained, pulsating restlessness. And that’s just the first fifteen minutes. Choreographer Margaret Jenkins’ seventy-five-minute “A Slipping Glimpse,” an evening-length dance concert collaboration between members of the Calcutta, India-based Tanusree Shankar Dance Company and Jenkins’ own San Francisco troupe, is an alluring East-meets-West hybrid of modern dance that’s difficult to categorize. That’s OK, especially since once your eyes and ears begin settling into a particular pattern of movement or sound, Jenkins’ direction or Dresher’s music might mutate into something completely different. A classically trained Indian quartet featuring Eastern-flavored music gives way to a jazzy large-group number underscored by a steady rock beat. A dancer focuses his energy onto the most minimal physical gesture—the tap of a shoulder—as energetically as they do an Olympian-sized lift. And so on with this study of opposites, and in the words of Jenkins, a piece “conceived at a vertiginous moment in history when it’s often difficult to tell on which side of the looking glass we are standing—or dancing.” For this presentation, production designer Alexander V. Nichols will transform the dance center into a theater-in-the-round configuration in which platforms and cantilevered walkways will nestle between four sections of the audience, guaranteeing a multiple-focus staging effect, and the evening will begin with an outdoor prologue a couple of blocks from the auditorium, weather permitting. Like a mood music album brought to choreographic life, the vertiginous “A Slipping Glimpse” promises to be a soothing and sexy dose of kinetic and aural sensations, as well as a great kickoff to the Columbia College Dance Center’s 2007-2008 Season. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

At the Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, (312)344-8300. This production is now closed.

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Chicago Tap Theatre’s latest, “The Hourglass in ‘The Stop-Time Chronicles,” could quite possibly be Chicago’s first full-length, alternative music, all-movement, no dialogue, superhero tap-dance opera based on an imaginary sci-fi comic strip (“The Hourglass”). This time around, director and choreographer Mark Yonally, also CTT’s artistic head, has teamed up with Chicagoan Andrew Pepoy, an illustrator and artist with impressive credentials at Marvel, DC and other comic book publishers. The result of this unorthodox yet inspired artistic union is Chicago Tap Theatre’s best and most fully realized story show to date, a deliciously camp, choreographically satisfying and sometimes moving dance dramedy with a killer soundtrack. Read the rest of this entry »

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When Tiger Prawn, danced with androgynous allure by Marissa Moritz, is wielding her thrilling mix of modern dance and Shaolin Kung Fu, when its funkadelic early 1970s soundtrack is thumping away, when its two percussionists are pounding their drums stationed on both sides of the auditorium and when “The Kouken,” an ensemble of Ninja clones attired all in black with neon ankle straps, are performing a hypnotic Oriental fan dance, Chicago Dance Crash’s “Tiger Prawn: The Mountain Mover” easily becomes one of the most unique dance experiments presently to be enjoyed on the Chicago stage. At times resembling an Eastern-influenced Yoga class on steroids, boasting the wild colors of an Anime cartoon or evoking the physical grandeur of Chinese Opera, “Tiger Prawn” is chock-full of meticulously choreographed fight scenes that are true to the Hong Kong thrillers from which it partly takes its inspiration, as well as featuring wistful ballet solos that offer some counterpoint to all that technical testosterone. Although a spoken-word narration accompanies this dance concert throughout, I couldn’t begin to tell you what “Tiger Prawn”’s convoluted “story” is. Instead, I perceived “sketches” and hints of character, relationships, allegiances and rivalries, and that was more than enough to enjoy the dance. And that’s probably my one gripe with Chicago Dance Crash and their need to saddle their movement plays with ponderous and meandrous dialogue that ultimately adds very little. In fact, it probably extends the work longer than it should be, and for all its holistic pronouncements amounts to little more than Eastern philosophical kitsch. But I’ll be damned if “Tiger Prawn” didn’t possess passionate dancing, an enjoyable punk-ass sense of humor and a look like a Kung Fu beat ‘em up video game come to choreographic life. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph, (312)742-8497. Fri-Sat 7:30pm/Sun 3pm. $10-$15. Through Jul 15.

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The big question with the return of “Riverdance” is: how much is the show’s Irish dance choreographer, lead Irish dancer and native Illinoisan Michael Flatley, missed in its current incarnation? The answer is somewhat ambiguous because Flatley’s company choreography is still step-for-step the same as it was before his embittered and well-publicized departure from the show to go on to create other works (“Lord of the Dance,” “Feet of Flames”) that traded in on his “Riverdance” persona but depended completely on his own unique solo dance style. The company itself is as tight and energetic as it ever was, which is the good news. The bad news is that the producers have decided to keep all of the Flatley solo and duet spots intact with an interchangeable cast of principals as if to keep saying, “See? Anybody can do what you did,” when the reality is that, well, they can’t. Read the rest of this entry »