FACETS
Specific bodies make specific dances. A strong dancer will use angular, percussive movements because it’s easy for a strong body to throw itself quickly. A flexible body will prefer swinging movements that create a lot of momentum, because a flexible dancer has enough range to wind up and let loose in a big arc.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Triptych begins with three women (Ann Boyd, Winnie Ladd, and Jane Siarny) standing in a line behind one another in a shaft of light in a far upstage corner. In silence, the women move forward swaying. As their formation starts to break apart, each woman picks up the skirt of her dress and shows her legs, then releases it, letting the soft material float down. After this mysterious action is developed, the women suddenly break, run back to the far corner and into line again, the lights rise, and a more frenetic dance begins. The strangeness of this sequence is appealing, while at the same time a deeper pattern shows itself shyly, like a squirrel hiding in a tree.
The group pieces expand this vocabulary of grounded and sometimes violent movements with falling, catching, holding, leaps that cover space, running, and sharp exhalations. These movements require strength, which the dancers amply provide. Propulsive movements alternate with sudden stillnesses–in A Pleno Sol (“In Full Sun”) Kathleen Kemme stops close to the audience in center stage and simply looks at them like a lost child. Slow stretches and deep back bends fill the quiet moments.
The interludes between dances are a parable of emergence from psychic depths. The first interlude is the bleak solo by Johnston-Coursey. The second interlude starts with the same movements and mood as the first, but halfway through Johnston-Coursey is joined by Siarny; the interlude ends with the sound of drumming feet. Siarny seems like Johnston-Coursey’s alter ego, a welcome friend in the darkness, and in the third interlude, which merges into A Pleno Sol, Siarny and Johnston-Coursey are joined by Ladd, a third alter ego. As alter egos are added, the lonely desert of the self is peopled; the self emerges from isolation, strong enough to participate in the world.
