CHICAGO REPERTORY DANCE ENSEMBLE
One camp is headed by (but not limited to) the choreographic team of Christina Ernst and Sam Watson, who tend to explore in their dances a single movement idea or one abstract, almost platonic concept–as in their most recent work, Color. Although generally very inventive, the result can at times seem rather limited, more like an exercise or a sketch than a completed dance with a distinct purpose.
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There’s no question, however, that O’Slynne’s evening-length work, What Are We Going to Do With Mary? or, The Schizophrenzia of Preston Carlisle, dominated the Civic engagement this year, not only because of its length but because of its power. This “murder mystery” in two acts is brilliant, perverse, violent, hilarious, threatening–and incomplete. Brilliantly set up in the first act, it falls apart in the second. (Fallen Angels, a less ambitious work, holds together much better.) Yet part of Mary’s power is that it’s a rough collage–part cartoonish musical comedy, part realistic southern-style narrative, and part deeply felt exploration of an emotional landscape.
It turns out that Carlisle is something of a comedian and old-fashioned southern raconteur as he begins to tell his story. He fell in love with Mary (Mary Ward) in high school, along with every other guy in the school, but Mary has a hankering for Driver Goodbody (Brian Jeffery), whom all the girls want. She marries Carlisle anyway–Carlisle’s family has money–then may or may not scheme to kill him. But Mary is the one who ends up dead, and the mystery is, who killed her and why?
The lurid sexual imagination hinted at in the first act comes into full flower in the second–it suggests voyeurism, masochism, and fetishism, and the dancers are dressed in costumes straight from the bordello. The last scene is called “The Nightmare,” but in fact the whole second act has a nightmarish quality: Carlisle is accused and found guilty; he’s tortured by his “friends,” who seem to lead him to a revived Mary; he’s reviled by them–they circle him, spitting out a virulent gibberish much worse than intelligible profanity, while he lies curled and helpless on the floor.
