NEW DANCES ’91
Two years ago the Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble collapsed under the weight of its own talent. This year artistic director Tara Mitton has re-formed the ensemble with dancers in their early 20s–dancers who are eager to try out their individual and collective voices. The elements they have chosen for “New Dances ’91”–theatrical dance, kinetic movement, a kind of Hollywood distillation of such themes as homelessness and corporate life, and working collaboratively to explore social issues in a full-length work–coupled with their good dancing are enough to create a critical mass. This concert, to be repeated this weekend at the Dance Center, is a promising beginning.
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Mitton’s three mime pieces frame the program, which opens with her Thursday, 3:02 P.M. An elegantly dressed woman (Shannon Raglin) is reading a book on a public bench while a crumpled figure, apparently a homeless person sleeping, lies on a bench behind her. While the house lights are still up, another homeless person (Anthony Gongora) wanders onstage looking like a tramp out of a silent movie. He digs through the garbage and offers the woman pieces of a sandwich. She refuses with perfect politesse. He finds a black brassiere in the trash, holds it up to his own chest, and clowns for her. She smiles warmly and gives him a dime. Shyly, he gives her a beautiful red apple from the trash. When he leaves, she throws the apple back into the garbage. The latent preachiness of the material is neutralized by impish humor and sudden breaks into dance movement, such as Raglin’s long, slow lunge to hand Gongora the dime.
Mitton’s second mime piece, Thursday, 3:21 P.M., uses the same situation as her first but with different characters. Melissa Thodos captures her yuppie jogger perfectly in a funny series of mannerisms. Elizabeth Wild’s homeless woman has too much generalized angst but some lovely movements, such as lying on the bench as if she were an insect on its back.
Gongora’s Why Don’t We See? ties the evening’s themes together. In this pure dance work for the entire ensemble, performed to Webern’s Slow Movement for Strings, Gongora touches the vein of grief that runs throughout the show. The dance pits individuals against the mass of the other performers. Thodos’s yuppie jogger is alone amid embracing couples; Wild’s homeless woman dances around the edges of a solid phalanx slowly marching forward. The dance seems to say that everyone’s life is made smaller by the corruption around us and in us.
