THE CHICAGO PROJECT
“The Chicago Project,” performed by Concert Dance, Inc., is meant to celebrate Chicago architecture. The choreography is by a Chicago dancer, Venetia Stifler; the set, made up of architectural photos, is by a Chicago teacher, Frank Vodvarka; and the music is by Chicago composers Paul Solberg and Rick Snyder.
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Stifler divides “The Chicago Project” into three parts, performed in the following order: Magic Spaces (1985), Private Places (1988), and Corporate Cases (1989). Each of these sections is further divided into four or five parts. When a thing is divided, one naturally suspects a principle of organization. I tried several. The first was that Magic Spaces saw Chicago architecture objectively, Private Places (which the program said exhibited “conditions in the heart and mind”) subjectively. This left Corporate Cases out on a limb, and anyway when I started to think about how dance might interpret architecture “objectively” the idea didn’t make much sense. The dancers would simulate an arch? Or a spiral staircase? They’d still be performing the choreographer’s idea of the architectural object.
But what really made it hard to find an organizing principle in “The Chicago Project” was the fact that the choreography in all three sections looks the same. True, slight differences emerge–Magic Spaces is the most laudatory in its approach to the architecture, Private Places the most earnest, and Corporate Cases the most ironic–but the same movements appear throughout, and many of those are drawn from a familiar vocabulary. Too often I looked at the dance, looked at the architecture (beautifully photographed by Vodvarka), and asked myself: what’s the connection? (Later it occurred to me that none was ever intended, that the architecture was merely a classy setting for Stifler’s choreography. But for her to be so self-centered seems unlikely.)
Special guest AM/FM, which stands for “Alexander, Michaels/Future Movement,” opened the program with two dances. This men’s duet company, formed by and composed of the two male CDI dancers, has nothing futuristic about it. But its very lack of pretension, juxtaposed as it was with “The Chicago Project,” was a relief.
