"'Flabbergast' an unrelenting blast of entertainment" (Chicago Tribune)"Luna Negra's showing what dance can do" (Chicago Sun-Times)
"Luna Negra Dance Theater joins the ranks of the country's finest mixed-repertory contemporary companies..." (Time Out Chicago)
All the critics agree, this past weekend's performance by Luna Negra at the Harris Theater was spot-on brilliant. A spectacular display of exquisite dancing, beautifully honed artistry and new creative horizons, Luna Negra is raising its own already high bar, and we (the Chicago audience) get to sit back and enjoy the show.
All the critics agree, this past weekend's performance by Luna Negra at the Harris Theater was spot-on brilliant. A spectacular display of exquisite dancing, beautifully honed artistry and new creative horizons, Luna Negra is raising its own already high bar, and we (the Chicago audience) get to sit back and enjoy the show. And if you don't trust their opinions, you can trust ours. The show was indeed quite wonderful. My personal favorite work was Spanish choreographer Fernando Hernando Magadan's Naked Ape. It opened with four white-clad dancers standing center stage, flanked in the corners by luminous, three-dimensionally molded articles of clothing, like shirts and pants with invisible wearers. These pieces lit up from the inside, making the scene even more surreal and ghostly. A fifth dancer, clad all in black, observed the group like a detached researcher, speaking in Hungarian as he shaped the dancers' forms when they froze in their movement. The group morphed out of and back into their own series highly original movement that was tense, relaxed, strong, weightless, graceful, forceful, complicated and subtle. Wonderfully nuanced duets and solos emerged. It's hard to describe, but believe me, it was a gorgeous work, using simple yet imaginative imagery to create truly stunning tableaux.
Book-ending Naked Ape was Luis Eduardo Sayago's Solo una Vez, a very likable romp for three men and three women about the challenges and rewards of relationships -- to which we can all relate -- and then Gustavo Ramirez Sansano's wildly hyper but still focused Flabbergast, the kind of work that puts the Latino flair into Luna Negra's repertory just where it fits the best.
Book-ending Naked Ape was Luis Eduardo Sayago's Solo una Vez, a very likable romp for three men and three women about the challenges and rewards of relationships -- to which we can all relate -- and then Gustavo Ramirez Sansano's wildly hyper but still focused Flabbergast, the kind of work that puts the Latino flair into Luna Negra's repertory just where it fits the best.
Overall it was a remarkable evening of some of the best dance I've seen this season. Should you have missed it this time around, don't make the same mistake next season. Luna Negra is on fire -- muy caliente!!
SPDW Dance Theatre...
And lest you think we're being partial to our clients, another show this past weekend that I cannot rave enough about is Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre's outing at The Dance Center of Columbia College. The debut weekend for the troupe at this ideally-sized dance house, the program of three works offered a lovely and delicious array of the company's many formidable talents.
Joanna Rosenthal's Grey Noise was essentially a character study through dance, the kind of work that puts the "theater" in dance theater, rich in subtext, individuality and unexpectedness. Carl Flink's HIT was full of just that -- uncompromising, literal and forceful hits, the kind of "take that!" smacks that made the audience visibly and audibly react. I applauded the bravery of both this choreographer, for asking his dancers to be so harsh (and yet so trusting!) with one another, and his dancers for truly going there to make the theme of violence and aggression ring true.
The evening was completed by the silky bittersweetness of Shapiro & Smith's To Have and To Hold, a gorgeous work where the dancers used three long benches to create the simplest yet most profound images. The work's transcendent themes of love, death, loss, and the emphemerality of life were never so profound in a work of dance.
Given the fact that the company sold out its three-night run, I would safely say the performances were a huge success -- commercially and artistically!
And still to come...
The crunch of the dance season came a bit early this spring, happening around late February. But it's not over yet -- this coming weekend brings one of my favorite companies back to the Harris Theater stage -- Hubbard Street Dance Chicago! (The show runs Thurs. through Sun., March 17-20.) The spring engagement brings two Israeli dance powerhouses to the Chicago audience: Ohad Naharin (yay!) and Sharon Eyal. Hubbard Street fans know who Ohad is (re: Minus 16, a HSDC staple), and Sharon is another visionary artist from Tel Aviv's Batsheva Dance Company. HSDC is presenting new works by these artists, and I simply cannot wait! It should be a powerful, beautiful, and very fun program. I hope to see you there!
The crunch of the dance season came a bit early this spring, happening around late February. But it's not over yet -- this coming weekend brings one of my favorite companies back to the Harris Theater stage -- Hubbard Street Dance Chicago! (The show runs Thurs. through Sun., March 17-20.) The spring engagement brings two Israeli dance powerhouses to the Chicago audience: Ohad Naharin (yay!) and Sharon Eyal. Hubbard Street fans know who Ohad is (re: Minus 16, a HSDC staple), and Sharon is another visionary artist from Tel Aviv's Batsheva Dance Company. HSDC is presenting new works by these artists, and I simply cannot wait! It should be a powerful, beautiful, and very fun program. I hope to see you there!
Posts
