Dancer Monica Rodero’s evocation of the growth of living things, one subject of Debra Loewen’s Luminous for Wild Space Dance Company, was meant to be performed outdoors on grass and viewed from indoors through the glass walls of the palatial greenhouse of the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory Annex. A steady rain on Friday evening brought this prelude inside. Rodero danced serenely in warm proximity to the audience, casting shadows on the greenhouse interior as rain ran across the glass ceiling and down the walls.
We sat in rows facing east, dry and comfy in this totally transparent theater. Outside, it was dark but the night sky, thick with clouds, reflected the murky glow of distant city lights. Upstage right, the black shape of a freshly bared tree loomed just outside the glass. Inside, quiet lighting created shimmers and shadows. The view to the outside made the dance floor seemed infinitely large. Gestures seemed bigger, stillness stiller and distance vaster. Eyes adjusted easily. Movements had great clarity.
In moments of silence, you heard the rain. Otherwise, you heard the lush saxophone playing of Duo d’Entre-Deux (Tommy Davis and Nick Zoulek)—saw them, too, since they played live, interacting with the dancers and drawing ambient sound from the room itself. A playful episode in which they improvised in sound and movement with dancer Dan Schuchart was a delight; overall, their contribution to Luminous was profound. Beautiful harmonies sang in contrast to mysterious knockings and hums, and finally to ungodly, soul-shattering blasts.
Sub-rational and shadowy, 13 dancers dressed in white moved, morphed and posed in many fascinating ways while the audience adjusted to the here and now. By midpoint, they’d begun to change into colored street clothes. Their movement phrases grew longer and more complicated. Without calling attention to it, the dancers became people who’d age, experience the joys and pains of life and one day die. The effect was deeply heartening, like cleansing rain.
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Outside, rain became mist. On the way to our cars, we watched a white-clad dancer in a spotlight on the park lawn cast invisible shadows on the wind.
