Photo by Paul Ruffolo
Wisps of impressions of Danceworks Performance Company’s impressive Footsteps, Shadows and Whispers at Next Act Theatre last weekend:
Once a dancer, now an Master of Fine Arts student in film and new genres, Kym McDaniel’s films have graced recent dance concerts at UW-Milwaukee and Danceworks. With “Ghost Light,” the program opener, she emerged as a mature experimental dance maker. The piece included some of her customarily expressionist film images showing ghostly flashes of dancing bodies; but she added projected text, poetically asking to merge with her dancers and temporarily inhabit their bodies. To a hushed drone like a ringing in the ears, her dancers performed in darkness with handheld lights that draped their bodies in shadows—a very personal piece.
Next, guest choreographer Dawn Springer restaged her 2010 solo “Dreams of Flight” for nine dancers. Christal Wagner was powerful as the earthbound soloist around whom the others gathered in silence. Dancers’ movements would suddenly start and stop as if by some spooky law of quantum physics. In the post-performance talk, dancer Melissa Anderson captured the uncanniness of this effect. She spoke of her shock in rehearsal on learning that she was actually leading the group in a section in which she’d been intent on following them. This dance was extremely pleasing.
Then Wagner’s “Hubris” introduced actual music, the Punch Brothers’ “Icarus Smicarus.” Wagner’s choreography was closely linked to it. Silhouetted, then revealed against bright orange light, the four dancers seemed a spirited punk gang—nothing to do but enjoy the high energy.
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I’m a “Dr. Who” fan. Gina Laurenzi’s pop-horror-sci-fi dance-theater chiller, titled “Figments,” held me enthralled. Her slithery spooks were the putative shadows of three haunted, possibly possessed maybe-humans. With fine dancing and acting, this fascinating piece had real bite.
Two big works with live music followed the intermission. Cadance Collective’s inviting “Jitterbug Suite: A Memory” blended fragments of audio interviews with seniors recounting memories of romance and wartime anxiety in 1940s Milwaukee with beautiful arrangements by flutist Emma Koi and cellist Alicia Storin of “Cheek To Cheek,” “April in Paris” and other treasures, while Christal Wagner danced, sang, tore and struggled to piece together what might have been letters, musical scores or diary pages.
Then the Tontine Ensemble string quartet made musical magic from Allan Russell’s emotive, scribbled score to accompany “Sleep Waking,” Dani Kuepper’s fantastic multi-dream dance drama with dialogue, a vacuum cleaner and images worthy of René Magritte.
