Photo courtesy Wild Space Dance Company
Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Look Again’
Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Look Again’
Wild Space Dance Company opened its season last weekend at UWM’s Mitchell Hall Studio with a completely engaging, evening-length concert of five new dances and a short improvisation by company artists. Titled Look Again, the new works were inspired by earlier Wild Space performances and the company’s longstanding creative processes. The title could suggest some stock taking and possible updating, but it’s mainly, I think, an invitation to the audience to see how consistently surprising Wild Space remains at nearly 40 years old, and with the new artistic leadership of Monica Rodero and Dan Schuchart.
Appropriately, the show opened with a look back to a piece created and performed in 2009 by founding artistic director Debra Loewen and Schuchart, then a longtime company member. This 2023 reimagining had Schuchart in Loewen’s role, with longtime company member Katelyn Altmann as collaborator.
The piece was titled Here and/or There. Moving rapidly and filling the stage space with arm, hand and finger action, the duo identified lots of “here” and “there,” speaking those words aloud to change their partner’s focus. Soon it was clear that “here” and “there” existed anywhere in space and/or mind. At last, the two agreed on a starting point, and together said “Go!” Then, in shared full-bodied movement language, they danced everywhere.
Photo courtesy Wild Space Dance Company
Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Look Again’
Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Look Again’
Afterlife in Motion
The Other Side was next and that’s where it took us. Tisiphani Mayfield choreographed a mesmerizing journey to the afterlife. This was her reimagining of a site specific dance that Wild Space recently performed at Forest Home Cemetery. Dancers Dijon Kirkland, Jessica Lueck, Nicole Spence, and Shannon Stanczak performed against a frightening sound score by composer/percussionist Paul Westfahl.
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The darkness was broken by strings of tiny white light bulbs in glass bottles placed on the floor during a blackout. The shadowy dancers slowly drew the light strings from their containers, like spirits from bodies. They strung the lights around their ankles or wrists, then lifted and moved those body parts, as dancers can. The light-spirits traveled.
Suddenly a magnificent wooden sculpture draped in countless tiny white and yellow lights descended to hang above the entire stage floor. An almost imperceptible build of stage light allowed us to see the dancers dimly. They were people now, moving in driven fashion, sometimes running as if away from something. The movements increased in violence. The bodies seemed spent. The dancers collapsed.
Meanwhile, Westfahl’s accompaniment grew from what sounded like heavy rain, to a downpour, to something torrential. A powerful pounding sound was added. It changed to a quiet ticking, and finally soft keyboard notes as complete darkness fell, dancers disappeared and new strings of lights—yellow, this time—appeared in bottles, waiting.
Next on the program, a piece of performance art by Schuchart titled whim & desire. Standing upstage, his back to us, he lifted his arms and grabbed at air. He leaned backwards and walked backwards until his upside-down head touched a microphone downstage. He created startling sounds by swinging the mic and its cord against air, floor, and body parts, instigating a wild, mood-shifting score by Westfahl to which Schuchart danced, to the point of exhaustion, in movements that seemed born from deep impulses. Then he dragged himself to the microphone, sat on its speaker, looked straight at us and said, “Hi. I want to share some thoughts.”
Photo courtesy Wild Space Dance Company
Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Look Again’
Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Look Again’
He read to us an exhaustive list of everything he’s ever wanted—actual out-of-reach items, but also every kind of life experience, feeling, state of being, good and bad, selfish and generous. “I saw that you wanted it, and I wanted it,” he said, lying on the floor on his back, as darkness fell.
Dancer Jasmine Uras opened the next piece—titled today was once tomorrow and choreographed by Altmann with the dancers—by pulling a chair up the center aisle, and sitting among the audience to face the stage. After a few searching gestures, she told us a childhood memory: she and her sister enjoyed building zoos for their plastic toy animals.
She moved the chair onstage, faced us, and resumed her moves as a performer. Dancers Ashley Ray Garcia, Cuauhtli Ramirez Castro, Ida Lucchesi, and Nicole Spence arrived to a sweet Westfahl score, and soon we were sharing the room with a playful dance community inspired by each individual’s memories, employing skills acquired through years of work, and responding to one another in transparent ways that felt honest. This was a piece about them; about us, too.
The last dance, Set, took that kind of honesty to comic heights. Schuchart choreographed it with the dancing trio of Altmann, Ray Garcia, and Gina Laurenzi. I don’t know how they found such silly steps, but it was fun and very funny. Then Here Again, a quick improvisation by the full cast, let us all meet again.
