Dance has been bubbling back to the surface for a few months now but there was something about Giordano Dance Chicago’s (GDC) Illuminate performance October 22rd that had the whiff of a full resurgence. The show marked the opening of the company’s 2021 home season and seemed intent on showing the world what it had been missing for the past 19 months.
As possibly the oldest jazz dance company in the world, GDC’s Friday night performance didn’t emphasize its roots. Instead, it looked out at the world, bringing in new influences and going into areas you don’t ordinarily tie to the company’s image. With a total of seven works danced, they still had ample opportunity to feature a few pieces that define their core dance style.
Perhaps as a prelude to ambitious plans for 2022, the show’s opening reached back to jazz’s origins with music scored and sung by South African Bongi Duma. The deep rhythms emblematic of an African heritage are only expected in specific contexts and finding it here was slightly startling. Conceived by Nan Giordano and collaboratively choreographed, the opening was intended to draw a clear connection between the company’s signature dance form and its inspirational source. Duma’s solo, dramatically beautiful and intense, was later joined by the company’s full ensemble. Layering nods to movements whose lineage are distinctly African onto a contemporary western foundation turned out to be an impressive mix of artistic references. It was also undeniably elegant.
An opening that heroic set a high bar that the company had little problem meeting throughout the evening. Even though it’s a very demanding work permeated with difficult lifts, Flickers, a 2019 dance created by Miranda Davis, the dance turns your thoughts inward because its story is one of personal struggle. We later learned that the soloist, Zachary Heller, who so skillfully and compassionately translated the dance’s message of resilience, would soon be retiring from the company.
Adam Houston and Katie Rafferty’s dance duet to A Little Moonlight kept it nostalgic, lighthearted and sizzling. A lot of what made the fabled Astaire-Rogers team so magical in the 30s and 40s was their lightness and flawless execution. The spins, the segues into tap, the phenomenal syncopation; choreographer Autumn Eckman built them all into her 2010 chocolate bon-bon of a dance. Houston and Rafferty were perfection on fire; dancing with the panache of bygone Hollywood stars and delighting in the effort.
Their energy flowed right through to Ray Mercer’s Shirt Off My Back. Playing off the question of what people are willing to sacrifice for relationships (of any kind), Mercer’s dance commentary trades in drama, depth and complexity. Giordano’s dancers proved how bold is better and that ferocity can be endearing as they beautifully dominated a clever and entertaining dance statement.
Strangely, where you’d expect the spirit of the company to shine through most brightly, it wavered. Only in the repertoire for a few years now, Joshua Blake Carter’s Take a Gambol is a custom fit for GDC. And it certainly opened just as you would expect it should, this time with a boat load of attitude tucked under a fedora and strolling on sensuous legs. Take a Gambol lends itself to interesting tweaks and this intro looked to be one of them. Verve is the work’s battle cry and joy is its usual aftermath. Even though all the pieces that make the dance superlative were there, its speed and slicing transitions, it somehow failed to attain true lift; or at least the customary leaps of virtuosity that make it so distinctive.
The night’s last work jettisoned any disappointment that might have surfaced. Pyrokinesis is a whirlwind dressed up for a ball, an exciting and multi-faceted dervish that makes the audience’s blood surge. It’s also the first dance that Flicker’s soloist Zachary Heller performed with the company 14 years ago. It was his request that Pyrokinesis be presented Friday evening. Christopher Huggins, an alum of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, created the piece in 2007 and Giordano Dance Chicago has been torching stages with it ever since. It’s luster never wanes and the company seems to bring every ounce of its brilliance to the table when they perform it. Delighting the hall and whetting the appetite to see what the company has in store for the future, last week’s presentation was no exception.
Illuminate
Giordano Dance Chicago
October 22 & 23, 2021
The Harris Theater