Engine with a heart: Dance Kaleidoscope closes season with new work to new music

 "We Walk Beneath a Patient Sky," the substantial new work opening Dance Kaleidoscope's final program of the current season, shows the result of a rare collaboration between a choreographer and a composer both active here. Jordan Munson blends his affinities for electronic music and the Appalachian musical tradition in the new work, against which Joshua Blake Carter has set his arresting choreography. He's tamed his characteristic abruptness of movement to focus on how a community establishes ritual and secures a common acknowledgment of meaning and values.

Seen Saturday night at the Toby, the four-part work embraces a fresh vision of the hero's journey theme, but applied collectively more than individually. Robed, hooded, backs to the audience and unindividualized at first, the company of a dozen dancers comes to grips with the forces they must contend with, reaching up, arms sometimes hooping the air above them, also thrusting downward at an angle with motions that could represent both digging and pacifying chthonic power. Work and faith are in dialogue.

Guitarist Munson and a fiddler supply the live component of the music, with occasional vocals attaining clarity in the finale, where they repeat the work's title. (At intermission, I spotted a young girl no older than 10 many rows ahead of me, mimicking that movement, as if testifying to both Carter's gestural imagination and the girl's receptivity to modern dance.) It was no surprise that the lighting design by Laura Glover immediately functioned as the crucial dance partner, with shafts of light beaming down in such a way that they also seemed to beam up from the people, who were clad in Terri D. Moore's earth-toned costumes. 

"Deep Was the River" is the first movement's title. "Interlude" then acknowledges the

Jordan Munson and Charlie Beck with dancers in "Deep Was the River"

challenges the community must face to interpret its world and make the best of it. The movement ends with an unmistakable evocation of the ancient sculpture "Spear Bearer" by Polykleitos, a pose which introduced the balanced stance (called contrapposto) promising action but resting upon the warrior's poise. It was hugely influential in advancing the realism and grace of figurative sculpture more than two millennia ago, and is well repurposed in the context of "We Walk Beneath a Patient Sky." 

From there comes the descent of "Dark was the Valley," with the community long since ready for action solidifying the bond among its members. The knowledge they have gained is not certain, but it is not inhibited by overthinking. They are exhibiting the force that John Keats called "negative capability," by which he meant the poet's ability to proceed confidently without relying too much on the narrowing focus of reason. The phrase can be applied collectively as well, especially when the group is small and self-contained, as mountain towns tend to be. No wonder the community expresses this with a bit of a hoedown (kudos to Munson) in the last movement, which Carter has designed without resorting to folk-dance cliches. The effect is exhilarating.

Carter's other new work ended the program. "Infinity Engine," a piece premiered in Chicago in 2024, is being given its DK company premiere this weekend. It lent its name credibly to the whole show. Modern dance at this level of professionalism and verve suggests that the galvanic force behind it could go on endlessly. "Infinity Engine" is obviously the "closer" that Kia Smith, artistic director of South Chicago Dance Theatre, requested from Carter, according to his program note. 

Despite the drive and precise coordination of the troupe and the design of its triumphant conclusion here, I found the work loaded with virtuosity yet stingy with  emotional impact. It was abstract and expertly done, but somewhat chilly and machine-tooled. Choreographically, the work filled its function of not moderating or footnoting the power of the pieces preceding it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it did the same thing for the SCDT's  show two years ago. 

Manuel Valdes in "Cloudline"

It was good to encounter guest choreographer Robert Battle's "Train" again. If there is something machine-tooled about it as well, it amounted to a dynamic portrait of mechanical domination of our environments, particularly in metropolitan settings. The musical accompaniment, recorded by Les Tambours du Bronx, a percussion ensemble, was unrelenting yet texturally variegated. The emotion conveyed was a matter of finding new ways of examining the repetitive train sounds as they overwhelm the train's surroundings. The suggestion is that a large train imposes itself on an environment and projects a kind of inanimate personality that dancers can project under a master creative hand. I look forward to a new piece that Battle is scheduled to provide for DK next season.

Robyn Mineko Williams' "Cloudline" was on a DK program last September that I had to miss.
Its presence in this show lifts up a kind of fluidity, humor and subtle pathos that help it stand out. In her program note, the choreographer specifically mentions film, and she manages a live-action counterpart to the dissolves and contrasting fast cuts used in making movies. The overlap with actual dreaming is wittily addressed. The first section resembles a dream version of speed-dating. Later there's skillful examination of the theme of interpersonal connections that form quickly, perhaps whimsically, then yield to separation with tinges of regret. Attraction and repulsion are subject to the same flux. 

There's a glorious isolation of couples and a soloist under and out of space-filling giant sheets. Burke Brown's lighting design emphasizes that even figures in semi-shadow are not marginal; no person in the picture is ignored. "Cloudline" is a welcome burst of lyricism, something to stay in the memory along with "We Walk Beneath a Patient Sky" over the long summer until the 1926-27 season.

[Photos: Moonbug Photography]