Opening with a pile of bodies in a dark void, Buscar A Través is an enterprising showcase of student talent and ability. With works ranging from the obscure to commercial, this showcase highlights the strong contemporary training and thinking that the students at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago go through before putting work onstage. As both a performer and choreographer for this showcase, my review will have some inherent bias and areas of muddled clarity, but I will try my best to give an accurate account of the feeling and aesthetics of the pieces presented, giving insight into the emotions and performance of each piece. Some pieces I was only able to see small pieces of due to the nature of my role as performer in the opening and a choreographer of the closing piece.
Circling back to our pile of bodies lying motionless in the void, this is the start of ephemeral sunshine by Emmie Banayat. This commercial Hip-hop, K-Pop, And UrbanContemporary style piece kicks off the show with a short dance film displaying a central character moving through a turbulent series of events, being pulled form large group work, duets, solos, and even out of the picture entirely. This journey ultimately culminates in a form of acceptance for said character as the film fades, and the bodies begin to shift. The live portion of this piece begins with tightly knit and carefully choreographed group work and scattered solos reflective of either a hedonistic indulgence in the spotlight, or a pensive reflection of what they’ve done. The piece then ends how it started, a pile of bodies, lost in the void.
Zugzwang was the immediate follower, and quite a contrast dynamically. This Contemporary Ballet piece was crafted by Shannon Lane, exploring this sense of being stuck in yourself. Two dancers clad in matching, checkerboard outfits took the space with striking, yet thoughtful balletic movement, that both matched, juxtaposed, and fueled the others. A clear feeling of resistance was evident throughout the movement, with much of the work having a push and pull dynamic amongst the two dancers. I was unfortunately not able to view this work in its entirety due to changing and reorganizing after the performance of ephemeral sunshine but based on audience reaction and what I did get to see, this piece was an exemplary show of balletic storytelling.
Following this was Lizeth Adaly’s and Gabriela Marks’ Dos muertes, una vida, a fantastic look into a new age reinterpretation of the Limón technique. This masterwork of contemporary partnering and weight sharing showed not only strong technical elements, but also a community of trust amongst the dancers inside of the piece. This was all in exploration of what it means to “(be) stuck between two polar opposites of yourself” (Gabriela Marks). Finding this sense of duality, middle group, and extremes was a consistent theme throughout the work’s entirety. This piece also had a strong and consistent geometric motif, often having dancers create and move through large complex shapes and structures spatially with their movement.
After this visual feast of geometry and partnering came something more subtle in its messaging, Onism: The Frustration of Only. This quintet was crafted by Sophie Daker as an exploration of how frustrating it can be to accept that you will only live and experience a limited amount of all the lives the world has to offer, as you have only one life to live. While much of this piece's unity movement speaks to an idea of existing as the singular, several smaller, nuanced movements hint at the irritation towards this life, and the desire to chase a different set of experiences and knowledge. While I was only able to watch this piece one time all the way through, its strength in the minute details has stuck with me since.
After intermission’s debacles subsided, and I, now out of costume could join the audience. Lola Jett-Beachley's Bare had begun onstage. A stunning trio of femme presenting movers began to find such captivating exploitations of commonly sexualized movements and gestures throughout the piece. This unpacking and almost obscurely scrutinizing display of dance movements and motifs commonly seen in Burlesque or Strip Club settings was intriguing. The drawn out highlighting of an arched heel, a discomforting removal of a shirt with head, neck, and one arm locked in an uncomfortable pose. This commentary and reevaluation of the what and why behind sexualized movement was eye-opening, and really begged the question of whether it's the movement itself, or the context within which it exists that makes the movement inherently sexual in nature, and in either case, to what level are those fields of movement validated or invalidated in academia?
In antithesis, Garden of Earthly Delights was an energetic exploration of life’s pleasures, questioning commercialization of art, love, dance, and music as its nearly 20-member cast took the stage in voluminous fashion. This work by Sophia Peck was a contemporary style dance following the character “Ms. Capitalism” as she ventured through desire, greed, and ultimately her own demise? Or perhaps the demise, or integration, of everything around her. Despite the serious nature of this topic, the piece had a sense of lightheartedness and whimsy that echoed in the audience as dancers skipped, performed tricks, and pretended to prank each other with fake drinks being spilled. This exploration of exploitation through means of play was very well crafted, and though it had many moving parts throughout its lifespan, including two different dancers taking of the role of “Ms. Capitalism,” its message still rang clear as its jarring puppet-like tableau took the final few seconds of light before the piece closed.
Closing the show was my (Dev Saxman) own piece, Corruption of the Nostalgic, which was a contemporary exploration of events from our past, and how they can corrupt in our minds as time passes, and how this corruption goes unrealized until we revisit said thing and it’s “not right.” This piece has five dancers, with one dancer continually finding themselves in this state of corruption, resetting the piece to try and make the memory right again. This reset happens three distinct times, each with some variation of retrograde inside of the choreography, until the inevitable decent into corruption and chaos emerges, where the soloist dancer has to face this corruption or let it destroy them. The remaining dancers act out duets of desire, or how the false memory was changed to be better through nostalgia, and two pedestrians, to show the world going on with or without the soloist. This piece ends the show on a confusing note, the house lights come up as the stage lights fade, four of the dancers are now either in the audience, or opening the theater doors, and the soloist is left onstage, where they never get up even as the audience, befuddled on why there is no bow, begins to slowly leave the theater. Is the piece really over? Is this something that truly has an end?
Dev Saxman (They/Them) is a Contemporary choreographer and dancer in their final year at Columbia College Chicago as a BFA Dance major. Coming from southwest Florida, and later western Massachusetts, They have studied Dance and Choreography for nine years with a focus in Modern, Contemporary, West African, and Hip Hop, with minor studies in Flamenco, Afro-Modern, and Pointe. From this, they have begun to develop a specific vocabulary of movement based on the somatics of grief and loss. These “Somatic Grieving Techniques" are being actively developed into a specific style of structured Improvisation and meditation.
