Exit Disclaimer: Science and Fiction Ahead
It was an exciting year for dancers and choreographers, and UW-Madison loomed large in this year’s hottest performances. Always someone to watch, UW-Madison dance professor Kate Corby performed dancelikeaman in November at Lathrop Hall. A thoughtful exploration of masculinity and gender identity in the dance world, it featured Josh Anderson and Mikey Rioux, who performed with guts and candor. It will continue to inform how I view men dancing. I find myself fondly reflecting on the deluge of action figures raining down onto the stage. Also on the bill that November night was an excerpt of Exit Disclaimer: Science and Fiction Ahead from the Chicago-based company The Seldoms, whose director, Carrie Hanson, is the fall interdisciplinary artist-in-residence at UW-Madison. Like Corby, Hanson made me think without clobbering me over the head. These talented performers make me look forward to The Seldoms’ Floe in January at Memorial Union.
On Halloween, I took in another performance created by a UW professor; Peggy Choy’s FLIGHT torn like a rose was a fanciful rumination on the famous Sufi poem “Conference of the Birds,” which made me want to learn more about the poem itself. Andrew Jordan’s elaborate bird costumes enhanced the dancers’ metamorphoses into birds. The cast members all deserve acclaim, but Ze Motion and Lacouir Yancey as parrots and the electric Xavier Townsend as Nightingale were riveting.
But campus wasn’t the only place to find amazing dance in 2019. In February, Kanopy Dance’s restaging of Devil’s Night: An Apocalyptic Vision in Heavy Metal was set to Finnish cello metal band Apocalyptica’s arrangements of Metallica songs and their own compositions. I complained at the time that I was too old for loud music, and that the stage seemed too small for all that action, busy costumes and large cast. Maybe things seem crowded due to the outsize talent of new company member Richard Oaxaca. He is a dynamic and energizing presence on stage and off.
Kanopy 2, the company for younger dancers, presented Midsummer’s Eve in May. The cast included four talented high school seniors who are now out in the world and I sincerely hope they will still have room for dance in their futures: Sarah Nathan, Maya Finman-Palmer, Milo Sachse-Hofheimer and Catherine Maxwell. Another standout was junior Roan Alexander, whose beauty draws your eye and whose solid technique holds your gaze. She is also a gifted actor, as demonstrated by her world-weary, cigarette-dangling, flip-flop-wearing character in Patsy.
Every summer I tell myself I am going to take a week off from work and join Li Chiao-Ping at her annual Summer Dance workshop held on her farm, which culminates in a performance. At least I was able to catch the show. In “Out of Doors,” I was particularly smitten with Li’s solo for Lauren John, “moi non plus,” where John glides through space so smoothly that she makes you forget dancing is hard. Caroline Criste was riveting in Liz Sexe’s lovely work Lone Sum: Part 1. And I would be remiss if I left out John Crim’s performance in “In Lies the Truth.” Maybe 2020 will be my year to dance on the farm.
The annual Kloepper Concert, held at Lathrop Hall in December, showcases works from students in the UW-Madison dance department, which is full of promising young dancers and choreographers. Ellie McShane poignantly revealed a range of dynamics and emotion in her solo, “The Cradle Will Fall.” Veda Manly, who performed a solo “I Hate That Word Called…,” seems to already be a fully formed and mature dancer. Choreographer Brooke Schroeder’s “Plastuck” looks at our reliance on plastic, with dancers navigating a landscape cluttered with clinging and floating plastic bags. Tye Trondson was excellent dancing in Lauren Lynch’s provocative and witty piece about depression, “a frightfully fragile plastic pouch of a terribly toilsome exhale,” and choreographed the concert’s final work, the loose and breezy “Come and Go.”
