“Considering Movement: Notes on the Elevate Chicago Dance Festival” by Gervais Marsh (Elevate 2022 Festival Writer)

Movement as an ever-shifting experience of relation, as one finds new and already known ways to live in this world. Movement as a mode of understanding one’s relationship to self and others. Movement as praxis, as fugitivity, as a way towards rest, as experimentation, as the way out of no way, as the way to make a way. Their feet move with a speed that exceeds the eyes’ ability to track, embodying a deeply cultivated precision. “Juke for Liberation” choreographed by Christopher “Mad Dog” Thomas and members of Kuumba Lynx, interweaves Chicago footwork with spoken word poetry, renditions of Black American spirituals and video recordings of disco inspired juke scenes. Reverberating beyond the stage, the three dancers juke together and channel a collective vibration that signals intimacy forged through this dance practice, which critically embodies Black quotidian experiences in Chicago. Thomas and Kumba Lynx hold the precarity of Black life alongside the possibilities to build new worlds, linking the environmental racism that has long impacted Altgeld Gardens in Chicago with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan or Jackson, Mississippi. 

Both Thomas’s “Juke for Liberation” and Anna Martine Whitehead’s “Force: An opera in three acts” speak to imaginings of liberation in nuanced, interconnected ways. “Force”, in its conceptual framing, provides an expanded perspective for thinking freedom without overdetermining the boundaries of what forms of liberation could/should/will look like. 

Wrapped in denim, bodies intertwined; they slowly roll across the floor towards the stage. Exertion is evident, a weight pulls them to the ground. They pause for collective moments of rest, lying in different configurations around a chair on the left of the stage. Zachary Nicol begins a sonic transition, soon joined by dancers Jenn Po’Chop Freeman and Rahila Coats gently swaying alongside him. Kai Black enters on drums with Teiana Davis playing keyboard, amplifying the voices of vocalists Daniella Pruitt, Tramaine Parker and Nexus J. Textured with emotion, the soundscape is spacious, oscillating between unbounded and grounded vocalizations that transport the audience outside the fixed space of the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center into an elsewhere place, one that is in process perhaps never to be defined.

Whitehead sings briefly in French, describing “le trou,” or a hole, as a framework of possibility, a necessary reconsideration. What are the holes inside the w(h)ole? Holes as opportunities to escape, to think otherwise, as spaces of undoing. Coats and Nichol lock arms with Whitehead, carrying her to the back of the stage as her legs glide through the air. In the final scene, the heightened voices of the singers repeat, “This wall has to fall!” with a force that pulsates throughout the venue. The dancers spin their denim capes around their bodies in a moment of release, for the world cannot be undone until we let go of claims on what it currently is.   

“In Lieu of Flowers”, choreographed by Kia S. Smith, begins with sharp, precise movements that construct a strained tension, pulling me in as I follow the reactive energy vacillating between the two performers, Kelly Anderson and Taylor Yocum. A refusal of release, the emotions structuring the relational dynamic is unclear; they move in response to one another, tinged by the affective murmur of a looming transgression. As the soundtrack switches from the ominous hum to a doo wop song, the artists inhabit a robotic emotional register that feels ironic in the jarring change from the previous scene. The piece closes with another sonic shift, a violin signaling a return to the somber tone which the piece began with. This time the dancers are more in tune, though the constrained atmosphere remains. There is a difficulty throughout this piece, an inability to trust the vulnerability of intimacy. Accessing experiences of relation so often involves grappling with the defensive positions we each form. 

How do bodies respond to one another in the nightlife space? What fleeting encounters take place? In a dynamic closing performance at Mana Contemporary, amidst bright strobe lights and electronic and house beats, Erin Kilmurray’s piece “The Function” explores the intimacies forged during the experience of the rave. The four dancers conjure a dynamic presence, taking over the stage and transforming it into their own DIY world. Cheers of support can be heard throughout space as the dancers expand the relational potential of the performance to the audience. Energy is shared and built upon, with the dancers vibing off each other, weaving through choreography drawing on modern, hip hop and voguing movements. As the performance winds down, the dancers bring their bodies close together in a beautiful moment of collective touch. They roll across the floor, releasing their bodies to each other. Is there a possibility to build ephemeral moments of trust amongst strangers? While nightlife is a space of negotiating bodily responses structured by racial, gendered, and sexual power dynamics, this piece is a reminder that the rave may also be a space for forms of relationality which are often limited in our day to day lives.

Surrounded by the changing leaves on a chilly Fall afternoon, the Elevate Chicago Dance Festival has invited the audience to witness three performances in Big Marsh Park, located on Chicago’s Southeast Side. There is an anticipatory atmosphere to see how each performance will activate this space, which is markedly different from the more conventional sites utilized by the festival.

What did your mama tell you? This is the question that animates Aaliyah Christina’s piece Praise Mother. Opening to a big band horn set, the assembled dancers (Naomi Batty, Keyierra Collins, Felicia Holman, Deja Hood, Mekeba Malik, and Darling Shear) dressed in black with purple gloves begin with J-Setting inspired choreography, paying homage to the Southern roots that influence much of Black life in Chicago. As they move forward, leading the audience into a concrete skate park, the collective energy becomes increasingly playful. Evoking a desire to cultivate collective joy, the piece is a love letter with gratitude to maternal figures who have shared critical knowledge that has shaped the ways of understanding and being in the world for each dancer. Felicia Holman performs a short monologue, highlighting lessons from her mother, “My mother told me that when I was born, she said to herself, ‘I can’t wait until she learns how to talk, so that she can tell me who she is.’ Holman’s words affirm an autonomy that is reiterated throughout the piece by the collective, heard in their refrain, “Praise Mother, cuz we be fast, we want no problems, so y’all can stay mad.” In this chorus, the dancers reject the demands often placed on Black people to perform societal notions of respectability, asserting that they will live their lives as they see fit.

In a clearing above the skate park, “The Axe Forgets, The Tree Remembers” choreographed by Ysaÿe Alma begins a meditation on food justice, highlighting the relationships Black and indigenous communities have always had with growing food. Beautifully reverential, the interplay between the choreography and music suggests a recognition of human and other forms of natural life are intimately connected. Incorporating different dance styles, including West African and Modern with references to Jump Blues featuring the song “Beans and Cornbread” by Louis Jordan, the piece shifts between solos, duets and the quartet performing together. The dancers, Aaliyah Christina, Cecilia Slongo, Jada Rose and Ysaÿe Alma, close the work by displaying placards with information on dispossession of indigenous communities from their native lands, food insecurity in Black communities and the continued destruction of biodiversity, leaving the audience with a call to action.

Closing out Sunday’s performances in the park, “Anatomy for Interiors” devised by Jasmine Lupe Mendoza, Lia Kohl and Corey Smith begin with slow, deliberate movements inside a tunnelway. Both dancers find connections between their bodies and the cold metal of the tunnel, with X sliding their body slowly down its side. The piece continues with Mendoza placing the chair outside the tunnel, on a hilly incline, exploring the balance of tension between their body and the chair. An overcast sky gathering dark clouds above, the duo step deeper into the tunnel so that only their silhouettes are visible, slowly moving their bodies wrapped in translucent fabric. In one of the most compelling moments of the performance, the duo descends with a quick foot shuffle from the top of the incline, Mendoza wrapped in the cloth with Smith following behind, holding a radio that emits an intermixture of grainy music and broadcasts. An eerie beeping noise can be heard as the performers forcefully jerk their bodies at the opening to the tunnel, engaging in an embodied relational moment.

The Elevate Chicago Dance Festival provided an opportunity to both think expansively about conceptions of relationality and witness varied ways this can be manifested. A vibrant convening of Chicago’s performance communities, and a chance for artists to be in dialogue, it is a generative event that will undoubtedly leave viewers with reflections on movement, envisioned broadly, as a rich experience of being.

Header Image: “FORCE! an opera in three acts” (excerpt-in-progress) / Anna Martine Whitehead and collaborators at Segundo Ruiz Pelvis Cultural Center | October 14, 2022 | Photo by Ricardo E Adame