A pool of talent shows its stuff
The Chicago Tribune
By Lucia Mauro Special to the Tribune
"It's really steep," shouts choreographer Carrie Hanson as she races from one end of an empty swimming pool in Malim Park to the other. "But it's sort of fun to work against gravity."
Hanson and her dance-performance collective, The Seldoms, chose the unusual venue for the world premiere of Hanson multifaceted performance piece, Giant Fix, which runs through Oct. 15.
It's akin to a physics experiment in motion as audiences sit on opposite ends of the outdoor pool and six dancers (including Hanson) play with scale and perception.
Hanson's company unites artists from many disciplines for original works set in non-traditional environments. And with Giant Fix, she wanted to explore her experiences with a "pre-sleep phenomenon" in which she had an altered sense of scale – a sort of floating through space at the moment between falling asleep and dreaming. The pool's "beautiful (sunken) white rectangular," as she calls it, inspired her to create a dance that would illustrate the notion of entering a new time and space dimension.
Hanson commissioned Andy Hasenpflug and Corbett Lunsford to compose a percussive, structured-improvisational score for the piece. The musicians perform live on the edge of the pool. Ropes are strung above the pool to form irregular triangles.
At a recent rehearsal, the raked white-concrete pool, with a surprisingly springy floor, makes the dancers look like specks. But depending on where they place themselves, they grow or shrink like multiple Alices in Wonderland. The images shift again as the performers leap, twist, roll and climb across what resembles an Arctic wasteland. "The goal is to create a sense of shifting light and shifting perspective for the audience," says The Seldoms' associate artist Doug Stapleton.
Scenic designer Kevin Newhall put circular stained-glass discs at the bottom of the pool around which the dancers navigate. These pieces, notes Newhall, give only the faintest suggestion of a water image. "They're kind of lily paddish," he says. "They're bubbly and beautiful and can be bright or muted."Lighting designer Margaret Nelson will illuminate the glass orbs from underneath for a "glowing effect" and Lisa Barcy provides colorful stop-motion animation. Says Hanson: "I wanted to make Giant Fix visually rich and informative. It feels more like a painting than a dance."
This idea extends to Lara Miller's sculptural costumes. Inspired by Cubist art, the costume designer has the dancers wear plum and gray undergarments, over which they wrap coiled accessories that resemble Slinkys. Each dancer wears the coil in a unique way – as a skirt, a corset, a train.
Ultimately, Hanson and her collaborators have taken a finite structure, such as a swimming pool, and turned it into an exploration of the infinite. "I'm interested in the idea of things existing far, far around us," says Hanson. "But this idea of limitless infinity goes inward, too. It exists within our own bodies."