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player ready...What is it about disaster that excites our imaginations? For years, Chicago Dance Crash has produced apocalyptic narratives — “Tribulation and the Demolition Squad” in 2005, “Gotham City” in 2012 — whose sense of adventure and pop-cult fun made the company unique in Chicago, as did its willingness to mix ballet with acrobatics, contemporary dance with hip-hop.
Through Dec. 20, Dance Crash is back at the Storefront Theater, the scene of many of its earlier triumphs, with “New Alaska,” the premise of which echoes the company’s previous doomsday tales: Imagine yourself in Alaska, 100 years from now, after some global disaster.
Or it could be the start of a Second City sketch.
But here, five choreographers have each created a relationship-oriented piece on the subject of catastrophe. Predictably, the stage is submerged in smoky darkness, shot through with moody side lighting. Everyone is anguished, bewildered, often unconnected to the others. The music is mostly experimental electronica, perhaps in a stab at the futuristic setting.
The Crash dancers are no slouches. Versed as they are in so many styles, they can be supremely fun to watch. And “New Alaska” sprang to life midway through in an improvised dance, “Freestyle on the Fallout.” Accompanied by an ancient educational recording on the dangers of radiation and some musical selections that broke the tyranny of electronica (Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence,” Tom Waits’ “All the World Is Green”), this series of four solos by Brian Hare, Chantelle Mrowka, Kaitlin Webster and David Ingram highlighted the performers’ musicality, amazing physical abilities and capacity to find emotion in the physical.
The following duet, Webster’s “One Too,” offers a welcome tincture of humor. Though Webster’s program note suggests she’s revealing two aspects of a single psychotic personality, I thought of dancers KC Bevis and Brian Humpherys — antagonists and chums decked out in stocking caps and camouflage long underwear — as Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” Songs by Tonstartssbandht, filled with bizarre harmonies and lyrics, form the matrix for the duo’s rough-and-tumble moves, highlighted by the occasional doomed caring gesture.
The three dancers of Ahmad Simmons’ expertly varied “Vignette” continue and even heighten that sense of connection. Facing off or embracing, roiling together or attaining and holding pristine poses, the three women suggest shifting power relationships and occasional intimacy. But “Vignette” feels provisional, as if it wants to go somewhere that its brevity won’t allow.
The program’s final work — “Heard That,” a sextet by Crash artistic director Jessica Deahr — features some impressive dancing, responding to the hesitations and burps of techno by Extrawelt and Murcof. But because it’s essentially a series of rapidly shifting duets, the work doesn’t seem sufficiently shaped despite its escalating hysteria.
Kirsten Shelton’s octet, “Stranger Than This,” and Stephanie Paul’s quintet, “The Refusal of Fate,” open the program.
Laura Molzahn is a freelance critic.
Twitter @LauraMolzahn
2.5 STARS
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Dec. 20
Where: Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph
Running time: 1 hour
Tickets: $15 at 800-595-4849 or www.chicagodancecrash.com
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