Aiming for your work to be understood is natural, maybe especially in dance. But aiming too hard for understanding, rather than leaving room for the imagination, gives the audience little to do but contemplate beautiful bodies in motion.
Plenty of labor has gone into “Chicago Revealed,” the program Thodos Dance Chicago performed Saturday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts and will repeat March 5 at the Harris Theater. All four works, two by guest choreographers, are new, though “Sono’s Journey” debuted in January at the Auditorium.
Melissa Thodos has now created three one-acts based in history. Narrative is a natural way into dance, but for stories to work, they need a problem to solve. “The White City” (2011), based on Erik Larson’s Chicago history book “The Devil in the White City,” had unsolved murders. “A Light in the Dark” (2013) had the struggle between the pathologically complex Helen Keller and her strong-willed teacher, Anne Sullivan.
Those conflicts were dramatized. But the racial prejudice, fomented by war, haunting the career of Japanese-American dancer Sono Osato, now 96, isn’t onstage. Instead Thodos has given “Sono’s Journey” extensive voiceovers, derived from Osato’s memoir, which allude at times to the disruptions caused by discrimination. More often, this recitation provides the dry facts of Osato’s life: the number of performances in a given year with Ballet Russe, the rent she paid for a New York apartment. Toward the end, the voiceovers’ name-dropping undercuts emotion.
As a choreographer, Thodos’ strong suit is luscious, sweeping, gusting yet continuous motion; it looks and feels happy. Some of the most appealing dancing in “Sono’s Journey” comes in the love duet for Osato’s parents and in the passages for all five family members. Thankfully, in the “War and Internment” section (one of 13), Thodos does break out of the straitjacket of the upbeat, and the piece briefly gains stakes.
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Otherwise, “Sono’s Journey” is relentlessly uplifting. Thodos’ new “Thio Kosmos” (“Two Worlds”), a female sextet focused on the Greek-American experience, is similar — and also narrated. Here Thodos’ preferred style gets in the way: Mushy movement combines with mushy music (though the final selection is more propulsive) to obscure the canon phrases.
Choreographer Kevin Iega Jeff of Deeply Rooted also tackles discrimination in “RedLines/BlueHorizon” — the redlining of “bad” neighborhoods institutionalized racism — but in a muscular way. The pulses of the score, by Steve Reich and Hans Zimmer, drive the 12 dancers in the choreography’s inventive, highly musical spasms and collapses. Projections of words with complex meanings (“pneuma,” “megalopolis”) guide our journey but aren’t overly definitive.
Robyn Mineko Williams provides the evening’s quirkiest, most moving piece in “At the Apex,” referring to the popular South Side jazz club of the 1920s. Set to three evocative vintage recordings, this quintet for two men and three women instantly sets up a question: Who will be left alone? The answer is performer Briana Robinson (also excellent in “Redlines”), who dances one long, strange ribbon of movement after another. Solos are difficult to pull off, and she and Williams get this one right.
Laura Molzahn is a freelance critic.
REVIEW: Thodos Dance’s ‘Chicago Revealed’
2.5 STARS
When: Through 7:30 p.m. March 5
Where: Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St.
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Tickets: $15-$65 at 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org