The stunning Elizabeth F. Cheney Mansion in Oak Park will form the backdrop for Winifred Haun & Dancers when they mark their 27th season with “Glimmers in the Garden: An Intimate Gala Celebration,” from 6-9 p.m. Oct. 23.
“Cheney Mansion is such a special place, inside and out,” said company founder Winifred Haun. “If the weather allows, we’re going to have some dancing on the veranda.”
Haun added that her company has always done performances in community spaces. She said that she believes the Cheney Mansion “would be a terrific setting for our gala.”
There will be three main dances at the event. One will be an excerpt from Haun’s 2017 work, “Trashed,” which combines contemporary dance with circus acrobatics elements.
“We are going to be bringing that dance back next season so I thought we could start working on it,” Haun explained. “It’s about 35 minutes so we’re just showing four minutes of it.”
Although the piece is intended for nine dancers, a duet will perform at the gala.
When “Trashed” was premiered in 2017, it was done in collaboration with Australian circus artists. “We’re going to need to start training again in circus arts,” Haun said. “And the dancers are really looking forward to that.”
There will also be a group work choreographed by company dancer Eona Carey, “Wild Roots, Fugitive Blooms.”
“It’s really stunning,” Haun said about the work for six dancers.
“This piece to me was about the societal obsession with being a good person and just how much we can actually be that on our own versus how the people around us — our community, our society — influences us,” Carey said.
The choreographer described the work as “a very almost eerie, unsettling piece.”
The title of the work came from a poem that Carey read, she explained.
Dancers will perform to the piano arrangement of Borodin’s “Requiem Aeternam” and “Fake Monk,” performed by a Chinese monk.
“The fact that she chose my piece as one of those to be performed by the professional company is such an honor,” Carey said.
The third dance selection will be a solo created by Assistant Choreographer Vernon Gooden for Assistant Artistic Director Julia Schaeffer, “What’s Being Said.”
“That’s really beautiful, too,” Haun said. “It’s got a chair in it.”
“The piece was one of my solos that I performed,” Gooden said. “I wanted to transfer it over to someone else and see what their interpretation was.”
The choreographer described the piece as dealing with what people say about someone and how that person interprets it. He said the work was inspired by the fact that through social media and television, “things are being thrown at you and you don’t know what’s going on,” Gooden explained.
In the beginning of the piece, there is a recording of people talking playing. The second portion is a song by Celisse.
More Top Picks Hammocks Campings
Gooden said he is very excited to have people see his work at the gala.
Carey’s work will be presented in the living room, Gooden’s in the solarium, and Haun’s work in the master bedroom.
“We’re going to split the audience in half,” Haun related. “Half will go into the solarium, and the other half will go upstairs to see the ‘Trashed’ duet. Then they’ll switch places. After that’s done, they’ll come into the living room and watch the group piece.”
For people who can’t climb the stairs, there will be a special presentation in the sitting room of a dance that hadn’t been decided at press time.”
There will also be short dance sequences on the veranda and in the foyer. In addition to the performances, there will be dinner and wine.
The Cheney Mansion is at 220 N. Euclid Ave. in Oak Park. Tickets are $350. Information is at winifredhaun.org.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.