MacArthur Foundation, based in Chicago, sponsored an unprecedented retrospective of five MacArthur Choreography Fellows, curated by Harris Theater’s outgoing managing director, Michael Tiknis. Last month, we were treated to a full week of The Chicago Dancing Festival.įriday, we were, each one of us, beneficiaries of MacArthur Genius grants, at least those of us who were lucky enough to snag a ticket to this delicious evening, free to the public, thanks to sponsorship by the MacArthur Foundation.Ĭelebrating 35 years of grant making across the arts, sciences, and social agencies, the John T. Oh, Happy Day! Chicago is once again the beneficiary of private philanthropy that has delivered the gift of world-class dance to our doorstep, free and open to the public. An entire drama of relationship unfolded in a dance of weightlessness and gravity, confinement and escape, perfectly set to Arvo Pärt’s hauntingly beautiful “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.” Suspended from harnesses and rigging, feet touching earth only long enough to push off into arcs of ecstasy, before careening off into space, the dancers magically played out the metaphor of falling in countless configurations of swinging, rising, reaching, clinging, and spiraling in and out of each other’s grasp, only to succumb each time to the inevitable pull of gravity into each other and the kiss at the center of their union. The igniting kiss was both passionate and climactic, and yet the air-born dance built momentum on that theme to the very last moment. Hubbard Street’s Jason Hortin and Jessica Tong, exquisite in Marshall’s poetry of weightlessness, were celestial bodies whose orbits intersected at that inevitable moment. We could have been witnessing the birth of angels at the touch of their lips in Susan Marshall’s “Kiss” (1987), opening “An Evening of Dance With MacArthur Fellows” at the Harris Theater this past Friday.
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