Two haunting and beautiful Chicago-based companies share a bill in an unusual move for the Dance Center of Columbia College. The gorgeously fertile partnership that is Jonathan Meyer and Julia Rae Antonick’s Khecari present two pieces, one by each collaborator: Antonick’s piece for four women entitled “cresset: vibrant, rusting,” accompanied by a percussive and found-instrument score by Joseph St. Charles, and Meyer’s “Esther & the Omphali,” duet for two men that explores ideas of domestication and its compromises. Rachel Bunting’s dance theater project The Humans should create a complementary contrast to Khecari’s intensely somatic abstractions; Bunting uses costuming, props and deliberate, cryptic symbolism to create lovely, often spooky atmospheres riddled with dreamlike meaning. “My my gray sky” is a foray into childhood memories and landscapes both real and imaginary, inspired by an old black-and-white photo of an unknown young woman sitting on a couch next to a menacing stuffed bunny. Performers in the piece range from age seven to over sixty, placing a whole human timeline on stage for our reflection. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 South Michigan, (312)369-8330. Thursday-Saturday, February 6-8 at 8pm. $26-$30.
Extremely Gentle and Incredibly Close: Khecari Plays with Proximity and Scale in Vicinity Diptych Dance theater is all about people watching other people in motion. For Jonathan Meyer and Julia Rae Antonick, co-executive directors of Khecari, the stationary bodies are of equal importance to those under the lights. The Khecari founders are interested in not just the eyes and brains in those watching bodies, but what happens to all human organisms in the room…
