Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project in “The Big Bang.”/Photo courtesy Art on The Mart
During Chicago summers, in the dusky hour just after downtown skyrises are splashed in pastel hues, the world’s largest outdoor video installation comes to life. An array of thirty-four projectors situated above the Riverwalk fires up, bathing the two-and-a-half acre limestone façade of The Mart (formerly the Merchandise Mart) in a stunning follow-up act to sunset. This summer’s “Art on The Mart” season opened last Thursday, with the inaugural screening of “The Big Bang: Movement Theory + the Black Dancing Body,” featuring the ten companies in the current cohort of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project.
In introductory remarks that floated across the river and bounced off the face of the million-square-foot building, CBDLP director Princess Mhoon observed that the busts of white industrialists set atop pillars facing The Mart—Woolworth, Marshall Field, Montgomery Ward—“tonight, will watch our story.” Mhoon also served as creative director for the project, working closely with new media artist Liviu Pasare and filmmaker Elizabeth Myles on the roughly ten-minute video that will play on a loop each night from 9pm to 10pm. Mhoon selected house music for the score, commissioning music from Chicago-based DJ Duane Powell, Sam Thousand and Steve “Miggety” Maestro that can be heard across The Mart plaza, the river and onto Wacker Drive.
Like all “Art on The Mart” pieces, “The Big Bang” is monumental in size but bite-sized in length, ideal for passersby on the Riverwalk or Wacker, and occupants of small boats and kayaks to linger and view, as many did on opening night. Considering the scope of the subject—the birth and evolution of American dance—and the number of collaborators involved, the piece is incredibly concise. The Chicago Multicultural Dance Center & Hiplet Ballerinas, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, The Era Footwork Collective, Forward Momentum Chicago, Joel Hall Dancers & Center, M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Move Me Soul, Muntu Dance Theatre, Najwa Dance Corps, and Praize Productions all appear in a three-act visual story that tidily connects traditional African dance to twentieth and twenty-first century American forms. Through the magic of editing, West African stomps give way to tap and hip-hop, sideways kicks of the Charleston are revealed in the shuffle steps of Footwork, each thread picked up by a different dancer in a different style and passed along to the next. Three-hundred-foot tall dancers glide across vivid backgrounds, titans of culture rightly towering over captains of industry below.
“The Big Bang” screens in rotation with “Gensler: Building Light” nightly.
“The Big Bang: Movement Theory + the Black Dancing Body,” part of Art on the Mart nightly through September 13, 9- 10pm. Free. Info at artonthemart.com.
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