Darrell Jones is a recent transplant to Chicago from New York City, where he danced with many legendary contemporary artists, including Bebe Miller and Ronald K. Brown. Now Jones teaches modern technique and improvisation at Columbia College and is mounting his first evening-length work in Chicago, third Swan from the end: Battle Gracefully to be Legendary.
In third Swan ( sic ) , Jones experiments with combining his extensive modern dance training with his relatively new exposure to the voguing aesthetic, revealing the logic of the vogue and the history of the dance form while exploring issues of masculinity and femininity, stereotyping, power and 'graceful battle.' Now, this isn't Madonna's vogue. It isn't even the Paris is Burning vogue. It's today's vogue, a unique dance form that has blossomed since the '80s in cities like New York, Chicago and Atlanta, and remains a vibrant and often misunderstood discipline. The vogue has remained relatively underground, perpetuated through the ballroom scene where brave dancers, both young and old, experiment with the art form, interweaving modern dance, gymnastic and martial arts elements, to compete in pageants and push the edges of expectation.
Jones, a participant in the Chicago Dancemakers Forum program, has researched the voguing community through video and personal experience and incorporates some of the key principles of the aesthetic into his new work. 'Arm control is one of the elements they talk about,' Jones says, discussing the vogue technique. 'There are dips, which are falls. There are twirls ( or swirls ) , which are about a circular pattern in the body. There is walking and sashaying. The Duck Walk is there, which is a parallel to the movements of a geisha. A lot of times it's a take on what a female body would do, but it constantly gets interpreted through a hyper-masculine kind of energy. The parallel [ position of the legs ] is a hyper-masculine from, as opposed to turned out legs, which has a feminine orientation. The gestural things are effeminate but the attack is very masculine.'
Jones, who will perform alongside six other dancers in the show, combines modern dance floorwork, high kicks and attitude turns with pulsing hips, feathered hand gestures and sassy mock-fights that balance delicately between intimacy and conflict. Certain portions of the piece are cleanly choreographed, while others retain that essential vogue-style improvisation where the dancers get to show off their flair.
For the music of third Swan, Jones has enlisted two composers, Patrick Grant and Amber Lewis, to manipulate classic house-music standards, one to re-work the base-heavy rhythms into orchestral arrangements and one to extract their musical source, whether it be from B-grade karate films, beauty pageants or Japanese Shogun operas. third Swan from the end takes place at The Galaxie, 2603 W. Barry, Sept. 21-22, at 8 p.m. After the performance on Sept. 22, Chicago's own House of Avant Garde will host a mini-ball spectacular, which will surely be the perfect culmination to a weekend of wild performance, transformation and innovative storytelling. 866-468-3401; $12-$18.
Also don't miss these upcoming events:
—Winifred Haun & Dancers and Voice of the City present Circle in the Square: New Works in Dance Theatre, Sept. 14-16, at Historic Pleasant Home mansion, 217 S. Home, Oak Park. The show will include work by Christopher Ellis, Dawn Marie Galtieri, Winifred Haun and Jill Heyser, among others. 773-782-9471; $20-$25.
—To open its 34th season, The Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, will present San Francisco choreographer Margaret Jenkins and her company in a new evening-length work, A Slipping Glimpse, Sept. 27-29. Developed in collaboration with and featuring dancers from the renowned Tanusree Shankar Dance Company of Calcutta, Jenkins' newest multi-disciplinary work will transform the Dance Center theatre into a theatre-in-the-round using platforms of various heights placed in and around the audience. 312-344-6600; $20-$28.
—The Chicago modern troupe The Seldoms remounts GIANT FIX/dance in a pool Sept. 27-30. Staged in the outdoor, drained pool at Hamlin Park, 3035 N. Hoyne, this intriguingly placed work is based on the unique, personal pre-sleep phenomenon where the usual perceptions of scale and depth are radically altered. Choreographed by artistic director Carrie Hansen and danced by an ensemble of eight, The Seldoms explore a place of constant flux and subverted expectations. 312-328-0303; $12-$15.
—Venetia Stifler, head of the Ruth Page Foundation and artistic director of Concert Dance Inc., is reviving a 60-year-old ballet, Billy Sunday. Created by iconic Chicago choreographer Ruth Page, the dance tells the story of another Chicago legend, baseball player turned evangelist Billy Sunday. A production documenting the rehearsal and performance process premieres on Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. on WTTW-11, then the live performance takes place at the Northeastern Illinois Auditorium Theatre, 5500 N. St. Louis, Sept. 28-30. 773-442-4636; $15-$25.
—Lastly, don't miss Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's 30th anniversary season Fall Series, Sept. 26-Oct. 7 at the Harris Theatre, 205 E. Randolph. Two weekends offer different programs, including work by Twyla Tharp, Nacho Duato, Daniel Ezralow, Susan Marshall, Jim Vincent, Brian Enos, Ohad Naharin and Jiri Kylian. 312-334-7777; $25-$85.
