EARTHBOUND
A professor of mine once described modern architecture as flight, a lifting from the ground. I’ve always thought of dance this way, as the body’s movement against gravity, to remain aloft. So the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s performance of Echo Sense by Crystal Tile, at Fall for Dance, was slightly shocking. In this piece, performed before a blank black backdrop, eight young dancers in tailored trousers and vests skirmish, shifting back and forth across the stage. They don’t stand erect, stride, or strut. They are instead, continually, holding themselves just barely above the ground, crouching, hovering, crawling.
The narrative is evocative and, perhaps purposefully, vague. The pinstriped costumes and the stuttering strobe lighting call to mind Depression Era silent movies. The dancers’ physical aggression – they way they approach each other, lay hands on each other, tug each other, surround each other – reminded me of a rugby match or a street fight. At moments all eight coalesce into a single figure, rising up from the ground or cascading towards it, like a series of stop-motion photographs. They are earthbound, in a slow, perpetual fall. But the act isn’t passive. The dancers move quietly, with leopard-like ferocity. They remain sure-footed in a dark, difficult landscape.