CELEBRATING ST. LOUIS’ VIBRANT DANCE COMMUNITY
St. Louis Dance HQ’s Blog is a compilation of writings and performance reviews from a variety of St. Louis based dance writers. If you’re interested in sharing your writing on our blog, please email stlouisdancehq@gmail.com.
HQ REVIEW: “Half Baked” presented by Big Plate Dance
Half Baked, produced by Big Plate Dance and performed at Greenfinch Theater & Dive, was a showcase of three works in progress by Abby LeBaube with e-Gos, Josiah Gundersen, and Erin Morris with Steve Davis. The evening was a stripped-down performance in a space akin to a black box theater with no curtain, simple lighting, and a few rows of chairs ascending on three sides of the stage. The performance pieces were distinct; ranging in texture, style, and content, and each was immediately followed by a Q+A with the artists. These artist talkbacks were facilitated by Big Plate Dance Artistic Director Tayler Kinner who followed Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process – a curated method of receiving and offering feedback to a work in progress.
HQ Review: “IN TWO” by Brendan Fernandes at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is a building that seems to emphasize its empty spaces; holding the weight of its own openness with thick concrete and large stretches of glass. It is an austere, contemplative space, with natural light fracturing and reflecting from a pool in the center of the building, sending wavy lines onto the gray ceilings, walls, and floors. The building was constructed in 2001 by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, known for his minimalist approach. I describe the space at some length here because it served as an important element and the context for In Two, a dance performance choreographed by Brendan Fernandes. In it, four dancers (Sergio Camacho, Xenia Mansour, Christopher Salango, and Carly Vanderheyden) responded to the most recent exhibit in a series of interweaving duets. But the dancers’ relationship to the building was just as remarkable as, and amplified by, their connection to the art and other bodies within the walls.
HQ Review: MADCO presents two weekends of “Bound” at The Luminary
MADCO in partnership with The Luminary presents its Spring Concert titled, “Bound,” April 19 & 20, and 26 & 27, 2024, 8pm. “Bound” features premiere choreography by Arianna Russ and CJ Burroughs.
HQ Review: WashU’s 2024 MFA Dance Concert
Washington University in St. Louis Performing Arts Department presents its 2024 MFA Thesis Concert.
HQ Review: “STORYSCAPES” by Karlovsky and Company Dance
In Karlovsky & Company Dance’s evening-length work, STORYSCAPES, the program posed the questions: “What are the stories and attitudes shared that get passed down through the generations? What stories do we want to continue to embrace? What stories should we re-evaluate? What stories should simply end?” If the stories we tell ourselves create the landscapes we live in, then investigating those stories for veracity, usefulness, and value becomes paramount.
HQ Review: “Picture Studies” presented by The Big Muddy Dance Company in collaboration with The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
The Big Muddy Dance Company performed the work in partnership with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Retracing the origins of this work is a little like a spiral diagram of overlapping collaborations and inspirations: composer Adam Schoenberg was invited in 2013 by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to compose work inspired by certain pieces of visual art. Thus the first iteration of Picture Studies was born. More than ten years later The Big Muddy Dance Company has been invited to respond in movement to Schoenberg's music, which the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra brought to stunning life. Artistic Director and choreographer Kirven Douthit-Boyd notes in the program that inspiration was taken from both Schoengerg’s score and some of the original works of visual art from which they originally sprang. The result was a stunningly successful melding of artistry and disciplines.
HQ Review: Cloven III SpaceStation Dance Residency Fundraiser
“Cloven III” is an evening-length work by Jacob Henss and Betsy Brandt. This duet, performed by both creators, is the third installment of an exploration of the rural relationship between farmer and bovine as a lens for personal reflection. The dairy cow is a site of industrialized sexuality and consumption, and the “Cloven” trilogy is an ode to this overlooked yet ubiquitous animal, symbol, and food source. This eccentric choreographic work lives at the intersections of experimental theater, contemporary dance, burlesque, and performance art. Its St. Louis debut will be followed by a series of performances throughout the Midwest this spring.
HQ Review: Saint Louis Ballet’s LOVEX3
Saint Louis Ballet’s production of Love X 3, which took place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center February 16-18, 2024, featured three pieces of varying styles of ballet, created by three different choreographers. The performances in this show clearly displayed how versatile ballet can be and gave everyone in the audience something to appreciate about ballet, no matter what their personal preferences may be.
HQ Review: MADCO’s Dare to Dance - Saturday
The lights flicker off as Kayla Montgomery takes the stage of COCA’s Berges Theatre. At just 14 years old, Kayla had been chosen to perform a solo she created as part of MADCO’s Emerging Student Choreographer Program, in partnership with St. Louis Academy of Dance (SLAD). As the music swells, Kayla emanates a poise and assuredness about her presence on stage. She effortlessly oscillates between multiple movement qualities within a single phrase, capturing the range of a leg extension that then melts to the ground and allows the weight of the floor to sink into her hips and torsos. She uses her spine to punctuate the subtle riffs of Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness, before gliding over the stage with a turn that fills the entire room. Her intuitive musicality and ability to seamlessly transition from one style of movement to the next made Kayla’s performance one of the most striking of the evening, and perhaps most evident of what MADCO’s Dare To Dance Festival is all about. A festival, led by Artistic Director Arianna Russ, to showcase the immense amount of innovation and collaboration that exists in the St. Louis community and beyond.
HQ Review: MADCO’s Dare to Dance - Friday
MADCO presented the first performance of the dance festival, Dare to Dance, on Friday, January 19th. The evening was the first of two performances as part of the festival and featured 13 dance pieces from various independent choreographers and dance companies in St. Louis and beyond. When writing about large performances, the prevailing challenge becomes discerning which pieces to mention. One option is to write in detail about every piece, though the risk is to belabor the task, another is to choose dance works at random, and the very worst option is to write about the dances which are personally most enjoyable to the writer. In lieu of these unsatisfactory options, the pieces mentioned here are those which for various reasons stood out as singular from the rest of the program. The night was full of talented artists and interesting choreographic viewpoints and any who are left absent here should not be viewed as a statement of merit but of the necessity of brevity.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s EVOLUTION: Program A
EVOLUTION continued The Big Muddy Dance Company’s season at the Catherine B. Berges Theatre on January 11-14, 2024. This winter concert featured three different programs with a mixture of both familiar pieces and world premieres. This review in particular will focus on the pieces in Program A, which the company performed on Friday, January 12.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s premiere of “New Ritual” by Sidra Bell
A “boutique hybrid brand of prolific movement illustrators,” is how Sidra Bell of Sidra Bell Dance New York self-describes the work she creates. With this in mind, her world premiere of “New Ritual” performed by The Big Muddy Dance Company, brought to St. Louis Bell’s distinct flair for utilizing dance as way to convey the hybrid nature of our bodies. Both as individual bodies, and as collective units, moving about in this contemporary world.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s “Awakening” (Program B)
At the opening of Awakening, the newest production by The Big Muddy Dance Company, the curtain opened to a dark stage and the sound of drums. The lights came up on two dancers dressed in blue suits, backs to us, in a street lamp-like glow. Separated from us by a screen, the dancers appeared slightly hazy. Jazz music played as the first dancer began to move: rolling shoulders emanated out into fluid, full-body unfurling. He made contact with his partner and she too came to life with sliding stretches and turns. They walked towards the audience as the screen rose and the light changed to a stark white, exposing the stage wall behind them. Eventually, the full company of 14 worked their way onto stage. Like the jazz music which inspired it, the movement in Something About a Dream, choreographed by Kirven Douthit-Boyd, was at once bouncy and taught, fluid and sculptural, playful and longing. The piece moved, ebbed, flowed, and filled the stage to the brim with color and sound. It ended as it began: two dancers facing back, silhouettes softened by the screen. As music and lights faded they continued to move. The dance, one supposes, went on without us.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s “Awakening” (Program A)
On November 2 and continuing through November 5, The Big Muddy Dance Company delighted audiences at its fall concert, Awakening, at the Catherine B. Berges Theatre at Center of Creative Arts. Awakening featured Program A on November 2 and 3, and Program B for both the matinee and the evening performances on November 4. This is a review for Program A, which included two pieces that premiered in The Big Muddy’s spring performance last May and a new premiere that evening.
HQ Review: Ballet 314’s “Fall Fête: Twisted Tales”
St. Louis dance companies have packed this month’s calendar with their first shows of the 2023-2024 dance season. The most recent company to present their opening performance is Ballet 314 with Fall Fête: Twisted Tales, held on Saturday, October 21 in the Strauss Blackbox Theater at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Centre. Now in its second year, Fall Fête was a mixed bill show that featured three separate works performed in an intimate setting, as well as a fundraising event for the company. This review will cover the evening performance, which included an elegant pre-show cocktail hour and post-show reception, as well as brief talks from company directors Rachel Bodi and Robert Poe. Fall Fête celebrated Ballet 314’s growth as a company and took the audiences’ breath away with gorgeous dancing and engaging stories behind the pieces performed.
HQ Review: A Synopsis of St. Louis Ballet’s “Giselle”
Saint Louis Ballet opened their 2023-2024 season with Giselle at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center on the campus of University of Missouri-St. Louis. This haunting full-length ballet featured live music from the Chamber Music Society of Saint Louis, continuing a new tradition of excellence for the company.
HQ Review: RESILIENCE Dance Company’s “Entry Points”
Resilience Dance Company’s newest works were shown at Intersect Arts last weekend and consisted of five distinct dance pieces by an array of choreographers. The evening offered dynamic movement and demonstrated a breadth of tone and content within a 75-minute runtime.
HQ Review: St. Louis Rhythm Collaborative’s “Live at the Last Hotel”
STL Rhythm Collaborative opened its season with Live at the Last Hotel, performed at Missouri Baptist University, October 6-8. This unique show featured tap, jazz, and modern dancers made up of company dancers and trainees from moSTLy Tap, Washington University dance students, Missouri Baptist University dance students, and individual dancers from the St. Louis community. They all shared the stage with The Hard Bop Messengers, who provided the live jazz music onstage for the entire performance.
HQ Review: Karlovsky and Company Dance’s “In Transit”
InTransit, a community project led by Karlovsky & Company Dance, began during the pandemic and has endured beyond those strict restrictions. In this year's iteration, audience members moved between five locations: four small, brief performances culminating in a finale at a fifth location. Audiences were invited to chose their own starting location: Tree Grove at the Pulitzer, Park-Like, Spring Church, or The Sheldon.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s BLAZE
The Big Muddy Dance Company presented Blaze, its final show of the 2022-2023 season, from Friday, May 19 to Saturday, May 20 at COCA’s Berges Theatre. This review will focus on Friday night’s show, which the company performed in front of a packed house. The Big Muddy Dance Company will also stream Blaze online Friday, May 26, through Sunday, May 28. The Big Muddy performed three pieces in this evening-length show, in which the dancers embodied choreography that displayed contemporary movement that was both fluid and strong. Each piece had its own choreographer and concept, which treated the audience to a variety of dance to enjoy in one evening.