“Movement is as fundamental to human existence as breath” is the idea that drives Southwest Michigan-based professional contemporary dance company CPR Dance: Inhale Movement.
Now in their fifth year, their most recent performance, 5oma, which toured Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Benton Harbor over the weekend, explored emotions, meaning-making, and voice, both literal and figurative, in nine dances from nearly as many choreographers, five of which were premieres.
Studio B in Dalton on Western Michigan University’s campus was a packed house Saturday night to see the company’s nine dancers plus nine guest dancers from Academy Dance Arts offer a variety of contemporary styles set to different music exploring the possibilities of dance heightened by thoughtful costumes and effective lighting design by Lexie Frontjes.
According to Executive Artistic Director Carolyn Pampalone Rabbers’ program notes, “5oma explores the connection between our physical selves and our shared humanity through the power of collective voice in movement. This work reflects what unites us, physically, emotionally, and collectively, and how dance deepens our understanding of ourselves and how we relate to one another.”
Two of the most experimental, evocative dances of the evening were choreographed by Rabbers. The evocative premiere “Nobody 01100011”, a series of three duets, raised questions about life, dance, and relationships in an AI-driven world. Made with the use of ChatGPT, The Living Archive, and AISoma, translated and interpreted by the dancers, they spoke as well as moved: one dancers spoke to another as if a chatbot, with surprising if not surreal intimacy, receiving answers to existential questions about loneliness and life direction—while in another section of the dance, they talked through phrases and steps while doing them as well as questioning what they were doing.
“In Praise of Shadows” used film as a backdrop to the piece, projecting images of masks, blooming flowers, water droplets, moving clouds, lines creating circles and squares, and scrolling text in various languages and characters while dancers used flashlights to light each other, create shadows, and at times, temporarily blind audience members. Tempo and music changes added to the sense of organized chaos as the dancers mouthed inaudible words.
Speaking continued through other dances of the evening to carry through the theme of literal voices, particularly in the premiere “high clarity, no pressure” choreographed by Sophie Minouche Allen, which opened the second act. Six dancers in black pants with red and blue iridescent t-shirts take turns being upright and on the ground—from handstands to pirouettes to writhing, weight sharing, tumbling and rolling—as electronic music by Michael Wall builds. They sway and lean into a line center stage eventually speaking repeated phrases over one another at the end: “Hi”, “No”, “Tie your shoes”, “Done and dusted” among them.
There was a sameness to several of the dances despite having different choreographers. Kelsey Paschich’s premiere “Ghost Murmur” and Sarah Zehnder’s “HEaRd” both make use of well-executed undulations, body rolls, big lifts, big arms, gliding, sliding, running, lifting, twirling. Dennis Davis’s "The Depaux” offered some funky moves and grooves, and “Fix You” performed by Academy of Dance Arts’ youth dancers was a crowd pleaser.
The most moving dances of the evening were shot through with balletic movement and deep emotion. Seyong Kim and Wonsuk Cho’s deeply sensual and dramatic “desperate + inseparable” set to Vivaldi offered lovely pas de deux that gave way to a pas de quatre in which the dancers all fall down.
In Abby Marchesseault’s incredibly compelling pas de deux “Don’t Forget Me”, set to David Lang’s ‘Just (After Song of Songs)’, Abby Marchesseault stands at and on a table downstage pensively applying lipstick—first to her lips, then to her cheeks—but is interrupted by Dennis Davis who drags her away from the obsession and lifts her as if saving her from herself even though she fights him. They mirror each other with wild pirouettes, and he lifts, turns, flips her until she glides down his body onto the floor. It’s gorgeous.
With 5oma, CPR Dance shows its vitality and relevance as well as the beauty and possibility of contemporary dance in Southwest Michigan. Showcasing incredibly talented dancers and choreographers, this performance draws on tradition as well as creates something new in conversation with the past, present, and future of dance as well as the creative impulse and humanity itself.
5OMA
CPR Dance: Inhale Movement
July 17-25
inhalemovement.com
