Displaying items by tag: Gershwin

Many decades ago, my mother enrolled me in ballet classes, hoping the classical training would somehow turn her rotund preteen into a graceful swan. On my way to those tortuous lessons on Davis Street in Evanston, I passed another door marked “Gus Giordano Studio.” The typeface was cooler than the ballet studio’s script and so were the jazzy strains of music that drifted downward. If only I’d climbed Giordano’s narrow stairway instead, I might have lasted longer on the dance floor.

Fortunately, plenty of other students chose Gus Giordano’s door. His infusion of jazz into contemporary dance has endured and manifested under the leadership of his daughter Nan and other creative contributors. Now in its 63^rd season, Giordano Dance Chicago presented its Ignite the Soul program at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts last weekend with the vibe that emanated from its original studio.

Sing, Sing, Sing, set to Louis Prima’s penetrating drumbeat, gave us three dancers and six white-gloved jazz hands having the time of their lives. After that joyful salvo came the lengthier and more reflective Gershwin in B.  Choreographed by Al Blackstone to a mélange of Gershwin classics, the 2024-piece features Erina Ueda who pulls us into the abstracted narrative by reaching for a red fedora that slides away before she can grasp it. Joined by the expressive and sleek ensemble in Branimira Ivanova’s glorious black and white costumes, the dancer strives for that fedora of success. Along the way, she finds love, partnering with Eduardo Zambrana and then moving on as she reaches for the next fedora.  

From Gershwin’s signature American jazz idiom, the program shifted to an Afro-Cuban sensibility. Liz Imperio’s La Belleza de Cuba set the entire Giordano company in motion, coupling and uncoupling with such intensity, the dancers seemed electrified by the mere presence of their partners. Almost like a palate cleaner, Interlinked by company member Simon Schuh did indeed interlink bodies with rapid-fire precision that suggested gymnasts as much as dancers.

Erina Ueda returned for different challenge in 333. Choreographed by Nan Giordano and Cesar G. Salinas to the music of Otis Redding, the solo piece further showcased Ueda’s emotional and technical range.

The final work of the evening, Red & Black, was created by Dancing with the Stars choreographer Ray Leeper for the company in 2024. With music selections from Eartha Kitt, Michael Bublé and others, the work has men stalking women and women stalking men, everyone seductive in their red and black attire. Lifting bar chairs, grouping and regrouping, forming alluring tableaux, they project an almost predatory energy. At one point, the women remove their jewelry and a single shoe, leveling themselves with great control as they continue their interactions with the men.

With its nightlife setting and the dancers’ charged, sophisticated moves, Red & Black brings another nighttime revelry, The Wild Party, to mind. Leeper’s extended party, however, doesn’t disintegrate into darkness; it simply keeps unfolding. Where exactly Red & Black arrives at the end is unclear and perhaps doesn’t need to be. The journey for this recent offering – so many years and countless stairs climbed by gifted dancers since I felt the Giordano magic on Davis Street – is destination enough.

For more information on Giordano Dance Chicago, go to https://www.giordanodance.org/

“Broadway & The Bard”, Len Cariou’s idea of combining his two great loves – Shakespeare and the American Musical, is a heartwarming and tender paean to the art forms which made him an icon of the American stage. Conceived following his Broadway appearances as Shakespeare’s Henry V in 1968 and opposite Lauren Bacall in 1969, it consists of ingenious pairings of Shakespearian monologues, and both well-known and obscure musical selections from The Great White Way, in which Mr. Cariou gives full voice to his passion.

Mr. Cariou is 79 years old, so we really didn’t know what to expect. It has been awhile since his Tony Award winning triumph as Sweeney Todd. He did get off to a somewhat shaky start, most obviously with pitch problems in his upper range. Perhaps he was trying to conserve energy and had not properly warmed up. Perhaps there was lack of support because he was seduced by the false promise of amplification. The venue was a very small space – why bother with amplification? As a result, it took a while for the audience to immerse itself in the performance.

However, this was Len Cariou. A few flat notes are not a problem. The epitome of honesty, Cariou’s brilliance is rooted in total dedication to his art and his immersion in the meaning of the text, his compelling selfless confidence in the mastery of his craft, and massive stage presence. His irresistible charm, humor, and laser-like smile blasts across the footlights and envelopes his audience. Never maudlin, self-indulgent, or boasting, he shows a complete absence of self-consciousness, traits usually absent from other one-man-shows or cabaret acts.

The accompanist for a venture of this kind is often overlooked or given secondary status, but Cariou is blessed to have found Mark Janas, whose virtuosic, pianistic brilliance and bedrock support for the singer never strayed beyond the boundaries of collaborative ensemble. This was one of the finest examples of accompanying that we have ever heard. It wasn’t clear what Barry Kleinbort contributed; it seemed that most of the explanatory banter before each grouping could have just as easily been improvised by Cariou. Scenic design by Josh Acovelli looked as if whoever occupied the space last didn’t quite finish with their strike. We might have thought we were in the wrong theater, but for the obligatory bust of Will just upstage of the Steinway grand piano.

Performed at Chicago's Stage 773, “Broadway & The Bard” is often clever, such as when Benedick’s Act II, scene 1 speech lamenting his vow to never fall in love segued into Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?”, or Petrucchio’s misogynistic speeches from “The Taming of the Shrew” morphed into “How to Handle a Woman” from “Camelot” - when we were expecting “Kiss Me Kate”. However, there were occasionally abrupt or jarring segues, such as when the viciously ambitious Act III, scene 2 speech of Richard II goofily became “If I Ruled the World”, by Ornadel and Bricusse. Nevertheless Matt Berman’s atmospheric lighting seemed to help soften these moments by gently taking the audience out of one theatrical reality into another.

Mr. Cariou’s concept of monologue and melody peaked with Marc Antony’s Act III “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech from “Julius Caesar”, in which Cariou gave full reign to the vestiges of former power and range of the great singing actor who dominated the Broadway Theater for nearly four decades, and was followed by a wonderfully insightful “Forget Medley” of songs by Rogers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, Alan Jay Lerner, and a setting of Shakespeare’s “Fear no more” by Stephen Sondheim which left the audience all but breathless.

Inevitably, as though in recognition that his days are numbered, Cariou entered Lear’s Act II, scene 4 monologue in which Lear acknowledges the fragility of life and rails against his daughters’ faithlessness. Segueing into Kurt Weill’s “September Song” provided the most moving and tender moment, as if Mr. Cariou was using this vehicle to say goodbye to his audience and career.
“Brush Up Your Shakespeare”, for sooth!

Bill & Margaret Swain