Critic's Choice – The Seldoms
Chicago Reader
By Laura Molzahn
Offbeat venues really inspire Seldoms artistic director Carrie Hanson. For past performances she's made use of an empty Park District pool and a dusty retail space with a soaring atrium. This weekend she stages her new work, Convergence, in a 17,000-square-foot former Streets & San garage.
The dance's six sections – repeated throughout the evening so viewers can arrive and wander at their leisure – will be framed by Joel Huffman's four smooth-surfaced, abstract installations, scattered throughout the space, and one remnant of the building's industrial life: a large metal shipping container.
The duet staged inside the rusted box is rough and raw, with two dancers bouncing off the walls and reciting graffiti scrawled on them by long-gone workers – "Ham was here," "hey Chris I love you." An elegiac tone marks the sections set against Huffman's work. In one motif the dancer stands with her back to us, feet planted wide, and gazes behind herself as if at a receding past. Art, artists, and art patrons suddenly seem as ephemeral as Chicago's working-class heritage.