“The Making” — Review by the Chicago Reader

“Welcome to The World of The Seldoms’ ‘The Making’ ”

Painted banners hang long and low from the rafters of the Pulaski Park Field House, and when the music begins with a noise like a siren, the dancers flicker in and out of view through them, as animals in a thicket or words obscured by censorship bars. They are jointed and joined, mechanical and organic, as they emerge and retreat from view, in groupings that create dependencies through the tensions of push and pull that pulse within and beyond the self. The touch becomes strange as a hand skitters down a leg, not a tickle or a grab, something robotic but alive with intention.

The Making, the Seldoms’ newest work, moves the audience through three distinct environments in the field house, offering vantages and modes that showcase the variety of talents that have assembled this immersive experience. It places its constancy in the moving object, in the bodies of the dancers. Most powerful is the second section, which seats the audience in semicircles scalloped around the room, close enough to touch the restless sinew, to see the detail of the foot as it curls into place, the undulation of the torso as it breathes.

In The Making, dancers are heroic, making cranes and levers of their bodies to furl and unfurl down the length of an auditorium, making architects and architecture of themselves. The majesty of human endeavor and the humility of its labor are here.