I don’t encounter too many firsts after all these years of writing about the performing arts. But upon entering the New Hazlett Theater for a Corningworks performance, I was greeted by a petite woman almost swallowed by an oversized pink suit.
“Would you mind if I gave you a hug?,” she asked as she gazed up at me. This was not something that a very seasoned dance writer, accustomed to assembling personal (and hopefully balanced) views on the arts virtually alone, ever imagined.
But I accepted…with pleasure. I would later learn that this was University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Li Chaio-Ping, one of Six Women of a Certain Age in The World As We Know It. She would be quickly joined onstage by Simone Ferro (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Endalyn Taylor (University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign) and Charlotte Adams (Professor Emerita, University of Iowa). We would also encounter two redheads — Point Park University alumnus Jillian Hollis (Heidi Latsky Dance), substituting so beautifully for the great Heidi Latsky herself, who was still recovering from a hip operation, and Pittsburgh’s own great dramatic redhead, host/choreographer/director/performer Beth Corning.
The women were clad in shades of pretty pastels. I assumed the voluminous, but nifty-zoot-suit-like outfits, beautifully detailed as always found in a Corning production, could have symbolized how women are often smothered by the men in their lives.
In keeping with the transparency women are trying to achieve through the #youtoo movement, I have to say that I bought into the concept-at-large because I am of “A Certain Age” as well. And I wanted to see what these remarkably accomplished women (Google them) had to say.
Which was plenty.
The format was fairly simple. The women brought their own solos, often literally to a table, with Corning providing connecting dance tissue. Given their career longevity, they also infused a certain power, wit and substance that is not often seen into chewy morsels of dance.
It all began with the table (also a big favorite of Corning and Pittsburgh’s own Attack Theatre as a gathering place for so much besides the dance.) Called In medias res, Li cantilevered on, above and below the furniture piece, demonstrating a remarkable strength and control.
It was the most physical work of the evening, admirably combined with text sprinkled with alliteration and a certain amount of whimsy, something writers like me so often adore. “Before I begin, it is already begun…bedazzle…be square…be you.”
The women collected, then dispersed, except for Ferro, performing a piece by Mauriah Kraker called the quiet. She, too, took off her suit, as the others would following her, looking like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.
She picked her way through well-defined phrases, broken by a blurred windmill of arms. A slow line of shadowy figures made its way across the back, as if a parade of life influences.
Taylor then simply laid her neatly-folded suit in a square of light. A former principal with Dance Theater of Harlem, she had a wondrous lyrical quality in her solo, Is All, which played in and out of memory. It changed as it went on, with an emotional crescendo that bubbled out of the dance.
The remaining women lugged a heavy claw-foot tub across the stage and placed it on the stage in almost ritualistic, team-like fashion. A hand emerged. A cigarette. Toes wiggling. Then a nude Adams engaged in a pas de deux with said tub.
It was daring as she walked around the lip. Moreso, there was a wry amusement in this sanctuary that most of us have, where more than flesh is often exposed.
Corning then reprised one of her own table pieces, taken from her biographical wellspring, muscular in the clarity of its familial characterizations. Where a table cloth became a shroud. But where Corning knew she had a spot at that table.
The last segment belonged to the Latsky/Hollis combination, unfinished. Hollis were a tattered white jump suit. As she moved, her hair came undone, flowing with the rest of her body. There was a pliant weight to it all, performed as a woman relishing her individuality.
But then, they all did as we ventured into each of their worlds.
And, oh yes, there was an empathetic lighting design of such subtle sophistication and thoughtfulness by Iain Court, who we should dub a seventh honorary participant in this collective.
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