Dance Review by Sarah Osterman Myers, August 1

Published on Chicago Stage and Screen

The Long And Forgotten Winter— performed by RE|Dance Group

Swirling, white feathers. A towering paper crane. Golden light. Spiritual restlessness. A physical journey.

RE|Dance Group’s fifth annual evening length work is of herculean proportions and transports the audience through time, space and dimension. Divided into three sections titled Devotion, War and Transcendence, Artistic Director Michael Estanich’s 70-minute work uses a dance-theater approach to confront great uncertainties of past, present and future. Often times when such grandiose topics like war are broached in dance, the result is feigned aggression and struggle, but The Long And Forgotten Winter wrestles that expectation into a more spiritual realm and explores the relationship between God and War.

Estanich willingly admits to feeling “fractured” about those two ideas, and maybe that’s why he uses seventeen different songs throughout the piece; to demonstrate through musical fluctuation the ever-changing journey that is spirituality. Yet while musically fragmented, creative movement transitions make The Long And Forgotten Winter feel like an interconnected passage through time, successfully allowing the nine performers clad in Spanish conquistador garb to dance to 15th century Vihuela melodies at one moment and then shift into a casual, stomping phrase suggestive of contemporary times at another.  

Soft curiosity into birdlike gestures into determined stamping into interwoven limbs into spinning and slapping; the movement is as assorted as the music. Yet while choreography changes, the enormous crane structure created by Grant Sabin and subtle lighting designed by Sarah Lackner stay constant, becoming a familiar and comforting backdrop. And it’s that masterful blending of familiarity and the unknown that marque the evening as a memorable voyage.

The Long And Forgotten Winter is supported in part by Audience Architects’ New Stages for Dance Program and appears at 7:30pm on August 2nd and 3pm on August 3rd at The Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts located at 1016 N Dearborn St, Chicago, IL 60610. For information and tickets visit www.redancegroup.com.

TAGS: RE|Dance Group; Michael Estanich; Lucy Vurusic-Riner; Sarah Lackner: Grant Sabin; Elaine Hlavach; Daiva Bhandari; Stacy DeMorrow; Angela

Luem, José A. Luis; Jonathan Monroe-Cook; Mindy Meyers; Melanie Rockwell; Sarah Osterman Myers