Jacqueline Burnett, statuesque, iconic. She stands, as if chiseled into the air, with a stoic determination, perched on a hollow cylinder, the expression on her face no different than if she were rooted in the ground. In a dark room in an old house—midwestern, modernist—Andrew Murdock makes conversation with a shadow. He speaks with his mouth and his hands. He speaks as if he sees the others, but he does not see the others. The house has the colors of the sky at sunset. The colors are brought in by the costumes and the humans that carry them on their bodies. In the oven is a single potato.
Among his collaborators is fellow HSDC alumnus Tobin Del Cuore, founder of Brooklyn-based film and production company Imagination + Muscle, who codirected and filmed The Sky Was Different at the Schweikher House in Schaumburg and at C5 Create with No Limits. Del Cuore began making films as a dancer in the company—initially with the specific aim of sharing the company’s experiences with a friend and colleague from a distance. “I was close to Cheryl Mann—we were dancing together all the time. She was exploring photography and encouraged me to explore moving images, so I got a camcorder and started playing around. I made a tribute for Cheryl when she stayed home from tour—it was the first time she had knee surgery and couldn’t come with us.” HSDC encouraged him to continue, commissioning a series of travel videos for the company’s next tour, as well as video portraits of the dancers for a gala the following year. Although Del Cuore has created a few additional promotional videos for the company since leaving the company in 2007, he says of The Sky Was Different, “It’s a significant return to the company for me in a way I hadn’t experienced before.”
Even from a distance, Fredrickson found a way to bring himself back to Hubbard Street—through Murdock, who remained separate from the other dancers throughout the process, including the filming. “Everyone was working in the studio or in their own place, but Andrew always stayed at home. I related to this person alone in his room—I felt that I was him: when everybody else was in Chicago, I was in my box in Germany.”
Precarious place. I like what that does with the tension. It sounds scientific but maybe it isn’t.
12/3-12/6: Thu 12/3 and Sat 12/5, 6 PM, Sun 12/6, 2 PM; hubbardstreetdance.com; F, but reservations required.
