Blues Dances, a suite of dances performed to live music by composer Erwin Helfer, Chicago boogie-woogie innovator and master blues pianist with noted saxophonist John Brumbach. Blues Dances, captures humor and hope in the face of daily life and reveals landscapes that are at once magical and unforgettable.
Choreographer: Jan Bartoszek
Music: Erwin Helfer (piano) and John Brumbach (saxophone)
Costume Design: Sue Haas
Victor Alexander, Mei-Kuang Chen, Eric Eatherly, Brooke Franklin, Maray Gutierrez, Kim Larimore, Christopher McCray
Blues Dances
March 25-27 2004
The Dance Center Columbia College Chicago
Choreography Now: Dancing on the Boundary
February 27th 2004
Chicago Cultural Center
Jubilate!
November 19, 2006
The Harris Theater
In Blues Dances, Bartoszek strips down the Broadway musical convention of showing a diorama of broadly painted relationships across a bustling cityscape to something more aching and internal. The sense of feeling lonely in a crowd is conveyed through a series of rough-and-tumble solos amid the tug-o-war swaying of dancers, who cling to each other or push away their partners at a blues club.
-Lucia Mauro, Chicago Tribune
Special thanks to the Sara Lee Foundation.