Kate Zambreno

Heading on Sheridan Park Road towards the Berger Park field house, you pass a Catholic school playground. The children, in all their different sizes, colors and shapes--uniform only by the required plaid--play ferociously during recess. Their feet stomp on the pavement as they chase after a dodgeball, bellowing high-pitch shrieks, some of it cruel, some of it unintelligible. Since you are going to interview a choreographer, one who would probably listen more to the physical poetry of this scene, you linger longer than you would normally.

On the other side of the street is the field house, a little brown shack resting on Lake Michigan almost like a retreat. On the third floor, the headquarters and rehearsal space for the dance company Mad Shak (the name's an anagram of the founding dancers' initials), founder and artistic director Molly Shanahan nestles in her little alcove of an office, talking about the Edgewater neighborhood where she also lives. This play of opposites inspires her about her location, both nature in its patterns and chaos, as well as the volatility of the surrounding urban environment. "I sometimes wonder how I would do in a city like New York that seems to me much more about the manmade--I know there's Central Park, and lots of sorts of escapes from it," she stops, considering thoughtfully, her hands winding around themselves.

"But the cityness of New York seems quite present. And unavoidable. So I ask myself sometimes how I would do in a situation like that. And I ask myself sometimes how my work would live in a more rural situation. My fascination with watching nature would be all-around. I ask myself those things sometime, because I do feel a pull in both directions. It's ironic that this space really enables me to have that. Just simply from choosing to look out one window or another."

You both look out at the open pane blowing in cold air. Shanahan laughs. The muscular dancer looks younger than her thirties, almost elfin with her dark curly pixie cut. Chicago has been home for the Canadian-born dancer and teacher ever since she moved here ten years ago from Ohio, where she studied contemporary dance. Her company, nearing its tenth anniversary, has gone through many phases borne out of intense reflection, from what she describes as a fascination with text to a concentration on pure movement. She talks about contemporary dance and her stretch to develop a new movement vocabulary. A choreographer of contemporary dance is like a philosopher experimenting with her own ideas in a different language than that of the masters who preceded her. "We all have the same body. We all have a body. We all have a body with potential and capability and capacity," Shanahan considers. "Dancers are privileged in that their life is spent honing that capacity or mining that capacity for depths that not everyone focuses their life or time on. In a lot of ways a choreographer that's developing new movement vocabulary is doing the same kind of things that James Joyce did with language, which is reinforming how we look at it by the connections that are made, or how far it pulls itself out from the literal."

When she first began the company, she was also interested in exploring the boundaries between dancer and non-dancer, and between sound and movement. Percussionist and composer Kevin O'Donnell, one of the original dancers in the company, has been composing scores for Mad Shak since the beginning. Shanahan characterizes this long-term collaboration with O'Donnell, who composed the score for both of the two works she will be premiering at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, as constantly evolving and integral to her company's aesthetic. "The history we have built is entering the realm of rare," she says.

Her work continues to evolve. Although Shanahan thinks heavily about her work, she discusses her fascination with movement as being visceral and immediate. "Movement over and over and over again is a doorway into the present moment, which is not a cerebral happening," she says. "My work is really about movement. And because it's so much about movement, and discovering and inventing movement that is unique, it becomes also about a lot of emotional/human/whatever things that aren't part of the intended backbone of the work, but become a part of it. There's not literal stories or emotional states of being that I set out to express, nevertheless those things grow into the piece, because the movement is, I hope, knock on wood, really honest."

This week Shanahan premieres two new works, a sextet entitled "The Poems of Replaceable Kings," as well as the first phase of "Eye Cycle," a longer-term project commissioned by Links Hall in partnership with the National Performance Network and Denison University, her alma mater. In "The Poems of Replaceable Kings" Shanahan experiments with live video feeds in order, she says, to meditate on the theme of the relationship between the observer and observed and to experiment with different perspectives. She has worked with video the last eighteen months. "As a way in the live moment of performance to reveal additional eyes," she says.

In "Eye Cycle," her duet with another dancer aims to explore the metaphoric role of light in movement. "I am constantly fascinated, or just drawn in, stupefied, on how my life feels so ridiculously momentum driven. How light continues to--it is sort of hokey--continues to move at its own pace," she says. Light to Shanahan has grown to epitomize live performance for her, so ephemeral and exciting. "In a lot of ways Eye Cycle is a response to that. It's really pushing my boundaries creatively about the moment of creation and the moment of performance."

"Eye Cycle" was also influenced by Shanahan's natural surroundings. At home she rehearses in her living room and dining room that are surrounded by windows. "I will come home in the evening, and look and see this kaleidoscopic patterning of light in the space, and I'll think to myself, 'I've got to get in there and work in this light,' and I will go to do something stupid like change the laundry, or, whatever, open my mail, and look, and the light has completely, utterly changed and will never be the same again."

You walk outside with Shanahan. She is going to her car to collect lamps bought at a vintage shop to be used for "Eye Cycle," you need directions to the nearest gas station. She points and turns and draws out a map in the air. "First you take a right, and then if you've reached here you've gone too far." You remark that it's kind of humorous to be given directions by a dancer. She laughs. It is no longer rush hour, you also remark. It is now evening. The light has changed and of course you think about that.

Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak Dance Company premieres "The Poems of Replaceable Kings" and "Eye Cycle" October 16 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 North Dearborn, (773)743-8014, Thurs-Sat 8pm, $18, through October 25.

(2003-10-16)

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