You don’t have to leave home to discover new things. The Joffrey Ballet, for instance, reveals a whole new side of itself when it takes to the streets in Alexander Ekman’s Episode 31, a company premiere at this year’s Chicago Dancing Festival. Created in 2011 for Juilliard students, Episode 31 opens with a video of flash mob-like Joffrey dancers overrunning the el and the pavement. The piece itself exudes tribal energy—think hip-hop and Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring—as 17 dancers break into stamps, spasmodic twitching, all sorts of tipping and tossing, and yelling. It’s thrilling, but exhausting for the dancers and almost assaultive for the viewer. Fortunately, it’s relieved by sudden moments of stillness, even of classical dance.
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