This past weekend Chicago Dance Crash finished their run of Immediate Gratification, a show I imagine was inspired by text messages, hot pockets, and next day shipping. The idea? We want what we want when we want it.

Put together by guest director Paul Christiano, the show featured a hodge podge of skits and pieces that had the audience laughing for most of the night. This wasn’t the Crash I’m used to. Their shows are always entertaining and filled with comedic relief, but Immediate Gratification was unlike anything I’ve seen them do.

It’s no surprise that America has a very short attention span these days. Wait, what was it that we were talking about? Oh right, short attention spans. This concept fueled choreographer Paul Christiano to develop a piece in 2010 called “ADHDivas” that pokes fun at the “DirecTV generation” while giving them exactly what they want. The choreography is as fast paced as the Girl Talk-esque soundscore -- if Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis lived in a Max Headroom cartoon video game existence -- that Christiano composed himself during rehearsals.

Directed and choreographed by Christopher Courtney, who also stars as the Great Stone Face, The Trials of Busta Keaton is packed with juicy comedy, tragedy, and illusion as it explores the haunting correspondences between silent film and danced narrative, pratfalls and break-dance, the Hollywood lockstep and mechanized, alienated hip-hop. Current pop music, vintage commercials, and recorded snippets of interviews with celebrities such as Chris Farley and Brandon Lee provide a vivid aural backdrop.

The Chicago Dance Crash, no stranger to dialogue in its dance and storytelling mix, turns to silence in "The Trials of Busta Keaton," a production inspired by the struggles of a movie comedian.