Reviews

Chicago Dance Crash excels at having fun, at playing. Which isn’t as easy as it might sound: To let go and yet venture beyond the silly requires a bit of bite here, a bit of pathos there. It’s an approach that Shel Silverstein perfected. And the Chicago-born poet-artist-songwriter makes the perfect Dance Crash playmate in “And Now for the Dancing Pants!” through Dec. 10 at the Ruth Page Center.

Silverstein famously appealed to both adults and children, and though I wouldn’t exactly call “Dancing Pants!” a family show, the opening-night audience included kids, maybe ages 8 to 12, who seemed greatly amused. The MC Mattrick Swayze (aka Matthew Hollis) eased us into the festivities with a game show: a dance battle between two teams, the outcome decided by audience responses. Then we saw 13 very short dances by six choreographers, each piece titled after a Silverstein poem.

Decked out as a lanky, swishy Christmas elf complete with candy cane-striped high heels, longtime Dance Crash collaborator Swayze is unfailingly, effortlessly funny. Here he banters with the audience (taking good care of the children, don’t worry) and announces the rules of three rounds of danced games for the two teams: Interpret a Silverstein poem, which he reads aloud; follow a set of movement guidelines (give your best “Mighty Ducks” dance-team impression); play a game of freeze-tag.

There’s considerable dance interest in these contests, especially the movement-directed ones. Entirely improvised, they offered some spontaneous thrills: The team directed to keep one dancer off the floor at all times nearly dropped her at the last minute; dancers asked to telegraph movement, passing a phrase from one person to the next, came up with some lovely canon moves.

But the meat of the show is the choreographed second part. Rapidly paced, the dances are thickly layered with occasional dialogue and live singing, recordings of the Silverstein poems, and pop music ranging from Rosemary Clooney and the Bee Gees to rapper Kamau. The effect is pleasant overload and confusion: Much more is going on than you can catch in the moment.

Some of the pieces here are just played for laughs: David Ingram’s blessedly short, sweet solo “Prayer of the Selfish Child,” the solo “Unhappy Here,” choreographed by Deahr, which turns Kaitlin Webster into a brown paper-wrapped package. And some are about virtuoso dancing, generally in the hip-hop mode. Zak McMahon’s free-styled “Dancing Pants” makes Silverstein’s drawing come alive. In Rich Ashworth’s beautifully detailed “A Battle in the Sky,” two teams of two face off; KC Bevis, McMahon, Kelsey Reiter and Porscha Spells absolutely nail the musicality of this very musical work.