Urban Bush Women- Walkin with Trane

COLUMBIA COLLEGE DANCE CENTER CHICAGO PRESENTS URBAN BUSH WOMEN,

‘WALKIN WITH TRANE’

REVIEW BY: Maja Rios

Urban Bush Women. Photo courtesy of The Dance Center.

This outstanding, Brooklyn-based troupe of seven dancers; six female and one male, of different ethnicities and body types was a feast to behold!

Starting in silence and darkness on stage, a white-clothed form appeared and danced in total silence and eventually was joined by six other dancers with pure movement against a black background. Never has silence created such beauty.

Next, the dancers moved to a variety or recorded sounds and background images that traced the beginning of jazz to the present day. Humming , field hollers, jazz riffs feet taps to electronic music, and modern jazz combo music,;the dancers contorted their bodies in time to each separate beat, with every part of their bodies. One dancer , moved and scatted acapella jazz riffs as she moved her body to each nuance of sounds she was humming, like her body was John Coltrane’s sax in body form! Amazing!

In the second half of the program, the dancers clothed in black/red/white costumes, moved in more free-form style and improvisation to live Coltrane excerpts from Coltrane’s masterpiece, “A Love Supreme” played live onstage by outstanding pianist, George Caldwell, who is part of the touring show. Mr. Caldwell was a force of nature himself, with great rhythm and emotion, playing both bass lines and chord/melody by himself.

This was cutting-edge jazz dancing at its best and Trane “s music truly came alive anew with Urban Bush Women Dance Collective! Bravo! A Must See! Two more perfomances are scheduled for Fri and Sat Feb 19^th and 20^th ,7;30 pm at Columbia College Dance Center, 1306 S, Michigan ave. Chicago.

M. Rios
www.chicagojazz.com/majarios

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