Feature image: Courtesy of Amanda Milligan.
By Xiao Faria daCunha
On a dimly lit stage, a dancer is seated elegantly in a wooden chair. She fidgets in her seat, stretching her limbs as if slowly waking up from a trance. The movements gradually intensify, but the lady still appears to be invisibly confined within a certain radius around the chair. It is only when the dancer removes her dress that she gains full freedom. Liberated, the lady strides across the floating white balloons pinned to the stage’s floor. The balloons get pulled and tangled as she bends, reaches, and rolls. Their shadows cast into deformed clusters on the back wall. Toward the end, the staff enter the stage, remove the balloons, and finally, the chair, leaving the dancer staring into the empty room. Light’s out.
“Lady” was the first piece in a new body of work by Chicago-based dancer and choreographer Amanda Milligan. The series is inspired by the works of American painter John Singer Sargent, whose portraits primarily capture the women of the Edwardian Era high society.
For Milligan, choreographing after a visual art piece is an act of restoration, imagination, and exaggeration. “We know so much about John Singer Sargent, but barely anything about the women he painted,” said Milligan. “Who were they? How did they feel?”
For example, the “naked” lady was far more active and mobile, interacting with the balloons with curiosity and frustration. By undressing her, Milligan freed her. At the same time, she reminds the viewer that while the painted woman is two-dimensional, their existence was not — the painting omits and erases the subject’s true identity.
In “Queens Head,” inspired by “Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth,” the dancer wears a weighted cape with various fabrics representing the victims in Lady Macbeth’s story, following a choreography guided by significant lines spoken by the murderous queen. This combination investigates the emotions and struggles the mad queen experienced throughout the story and the labor demanded from the actress to portray such a character on stage.
The next piece, “Ruckus,” is named after “El Jaleo (The Ruckus),” one of Sargent’s earlier paintings capturing the livelihood of the commoners. Here, Milligan goes behind the scenes: one dancer plays Sargent, dancing with the female dancer during the first half, then sits to the side with a paper pad while a character study (created by Chicago-based artist Ava Leldo) comes together via projection on the backdrop. This multimedia approach honors the creative process while recreating the passion, noises, and livelihood excluded from the completed painting.
“I love Sargent’s work, but we also must be honest that he was fully coming in from the lens of the male gaze,” said Milligan. “ I wanted to step in so we can look at these women from a female lens to restore these women’s complex humanity that got lost in the paintings.”
“Lady”, “ Ruckus” and “X” will premiere in Chicago on June 20th and 21st at Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble Theatre (1650 W Foster Ave, Chicago, IL 60640) as part of “A Gallery of Dances,” a multi-story, multimedia dance performance produced by Chicago-based Dance Company, Darvin Dances.