HEAD TO TOE Antonick gives Meyer a lift.
Photo: Dan Merlo
Watching Jonathan Meyer and Julia Rae Antonick tumble, flip and wrestle through their intricate duet work is like riding a roller coaster without leaving your chair. When choreographer Meyer transplanted his Khecari Dance Theater from Taos, New Mexico, in 2006 (Khecari is a Sanskrit word that means dancing in the abyss), his first production was Dyad, an evening-length duet performed at Links Hall, danced by Meyer and Lia Bonfilio, a strong and powerful dancer who freelances with several troupes here in Chicago.
The energy in Dyad seems to have been a portent of exciting things to come: Although Khecari has mounted several ensemble-based productions since then, some of Khecari’s most intriguing choreography has blossomed out of Meyer’s collaboration with Antonick. A graduate of the Chicago Academy for the Arts and the California Institute of the Arts, Antonick is a dancer, choreographer and videographer.The two met within Chicago’s close-knit modern/experimental dance scene and have since embarked upon a series of duet creations. Their Project #4 debuts at Links Hall this weekend. We interviewed Meyer and Antonick separately on their collaboration—but thought it fitting to present some of their thoughts together below, mimicking the back-and-forth process they use in the studio.
Antonick: We began our collaboration by spending a lot of time training each other in what feels so natural for one of us and just plain awful for the other. For example, I work with Jonathan on backbends, and he works with me on inversions.
Meyer: Julia is a very big, very kinetic mover. We have very similar kinds of quirkiness to how we move. She’s a more arm- and hand-oriented mover, perhaps from her background in Balinese and Javanese dance.
Antonick: I think Jonathan is spring loaded! I know that he has been shaped by his early training in gymnastics and capoeira. I am always amazed at how he uses this power so elegantly.
Meyer: We share an interest in challenging the gender expectations that arise with duet work. We get feedback [from viewers] about how much “story” about relationships they see in our dances, which is interesting to me, because it’s not there much in what we’re actually exploring. Our explorations are more about momentum, weight, balance. Yes, relationship, but more in the sense of physics than of human drama.
Antonick: We really indulge in our shared love of highly kinetic movement and find a shared space of creation that is really surprising. We do a lot of passing back and forth of the directorial baton. It is great to switch back and forth while making something, so that if, say, I have a stomachache from eating too much kimchi right before rehearsal, then I can just sit in the corner and Jonathan can slam it out.
Meyer: There’s an incredible richness about what arises. To use an overused term, a synergy. There’s also joy in having developed a relationship with enough history that there’s a lot of ease, a knowledge of each other and how we work together. There are times when one of us will step up and direct, if the other is not so “on.” Other times, when we’re both really firing, it’s really exciting.
See the lively duo at Links Hall on Friday 5 at 8pm (tickets are $12).