The Better Half

2011, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

This lively spin on the noir classic Gaslight playfully captures the claustrophobia, escapist tendencies and resilience in domestic relationships, in a dance theater language full of surprising turns and contemporary resonance. The Better Half is co-created and co-directed by Lucky Plush’s Artistic Director Julia Rhoads and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig of 500 Clown.

NPD touring subsidies are available for The Better Half in 2012/13. Contact Lauren Nixon at laurenn@pentacle.org or 212-278-8111 ext. 305, or by visiting www.pentacle.org.

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Reviews “a piece of tremendous humor, humanity and, as to be expected in the hands of Julia Rhoads and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, smartness.” Sharon Hoyer, New City. Read More “this highly entertaining work from Lucky Plush Productions…[is] one of the most accessible exercises in modern dance you'll ever see.” Read More “a breakneck pace, skipping like a spinning stone across its surfaces like a perfect piece of pop art.” Zachary Whittenburg, Time Out Chicago Read More Audio Preview Lucia Mauro on the WBEZ program 848: Audio Stream

Support The Better Half premiered in October 2011 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Support for this presentation was generously provided by Pamela Crutchfield. The Better Half is a National Performance Network Project (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in partnership with the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and NPN. This performance is also supported in part by Audience Architects’ New Stages for Dance program, with leadership from Dance/USA and the MetLife Foundation. The creation and presentation of The Better Half is also supported by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with the New England Foundation for the Arts through the National Dance Project. Additional support is provided through project grants from Boeing, The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Habituation

2010, Spring to Dance, St. Louis

Referred to as "fresh and supremely present" after its premiere at Spring to Dance in St. Louis, Habituation unpacks the seemingly reflexive nature of the movements that we do every day, raising questions about influence, originality, and the ties between preference, habit, and creative choice.

Punk Yankees

2009, The Dance Center of Columbia College

Punk Yankees is a provocative and entertaining dance theater work that combines live performance, video, and the internet to unpack ideas about authenticity, originality, and the ownership of dance in the digital age.  With the controversial nature of dealing with issues of intellectual property, the work takes on challenging topics including sampling, mash-ups, stylistic referencing, impersonation, unconscious theft, lineage, cultural appropriation, and ideas about "fair use" in dance.  Featured in the Chicago Reader's "Best of Chicago 2010" for Best Commentary on Modern Technology by a Choreographer, "the fast-paced, witty Punk Yankees…is fundamentally paradoxical, tongue-in-cheek, subversive, and, best of all, great fun."

Visit our website StealThisDance.com, a virtual stage for our research and experiments for Punk Yankees, and a place where you can steal, buy, and share some dance moves!

Choreobibliography

In the Middle, Somewhat Replicated

2009

Info coming soon...

If...Then I Am Here

2008

Info coming soon...

The Sky Hangs Down Too Close

2008, The Galaxie

"What moves you?" This is the guiding question behind Lucky Plush Productions' The Sky Hangs Down Too Close, a work created by Associate Director Peter Carpenter. Conceived in response to the themes of conflict and desire in Bertolt Brecht's stark drama, In the Jungle of Cities (1924), this darkly satirical dance-theatre work reckons with the seductive and powerful forces that move us everyday. In The Sky Hangs Down Too Close, Carpenter develops arresting images that recall-often comically-the bizarre and shifting ways in which power articulates itself in both public and private interactions. Creating the work in collaboration with a cast of seven veteran ensemble members, Carpenter focuses on the concept of "unmotivated struggle"-a key theme for Brecht-as a way to understand the ways in which we move and are moved. In this, the piece critiques patterns within the social world and simultaneously recognizes the physical labor and symbolic potency of the dancing body.

Cinderbox 18

2007, Museum of Contemporary Art

Cinderbox 18 takes its cue from the media's voyeuristic approach to "reality" to explore the comedy and anxiety in our hyper-networked culture.   With a specific curiosity in the purportedly unscripted and fly-on-the-wall observational style of reality TV, the work both exploits and makes indistinct the live and virtual, private and public, observer and observed, improvised and choreographed, and the highly presentational and minutely subtle.  Athletic choreography, video, dialogue, and a "show within a show" characterize this complex and interactive environment shaped by the media technologies that alter our perception of how reality is generated.

She/Three

2007, Ruth Page Foundation

She/Three is an evening length choreographic triptych that muses on the shared and distinct qualities of three Shakespearean women - Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia - through the point of view of three different artists- Brian Jeffery, Marianne Kim, and Peter Carpenter- utilizing dance, performance video, and theater. The lead artists, along with Lucky Plush Artistic Director Julia Rhoads, share a distinct history of collaboration through their affiliation with XSIGHT! Performance Group, a dance-theater company that was a unique and vital part of Chicago's dance community from 1985-2000.

Lulu Sleeps

2005, The Dance Center of Columbia College

Lulu Sleeps is an evening-length work reflecting the elusive residue of dreams.  With visual design elements of sculptor D Christopher Krause, costume designer Lara Miller, lighting designer Margaret Nelson, and video artists John Boesche and Logan Kibens, the stage becomes a visual playing field where dream archetypes and compelling physicality intersect.  Set to an original score by composer Mark Messing and Kevin O'Donnell, Lulu Sleeps journeys through the poetic and absurd nature of dreams.

Jumping off from images and themes in the most common recurring dreams (falling, flying, sex, death/decay, the situation where everyone else knows what is happening but you), Lulu Sleeps spins out into a non-linear dreamscape filled with rich and evocative movement and imagery. The Chicago Tribune refers to Lulu Sleeps as "Dreams re-imagined through a mysterious psychophysical language…an experience that is quite mesmerizing," and the Chicago Reader notes, "Funny, grotesque, or strikingly lyrical, Rhoads's choreography is beautifully executed."

Surrerlium

2005, PAC/Edge; 2003, Vittum Theater

Initially conceived as a response to a child's fascination with a helium balloon - an object full of fragility, beauty, and tension - Surrelium offers visual metaphors for the ways we experience confinement and release, enchantment and transformation.  The work has 6 distinct sections, and together they offer a "transformed, alternate reality with optical illusions, complex composition, and delicate yet powerful movement that seems to take place in another stratosphere." (Chicago Sun Times). The Chicago Tribune referred to Surrelium as "Indefinable moments of beauty, wit, and fire…It's as if Degas and Magritte showed up in each other's dreams to playfully toss around images of the twisted and the sublime."

Shift

2004, Vittum Theater

Co-created by Julia Rhoads and Krenly Guzman in collaboration with the performers, Shift looks at the physical language of texture and its translation into movement. The textural changes in performers' bodies continually alter their relationships to each other and create a movement landscape with a heightened sense of detail.

Voyaging

2004, PAC/Edge

In the spring of 2004 Lucky Plush Productions and Walkabout Theater Company collaborated to produce an orginial performance, Voyaging, based on Charles Darwin and his world-changing voyage on the HMS Beagle. Dance, theater, music and visual design burst the boundaries of traditional biography looking at social behavior, class structure and biological attraction in light of evolution and natural selection. Voyaging was made possible in part by Elizabeth F. Cheney and the Chicago Community Trust project specific grants.

Endplay

2003, Athenaeum Theater

Conceived and directed by Julia Rhoads, Endplay uses Samuel Beckett's "Come and Go" as a point of departure. The piece highlights a group of characters whose rituals and games serve as a means of affirming themselves as they are lost in a cycle of endless repetition.

Reverie

2002, Athenaeum Theater

One of our shorter repertory works, Reverie utilizes 2 live-feed cameras – one from a birds-eye perspective – as well as pre-recorded footage of the work to evoke the illogical time frame experienced in a dreamlike state.

Beneath the Surface

2001, Chicago's Union Station

In the Great Hall of Chicago's Union Station in September 2001, Lucky Plush presented a durational installation work as well as a dance film, both titled Beneath the Surface as a part of M5's Chaos. Collaborating sculptors from M5 created multiple projection surfaces for the video components of the installation.

Bedtime Stories

2001, Fairbanks, Alaska

Co-created and directed by Julia Rhoads and Holly Rothschild, Bedtime Stores draws upon pop culture archetypes such as Cinderella & Snow White, as well as the intimate and introspective aspects of sleep and human interaction.

Meet Them and Wonder/Vermillion Falls

2000, Fermilab Arts Presenter Series

Co-created and directed by Julia Rhoads and Holly Rothschild, Meet Them and Wonder and Vermillion Falls were first presented at the Fermilab Arts Presenter Series in April 2001 with Hubbard Street 2 and Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, and later as part of "LadyFest Midwest," a festival given critics choice in the Chicago Reader where Kerry Reid referred to Lucky Plush as "cleverly lunatic."

Swinesong

2001, Athenaeum Theater

"Lucky Plush Productions choreographed and performed [Swinesong], one of Dance Chicago's most entertaining pieces…It is evident that they share a penchant for theatrical work, adept at both provocative and humorous material." -PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art

Rituals of Polite Seduction

2000, Hamlin Park Fieldhouse

Both dance-theater work and social satire, our first evening-length work Rituals of Polite Seduction is an absurdist take on gender roles and unfulfilled fantasies through a surprising collision of genres. Noted for its humor and unexpected elements of transformation, Rituals of Polite Seduction reflects on socialization and instinct without simplifying traditional arguments or reinforcing stereotypes.

Royal Flush

1999, Ruth Page Series

Co-created and directed by Julia Rhoads and Holly Rothschild, Royal Flush is the first of our shorter works. Royal Flush was nominated for a Ruth Page Award for "Choreography and Performance of the Year."