| breakbone reviews
Visions of Light 2007
 Chicago Tribune feature
 Chicago Reader Critic's Choice
héroïne - A Woman's Tale 2006
Chicago Sun Times Review
Chicago Tribune Review
Reader Critic's Choice
ONE 2005
Northwest Indiana Times
Chicago Sun Times
Chicago Tribune Review
Deadtech 2004
Reader's Critic's Choice
Chicago Tribune Review
Reader
Feature Sect 1
Chicago Dance & Music Alliance
Awards Breakbone For Excellence
The Cheney Award
Logotype vs. 2.1 2003
Reader Critic's Choice
Chicago Tribune Review
Chicago Reader Review
ONE series 2003
Chicago Tribune Review
Reader Critic's Choice
Logotype Concert Premiere 2002
Dado - Independent Critic
Reader Critic's Choice
Chicago Tribune Review
Su - Independent Critic
Logotype 01 Premiere
Chicago Reader Review
Logotype 02 Premiere
Chicago Reader Review
Logotype 03 Premiere
Chicago Tribune Review |
excerpts
In the blistering Visions of Light, artistic director Atalee Judy further explores chamber dance-theater opera. This new hour-long solo show is both a meditation on the life and death of Joan of Arc and on Judy's father, a schizophrenic hospitalized several times before he died, when she was 12. At the age of six she believed that he "heard angel's voices, could walk on water, and could speak directly to God." Though Judy occasionally employs her signature "bodyslam" style--notably in a chase scene called "Wolves"--more often she moves in a quieter but still highly passionate way. Of the sections, the most moving were "Pray" and "The Noose," the latter performed using a silky sling that allows Judy to be sort of airborne but also close to the floor, a fine metaphor for the human condition.read more >>
Breakbone overcomes obstacles, if not stereotypes
"Heroine" can be a grueling voyage with a dramatic or choreographic gesture that is either starkly realistic or surreal, and this saves the day. In addition, Faes and Fehrenkamp are strong, deeply expressive dancers capable of suggesting great vulnerability as well as grit. As for Atalee Judy, her integration of all the various media is invariably artful and imaginative, and she possesses an impressive sense of theatricality.
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Breakbone infuses sisterhood with bone-crunching power.
In 'ONE,' what's hidden comes to the surface.
"If you could look behind closed doors in half of the houses in America, you'd see people having breakdowns, people having fights, physical violence. You'd see women making themselves sick to lose weight..."
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Breakbone's Deadtech the formidable new work
A large-scale collaboration between Judy, several designers and the Dance COLEctive, "Deadtech" follows the journey of the title mechanized survivor (spun from wires and used auto parts) of a global catastrophe. Left with artifacts, like the torso of a doll, Deadtech searches for signs of human life only to receive mixed signals about love, sex, war, power and death.
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Breakbone's Award for Excellence for the ONE Series
A new cash prize, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Award of $7,500, will go to Breakbone DanceCo for Excellence in Performance of their ONE Series Concert held for a brief engagement this past February 2003 to sold out houses. read more >>
Logotype vs 2.1 - the concert
Literally incomparable, Atalee Judy is a dance artist confronting a world of agony and requiring even those of us who like pretty dances with pretty music to notice movement's unique role in dissecting that world and calling it to account. read more >>
ONE series 
They fall to the floor, leap over each other's bodies and lift each other with breathtaking daring. Gradually, the tortured dancing in the film makes way for duets, including a spectacular one featuring Atalee Judy and Elizabeth Lentz in a rough, combative confrontation. read more >>
Logotype Concert Premiere
How to begin to fathom the mind of Atalee Judy, with her band of bone
slamming body breaking performers? read more >>
Atalee Judy is a choreographer for the 21st century, citing as the motivating force behind her "Logotype" series her generation's culturally induced attention deficit disorder and resultant fixation on jingles and logos. read more >>
This amazing ensemble is about as far removed from pretty, artful choreography as the human body can endure. They fall to the floor with so much angry energy it hurts to watch. But that punk intensity, that anti-pretty aesthetic only begins to describe the gutsiness & ferocious imagination of artistic director Atalee Judy. read more >>
Logotype 01 Premiere
Shot in a half-demolished building & wearing costumes resembling straightjackets - the choreography is shatteringly physicalthey and creates an effect of both classic universality and horrifying vulnerability. read more >>
Logotype 02 Premiere
The movement is unrelentingly violent, drawn from Atalee's immersion as a teenager in the punk rock scene, moshpit dancing, and the martial arts - the choreography gives a visceral reality to the impact of electronic surveillance on our lives. Suddenly, with no perceivable preparation, two of the women fling themselves high into the air, legs kicking out to one side as if blown away - the movement is sharply defined and rigorously executed. read more >>
Logotype 03 Premiere
Atalee Judy, is a radically issues-oriented choreographer of Breakbone DanceCo. I continue to vacillate between feeling violently pushed away and getting absorbed in Judy's sound-and video-heavy solos, which graphically tackle subjects in her self-described bodyslam technique. read more >> |
