Hello again! I know, it hasn’t even been a week. I said last time that I had plans for Friday, but I had misremembered: my ticket was for Thursday evening. I have to thank the venue for a timely email reminder yesterday morning — otherwise I would have entirely failed to show up, and forfeited a not-insignificant portion of my monthly entertainment budget.

The show I attended last night, after getting off of work, grabbing an early dinner at Raising Cane’s (my usual Friday treat, moved to Thursday because I had been expecting to go to the one in the Loop all week and I find deviating from a planned routine harder and harder as I age), and wandering the six short blocks to the Harris Theater, was Bodies of Matter, a presentation by the GALLIM dance company visiting from New York.

Dance is probably the art form I understand the least while admiring the most, and I’m not remotely competent to judge Andrea Martin’s choreography on any level but the visceral. Fortunately she kept a tight grip on my viscera nearly all the way through — during the slow, solo, strings-accompanied piece titled Middle Length Poem I did find myself succumbing slightly to the warmth of the full orchestra seating and the concession-stand beer I had purchased to kill time before the doors opened, and had to force my eyes back open. But otherwise I was rapt throughout, overwhelmed by the sheer bodily capability on display from the nine dancers in the company.

Because of who I am, my attention was captured at least as much by the music as by the dance. The oldest piece performed, BRUCE (2007), was probably my favorite, because being soundtracked by Balkan Beat Box and Joanna Newsom (remember Balkan Beat Box and Joanna Newsom?) brought it closer to pop than anything else in the program, which was dominated by glitchy electronic soundscapes. Chicago native India Hobbs’ standout performance in the middle of BRUCE lip-syncing to Newsom’s “The Book of Right-On” was almost musical theater in its appealing broadness, raising laughter for the only time all night, and the whole piece felt a bit like a more athletic Fosse homage to my ignorant eyes.

The slightest piece, to my mind, was also the newest (first staged in 2022), a fairly straightforward duet to Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” between a male and a female dancer; beautifully embodied, but adding little, as far as I could tell, that isn’t already present in the song. The more abstract pieces (state, DESDE, and especially the breathtaking, full-company closer SAMA, all from 2017–2019) felt both more intellectually rewarding and technically impressive, although I don’t discount the possibility that I’m just a rube who’s entranced by spectacle, and the more bodies on stage at a time the more thrilling I find it.

But I got so much pleasure out of that hour and a half that my nagging sense that I didn’t, or couldn’t, get everything that was being communicated doesn’t much matter. It’s a familiar feeling, and one that is the price for participation in the arts. I don’t have enough music theory to get everything that’s going on when I listen to jazz; I don’t have a complete understanding of the cultural context when I read French, Russian, or Japanese literature; even my favorite contemporary pop music, made by Africans or Latin Americans or Caribbeans in completely different circumstances than my own, carries meanings that I am undoubtedly incompetent to grasp. Embracing, acknowledging, and carrying on despite my ignorance is the only way to become even slightly more competent.

I’ll be trying to do that with a variety of artforms for the rest of the year. See you in March, if not sooner.