HQ Review: Chew+Spit presents WHATEVERFEST!
Since its inaugural performance in January 2025, chew & spit – a dance residency created by Marlee Doniff and sponsored by Space Station Dance Residency – has sought to actively lower the stakes of performance by creating a space that prioritizes process over product. That essence of low-stakes performance billowed through every aspect of chew & spit’s first annual fundraiser event, Whateverfest, presented on Saturday, October 18, at Webster University’s Department of Dance. A myriad of mismatched living-room lamps framed the makeshift performance space and offered a soft, homey glow that, along with the steady patter of rain on the roof, wrapped the afternoon in a sense of warmth and community.
The afternoon began with Hayley Barker’s “Now I Can Go Looking For Them.” One by one, three dancers cycled into the space with low, bobbing strides, carrying small crimson sachets close to their hearts. They looped in and out of the space in a steady rhythm, leaving their sachets behind before slipping away, bound to return with another. The grounded rhythm of their movement felt almost folkloric, like the seven dwarves of Snow White journeying through the mountains and woods on their way to the mines. Eventually, one stopped to consider the sachets, breaking the pattern enough to allow for connection in the dancers’ previously isolated journeys. Joy, warmth, and companionship took over as the dancers pulled apart the sachets to reveal golden ribbons of fabric that they tossed and waved through the air, an extension of the lapping quality of their limbs.
One of the most unexpected joys of the afternoon was Nawal Assougdam’s “Please Hold,” a post-modern office burlesque that left the audience enticed and hysterical with its absurdity and playful sensuality. Nawal began perched daintily in a rolling office chair, her toes tapping on the floor to spin the chair, showing the audience every angle of what she was about to offer. As she put on her secretary-esque reading glasses, the speakers filled with dial-up tones – her body convulsed with a quality somewhere between an electric shock and a cartoonish orgasm. From voguing with reams of paper to sliding around ecstatically in her office chair, Assougdam’s performance was a feast of sultry awkwardness and camp in all the best ways.
The final two works of the afternoon brought the tone back to a place of abstract curiosity. Jennifer Monson’s “Feist,” created in collaboration with and performed by Marlee Doniff and Tessa Olson, was a study in durational and energetic contrasts. A drawling banjo created a loosely americana atmosphere while the two performers oscillated between stumbling around the space and undulating quietly in place. There was an evident humanness and honesty in their movement, especially as the music faded out to highlight the weighted footfalls and heavy breathing of the performers. Moments of connection grew in their physical intimacy as the piece progressed, while the emotional intimacy remained as intentionally distanced as the farm couple in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Neither performer looked at the other too deeply or for too long, despite launching their weight at one another or pulling the other’s foot close to their face. Their journey felt raw, and in its wake was left a lingering, satisfying wholeness.
Those themes of humanity and authenticity carried into the final work of the afternoon, “Remember When…,” by Zoe DeYoung, Lexie Hoehn, and Reuben Thomas. Created as a time capsule with the intention of being performed in exactly 30 years, “Remember When…” serves as a snapshot of the performers and their memories of each other. With soft, intentional movements, the dancers melted and shifted between moments of isolation and flocking. Dialogue began to break out as the dancers reminisced on a fading memory of how they met. “I remember it was sad,” Zoe DeYoung repeated insistently, as Hoehn and Thomas moved on to their own games, citing “does it even really matter” in a tone that was simultaneously flippant and resonant. The work as a whole was a wonderful portrait in motion of a young friendship and a promise of commitment that looks toward the future with optimism and open curiosity.
Where dance often slips into ingrained habits of posturing and pretense, chew & spit’s genuinely low-stakes approach to performance melts away that sense of showboating. In its place, both artists and audiences are able to find a more genuine sense of connection. From its living-room-style setup to the informal mingling (and thrifting) with the artists both before and after the performance, Whateverfest felt much like a warm afternoon spent sharing and laughing with friends, a moment of honest community.
Photos provided by Marlee Doniff