HQ Review: Resilience Dance Company presents “Once Here, Still Moving” with Chicago-based company Hot Crowd
On Friday, April 24, Resilience Dance Company and Hot Crowd premiered their collaborative double-bill, Once Here, Still Moving, featuring two world premieres choreographed in response to the same central prompt: how space, place, and time define our embodied histories and shape our present selves.
The show opened with three improvisational scores, accompanied by Saint Louis-based musician e-GoS (Gabriel Vianello), bringing together dancers from both companies to respond to prompts provided by the audience. In a show centered on space, place, and time, there’s something especially meaningful about watching these artists share the stage for the first time, a convergence of two distinct places within one shared space.
Hot Crowd was the first to take the stage with the premiere of “buildup” by Artistic Directors Devon Lloyd and Brittany Latta in collaboration with the dancers. Inspired by poems written by WashU alum Lydia Nickels, the dance played out like a series of vignettes, whispering a sprawling series of striking images from behind rolling white window panes. In one moment, two dancers with lamp shades for heads bring the piece into a world of domestic absurdity. In another, the dancers rave in a crowded room before allowing the walls to close in tightly on one remaining dancer thrashing through every remaining inch of the claustrophobic space tightening around her. While still containing hints of the company’s signature athleticism and hard-hitting unison, “buildup” feels like a departure into something more cerebral and dream-like.
Closing out the night, Resilience’s “Benchmarks 9.0” by Artistic Director Emily Haussler charges with the energy of an adventure film as it teams with cinematic storytelling. Loosely following the interwoven stories of 9 individuals, the piece centers around the use of a small wooden bench, a bench that has been with the company through much of its history, serving as a marker of where the company has been and where it is headed. The dancers utilize the bench with a staggering inventiveness. At one moment the bench is a crowded bus seat, the next it is the high top of a bar, then a seat being anxiously saved for someone who never comes, a wall to lean on, a body to press against, an obstacle to hurdle, and a branch to swing from. Early in the work, a duet between Lexie Hoehn and Abbie LeBaube proves the company’s strength and extreme risk-taking as they climb the bench and each other in a kaleidoscope of contortioned embraces. Ashlynn Woelbling stands out, delivering an honest and heartfelt narrative of starting a new chapter in a new space, the bench taking the form of boxes of belongings as she presses through remarkably reaching inversions and breathtaking suspensions. Smatterings of community interweave the smaller narratives in perfect pacing — despite its 48-minute runtime it never feels drawn out and leaves a craving for more.
While this may have marked the first time the two companies have shared the stage together, the budding relationship between these two companies feels like it’s been a long time coming. Hot Crowd, a Chicago-based contemporary repertory company currently in its ninth season, is no stranger to the Saint Louis dance scene. The company has performed at the Saint Louis Contemporary Dance Festival in 2024 and at MADCO’s Dare to Dance Festival in both 2024 and 2026, amidst its myriad of other touring engagements around the Midwest. In similar stride, Resilience Dance Company, now concluding its seventh season, has rapidly grown its reach throughout the Midwest from Saint Louis to Chicago and beyond. The two companies share in their value of athleticism and rigorous contemporary partnering, with Hot Crowd thriving best to dance-heavy beats and Resilience routinely delivering breathtaking levels of physical and creative risk. As the two companies wrap up their seasons with one final run of Once Here, Still Moving in Chicago at the end of May, Resilience and Hot Crowd seem to be opening a meaningful bridge between the vibrancy of St. Louis’s dance scene and the broader Midwest.
Photos by Lumosco
