CHUTZPAH DANCE

Chutzpah Dance is a female, neurodivergent, Jewish led project-based dance company founded by Erica Isakower. Often told she had a lot of chutzpah in both positive and negative contexts, she allowed her nerve to drive her forward in her passion for dance to create an inclusive company that has the audacity to take up space. You matter. Your art matters.

 

Erica Isakower’s movement is athletic, dynamic, and floorwork-based. She utilizes all bodies through varying tales in a book of short stories. Never staying too long on one spiel, however, words crammed to fit the page. Loquacious. Each fleeing vignette is a prismatic kaleidoscope of ideas radiating and bouncing to the edge of sight with no return. Her work is a constant “Newton’s cradle” of innate rhythm and energy swinging back and forth–energetically juxtaposed in many strata of nature. Though inviting and interactive, my choreography puts the audiences' natural curiosity to work as they view a hidden world peeled open that invests in the audiences' desire to learn more. Turning the page, pushing the vines aside uncovers the encapsulated world as they absorb the thrust of spiraling and hypnotizing movement hurled their way. The contrasting sharp, pounding, angular shapes and the rushing waves of circular flow entice engaged eyes as they discover the circus train approaching. Browsing through heads and tails and tales, she constantly plays with facings, phrase layering, and phrase manipulation, cutting and pasting throughout the creative process to create a thousand-layer cake in a cartoon illustration, slowly drooping to one side–irregular yet pleasing, silly, and joyful.