Capitalism thrives on predictable, neatly defined categories, so it might be an act of rebellion to keep the algorithms guessing by mixing multiple art forms in one experience. For example, one of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s “Liquid Music” presentations at St. Paul’s Palace Theater this week.
That’s where folk-flavored rocker Justin Vernon’s band Bon Iver is rendezvousing with St. Paul-based modern dance troupe TU Dance and visual artists Aaron Anderson and Eric Carlson for a conflagration of creative energy called “Come Through.” Thursday evening’s premiere proved unrelentingly exciting, a celebration of body, heart, mind and soul that successfully blended multiple artistic visions.
Granted, it’s clear why four shows at the 2,800-seat Palace Theater sold out lickety-split: Bon Iver is a very popular band, a two-time Grammy winner whose most recent album hit number two on the pop charts. But if some among Thursday’s enthusiastic crowd decide to check out more modern dance, I wouldn’t be surprised. For what choreographer Uri Sands and his nine-member troupe presented was thrilling, beautiful and disarmingly expressive. And it meshed marvelously with the music that Vernon and his three bandmates were sending out from an upstage scaffold.
If that weren’t stimulation enough, artists Anderson and Carlson created projections that threw another voice into the conversation, one that could distract or augment the mood, depending upon your viewpoint. I was fine with the collage of images botanical and urban, artistic and medical, but I’d understand if the frequent use of text might be too much for some, stealing attention away from the artistry of Sands and Vernon.
Yet I can’t imagine that you could be distracted from these dancers for long, for the TU Dance ensemble is a tremendously gifted group. The dancers were the center of attention from the moment they emerged in bedraggled loose-fitting street clothes, soon falling into one of those elaborate, fast-paced full-company unisons that are something of a Sands trademark. Their movement equally employed tradition and bracingly fresh modern moves, frequently finding common ground between Africa and American street corners with dashes of exultation akin to what you’d find at a Greek or Jewish wedding.
And Vernon and company provided an ideal soundtrack, his emotive voice sliding between soaring falsetto and passionate growl, his electric guitar hypnotically meditative on some songs, rough and rocky on others.
For an artist who first found the public ear last decade as a soloist of sadness — his first album a virtual one-man requiem for a relationship — Vernon has gone on to increasingly value the meeting of creative minds, instrumentation and ambitions growing with each new incarnation of Bon Iver. That said, he’s slimmed down to a quartet for this project, one that features the Twin Cities’ Michael Lewis and J.T. Bates.
While this is a band that could clearly get a great jam going, Sands’ tightly scripted choreography wouldn’t allow too much of that. But it all fit together very well, especially in an extended centerpiece that looked to bear the title, “The Jig,” judging from words glimpsed in the deconstructionist projections. The movement and music traveled an arc from peaceful to passionate to aggressive and back over the course of a segment that proved a great showcase for all 13 artists on stage.
With 14 new songs by Vernon and one cover — Leon Russell’s “Song for You” — “Come Through” is a deeply involving 75-minute opus, one that left me inspired and a little overwhelmed, but hungry for more of this kind of multidisciplinary blend.
If you go
Who: TU Dance and Bon Iver
What: “Come Through”
When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Palace Theater, 17 W. Seventh Place, St. Paul
Tickets: Sold out, but, if turnbacks become available, they’ll be $45-$25 and available at 651-291-1144 or thespco.org
Capsule: An unrelentingly exciting meeting of the artistic minds… and bodies.
