While we can look at “Illinoise” at the Park Avenue Armory as a play or a dance concert, first and foremost it is a staged visual album. When considering where it fits into performance and critique, it most draws comparisons to Beyonce’s “Lemonade” or even the Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” before it could be compared to a more “traditional” musical theater adaptation of a musician’s discography (in example “Girl from the North Country”). “Illinoise” might tell a story but it is most certainly more interested in sharing an emotional state and directing how the audience’s mind explores themes like yearning and catharsis in Sufjan’s album “Illinois,” on which the performance is based.
From the first movements of entering the theater, it is noticeable how the space is set up in such a way that it resembles a rock concert. The proscenium style space has layers with the band’s instruments waiting for them to enter, while a billboard announces the show. Throughout the show there is a tension between a sense of invitation and a natural divide between groups. Whether it is the band and the dancers, or between the stage and the audience. The stage’s layers emphasize that divide between the dancers and the band, almost as though the real story tellers are the band and here are their shadow puppets acting it out.
The intimacy of the lyrics combined with the way that the movements balance gestural motions (that are an exaggeration of the characters actions) and more abstract “dancy” movements, make it easy to feel like you should join in or sing along. Yet, we the audience can read from the design of the space that we should not. It is an elegant way to reinforce the tension between the characters we see on stage who are often pulled between what they want to do and what they don’t feel like they can do. This is most definitely seen in the “Henry” section of the work as he is torn between an unrequited boyhood love and a new love, or between Chicago and New York. That tension we can see on the stage and in the movements comes directly from and is an embodiment of the lyrics of the songs played during those moments with lyrics in Chicago like “You came to take us/All things go, all things go/To recreate us/All things grow, all things grow”.
The visual album quality can most clearly be felt in the frame tale method used to explore the different elements in the original album. More surreal sections, like the dance performed by zombies, are shorter but are exploring the same conflicts. The disjointed movements compounded by the lyrics of the song, balance between a yearning to get away from, but still being haunted by the past (as shown by the zombies holding signs with the names of the founding fathers). Even the way that the dancers run in place reinforces that feeling of the inescapable, they can keep moving but they aren’t going anywhere.
The movements of the dancers take on repetitions, scaling them up or down in both size and effort, to relate the way the characters are reacting to the emotions of each other and the music. It is an externalization of that yearning found throughout the music. This is notable in the repetition of the opening scene where two of the dancers are laying on a blanket on the floor. The curving and carving radial movements that often originate in the limbs convey a sense of seeking but not truly finding, more about departures than arriving. Perhaps that pull to leave places and people as given narratively (ie leaving Chicago or leaving old friends behind) can best be seen in the off balance nature of the dancers as they so often feel like they are about to fall over but instead catch themselves and continue on with their dance. At the same time, the pounding rock concert style music is physicalizing the experience for the audience, inviting us into that yearning as well.
At the conclusion of the performance, there is finally a moment of release for both the audience and the performers as the dancers start to make sound as well. In this moment, the band sees them and they see the band. There is some relation to the breaking of the fourth wall in this, but perhaps it would better be called breaking the first wall since it is a moment of unity for the stage and not for everyone in the space. It breaks the divide between story and song, the music and the embodiment. This allows for a cathartic release after the tension that had been built up for the audience with dance that had previously fluctuated between staccato and flowing. Overall, this visual album styling of “Illinoise” takes on repetitions as it moves through its frame tale giving the audience an opportunity to work our own way though the emotions that the performers and choreographer have developed within the work.
Originally Written in March 2024 for Explorations in the Arts at Hunter College. Previously Unpublished.