Reviews
“Alvis' "Moonlight" is aptly named after the English translation for "Clair de Lune." The Debussy
score inspired and accompanies "Moonlight," and the whole feel of the piece is indeed basking in its namesake. The opening tableaux are disorganized in the best way. Like forest nymphs, the dancers shift between groupings in brief blackouts, as though gazing at their reflections in a pond that is illuminated only by the stars and the moon. It's stunning. The first half of the piece is not Debussy, but a Max Richter score: a repetitive drone not unlike a Gregorian chant. Combined with the dancers' crinkled white frocks (Brandon-Hanson), Chrzan's moon bath and Alvis' delicate hand on the movement, there's a sense of baptism, perhaps echoed by the dancers' letting go of the classical idiom just a pinch. "Moonlight" asks them to resist performing in its strictest sense, and to drop their centers of gravity toward the floor, a mark of Alvis' lineage as a former dancer at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.”
-Lauren Warnecke Chicago Tribune
“The first, Orrante’s “Scend,” was en pointe, set to Luigi Boccherini’s “Symphony in D minor,” and stuck to straight ahead classical vocabulary and patterning. Calf-length red dresses for women and red pants with lacy tops for the men matched the elevated aural and physical tone of the piece. The second, Alvis’ “Moonlight,” was a striking contrast, opening on barefoot dancers in white tunics moving between haunting tableaus. Alvis uses contemporary, release-based, energy-waving movement—internally driven choreography that demanded emotional commitment from her dancers, who rose to the challenge, executing stutters of feet and ripples of spine with equal presence and focus.”
- Sharon Hoyer New City Stage
“The accomplished sextet "Sunrise" — a commissioned work by a non-Thodos member, former Hubbard Street dancer Shannon Alvis — creates an intense community in flux, aided by Nathan Tomlinson's expressive lighting and Ezio Bosso's stirring music (owing a significant debt to Arvo Part). Comfortable with open spaces and with stillness, Alvis allows dancers to be individuals, and no one more than CJ Burroughs, whose labile, tentative solos epitomized human vulnerability at moments of transition.”
-Laura Molzahn Chicago Tribune