reviews > Chicago, IL

Carrie Ohm
Carrie Ohm

19 May 2007

The six dancers in Carrie Ohm’s performance “Super Happy Ending” wear their earnestness on their grim, serious faces. They have worked hard to learn the childish dance moves that they perform with little of the spontaneity and silliness that the six-year-old choreographer must have originally channeled into these moves. Fortunately the dancers have excellent costumes and props to carry the lightness that they can’t help but weigh down: puffy cartoon tuxedo bowties and bibs, gleaming ceramic rattles, and magical pillowy place keepers. In the gallery the props hang carefully and somewhat abjectly alongside a video projection of the dance and comically stiff portraits of the dancers, who seem to embody a certain paradox: the harder you try to be childlike, the less childlike you are.

—Lori Waxman