Review: Love, Loss and Other Constellations by Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company
by David Glen Robinson
The title Love, Loss and Other Constellations poetically describes the diverse themes of the new show by KDH Dance Company, the first sincecompany founder Kathy Dunn Hamrickpassed away in February 2026 . Beautiful dancers, well costumed and accompanied by wonderful live jazz-based music, created a dance event of sparkling imagery and creative inspiration. The show featured sections and movement tropes from Kathy Dunn Hamrick's choreography and shows from the company's past twenty-four years. These gems' “other constellations” were co-artistic director Alyson Dolan's framework settings of new sequences and imagery. The allusion to bright starry patterns is apt.
In theatre parlance this was a one-act, a single continuous 50-minute performance, presented from opening to curtain call without an intermission. The constituent dances blended, transitioning seamlessly from one to the next. This was very much Kathy Dunn Hamrick's tradition and style. She typically set her shows in modern dance. So did Dolan, who in her curtain speech said, “It’s modern dance. It’s abstract art, so get out of it what you wish.”
The audience got out of it a great, loving homage to Kathy Dunn Hamrick, starting with the pre-show installation around the stage of light fabric-wrapped boxes. The cast moved and played with these boxes at a walking pace, carrying them, scooting them, holding them overhead. At one point a dancer performed a headstand in a box, legs extended skyward, to comic effect. At other moments, dancers lay on the stage motionless as another danced through in solo. This reviewer thought of these tableaux as sirens lounging on a beach, that internal transformation coming early in the performance.
Quickly the aesthetic of the dance shifted to one of an abstract universe, freed from the limitations of the grounded earth. Lisa del Rosario rose to a gesture of one sweeping line, Brancusi-like, an intense upward look on her face, clearly communicating with all things Above. A photograph of Kathy Dunn Hamrick in that exact gesture hung for years in Café Dance.
Alyson Dolan wrote of her last visit to KDH, including the passing of the baton to Dolan, symbolized by the transfer of the KDH Dance Company's archival box. The box contained notes, descriptions, mementos, publicity, tokens, and souvenirs -- the memories of all the KDHDC's seasons—in short, the legacy. The box performances in Love, Loss, and Other Constellations symbolized shows in that archival box, glorified and released to inform the art of yet other constellations.
The cast—Anna Bauer, Celeste Camfield, Cara Cook, Lisa del Rosario, and Love Muwwakkil Estes—performed some of the high points of that legacy while facing the future. An intense tetrad, or dance of four (the dancers minus Cara Cook), seemed impossibly tightly clumped on stage without any collisions—astoundingly so, for Dolan's bold choice was to include the personal notes and inflections of the performers rather than giving us lock-step unison dance. This showcased the dancers' immense skills.
A brief trio by del Rosario, Bauer, and Camfield appeared even more intense, coming in the latter stretches of the show when the dancers, musicians and audience were covered with sweat. Intensity perspires.
Duets throughout the show were distinctively Kathy Dunn Hamrick.
Costumes were coordinated among the dancers, musicians, and the performing boxes. The signature color combination was black and gold. The combination was set off best in the costumes of the dancers (shapes, cuts and outlines varied widely) in metallic lurex fabric, obviously light, stretchy, and movement friendly. The costumes' gold lines against the black sparkled brightly under Stephen Pruitt’s lighting as if speaking to other constellations. Cara Cook designed costumes with assistance from Carissa Topham Fisher.
Similarly attired in black and gold, the musical ensemble gave us a fifty-minute suite of jazz, with solos and various instrument combinations. Co-artistic Director Drew Silverman composed and directed all of the music. He played a drum set with various supplementals. The others were Henna Chou (strings, including stand-up bass), Andy Nolte (keyboards), and Leila Louise Henley (saxophone). Henley’s lengthy saxophone solo in the second half of the show was an incredible jazz riff that flowed like a river. Music composed and performed live for dance is relatively rare and very welcome. Silverman gave us a great show. And his son Isaac gave us a great story, related as only a five-year-old can tell one (Isaac is also Alyson’s son).
Kathy Dunn Hamrick was a brilliant choreographer who left a legacy for the equally talented and committed. Love, Loss and Other Constellations is a new beginning and a loving look back to one beloved by many, a person who gave a world of art to all of us in her too-short life. We look forward to new shows by KDH Dance in honor of that legacy.
EXTRA
Click HERE for KUT-FM audio feature about the transition, May 11, 2026
Love, Loss and Other Constellations
by KDH Dance Company
Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company
May 29 - May 31, 2026
May 29 - 31, 2026
East Side Performing Arts
