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What's So Funny?
Random Acts of Entertainment
October 19 to 20, 2012
DanceWorks is a professional dance company in Milwaukee with a reputation for pushing the boundaries of movement and dance. THE SHOW is a professional sketch comedy troupe with a reputation for... well, let’s just say they have a reputation. These two groups have collaborated to bring you an incredibly funny, completely unique night of comedy. There will be sketches and there will be dances. There will be dancey sketches and there will be sketchy dances! The What’s So Funny cast consists of Doug Jarecki, WCT’s Education and Outreach Administrator, along with Karen Estrada, Andrea Moser, Matthew Huebsch, Jason Powell, and company members of DanceWorks.
Reviews:
Read the Reviews: Milwaukee Journal, Third Coast Digest, MilwaukeeMag.com
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Review Title
By Reviewer Name - TimeOut Theater Critic
Month 17, 2012
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Review Title
By Reviewer Name
Posted: Month 16, 2012
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Review Title
By Reviewer Name - Waukesha Now Theater Critic
Month 12, 2012
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Danceworks collaborates with comedy collective on 'What's So Funny?'
By Elaine Schmidt, Special to the Journal Sentinel
Month 17, 2012
Perhaps using "dancers" to describe those who perform in a Danceworks Performance Company production does those performers an injustice.
Saturday evening's performance of the latest Danceworks production found performers teaming up with members of The Show, a collective of local comic actors. Dancers sang and acted alongside actors who danced and sang in a collection of original, humorous, musical/theatrical/video/choreographed vignettes titled "What's So Funny?"
The partnership created wonderful contrasts and a lot of hybrid sketch humor/interpretive-dance giggles. Both Danceworks and The Show members proved themselves to be fearless, versatile, funny performers.
Constructed of vignettes, the show found dancers cast as figures in a life-size foosball game; prerecorded videos offering wickedly good spoofs of PBS dance documentaries; and sendups of "Downton Abbey," "Bunheads" and, loosely, "Cats."
As always, the company worked in a bare, black-box space with no more than the occasional portable ballet barre and makeshift video screen as scenery. A few simple props fleshed ideas, and costumes helped set time and place and define characters.
With each new piece, the performers created a different, engaging world in which to play out a scene.
Although the performers' expressive vocabulary for this production included a few sung segments and a good deal of spoken word, it was the movement that made the show.
Dancers in traditional house-servant garb used pantomime to express, on demand, the emotions of their rigid, upper-crust British employers. Pantomime was also the vehicle in a nearly wordless bit featuring three men waiting in desperation to use a restroom.
Ballet and silliness made a wonderful contrast when dancers at barres were controlled by a couple of foosball-playing lummoxes. Limber balletic movements became erotica for one of a pair of thieves.
A couple of production numbers, including a sidesplitting finale and a bit built around a dancer passing gas, were all part of the silliness and humor.
Performers for "What's So Funny?" included Danceworks company members Melissa Anderson, Kim Johnson-Rockafellow, Dani Kuepper (Danceworks artistic director), Christal Wagner, Joelle Worm and Liz Zastrow, with guest artist Alberto Cambra. They were joined by The Show members Karen Estrada, Matt Huebsch, Doug Jarecki, Andrea Moser and Jason Powell.
What’s So Funny? Danceworks and The Show
By Tom Strini
September 30, 2012
Let’s just ignore the sketch about lovely female dancers farting on stage – not that there’s anything wrong with that – and get right to the most imaginative comedy in What’s So Funny?, a joint effort from Danceworks Performance Company and The Show comedy collective.
The best idea in a night of good ideas: Crossing The Black Swan with The Ugly Duckling — not to mention Mean Girls, Fame and Napoleon Dynamite — to get a junior-high dance-department drama of envy, hazing, the supernatural and murder. The Show’s Karen Estrada, as the hapless nerdy girl, managed to build some sympathy despite the absurd conceit of being transformed by the magical powers of the duckbill mask. You can’t help but root for her to bump off mean girl Joelle Worm, who was herself ready to kill for the starring role.
The talented Jason Powell wrote the music and lyrics for and starred in An Unattractive Man. Choreographer Dani Kuepper set Powell amid a bevy of adoring chorines as he sang a patter song about all his admirable qualities and possessions: His comics collection. His action figures. His basement apartment — in his mother’s basement. His prowess in online debate about the relative quality of sci-fi shows. His bald spot. His allergies. In the song’s refrain, he expresses dismay that despite all this, he’s still called an unattractive man. Go figure.
Powell also cast himself as the butt of his own jokes in another song and dance, Date Night. Here, he’s out with the slinky Christal Wagner and all excited about a special gift he has for her. The little box does not contain the expected engagement ring, which enrages Wagner and sets her to belting out a song of complaint and warning. All the while, she yanks Powell through a tango that leaves him crying for mercy.
Mean girls Zastrow, Wagner and Worm, tormentors of Ugly Duckling Karen Estrada. Mark Frohna photo for Danceworks.
The Show’s Doug Jarecki produced three Pioneers of Dance video episodes, all of them starring the dancers and comedians in various guises. The opening credits and earnest tone nailed the vibe of local public TV documentary production circa 1970. At last, the nearly forgotten pioneer of dance on the radio gets her due.
Andrea Moser and Estrada wrote Stuckuppington Manor, a send-up of BBC upstairs/downstairs period dramas. The aristos, it seems, are just too reserved to express their own emotions. So their staff dances their emotions for them, on cue, in idiotically literal dances by Kim Johnson-Rockafellow, Liz Zastrow, Alberto Cambra and Melissa Anderson. The contrast of the wild gyrations of the servants with the utter deadpan of their betters makes the thing crazily funny. Also, Dani Kuepper should wear that upper-crust ringlet wig all the time. Walk down the street in that thing, Kuepper, and drivers will crash their cars from laughing.
The scripts, the acting and movement mesh beautifully in this show. The actors move surprisingly well, and the dancers know their way around punchlines, both physical and spoken. Everyone can sing. Against all odds, all 14 sketches work, without a stinker among them. Well there is that one, Kuepper’s Qui a coupe le fromage?, with very authentic sound effects by The Show. A cheap laugh, but a good laugh.
The Cast: Danceworks Performance Company, Melissa Anderson, Kim Johnson-Rockafellow, Dani Kuepper, Christal Wagner, Joelle Worm, Liz Zastrow, Alberto Cambra (guest artist); The Show, Karen Estrada, Matt Huebsch, Doug Jarecki, Andrea Moser, Jason Powell. Lighting by Jan Kellogg.
Guffaws and Port de...er...Braws! Danceworks' Hilarious "What's So Funny?"
By Paul Kosidowski
October 5, 2012
It seemed like an odd idea from the start: a modern dance company collaborates with an improve sketch comedy group to create an evening of…. Well, they really didn’t know what they set out to create—they just wanted it to be about dance. And funny.
What’s So Funny?, which runs through Oct. 13 at Danceworks, is still hard to categorize or explain. But it isn’t hard to describe: inventive, witty, audacious, hilarious, and, at times, even touching. It’s the most fun I’ve had sitting in a theater in a while, and if that sounds like a blurb designed sell tickets, so be it. The more the merrier.
For the show, Danceworks company members Dani Kuepper, Kim Johnson-Rockafellow, Christal Wagner, Melissa Anderson, Joelle Worm and Liz Zastrow (and welcome guest Alberto Cambra) are joined by the members of The Show—Karen Estrada, Matthew Huebsch, Doug Jarecki, Andrea Moser and Jason Powell—a sketch comedy and improv group. The combined groups spent a few months brainstorming and rehearsing, and unleashed over a dozen short sketches to an unsuspecting public. The result is a show that should have more sequels than Saw.
Since surprise is part of the delight here, I won’t be a spoiler. But here are some of the things you can see in What’s So Funny?
—A grown-up version of “The Potty Dance” that will be familiar to toddlers and parents of toddlers.
—A human-size foosball table.
—A short documentary about the burlesque dancer named Nipples (that was her real name—her stage name was Jenny).
—A brilliantly executed silent movie tribute worthy of Keaton or Chaplin.
—A Busby-Berkeley style dance number to a poignant lament for nerd/geek-love (be sure to notice the dancers’ headgear).
—A funny and oddly touching parody of The Black Swan that brings a bit of South Park snark into the world of grade school ballet classes.
And, as promised, you will see dancers act, and actors dance. And do it exceedingly well (a special shout out to Melissa Anderson for her portrait of a turbaned doyen of “interpretive dance”).
Regular Danceworks fans will get a special kick from seeing familiar dancers put on costumes and go for the funny. Comedy fans will get a charge from the great physical humor from dancers and actors alike. What’s So Funny? is a hoot. Long may it plié.