MONEY DROP Currency plays an important role in The Sky Hangs Down Too Close.

Photo: Cheryl Mann

In Peter Carpenter’s new work, The Sky Hangs Down Too Close, there’s a scene where dancers move around the stage with dollar bills hanging out of their mouths. “It’s a really odd thing to look at,” Carpenter says. “The dance continues for some time, and at points you actually forget about it, and then you notice it again. I think it’s really interesting how the dollar appears and disappears.”

An abstract meditation on money, power and struggle, Sky Hangs Down is inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s 1924 play In the Jungle of Cities, which is set in Chicago. Lucky Plush Productions, arguably the city’s top dance-theater ensemble, premieres the piece Friday 20 at Galaxie in Logan Square.

“Julia [Rhoads, Plush’s artistic director] said I would love Brecht and this play in particular,” Carpenter says. Indeed, he found the play’s critique of capitalism compelling, resonating with some Marxist cultural theory by Fredric Jameson and anthropologist José E. Limón (not to be confused with choreographer José Limón) that he read while working toward his Ph.D. in culture and performance studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This project has given me a chance to focus on some questions that I’ve had for a while, namely, What does postmodern capitalism look like? How does it make us move?” Carpenter says.

Though Sky Hangs Down tackles some heady topics, the performance itself is not entirely cerebral. “It’s quite physical,” says dancer Lia Bonfilio. “There’s a section when Meghann [Wilkinson] does a duet with a dollar bill. It ends up in her mouth, and it’s like this force pushing into the back of her skull until she’s supine on the floor.”

Another section includes two dancers, two tables and about $70–$80 in pennies. “The pennies spill off the tables onto the floor and make a lot of noise, which I find quite satisfying,” Carpenter says. “And you know how we have this saying that money is dirty? Well, it is! After doing that section, the dancers’ hands are black from the pennies.”

Carpenter used a technique he calls “sparking” to develop material for the work. In rehearsals—which began in January—Carpenter recited bits of the text from the play and asked the seven dancers to respond instantly with a short, improvised performance. “Sometimes the text [directions] would be really short, like ‘Hungry drunk’ or ‘White hot yell,’” says Bonfilio.

Wilkinson’s duet with the dollar was developed from another exercise: “I asked the dancers to use the dollar in two different ways,” Carpenter says. “One was to use it as a weapon against an imaginary enemy, another was to feel it being used against yourself.”

In keeping with the play’s urban setting, “we tried to find a really raw space downtown” in which to mount the work, Carpenter says. He and Rhoads eventually settled on the dance studio and theater Galaxie because its location in an industrial corridor resonates with the theme while still providing a dance-friendly facility.

The show begins with prologues in some of Galaxie’s smaller rooms, before the action converges in a large performance area. “The audience can walk around and check these out,” Carpenter says. Costumes by Jeff Hancock are “from the time of the play, but weathered, decaying,” Bonfilio says. “There’s a gown with a bleach spot where a brooch might have been.”

The mood of Sky Hangs Down is “definitely dark,” Bonfilio says. “But it also has a lot of dark humor. I think the big question of the work is, Why do we fight? Why do we struggle?” Not that Carpenter offers any answers: He says Brecht felt the audience shouldn’t wonder why the characters are struggling, but simply focus on the struggle itself. “I’m attracted to emotion and theatricality, but I also value letting the [dance] movement speak for itself,” he says.

The Sky Hangs Down Too Close hangs out at Galaxie through June 29.