Faster than the speed of light, a tiny powerhouse blazes a fiery trail of chaîné turns across the stage. “I am a bun-head at heart,” admits Maeghan McHale of Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, but this dynamo’s dramatic range spans the humor of Sherry Zunker’s The Man That Got Away to the intensity of Jon Lehrer’s A Ritual Dynamic.
In high school she was told she’d never make it as a dancer, but that didn’t stop the 28-year-old McHale: “I’m Irish, so I’m stubborn!” She went on to scholarships at the Dance Theatre of Harlem School and Steps on Broadway and a place with DTH’s second company.
The epiphany came at the 2003 Jazz Dance World Congress, where she first saw GJDC, and thought, “This is it.” It took four auditions and a stint in Giordano II before her dream came true. In a recent rehearsal her spine rippled through a relevé extension in a quicksilver shift of total body focus. For McHale, dance is like an addiction. “It’s what I love most!”
See her perform during GJDC’s spring engagement at Chicago’s Harris Theater for Music and Dance in March.
