Two years into this pestilence, the misery of war, the disappointment of mankind day after day weighing down desperate minds, with a future certain of nothing but social and planetary destruction, do we not long for a reprieve? As the nobleman Alonso Quijano sought glory in the guise of the knight Don Quixote, as a […]
Category: Dance
Light drives the story in TAKE
On an industrial strip of Rockwell just off Elston, beyond a white door with numbers painted in red, past a makeshift bar, through a dark curtain lies a white brick room filled with smoke. Through the haze, folding chairs line each wall, leaving bare an expanse of concrete, above which soar long sheets of white […]
Binary ballets
The evening begins with Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk’s melancholy Melody meandering through the auditorium, a haunting tune that invites contemplation. Curtain down, panels bordering the stage lit in blue and yellow, vines rise in relief where pillars would seem to stand: a ruin retaken by foliage or a reminder of the interdependence of nature and […]
‘A lot of us took on breaking because we were missing something from our lives’
Feet sizzle and fly like minced onions on a hot pan. Limbs wind into a knot, then spring loose. Fulminant levitation—transformation of momentum into moving sculpture—acrobatic play. When someone falls, it’s kidneys to concrete. Toprocks, footwork, power moves, threading, freezes: infinitely variable elements that throw bodies down to the ground and up to the sky […]
Hedwig Dances returns with Field Theory
On an architectural tour last year, Rigoberto Saura settled into the concrete forms of the buildings overlooking the Chicago River. Wrapping around the water, tall brutalist buildings push into the skyline. It was on this tour that Saura heard the phrase “raw concrete.” The piece he created for Hedwig Dances as part of their April […]
Something old, something new
After a dazzling return to live performance at the Harris Theater last autumn, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is presenting two programs over two weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art this March. RE/CONNECT features world premieres by Amy Hall Garner and Darrell Grand Moultrie alongside older works by Lar Lubovitch, Ohad Naharin, and Nacho Duato, […]
Moving beyond performance
Following years honoring public art, creative youth, theater, and music, the city of Chicago has designated 2022 the Year of Chicago Dance in recognition of an art form that is ubiquitous, burgeoning, diverse—and precarious. “The pandemic took a particularly devastating toll on our performing arts industry as shows were canceled, venues were closed, and artists […]
Kia Smith is a south-side diplomat of dance
At Chicago Dancers United’s Dance for Life festival last August, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage reverberated with layers of rhythm. Each row of dancers formed a different section of intertwining phrases—movements playful and powerful that recalled the musicality of jazz. The piece, South Chicago Dance Theatre’s Architect of a Dream, was the work of Kia […]
The collective quest of Chicago dance
Two events occurred toward the close of 2020 that suggested that life and art as we knew it (for better or for worse) might have a fighting chance of existing in 2021: the election in November and the emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines in December. But more briefly than the duration of most resolutions, […]
Joffrey’s Nutcracker gets a new home
Year after year the critic comes, that unkind aunt who wasn’t quite invited to the house spoiling Christmas for the children by pointing out that The Nutcracker is, like most American traditions, not as old and established as it purports to be and problematic where it comes to gender and race to boot. This year, […]
Muscle and mortality in RE/TURN
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, whose last public performance was at the Harris Theater in November of 2019, were in rehearsals on the Harris stage in preparation for their spring season in March 2020 as a citywide lockdown was announced. Following more than a year of virtual programming, the company reemerges at the Harris November 18-21 […]
Bridge Festival returns (virtually) to Links Hall
Bridge Dance Festival returns to Links Hall November 12 and 13 with a digital program curated by Fujima Yoshinojo (Rika Lin) featuring works by artists from Sendai and Tsu, Japan, San Francisco, and Chicago that reflect their individual journeys through the pandemic, as well as themes of identity, aesthetics, and expression. The festival was established […]
Dances of delusion
Months of confinement and isolation inform two introspective, retrospective works on a bill shared by Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble and RE|Dance this November, and one thing is certain: never has an apse looked more like the inner curve of a cranial vault, and our activities within the bone-white walls of Ebenezer Lutheran Church seemed more like […]
Home is where the heart is
Twenty months and one (ongoing) pandemic since their last performance at the Auditorium Theatre, their home of 20 years, the Joffrey Ballet launched its new tenure on the stage at the Lyric Opera House with a dazzlingly triumphant program of three new works by Chanel DaSilva, Nicolas Blanc, and Yoshihisa Arai and a classic by […]
Dancing their Chicago style
Chicago street dancers represent in Red Bull Dance Your Style.