The year 2022 was designated the “Year of Chicago Dance” by the city of Chicago, drawing a commitment from the mayor and several partner institutions to increase investment, collaboration, participation, and focus on dance in all its forms in Chicago. But if institutions are “humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain […]
Category: Dance
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Beyond The Nutcracker
December is obviously the time when dance companies dust off the old chestnut that, according to a 2017 Dance/USA survey, accounts for around 48 percent of their annual revenues. If you’re interested in The Nutcracker, we’ve got a round-up here. But there’s also more afoot in Chicago dance this month than the beloved Tchaikovsky ballet […]
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‘Every footfall leaves an imprint’
On October 27 and 28, the Harris Theater filled from front row to the top of the balcony for Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975) and common ground[s], a new work by Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo. These historic performances, coproduced by École des Sables, the Pina Bausch Foundation, and Sadler’s Wells, brought Bausch’s […]
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Different but the same
Though differing in mood, the three works in Joffrey’s Beyond Borders program are structurally of a type: abstract, ensemble-based, heavy on unison choreography that exhibits the patterns that can be formed by dancers forged according to an exacting technique. Featuring a world premiere by Chanel DaSilva, alongside a 2013 work by the late Liam Scarlett, […]
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Refraction opens Hubbard Street’s 45th season
Now celebrating its 45th anniversary, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago presents Refraction, a mixed bill of contemporary works consisting of the world premiere of Chicago choreographer Randy Duncan’s Love Infinite, The Windless Hold by Osnel Delgado, and Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Dichotomy of a Journey—for one weekend only at the Harris Theater. With a program composed of […]
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Seeking a friend for the end of the world
The stage is dark and lightly clouded with fog—in the distance, a dense heap of jumbled objects signals the end of systems and uses. Booms Day brings us into the story of a Girl (KC Bevis), who, equipped with little more than her boom box and her big pink glittering heart, must find friends and […]
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‘Black dance is American dance’
On August 27 in Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, the eight companies representing the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project—Ayodele Drum and Dance, Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Forward Momentum Chicago, Joel Hall Dancers and Center, Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, Najwa Dance Corps, and Red Clay Dance Company (joined also by Creation […]
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Romance languages
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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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‘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 […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]