Dylan Gutierrez Archives - Chicago Reader

A male dancer is dressed in a costume suggestive of a 19th-century military uniform (gray tights with red stripes down the side of the legs, suspenders, black boots). He holds up a woman in a white blouse that looks like a corset and a thin white translucent skirt

A dance of contrasts

by JT Newman February 20, 2023February 20, 2023

Scene: A blustery, freezing February night in Chicago. As we approach the Civic Opera House, a cluster of protestors come into focus. They’re holding aloft bloodied ballerina soft sculptures, signs that sport slogans like “supporting ‘great Russian culture’ is supporting the war,” and large-scale images of Oleksandr Shapoval, a Ukrainian ballet dancer and teacher who […]

The ensemble of Don Quixote in Spanish-style costumes stands in a circle around a blanket upon which Sancho Panza is being tossed into the air. The set backdrop is brick and stucco and Spanish-Moorish in design

Dance

Romance languages

by Irene Hsiao June 6, 2022June 6, 2022

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 […]

Two men in denim work clothes sit. The man on the left is sitting on a bench, pointing upward. The man on the right is following the direction with his eyes.

Dance

Binary ballets

by Irene Hsiao May 2, 2022May 5, 2022

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 […]