May 16
Photo courtesy William Frederking
RECOMMENDED
It’s been a fruitful year for budding choreographers, starting with Hubbard Street’s “danc(e)volve” program in January, then the Link Up residency at Links Hall in March and this weekend with The Dance COLEctive’s showcase of in-house talent. Incubating and presenting the creative gifts of her company members is nothing new to Margi Cole, who made nurturing and promoting the creativity of emerging artists a bullet point in her company’s mission statement and whose “COLEctive Notions” program is an annual event. Read the rest of this entry »
May 09
RECOMMENDED
High-tops meet taps in the Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s annual celebration of National Tap Dance Day. The all-male, high-voltage FootworKINGz will make an appearance delivering the furious, foot-flying, floor-scorching moves that have garnered the crew national press and two members appearances with Madonna both on video and on tour. Read the rest of this entry »
Apr 25
Jazz-based Inaside presents a spring program packed with pieces by new choreographers on the scene as well as a few from established dance makers. Richard A. Smith, Inaside’s artistic director, premieres a new trio based on notions of justice and objective truth. Read the rest of this entry »
Apr 24
Megumi Eda and Luke Manley in "The Watteau Duets"/Photo: Erin Baiano
RECOMMENDED
Noise rock meets ballet in a revival of Karole Armitage’s 1981 piece “Drastic-Classicism.” Dancers share the stage with the band, which includes Chicagoans Mike Vallera and Shelly Steffens. Armitage’s aggressive movement vocab captures well the adolescent rage and sexual fervor that made your parents hate the music and wait up for you in the living room with the lights off. Is this piece really more than thirty years old? Read the rest of this entry »
Apr 24
Photo courtesy Herbert Migdoll
RECOMMENDED
The Joffrey closes their season on a Romantic note—the capital R specifically pointing to Edwaard Liang’s “Age of Innocence” and Jerome Robbins’ “In the Night.” Both pieces are favorite Joffrey standbys: the former a lush ensemble piece inspired by Jane Austen, in which white-clad dancers play out formal, yet passionate courtships before three red velvet curtains; the latter a series of duets depicting three different romantic dynamics. Read the rest of this entry »
Apr 10
Photo credit: Daniel R. James
Dance makers from New York, San Francisco and Chicago release the reins and remix each other’s work in three nights of performances at Links Hall. New York-based experimental mover Julie Mayo and Madison/Chicago-based Kate Corby—both Links Hall Artistic Associates—invited a handful of choreographers to form creative wrecking crews, surrendering their finished pieces to their colleagues and dancing under their direction. Read the rest of this entry »
Mar 21
Joseph Kudra, photo by Jonathan Mackoff
RECOMMENDED
Gustavo Ramirez Sansano said he was interested in how a machismo culture, like that of his native Spain, is obsessed with the image of the free woman when he chose to adapt “Carmen” for Luna Negra Dance Theater. Sansano uses Bizet’s famous, hummable score (sans vocals), placing it to contemporary dance in a way that should make opera aficionados hear the music with new ears. Other lush elements of opera are present, too, reduced to a level of suggestion that supports the abstractions in the choreography without interfering with them. Grayscale costumes by fashion designer David Delfin and ingenious all-white set pieces by Luis Crespo establish scene and character in the midst of Sansano’s, quick, athletic choreography that blends ballet, modern, gestural movements and hints of pasodoble and flamenco. The mise-en-scene is inspired by Picasso, who inserted Carmen into more than 140 of his paintings. Read the rest of this entry »
Mar 20
Naci/Photo: Rosalie O'Connor
Three years ago Eduardo Vilaro stepped away from Luna Negra Dance Theater, the Chicago company he founded ten years before, to return to New York City and take the helm of Ballet Hispanico. Vilaro spent his childhood in New York and danced with Ballet Hispanico early in his career. This month he brings the company to Chicago to perform at the Dance Center of Columbia College, where he learned, taught and served as artist-in-residence.
Along with a new work by Vilaro, the program includes “Espiritu Vivo” by Ronald K. Brown, inspired by the intersections of African and Latino diasporas, “Naci” by Andrea Miller about Sephardic Jewish culture in Spain, and a piece on the greater human condition by the inimitable Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. I spoke with Vilaro via phone, catching him in New York between tours. Read the rest of this entry »
Mar 20
Almost forty years before John Woo had Nic Cage and John Travolta swapping mugs as a vehicle for on-screen suspense, Georges Franju originated the cinematic concept to far creepier (if less action-packed) effect. A brokenhearted plastic surgeon tries to restore his daughter’s mutilated face by kidnapping young women off the streets of Paris and stealing their identities the pre-digital way.
Not a subject one might imagine as a muse for a tap show, but Mark Yonally, artistic director of Chicago Tap Theatre, was inspired by just that, creating an evening-length stage adaptation of the French horror film “Les Yeux Sans Visage” told through rhythm both verbal and tapped. Read the rest of this entry »
Mar 19
Osipova Hallberg/Photo: Gene Schiavone
RECOMMENDED
Perhaps the only dance company in the world so famous it can be recognized by its initials alone, ABT visits Chicago for the first time in seventeen years to perform the iconic 1840 story ballet “Giselle.” The massive company boasts sixteen principals, over a dozen soloists and a corps (practically an army) of sixty technically superb dancers. With a rotating cast of leads, one could have an entirely different experience at each of the five Auditorium Theatre performances. Read the rest of this entry »
