Photo: Mark Palmer

RECOMMENDED

The title of Margaret Jenkins’ evening-length work exemplifies the ethos of the performance, both in the connotative meaning of the words and in the gentle play of syllables on the tongue and lips. Massive-scale projections by Naomie Kremer transform the theater walls into a dream-universe of constellations and kaleidoscopic light, bearing equal importance on the stage as on the white-clad dancers, who sidle in to play against a vast field of shifting lights. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: David Weathersby

RECOMMENDED

Honey Pot Performance invites audiences into the sensuous world of Chicago House, celebrating the feminine side of a movement that gathers all races, genders and sexual identities to the universal pleasure of losing oneself in a transfixing, danceable beat. The Sweet Goddess Project challenges the notion of House as a male-dominated scene, exploring not only female contributions to the scene, but also concentrating on the sense of community and empowerment inherent to the movement. Read the rest of this entry »

BONEdanse/Photo: Chrystyne.com

RECOMMENDED

Therapy, motivational albums, self-help books, tranquilizers, psychotropic drugs… Freud gave a language and a theory to our modern psychological damage, the rest of the twentieth century gave us ways to mend it. Atalee Judy and the newly christened BONEdanse delve into our peculiar cultural history of psychic damage control, including 1950s-era recordings from Dr. Beverley Weeks advising anxious housewives to up their tranquilizer regimen and case studies of characters suffering varying degrees of dysfunction: the hypochondriac, the hysterical housewife and, more daringly, the sociopath dictator. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s annual winter tap fest expands this year to two locations, adding a handful of performances to the regular program of multilevel workshops and master classes taught by some of the best hoofers in the business, including Lisa La Touche of STOMP. In the past, the Winter Jam focus has been on education, with classes taking place at CHRP’s headquarters at the Athenaeum Theatre. Read the rest of this entry »

Former Bolshoi principal dancer Mikhail Lavrovsky places new choreography on Prokofiev’s famous score in this staging by the State Ballet Theatre of Russia. The Voronezh-based (south of Moscow, some 300 miles from the Ukraine border) company has been around since 1961, but is a somewhat new import to the States. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

A high wind in North Dakota forced Michael Estanich to pull off the highway and videotape the play of prairie grass that “looked like the ocean.” This is the inspiration for RE|Dance’s “Inhabitants of Tall Grass,” an austere trio of great beauty and tenderness. Midwest ancestral blood should stir at the horizontal extensions, the graceful and severe lines—planes on plains—evoking images of broad expanses under vast skies. Read the rest of this entry »

Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theatre/Photo: DeanPaul

RECOMMENDED

Bright colors and Latin rhythms come to the fore in this autumn’s Global Rhythms program, with performances by Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater and the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company of Chicago. The latter will be accompanied live by Sones de Mexico during the Sunday performance. Step Afrika! also returns with new pieces exploring the multifaceted world of stepping—the high-energy, rhythmic stomp-clap-and-shout form that came out of African-American fraternities and sororities in the early twentieth century. Read the rest of this entry »

Merce Cunningham

RECOMMENDED

Dance in the twentieth century was redefined by Merce Cunningham. During his immensely prolific, seventy-year career, Cunningham created hundreds of dances and “events” that approached choreography, collaboration and the relationship between movement and music in a way never before seen. He actively choreographed and mentored his company until his death in 2009 at the age of ninety. The Legacy Tour is the company’s farewell performance; the Cunningham Dance Foundation is preparing to close, handing over a massive body of work to a preservation trust established by Cunningham. Read the rest of this entry »

Jessica Wolfram

RECOMMENDED

The centerpiece of River North’s fall program is Daniel Ezralow’s taut, gritty, high-octane “SUPER STRAIGHT is coming down,” a fifteen-minute piece inspired by a series of terse photos by Robert Longo entitled “Men in Cities.” The social pressure cooker of urban existence is given shape by ramrod limbs, whirling partnering and an industrial score by Dutch composer Thom Willems.

Frank Chaves, River North’s Artistic Director, was in the original cast (the piece was first set on Hubbard Street in 1989) and with the help of Sandi Cooksey, another original cast member, set it on his company. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Steven Caras

As the name professes, this all-male ensemble has street cred aplenty, especially on the major thoroughfares of Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard. Flashy moves and flawless technique have earned the Bad Boys accolades from across the high-profile entertainment spectrum, from competitive TV dance shows to Carnegie Hall, sharing bills with the likes of Lady Gaga and Elton John. Read the rest of this entry »