Photo: Matthew Gregory Hollis

Lizzie Leopold begins our interview by saying, “part of the project was to demystify modern dance.” A moment later, she talked about the challenge of not only presenting, but watching process-based performance—the kind of repetition-based, non-narrative exploration that serves as the foundation of her new piece “une elephante”—and the trust required on the part of the choreographer to pull it off. The two statements might seem in opposition; isn’t slow-paced, story-less dancing the kind that scares away audiences out of fear either of being bored or of having to talk about it afterward? Read the rest of this entry »

Lauren Warnecke/ Photo: Savage Rose Photography

Enid Smith takes inspiration from oil paintings by Chicago artist Andrew Rauhauser for her new piece, entitled “Pier.” Rauhauser’s beautiful and quietly menacing series of paintings depicting ice formations, rocky outcroppings, steel grey waves and frozen pilings along the North Shore inspired Smith to create an interpretation of Chicago winter in late August—a chilly reminder of the season past and to come. Warnecke—Performing Arts Coordinator at the Menomonee Club for Boys and Girls and collaborator/grant writer for Synapse Arts—wrestles with definitions of artistic success in “Grind,” Read the rest of this entry »

Juba!

RECOMMENDED

The pulse of tapping feet will thunder from buildings downtown for a fortnight as hundreds of percussive dancers gather for the annual Rhythm World festival, hosted by the Chicago Human Rhythm Project. Week one is a series of intensive residencies at the Fine Arts Building for youth and professional dancers from across the country. Next week features workshops and master classes during the day and public performances in the evenings. Each program is different, giving you just a few angles on a multifaceted American art form; hoofers and jazz musicians riff together at Jazz Showcase on August 1; August 2 is a by-donation informal student and faculty showcase at the Harold Washington Library; and three formal performances at the MCA—featuring virtuosos in their twenties, visiting masters from Canada, and Chicago ensembles respectively—wrap up the festival. (Sharon Hoyer)

Public performances at Jazz Showcase, the Harold Washington Library and the MCA Stage, August 1-6. For tickets to MCA performances call (312)397-4010. Visit chicagotap.org for more info.

Photo: John Sisson, Jr.

RECOMMENDED

Choreographer and sculptor Ginger Krebs has a restless intellect; speaking about her work, ideas tumble over rapid-fire, each thought shooting out a web of tendrils to new ideas; you feel as though she is mapping for you the interconnectivity of all things in the world and our relationship to them. Her newest work—the product of a DanceBridge residency last fall—has a similar sense of abundance. “Myth and Continent” starts by asking how, as we increasingly experience the world as a series of flat images, does that affect our relationships with our bodies and each other. From there, Krebs and her five collaborators consider the diminution of physical space and expansion of virtual space, our relationship with and demarcation of the earth (the title comes from a category of lawn ornament), and how space/time conceptions are shaped by manmade products like GPS. The density of ideas is leavened with humor and the genuine tenderness the performers have for one another. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse, 3035 North Hoyne. July 22, 28 and 29, 7:30pm. $12 at the door.

"Raven"/Photo: Anna Lee Campbell

A large canvas curtain pressed with black feathers cordons off a section of clean white gallery space. Holes are rent throughout the curtain, inviting visitors to step close and peer through. What they see is a large nest—or perhaps island—of earth, twigs and feathers and strewn atop the angular limbs of artists Eiko and Koma. The viewer may enter the dimly lit space behind the curtain and witness the quiet drama of the two naked bodies, reclined but activated, moving constantly though near-imperceptibly, in a silent dance that evokes meditations on death and the eternal.

The performance is entitled “Naked: a living installation” and comes to the MCA as part of a touring retrospective on the career of Japanese-born, New York-based dance artists Eiko and Koma. The couple has been creating work about subjects that, as they put it, matter to them (and indeed matter to us all) for forty years. Trained by Kazuo Ohno, one of the two founders of the slow, detailed, bleak and infinitely rich dance style butoh, Eiko and Koma draw attention to our perceptions of time and space and our physical places within them. “Naked,” as the full title suggests, is a durational piece, performed nonstop during museum hours. Visitors may sit and watch the piece evolve for as long as they please—an invitation to notice more, to experience the intimacy of the space, to become more absorbed in the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

The education-focused Dance Foundation returns from a tour of Italy to perform “New Beginnings”—a new piece by founder/artistic director Robin Fisher, set and recently staged in Rome. TDF pro company filmed their Rome engagement and the footage will provide a backdrop to the one-night-only show at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. Now almost twenty years old, the heart and soul of The Dance Foundation is its education component, providing scholarships to Chicago-area kids and allowing them to take up to seven hours of class per week at the Fisher Dance Center gratis: a pricey education for young aspiring dancers. Some members of the company are former scholarship recipients; others come from the greater dance community. This program is a tale of inspiration and affirmation, in concert with the mission of the organization. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, 9501 Skokie Boulevard, (847)920-9121. Friday, June 17.

Nancy Stark Smith: "Exactness of Weights of Feeling Kuva"/Photo Raisa Kyllikki Karjalainen

RECOMMENDED

A new week-long festival celebrating the creation of art in the moment firmly establishes Chicago as a thriving center of vital, groundbreaking dance. Presented jointly by the Dance Center of Columbia College and Links Hall, the fest pulls national and local artists together to teach, perform, lecture and discuss in venues across the city. Highlights include contact improvisation workshops with veteran Nancy Stark Smith, a performance and a workshop by Bebe Miller, an artist talk and performance inspired by the sculptural installations in Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall at IIT, and a free improv jam in Grant Park, timed to get the city amped for SummerDance. The fest also quite rightly takes ongoing musicians-meet-dancers improv series “Collision Theory” under the umbrella. Individual tickets to events are available; fest passes get you in to three, four or five performances and discounts on workshops. (Sharon Hoyer)

June 12-June 19. For information, call (773)281-0824 or visit linkshall.org/DanceImprovFest.shtml. To register for workshops or purchase tickets, call (312)369-8330.

Photo: Sandbox Studio

RECOMMENDED

Molly Shanahan finds new territory in this latest iteration of the “Stamina of Curiosity” project, namely the entry of aggression into her highly sensitive universe and its co-existence with the charged vulnerability of her performances. The language is the same—playful, elemental movements that seem generated by a greater brain of the integrated body; negative space between dancers charged positive, palpable as bodies—but the framework has changed. An awareness of our very yang, masculine culture is referenced directly in a score peppered with iconic ranting monologues from “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “A Few Good Men”—language playful and seductive as Shanahan’s work, generated at the opposite end of the energetic spectrum. Shanahan told me she found an intersection of vulnerability and aggression in the image of sharks, animals that depend on fluid, undulating movement for survival—a movement that adds to their terror in the human imagination. She states, “It fascinates me, the idea of survival being linked to adaptability and flow and that adaptability and flow being perceived as dangerous.” There’s a lot here and this is the last chance to see it before the “Stamina” project moves on. (Sharon Hoyer)

At Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center, 10 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston. June 2-5, 8pm. For tickets visit brownpapertickets.com/event/174278.

Photo: William Frederking

RECOMMENDED

The members of Margi Cole’s all-female company again take turns directing one another with the return of “COLEctive Notions,” what looks to become an annual evening of new, short works by the Dance COLEctive’s nascent choreographers. Cole has provided an opportunity for the COLEctive to create, direct and critique as peers, and the resources to present their labors for a weekend at Links Hall. Maggie Koller returns with ruminations on love, fear and emotional baggage; Alaina Murray makes her choreographic debut with a piece on life changes and tough decisions; and Molly Grimm-Leasure lucid-dreams the answers to those questions, with a nod to the power of the subconscious. New works by Jessica Post, Kaitlin Bishop and Olivia May are also on the program. (Sharon Hoyer)

At Links Hall, 3435 North Sheffield, (773)281-0824. June 3-5, Friday and Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 7pm. $18.

Photo: Ace McCarron

“Sometimes I shy away from the word meditative,” says Phillip Zarrilli, swiftly disarming the first adjective that came to my mind when thinking how to describe his newest work, “Told By The Wind,” “because it’s so loaded. What’s important in performances is that people are present to what’s happening in that moment, in that environment, with the other people present.”

Zarrilli has been cultivating this kind of deeply nuanced awareness in actors for more than thirty years, using a blend of martial arts and yoga to increase psychophysical awareness and, as the title of his master class at the Dance Center indicates, give the body eyes. “These are things that can complement the usual tools actors use,” said Zarrilli, referring to Stanislavski’s method. “They can take actors into a subtler level of awareness, of co-presence, of inter-subjectivity, of how to be available in space and time. These are material things, they’re not abstract.” Read the rest of this entry »