RECOMMENDED

It begins with a sweet yet sexy dance duet to Deniece Williams’ 1981 tender ballad “Silly” that is as satisfying to watch as the soulful singer’s emotionally rich and velvety voice is to hear. Next, the joint is not only jumpin’, it’s Lindy Hoppin’, Big Apple-in’ and Gospel Clappin’ to the Big Band jazz rhythms of black bandleader Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra’s “Tain’t What You Do, It’s the Way That Cha Do It.” Grace Jones’ hypnotic rendition of “La Vie en Rose” is the musical backdrop to a subtle samba-like shuffle that along with designer Jonathan Belcher’s lights and scenery—hundreds of vertical, metallic strips that reflect light like a disco ball—evokes the easygoing and playful ambiance of a French discotheque circa the seventies. And that’s just the beginning. Somehow, acclaimed choreographer Reggie Wilson and his Fist & Heel Performance Group, who integrate Afro and Caribbean dance forms with postmodern technique in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s premiere of their “The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek,” also fold into this musical and movement social dance experiment the Electric Slide, traditional spirituals, Chicago-style Stepping and more pelvic gyrations than you would find in a Fosse revival. Read the rest of this entry »

To all those Windy City white men who can’t—or won’t—dance, take comfort in knowing that roughly ten thousand miles away a group of Australian blokes also share your dilemma. Artistic director Gideon Obarzanek brings his critically acclaimed Melbourne-based modern-dance troupe Chunky Move to the Museum of Contemporary Art for three performances of the curiously offbeat “I Want to Dance Better at Parties.” Part docudrama featuring stories about men and their love-hate relationship with dance, part dance theater, part sociological examination of contemporary male attitudes towards movement, “I Want to Dance Better at Parties” is also a multimedia performance piece reinforcing the idea that movement can be the international antidote to male malaise. Depressed widower Phillip decides he wants to “dance better at parties” and uses ballroom dancing to transform mourning into movement. A physically demanding pas de deux between a male and female dancer is pure movement metaphor for the awkwardness that painfully self-conscious Franc feels when it comes to public dancing. And engineering brainiac Jack employs his background in digital codes to develop a kind of technical shorthand for dance annotation to help him better remember the steps learned in his Israeli folk dancing club.

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Although nearly 50 years old and having toured throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, the State Ballet Theatre of Russia is making its area debut at long last with a full-scale production of Prokofiev’s “Cinderella” that will include fifty-six dancers and a full Russian symphony orchestra. The company’s goal is to present Russian dance classics performed in the authentic Russian style, which in this case means using the 1991 Kremlin Ballet version staged by onetime legendary Bolshoi Ballet premiere danseur and later its general director, Vladimir Vasiliev, who has reworked his version for the ensemble, complete with new costumes and scenery designed to emphasize the elegant yet darker corners of the work. The fairy godmother, for instance, is more of a witch in the Baba Yaga tradition and there are Russian fairies in the gnome tradition that might give children a good but needed scare. But it is the company’s longstanding tradition of using line and movement to convincingly convey characterizations and emotions that makes this production so special, a production that couldn’t be more different than the Anglo-androgynous Sir Frederick Ashton take on the work that the Joffrey presented here last fall. (Dennis Polkow)

$45-$65. 8 p.m., Feb. 9, 10, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; (847)673-6300. 

Whatever you may think of their artistic merit, mega-entertainments such as “Stomp,” “Tap Dogs” and the “Cirque du Soleil” phenomena at least accomplish one important thing: they create a style and energy that they can call their own. The same cannot be said for “The All Night Strut,” Marriott Theatre’s new revue, whose look and feel owes as much to the above-mentioned enterprises as it does to old-fashioned book revues and musicals like “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “42^nd Street.” Not surprisingly then, distinctiveness is absent from this spectacular failure that takes a 20-year-old song-and-dance revue (using hits and dance styles of the thirties and forties) and tries unsuccessfully to fashion it into a hip musical and movement juggernaut incorporating new circus, aerial ballet and street dance. The problem is, everything in this show has been done before and it has been done better. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The familiar Tchaikovsky holiday confection is so gooey sweet that many dance cognoscenti view “The Nutcracker” much the way opera lovers look at “3 Tenors” concerts: i.e., they think it has nothing whatsoever to do with art. Thankfully, the late Robert Joffrey did not share that view. As a choreographer, Joffrey came to “The Nutcracker” rather late, offering the premiere of his “American” slant on the ballet twenty years ago, only a year before his death in 1988. Once the ballet company that bears Joffrey’s name made Chicago its home, it was inevitable that Joffrey’s particular take on the work would make its way into the already crowded “Nutcracker” marketplace and it quickly overshadowed all others, even the Ruth Page version that was performed for more than three decades at the Arie Crown Theatre. Joffrey’s conception of “The Nutcracker” is Victorian America, say Boston circa 1850. The look is Currier & Ives and is always visually compelling, with period costumes and a color scheme of aquas, blues, purples and magentas to match. But what really stands out in the Joffrey version is the transformation to the world of Clara’s imagination: a land of sugar-plum fairies and waltzing snowflakes that is as beautiful as it is magical. Both Clara and her Nutcracker prince, who are being danced by alternating performers, are true dancers (the Ruth Page version would cast children in the roles and give them surrogate dancers for their most important scenes together). Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Shakespearian characters are always superb springboards for modernizations, but what happens when three of the Bard’s most famous females are choreographically compared musing on what connects and divides them via the mediums of dance, theater and film? Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Juliet form the triptych and will be explored via the creative collaborations of former XSIGHT! Performance Group members Peter Carpenter, Marianne Kim & Brian Jeffery along with Lucky Plush Productions artistic director Julia Rhoads and featuring performers Lia Bonfilio, Nicole Garneau, Timothy Heck, Szewai Lee, Elizabeth Lentz, Marc Macaranas, Jennifer Meek, Martha Mulligan, Julia Rhoads, Joanna Rosenthal, Zachary Whittenburg, Meghann Wilkinson and a lighting design by Margaret Nelson. (Dennis Polkow)

“She/Three” plays at Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 North Dearborn, (312)337-6543, through December 9.

RECOMMENDED

West suburban native Kenneth von Heidecke began dancing back in the 1960s when he accompanied his sister to lessons and the teachers found out that he had the dance bug more than she did. After a career as a soloist that saw him dancing for George Balanchine and Maria Tallchief, a blocking error and collision to his knees from both sides sidelined him in 1983, but von Heidecke went on to subsequently become one of Europe’s most innovative and sought after choreographers. Some years ago, the College of DuPage asked him if he would stage a “Nutcracker” for its new arts center, and von Heidecke has been home every holiday season since to train the best of his students from the Naperville-based von Heidecke Chicago Festival Ballet, often bringing in dancers from abroad to fill in some roles and serve as an inspiration to the students. The result is a Nutcracker that is heavy on kids, yes, but not kids who just skip around like the old Ruth Page production, but who are actually already highly trained artists, which is what puts this “Nutcracker” high on the inspiration factor: take the kids to this production, and they may well want to put on the tights themselves, for better or worse. (Dennis Polkow)

Sat/2pm & 7pm. Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, (312)334-7777. $25-$35.

RECOMMENDED

Originating in postwar Japan amidst a storm of controversy, “butoh” is a type of performance art that some practitioners consider a form of dance, but that others insist is an expressionistic, highly stylized series of movements that have nothing to do with dance. No matter. Chicago-based butoh performer Nicole LeGette created her blushing poppy productions to celebrate and perpetuate botah. Her “Moon Spectre: Phase I” is sort of a topsy-turvy take on the tradition of the “Sun Goddess” creation myth where daylight was preserved through a reflection of the shy goddess’ rays. Here, the silvery rays of the moon become a silent observer and mirror for our own attitudes and shadows. (Dennis Polkow)

Fri-Sun/8pm, Sun/7pm, Links Hall (second floor), 3435 N. Sheffield, (773)281-0824. $10-$15. Though Nov 12.

RECOMMENDED

Lingering images, stories and memories that haunt us form the basis for this double-bill of movement-based performances conceived and presented by Chicago-based artist and choreographer Erica Mott. The work-in-progress concept piece “InPrint” is a group movement collage that examines the disposability of the female body in the human-trafficking industry that mixes live voice (supplied by Nicole Garneau) projected image and dance to take a dark and hard look at what we as a society throw away. The new work “Digging” is sort of a solo performance art version of “Body Worlds” that dissects one’s self image, right down to the bone, literally. (Dennis Polkow)

Thu-Sat/8pm. Links Hall (second floor), 3435 N. Sheffield; (773)281-0824. $10-$15.

It is one thing to have a recognizable style, but for the first act, at least, of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg’s “The Pirate Queen,” the show feels like it’s following a how-to kit based on the pair’s previous hit, “Les Miserables.” Here, the epic musical (which transfers to Broadway in the spring) portrays the story of the real-life sixteenth-century Irish Chieftain, Grace O’Malley, performed with gusto by Stephanie J. Block, a killer-voiced actress who played Elphaba in the Chicago version of “Wicked” last year. The Irish-themed musical is a rarity, and O’Malley’s tale of proto-feminism—she commanded a fleet of ships; owned huge tracts of land; eventually sailed to England for a tête-à-tête with Queen Elizabeth I—is rich and unique enough to warrant the bombast of a sung-through musical. Broadway could use some of that right now. But too often, shades of “Les Miz” peek through, and not in a good way. Read the rest of this entry »