Osipova Hallberg/Photo: Gene Schiavone

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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 »

Photo: Gadi Dagon

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Without fail, Batsheva elicits breathy wows from audiences worldwide—not for acrobatics or acts of contortion, but for a superhuman precision in phrases that slow down and speed up in a way that’s hard to grasp. You can almost feel the people in the surrounding seats rubbing their eyes and blinking with disbelief. Ohad Naharin, the visionary director of Batsheva, developed his own movement awareness approach, dubbed Gaga, that’s anchored in refining the dancer’s presence within the moment and a notion of there being “plenty of time.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

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Rare is the artist who can produce thoughtful, rigorously crafted work on a regular timetable. Alejandro Cerrudo has proven to be one of those gifted individuals in his tenure as Hubbard Street’s resident choreographer, turning out movement gems of stunning clarity and beauty year after year. “Little Mortal Jump,” a premiere on this program, is his tenth in three years. Granted, he’s been given a remarkable resource—the Hubbard Street dancers—and has epic plans for their considerable talent this fall…but more on that later. This program also includes reprises of two works that premiered last year: a lovely neoclassical piece by Alonzo King, artistic director of LINES Ballet; and hypercool “Too Beaucoup” by Sharon Eyal, house choreographer for Batsheva Dance Company (performing down the street the same weekend). Read the rest of this entry »

Aggression, territoriality and myths of masculinity emerged as central themes when Synapse Arts founder Rachel Damon, independent performance artist Erica Mott and the all-female dance collective the Space/Movement Project applied to share a bill at the Dance Center of Columbia College. The venue, either consciously or sub-, no doubt influenced the subject matter: the Dance Center is a big step for all three Chicago-based companies. Watching Damon rehearse one of her quartet numbers in a small third-floor studio in Wicker Park, I got an inkling of the challenges a choreographer faces when they create movement in a space one-fifth the size of their performance environment.

Our post-rehearsal conversation became about more intimate spaces. “I’m fascinated by territory as a human and martial artist,” Damon tells me. “You learn in that training about the red zone, the personal space between people.” She leans toward me, her face about six inches from mine. “This is a little less comfortable if we don’t know each other than…” she sits back to a socially acceptable two-foot remove, “that. Your brain responds to that space in one of two ways—you can go down the intimate track where I trust this person or you can go down the defensive track. The intimate track is a lot more cognitive-based and the defensive track has a lot more to do with back-brain, my lizard sense going off. That’s where the churning comes from: stirring up the space.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Vin Reed

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SPDW offers their company as the medium for the next installment of Peter Carpenter’s uniquely political brand of dance theater. Carpenter is interested in the social and political implications of the body on stage, explored memorably in his humorous and scathing send-up of the Reagan era, “My Fellow Americans.” This piece is the latest in Carpenter’s ongoing series about wealth and excess entitled “Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times.” Chapter 5 is subtitled “Lavish Possession” and is a treatise on ownership of things both material and intellectual. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Sandbox Studio Chicago

The space between performer and audience is where Molly Shanahan and her collaborators in Mad Shak work. Her Stamina of Curiosity project, now in its fourth year, is an ongoing exploration of authenticity and the moment through the lens of Shanahan’s fluid, ceaselessly rippling and spiraling choreography. Last year’s iteration, “Sharks Before Drowning,” brought aggressive, masculine energy into the previously vulnerable equation. This chapter, entitled “The Delicate Hour,” goes beyond, recognizing both the potential of strength and the power of dismantling it. Read the rest of this entry »

Victoria Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels in "Before the Rain"

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Though he collaborated with John Cage, one of the musical titans of the twentieth century, the late choreographer Merce Cunningham famously created his work independent of the music; he believed in chance so much that he once did a piece wherein the audience created individual soundtracks using shuffle mode on their iPods. I thought about this a fair bit during the Joffrey Ballet’s “Winter Fire” program, so forcefully did the music shape my perception of the three pieces being performed. The opener, William Forsythe’s “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” was an abstract work where the thrilling dancing seemed as much to background the harsh cacophony of Thom Willems’ ” dissonant soundtrack. I found myself in an aggressive mood by the end of the piece, in a football state of mind. Christopher Wheeldon’s “After The Rain” could not have offered a sharper contrast. One of the most perfectly beautiful works I’ve ever seen, it features couples dancing in graceful duets to the simple yet lush violin and piano of Arvo Pärt’s “Tabula Rasa” and “Spiegel Im Spiegel.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ricardo Santos/Photo: Sandro

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White, line-drawn figures walk across an LED screen running the length of the stage while below a few dancers create abrupt, angular lines to sounds reminiscent of subway stations and the beeps of a telegraph machine. Thus begins Wayne McGregor’s “Infra,” a piece he created for the Royal Ballet of London after the underground bombings in 2005. The Joffrey brings the piece to the U.S. for the first time, executing choreography that demands hyper-flexibility interspersed with quicksilver phrasing.

The cool precision of McGregor’s choreography can sometimes come off as devoid of emotion, but the currents of anxiety and fragility underpinning the subterranean “Infra” are very human. A series of duets that follow the opening sequence, set to strings and piano by Max Richter, are the embodiment of urban modernity: coolly flawless, detached, yet yearning just beneath the polished surface. When the couples line up across the stage, each pair executing their precise sequences in separate, constricted rectangles of light, digital figures passing overhead, never has perfection looked so quietly desperate. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Jennifer Girard

River North Chicago Dance performs Valentine’s weekend at the Harris; it’s appropriate timing for a show entitled “Love Is…” highlighting passionate partnering work. Artistic Director Frank Chaves spoke with Newcity about two premieres on the program: one from him, one from Mauro Astolfi, Director of Rome-based Spellbound Dance Company.

Your new work, “The Good Goodbyes,” is a collaboration with Chicago Children’s Choir director Josephine Lee.
Josephine and I had worked together in 2006 on my biggest work to date, “Underground Movements.” Josephine is a phenom; we really clicked as creative soul mates. We talked about wanting to work together again. One of my favorite instruments of all time is the piano and that’s her instrument. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Mark Palmer

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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 »