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 »
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 »
DV&D, Lux/Photo: Phil Knott
In just five years, the Chicago Dancing Festival has grown from a one-night showcase at the Pritzker Pavilion to a five-day multi-venue event encompassing performance, film and lecture. Like Lollapalooza, Dancing Festival tickets are snapped up shortly after they’re released. One difference being that, instead of $190 a pop, it’s all free.
Celebrated New York choreographer and Chicago native Lar Lubovitch along with dancer Jay Franke curate programs that include renowned companies from across the country, giving us the unique opportunity to see Martha Graham’s, Merce Cunningham’s and Mr. Lubovitch’s companies all in the same evening. I spoke with Jay Franke about the birth, growth and future of the festival.
How did you conceive of the festival?
Lar and I danced together at Hubbard Street and I danced in his company in New York later. We both felt there was a need for a dance festival in Chicago. We felt if we were able to give an audience access to the best that was out there, we would attract and grow a new audience for dance. We had our eye on the Pritzker—it’s a very grand performance space and democratic. We had 8,500 people show up to our first performance, so we felt we had an overnight hit on our hands. Read the rest of this entry »
Rachael McLaren/Photo: Andrew Eccles
RECOMMENDED
Calendars align as Alvin Ailey rolls through Chicago the same weekend Hubbard Street performs an Alonzo King piece created for Ailey. It’s a small modern dance world after all, but Alvin Ailey is one of the biggest fish in an ever-growing pond. Judith Jamison steps down as artistic director this year (the successor to Ailey), leaving a legacy behind her and a company she helped make a household name. The program—the last under Jamison’s leadership to be performed in Chicago—is a tribute to old and new: “Revelations” every night of course, but also two new works by AD-to-be Robert Battle that portray two sides of masculinity—aggression and vulnerability (sadly, never in the same evening)—and a company history lesson by Christopher L. Huggins entitled “Anointed” that nods to the passing of the torch from founder to Jamison to Battle. Three more Chicago premieres pepper the program, including one by Ailey, set to the music of Duke Ellington and celebrating the lives of Balthazar, Solomon and MLK. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress, (800)982-2787, May 18-May 22. $30-$87.
"Bells" rehearsal with Victoria Jaiani/Photo: Herbert Migdoll
RECOMMENDED
The Joffrey follows their winter narrative comedy of errors with a springtime plunge into the psyche. The rising stars in this case are Edwaard Liang, Julia Adam—both of whom have choreographed for the company before—and Yuri Possokhov, who makes his choreographic debut. By coincidence or design, both Liang and Adam explore the world of dreams, the former on a mass scale, the latter on the individual. Liang has been inspired by cultural consciousness before; his beautiful and strange 2008 “Age of Innocence” was about gender hierarchy and repression in the Victorian era. This piece, entitled “Woven Dreams,” is set to string pieces by Ravel, Britten, Galasso and Gorecki and abstractly pursues the collective consciousness. In “Night” Adam is content with following just one dreamer through her subconscious landscape, good and bad. Possokhov splits the dream worlds with “Bells,” a romantic, five-movement piece set to Rachmaninov’s 2nd. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress, (800)982-2787. May 4-15, $25-145.
Photo: Josh Weckesser
RECOMMENDED
Frank Chaves’ jazz-based company dances beneath the golden proscenium of the Auditorium Theatre for the first time thanks to a co-commission by the Auditorium, Michigan State University and the Wharton Center as part of their ongoing, primarily musical-performance-focused Miles Davis Festival. Chaves has created a suite of dances to four famous tracks from “Kind of Blue,” “Workin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet” and “Bitches Brew”—iconic recordings that should provide a familiar aural landscape for Chaves to create his particular brand of dramatic, romantic and crowd-pleasing choreography. Six more pieces fill out the program: three from Chaves, including a duet to Etta James’ “At Last,” one from former River North co-director Sherry Zunker, one from Alvin Ailey dancer and soon-to-be-director Robert Battle, and a solo from Portland-based Ashley Roland. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress, (800)982-2787. April 16 at 8pm. $30-$69.
Ronald Hynd with Fabrice Calmels & Valerie Robin in rehearsal/Photo: Herbert Migdoll
The first time a ballet company rehearses in costume, particularly if those costumes are lavish, late-nineteenth-century evening dress, is a great day to be a fly on the studio wall. While tugging at bustiers, flourishing capes, flashing garters to the mirror and general horsing around with top hats and canes, the dancers begin to truly inhabit their characters. And character provides the fluttering heartbeat of the Joffrey’s current production: Ronald Hynd’s 1975 comic ballet “The Merry Widow.” It’s a company premiere for the Joffrey, who have had the fortune to work with John Meehan, the principal dancer in the original production, and now the 80-year-old Hynd in the week before opening night.
The story originated as a turn-of-the-century operetta by Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehar. The action, comprised of intertwining romances, flirtations, infidelities and jealousy-fueled fisticuffs seems as ripe for adaptation into theater or a Jean Renoir film as an evening-length ballet. I sat in on a rehearsal of Act III, when the multiple storylines established in the first two acts intersect at a grand ball and comedic chaos ensues. Hynd’s translation of comedy of manners into formal choreography is remarkably nimble and spirited; he carries on a witty physical conversation with the score (adapted from the original by John Lanchbery), so the dancers move directly to the whims and moods of the music, performing their lighthearted farce like marionettes. Read the rest of this entry »
RECOMMENDED
Will the recent release of Darren Aronofsky’s menacing ballet thriller slash horror film prompt audiences to, um, flock to see the ballet that served as the film’s narrative framework? Hard to say, but the State Ballet Theatre of Russia is certainly timely taking this one on the road. It’s the St. Petersburg-based company’s second time in Chicago (the last was their 2006 production of Cinderella), performing Russian ballet in the time-honored tradition. Meaning you won’t see a drop of blood or glimpse the guts of art-making so literally imagined in “Black Swan,” but you will see the gleaming product of a quest for perfection: ranks of weightless ballerinas slicing through footwork with surgeon-like precision, leg extensions high enough to change a light bulb and a cast of sixty-five moving with one mind. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress (800)982-2787, February 4 at 7:30pm and February 5 at 2pm and 8pm. $30-$87.
As the economy slowly lifts us back to our feet and we look around, we see a remarkable sight: a performance industry in Chicago that survived the worst recession since the Great Depression wholly intact. Sure, we had a few brushes with death, and no doubt a few very small, very new theater companies threw in the towel, as they do even in good years, but unlike many other cities across the country, we’re in pretty good shape. How good? The League of Chicago Theatres issued a press release last week proclaiming our town as America’s theater leader, with more than 250 professional theaters, including four Regional Tony Award winners, and a combined annual budget of $250 million serving five million audience members. Add in our thriving dance community, a comedy scene that’s the envy of the nation and two world-class opera companies and you’d have to say we’re doing pretty damn good. But neither the economy nor any cultural organization is fully out of the water yet, and the dramatic uncertainty injected into the political sea by Mayor Daley’s decision to call it a day means Chicago’s performance community will need some steady hands at the wheel these next few years. Accordingly, for this edition of The Players, we’ve broadened our horizon and taken a closer-than-ever look at the individuals in charge of the financial fitness of our local institutions. Read the rest of this entry »
RECOMMENDED
The fiery all-female Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba returns to Chicago with a sampling of Cuban sabor—a little flamenco, a little Afro-Cuban, a little tango, a little ballet and contemporary dance—all performed with Rockette-like precision and showmanship. Quite literally: they take the stage as a kickline, setting an amped-up tone for two high-energy performances. Six musicians provide live accompaniment of heel-dropping, torso-rolling Afro-Cuban beats on congo and cajon; intricate strains of lush Spanish guitar accompany lyrical numbers. The massive company gets lots of costume changes: flaming red dresses with matching fans or white blouses with black pants or hip huggers with bared abdomens and long staffs, shifting through formations while stomping out clean, accelerating syncopations, their heads snapping right and left in perfect unison. It’s high-energy entertainment for all. (Sharon Hoyer)
At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress, (800)982-2787. October 28 at 7:30pm and October 29 at 8pm. $30-69.
