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.

Stravinsky Violin Concerto rehearsal/Photo: Herbert Migdoll

A spacious, sun-lit studio in the Joffrey Tower hums with activity. A pianist hammers repeatedly through a few bars of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D, the solo violinist tuning and the musical director flipping through pages nearby. A few dancers do the same, lightly marking steps, eyes intent on their piece of mirror. The photographer from the Trib who rode up in the elevator with me situates himself near a visiting artist from Milwaukee who sits in a corner, sketching. Ashley Wheater, the artistic director, walks about, conferring with soloists and musicians, then draws everyone’s attention and rehearsal begins.

This morning, the company is working on George Balanchine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” part of its Fall “All Stars” program—a tribute to New York City Ballet legends. The opening Toccata section of “Stravinsky” is vibrant and painterly: dancers enter and exit in groups of five, building to a grand ensemble finish to the movement, the shapes they trace through space giving a strikingly literal visual shape to the rigorous, intricate strokes in the score. Two duet sections follow, the first an angular, modernist pas de deux peppered with isolations and distorted motions accenting aural dissonances. The second is more lyrical, tender and danced by three different couples throughout the ten-performance run. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

There are no seats for “Fuerza Bruta: Look Up”; you’ll spend the entire sixty-five minutes standing on the stage of the Auditorium Theatre. Actually, you’ll spend most of the time jumping, cheering and dancing along with the joyous cast of this truly spectacular event, leaving the theater in a state of euphoria, wanting more. Or not, if your idea of a night at the theater is a well-defined personal space and a performance that at least attempts to create a cohesive narrative. Cohesion is consciously, anarchically rejected in “Fuerza Bruta,” as evidenced in one of the pieces—the show is made up of a series of disconnected performance fragments—when the cast is crammed into a too-small room above and in front of the audience, fidgeting to the point of destruction, where walls made of boxes, furniture in the form of checkered-tableclothed plastic tables, chairs and trash cans are soon rained down toward us. Soon free of the confines of conformity, the cast breaks into a joyous dance before descending the stage to frolic amongst the audience, dancing, breaking harmless styrofoam forms over unexpectant heads and then suddenly disappearing to regroup for the next piece.

A cultural mashup that might be the perfect entertainment for our times, “Fuerza Bruta: Look Up” is a burst of joy, a feast for the eyes, ears and mind. A fin-du-monde what-the-hellness seems to wash over the whole affair, sometimes decadent, sometimes erotic, always playful. The cast is a handsome mix of youngish boho chics, with a vaguely exotic aura emanating from the Argentinean origins of the work’s artistic director/impresario Diqui James (who also co-founded the seminal “De La Guardia”), composer Gaby Kerpel and many of the other key creators and cast members. The show’s pieces seem to alternate between a dystopian futurism and a utopian surrealism, with tableaus distinctly conjuring up visual art motifs from those movements. Or, alternately, men suffer, women play. As in a man, in a suit and tie, running on a giant treadmill for no apparent reason. He is shot, wounded and keeps running. Does he represent the seemingly constant state of political turmoil, with coup d’états and brutal military regimes that haunt Latin America? Or perhaps the inextricable blend of big business and violence that accompanies commercial power flexed outside its natural borders? Juxtaposed with such dramatic imagery, women soon frolic balletically on a giant shimmering wall, as if dancing on the wind. Later, erotic nymphs enchant the crowd in a giant overhead dipping pool of sorts, conjuring up Homerian Sirens, Surrealism and synchronized swimming at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

"Crossed" rehearsal/Photo: Herbert Migdoll

Choreographer Jessica Lang may be young, but she has created works for the most prominent ballet companies across the U.S., including American Ballet Theatre. This weekend, her new work “Crossed” opens alongside a world premiere by James Kudelka, former artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, and a revival of Gerald Arpino’s “Reflections” as part of the Joffrey’s spring program. This is her first commission from the Joffrey Ballet.

Can you tell me about your inspiration for “Crossed”?
Inspiration came from an idea for the set. I was drawing, thinking about what you could do in the theater space. I drew a vertical panel and a horizontal panel, forming the shape of a cross. It’s a very simple pattern; physically I can make that shape over and over again and be inventive with that idea of crossing. For music, I went with music that was written for the church: portions of Mozart’s Mass in C and some of des Prez and Handel’s music. Read the rest of this entry »

For two decades, Judith Jamison has sat at the helm of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, staying true to the company’s mission of celebrating African American heritage while expanding the diversity and artistry of the company’s repertory. This year, the twentieth anniversary of Jamison’s role as artistic director, she will hand the reins of the legendary company to a yet-unnamed successor. The program this weekend at the Auditorium Theatre celebrates Jamison’s vision and her considerable contribution to the richness of the AAADT repertory. The centerpiece of the program is “Best of 20,” a collection of excerpts from thirteen pieces commissioned or revived by Jamison, choreographed by a diverse cross-section of talent, from heavy-hitters like Lar Lubovitch and Ronald K. Brown to emerging artists. Jamison’s “Love Stories,” a collaborative effort with Robert Battle and hip-hop artist Rennie Harris is also on the program, along with her new work “Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places).” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The company that did it first does it again this weekend at the Auditorium Theatre. The Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre, founded in Perm in 1870 and dedicated to performing Pytor Illych’s works, rolls into Chicago with their production of Maurice Petipa’s 1890 original. “Sleeping Beauty” is widely considered Tchaikovsky’s best ballet and this is the company that originally staged it—needless to say they take it seriously. Principal dancers Natalia Moiseeva-Poleschuk and Sergey Mershin have a small armory of competitive ballet awards between them and the full company headcount is around sixty-five bodies. There will be spectacle and tulle aplenty, along with the superhuman virtuosity one comes to expect from Russian ballet: a satisfying fairy tale showpiece for lovers of the classics. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Parkway, (800)982-2787. Saturday, March 20 at 7:30pm and Sunday, March 21 at 2pm. $32-87.

Photo: Jack Vartoogian

In 1952, ballet dancer and choreographer Amalia Hernandez founded a small company dedicated to collecting and presenting traditional dances from across Mexico. Now, more than fifty years later, the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez has more than quadrupled its ranks and amassed a remarkable catalog of indigenous Mexican ceremonial, spiritual and celebratory folk dances, each awash in color and bursting with energy. In this, the centennial year of the Mexican revolution and bicentennial year of Mexican independence, the Ballet Folklorico is touring the U.S. with a special celebratory performance; voluminous dresses will swirl, Cuban heels will stomp, and Charros will leap in a program high on spectacle, featuring revivals of several pieces, some that haven’t been performed in fifteen years.

I asked Salvador Lopez, executive director of Ballet Folklorico and (grandson of the late Ms. Hernandez), about the challenges of presenting vernacular dances, culled from small villages and intended for participation over performance, in a grandiose setting like the Auditorium Theater. Read the rest of this entry »

Mauro Villanueva and Victoria Jaiani/Photo: Herbert Migdoll

RECOMMENDED

The Joffrey Ballet stays true to Sir Frederick Ashton’s definitive version of the world’s best-known fairy tale with plenty of frills and spectacle, including a life-sized pumpkin coach. The wicked stepsisters, played by men, lend a slapstick edge to the saccharine tale. Wendy Ellis Somes, a former dancer with the Royal Ballet, staged this production for the Joffrey, ensuring the piece, already familiar to the Joffrey, resonates with the grace and charm of the original, first produced in 1948, restaged in ‘65. Score by Prokofiev, splendorous sets—this one is for lovers of the classics. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E Congress Pkwy, (800)982-2787. February 17-28, $25-145.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's "Extremely Close"/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

By Brian Hieggelke

Dance exploded in the zeroes, fueled on by successful transitions at major establishments and the opening of significant new venues. Any consideration of dance in Chicago starts with our world-renowned homegrown company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (HSDC), which commenced the decade with the transition in its artistic leadership from Lou Conte, who’d founded the group in 1977 and built it into one of the city’s leading cultural exports, to Jim Vincent. Vincent didn’t miss a beat, building on Conte’s foundation, and greatly expanding the company’s formerly rather limited performance presence in its hometown by expanding to quarterly Chicago engagements, thanks in part to the opening of the perfectly sized Harris Theater for Music and Dance in November 2003. By 2008, HSDC had grown to a seven-million-dollar operating budget and Vincent himself was moving on, returning to the Nederlands Dans Theater, where he’d spent much of his career as a performer, passing the artistic reins at HSDC to his former associate, Glenn Edgerton.

Meanwhile, Chicago’s national reputation as a dance center was being augmented by its resuscitation of the esteemed Joffrey Ballet, which, in a state of financial crisis in the mid-nineties, had thrown something of a Hail Mary pass by departing the nation’s cultural capital of New York to see if it could make it in Chicago (it had long been extremely successful here on its tours, a tradition mirrored today by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which sold a whopping 14,416 tickets to its annual engagement at the Auditorium Theatre in 2009). Make it here it did, and by the dawn of this decade, it had established itself as a pillar of Chicago’s cultural community, even becoming the subject of a Robert Altman film, “The Company,” in 2003. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

New York-based Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is next on the docket of Auditorium Theatre’s International Dance Series and this is the one you have been waiting for. The relatively new company (founded in 2003)  comes to us under the artistic direction of former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater member Benoit-Swan Pouffer and with a mission of acquiring and commissioning new works by the world’s most sought-after emerging creators of dance. Mission accomplished. Their repertoire reads like a starting lineup of the world’s best contemporary choreographers. Cedar Lake dancers are athletic and dexterous and specialize in integrating ballet into contemporary dance and a host of popular forms.  In Chicago, the program will include Crystal Pite’s “Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue,” Didy Veldman’s “frame of view” and Jo Strømgren’s “Sunday, Again.”  You may have caught Pite’s “The Second Person” performed this summer by Nederlands Dans Theater. If you were lucky enough to see that transformational piece you know why dance fans are waiting for Cedar Lake with bated breath. (William Scott)

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet performs November 14-15 at Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress, (800)982-ARTS (2787). $30-$65.