Photo: Cheryl Mann

“Movement comes from individual people’s qualities. What are we picking out and reinforcing that one person did naturally?” Glenn Edgerton, artistic director of Hubbard Street, is talking about the process of staging repertory work—specifically Jiri Kylian’s sensuous, iconic “Petite Mort,” a personally resonant piece for Edgerton, who was a member of Nederlands Dans Theater when Kylian first choreographed it. “In 1991 it was very raw, even in technique. Over the years it has become more codified. It’s a very sought-after piece and every time it’s presented with a new company it becomes more exact. Now it has its own technique. It’s fun to analyze to the nth degree what our old colleagues did naturally…we were just young dancers doing what we do. And it’s great fun to realize it was an important time in Kylian’s development.” Read the rest of this entry »

Diabolus in Musica/Photo: Dorothee Senet

RECOMMENDED

Taiko drummers, steppers, drill teams, hoofers and a French medieval vocal ensemble tag team testing the joists in the Harris floor Thanksgiving weekend in four performances by nine-plus local and international companies that love banging out a beat. At least twice a year CHRP director Lane Alexander recruits companies from around the world to perform alongside multicultural American rhythmic ensembles like the Miyumi Project, Step Afrika! and Be the Groove. The Chicago premiere at this Global Rhythms is the aforementioned French ensemble Diabolus in Musica, performing thirteenth-century trouveres written by women. If you’ve been to a CHRP performance, you know that the organization has done more than put on a plethora of foot-stomping shows over the decades, it has nurtured generations of dancers and built a massive, vocally appreciative family of percussive artists. With groups like the South Shore Drill Team performing, whoops, shout-outs and good vibes are sure to fill the air. Anyone who has ever been unable to resist bobbing their head or tapping their feet to a tune should see this show. With 50 percent of ticket proceeds benefiting more than fifty Chicago non-profits, you might want to catch more than one. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph, (312)334-7777. November 26-28, $15-$55.

Lizzie MacKenzie in "Forbidden Boundaries"/Photo: Erika Dufour

RECOMMENDED

True to form, River North hits us with everything they’ve got for a weekend at the Harris: a five-buck “Eat to the Beat” lunchtime show on Friday, a family matinee Saturday afternoon and a packed program of favorites at prime time. The grown-up show includes a piece by Deeply Rooted’s Kevin Iega Jeff, rhythmic powerhouse “Three” by Robert Battle and two of artistic director Frank Chaves’ more popular works. The real jump-out-of-your-seat fun is to be had at the 1pm “Street Beat—Dance through the Decades” matinee: a montage of the evolution of jazz and the popular dances it inspired, from the Charleston to hip-hop, complete with period-appropriate costumes. It’s sure to be eye-popping confectionery for anyone who eats musical theater like cotton candy. And let’s face it, we all do. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph, (312)334-7777. Eat to the Beat performance November 12 at noon, $5. Street Beat matinee performance November 13 at 1pm. Fall Engagement November 13 at 8pm.

Photo: Eduardo Patino

Eduardo Vilaro once told me that, as a Cuban-born American whose parents immigrated to New York when he was very young and who had spent most of his adult life in Chicago, he never developed a sense of home. As a young dancer in New York, Vilaro performed with the iconic Ballet Hispanico; in Chicago he founded his own company, Luna Negra Dance Theater—building a home in a new city. In 2010, after fourteen years in Chicago, Vilaro returned to New York as artistic director of Ballet Hispanico, experiencing a sort of homecoming of the itinerant. I talked to him about Ballet Hispanico’s upcoming performance at the Harris and the transition back to a new New York via phone.

“It’s certainly changed a lot in the fourteen years I’ve been away. It’s interesting to see how the mayors have worked to take back the public spaces. There’s a lot of Chicago in New York now. On 34th Street, a little kiosk where you can buy sandwiches and sit down… I mean, for me, growing up in the eighties…really? No.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Valerie Jean Johnson

Cutting through the pitch-blackness, a flicker. A faint, pulsing light reveals a large, somewhat pod-like circle. Slowly, the expanse is illuminated, revealing a scatter of similar circles across the stage floor covered in sand. Water drips from somewhere overhead, as five bald figures, powdered stark white and cloaked in long, stiff white shrouds, lie in fetal crouches within halos of soft light. A sixth, identical figure stands stoically in the middle of this strange, vaguely ominous landscape. And then, the dance begins.

For thirty-five years, esteemed Butoh dance company Sankai Juku, with founder/director Ushio Amagatsu at the helm, has been crafting its singular performances, acclaimed by audiences in both its native Japan and around the globe. Through a collaboration between MCA Stage, The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, and the Harris Theater, the company makes its auspicious Chicago debut with a one-night only performance of its signature work, “Hibiki: Resonance from Far Away.” “I have always known that Chicago is a great city with a vibrant cultural life,” says Amagatsu via email, “and I was very happy to hear that our North American tour producers Pomegranate Arts had arranged an engagement of my work. Many years ago, we had the opportunity to perform in the outlying area, but this is our first time in the city… . It is a great honor.” Read the rest of this entry »

"Toda una Vida" with Zoltan Katona and Monica Cervantes/Photo: Cheryl Mann

By Sharon Hoyer

Last year, the founder of Luna Negra Dance Theater left the company to take charge of Ballet Hispanico in New York. Under Eduardo Vilaro’s leadership, the company established itself not only as a forum for Latino contemporary choreographers, but a presenter of some of the most imaginative, passionate and technically accomplished modern dancing in Chicago, period. Personally, I was sad to see Eduardo leave our city; he is kind, accommodating, generous with his time for rehearsal visits and interviews, and always a delight to speak with. Upon my visit to a Luna Negra rehearsal for the upcoming fall program, I knew very little about his successor, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, beyond his past choreographic contributions to the company.

From what I saw, Ramirez Sansano is staying true to the company’s vision. His own new piece, “Toda una Vida,” is equal parts playful and emotional, a duet—a wrestling match really—originally inspired by Sansano’s parents and their enduring marriage. The piece is set to two Boleros, starting with Ravel’s famous composition, the couple on opposing corners of a stage bisected by a long tube. They sidle and flirt and glance at one another, gradually working their way to the divider, stealing steps across the line, building to first contact with the same slow fire that fuels Ravel’s repetitive score. The dancers, brought along to Luna Negra by Sansano from his own company, own a unique movement style and maintain it (at least halfway through the piece, as far as I saw) even after they start sharing axes and tossing one another about. Tall, lanky Zoltan Katona moves energy and shifts through levels like a capoeirista marionette; tiny powerhouse Monica Cervantes spins, tumbles, leaps onto and over Katona. He in turn lifts her with a shin or forearm and she takes a short flight to land, spin and tackle him again in a blindingly intricate series of gravity experiments. Like most intimate relationships, it is alternatively, sometimes simultaneously, both play and battle. They grapple with one another the way young couples do, with sexual aggression and childlike affection, all the while Ravel’s epic, iconic melody climbing a sonic mountain, step by step. Read the rest of this entry »

Nacho Duato/Photo: Todd Rosenberg

This weekend Hubbard Street dances a program of works by three Latino artists: their phenomenal resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, Mexican choreographer and Princess Grace Award winner Victor Quijada, and world-renowned Nacho Duato, former artistic director of the Compañia Nacional de Danza, soon on his way to take the helm of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. Hubbard Street is the first U.S. company to obtain the rights to Duato’s “Arcangelo”—a Baroque vision of heaven and hell. Duato has been in Chicago to teach the piece—a rare treat for Hubbard Street, which has performed his works over the years, but never before had the opportunity to learn from the man himself.

“I enjoy very much working with the company; each year they’re getting better and better. I think now their repertoire is very challenging for the dancers. They’re working with very different choreographers, they tackle different time periods in contemporary work,” Duato says. “And yes, I think it’s one of the best companies in the U.S.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Chris Callis

Few choreographers have had as much success drawing crowds as Lar Lubovitch. The Chicago native has spent his forty-plus year career bringing lush, romantic dances to audiences via stage (e.g. his New York-based company, his stagings of Broadway musicals), screen (he choreographed the sexy, urbane duet that proved Neve Campbell’s chops in Robert Altman’s “The Company”) and TV (he recently won an Emmy for a PBS Great Performances presentation of his “Othello). Despite spending the bulk of his professional career in New York, Lubovitch keeps firm ties in Chicago, actively wooing Midwest dance audiences, most notably with the inception of the Chicago Dancing Festival—a weekend of free performances by the most famous modern and ballet companies from across the U.S. Next week, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company performs two programs featuring works that bookend the choreographer’s career, from his mid-seventies pieces set to Steve Reich and Philip Glass, to his more recent narrative, multimedia works. Mr. Lubovitch spoke with me over the phone about the program and the ongoing influence of his hometown.

The programs at the Harris present very different phases in your career. How would you describe the current trajectory of your work?

My pieces are always about dancing first and foremost. Each different piece of music elicits a different physical response and therefore a different type of dancing. From the time I began forty-three years ago to now, that has not altered. However, over decades different techniques, vocabulary, language, all that accumulates to add hopefully to the depth of what can be expressed about the music. Read the rest of this entry »

Frederica von Stade/Photo: Robert Miller

RECOMMENDED

During the early decades of the twentieth century, Ravinia was the summer opera capital of the United States. Concert opera was also the centerpiece of the twenty-two-year Ravinia music directorship of James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera. That tradition stopped under Christoph Eschenbach but has continued on under James Conlon, who is also music director of the Los Angeles Opera and the Cincinnati May Festival.

There have been two alternating trajectories established to Conlon’s concert opera performances since his Ravinia music directorship began here five seasons ago: grand outdoor pavilion performances of Italian operas by Verdi and Puccini—which last year included “Rigoletto” and will pick up next season with “Tosca”—and intimate indoor Martin Theatre performances of  operas of Mozart, which two seasons ago included “Don Giovanni” and “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and this year picks up with “Cosi fan tutte” and “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Conlon is a master Mozartean, bringing lively tempos and wonderful balance and charm to chamber-music-sized ensembles made up of Chicago Symphony members. What a rare treat it is to hear Mozart operas in an 800-plus seat venue, close to the size of the theaters that Mozart had in mind when he wrote these works, rather than the too-large Harris Theater (Chicago Opera Theater) or the cavernous Civic Opera House (Lyric Opera) where nuance and subtlety are lost. Director David Lefkowich returns to direct both productions and English surtitles will be projected throughout both works. New this year is the participation of the stellar Chicago Symphony Chorus, which should be a real boost to the proceedings. (Ravinia had been using amateur choruses as a cost-saving measure but the quality differential became too jarring for that practice to continue.) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Pearl Primus had originally planned on a career in biology but, as an African-American woman in the first half of the twentieth century, she ran into a lot of closed doors. Luckily for the artistic world, Primus went on to become a pioneer of traditional African and African-American concert dance, bringing academic rigor to her research and passion to the floor. Primus was among the first to present African dance to mainstream American audiences, performing original works informed by the black diaspora to academics, civil-rights fighters and Broadway theater-goers alike. In other words, Primus not only paved the way, but also graded the ground and invented the asphalt for companies like Muntu. This Saturday, Muntu will be the first African-American dance company to present Primus’ work, including “A Negro Speaks of Rivers,” her signature piece based on a Langston Hughes poem. The program includes a tribute to Michael Jackson and celebratory dances of the Yankadi, Kassa and Macru people; expect a high-energy, mixed program that will pull you right out of your seat. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph, (312)334-7777. Saturday, July 17, 7pm. $25-50.