RECOMMENDED
A high wind in North Dakota forced Michael Estanich to pull off the highway and videotape the play of prairie grass that “looked like the ocean.” This is the inspiration for RE|Dance’s “Inhabitants of Tall Grass,” an austere trio of great beauty and tenderness. Midwest ancestral blood should stir at the horizontal extensions, the graceful and severe lines—planes on plains—evoking images of broad expanses under vast skies. Read the rest of this entry »
Lauren Warnecke/ Photo: Savage Rose Photography
Enid Smith takes inspiration from oil paintings by Chicago artist Andrew Rauhauser for her new piece, entitled “Pier.” Rauhauser’s beautiful and quietly menacing series of paintings depicting ice formations, rocky outcroppings, steel grey waves and frozen pilings along the North Shore inspired Smith to create an interpretation of Chicago winter in late August—a chilly reminder of the season past and to come. Warnecke—Performing Arts Coordinator at the Menomonee Club for Boys and Girls and collaborator/grant writer for Synapse Arts—wrestles with definitions of artistic success in “Grind,” Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the press release from Links Hall:
Links Hall Announces its Fall 2011 Performance Series.
Chicago, IL – Links Hall is pleased to announce its Fall 2011 performance series featuring works from many returning artists, as well as new presentations from up and coming artists. Nasty Brutish & Short, presented by Links Hall and curated by Seth Bockley and Julia Miller returns for two more performances after a successful run in the Winter 2011 season. The Striding Lion Performance Group premiers their latest works in November, featuring a collaborative effort with another Chicago dance, theatre, or performing artist each night, culminating in a unique program for every audience. Links Hall’s 2011 Lisa Dershin LinkUP Artists Justin Cabrillos and Ni’Ja Whitson debut their brand new works in September as a result of a six-month residency at Links Hall, a highly anticipated performance. As we close out the year, December brings an annual favorite, the Winter Solstice Percussion Concerts, playing for their 21st year at dawn. For more information call 773.281.0824, or purchase tickets online at www.LinksHall.org. Read the rest of this entry »
Nancy Stark Smith: "Exactness of Weights of Feeling Kuva"/Photo Raisa Kyllikki Karjalainen
RECOMMENDED
A new week-long festival celebrating the creation of art in the moment firmly establishes Chicago as a thriving center of vital, groundbreaking dance. Presented jointly by the Dance Center of Columbia College and Links Hall, the fest pulls national and local artists together to teach, perform, lecture and discuss in venues across the city. Highlights include contact improvisation workshops with veteran Nancy Stark Smith, a performance and a workshop by Bebe Miller, an artist talk and performance inspired by the sculptural installations in Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall at IIT, and a free improv jam in Grant Park, timed to get the city amped for SummerDance. The fest also quite rightly takes ongoing musicians-meet-dancers improv series “Collision Theory” under the umbrella. Individual tickets to events are available; fest passes get you in to three, four or five performances and discounts on workshops. (Sharon Hoyer)
June 12-June 19. For information, call (773)281-0824 or visit linkshall.org/DanceImprovFest.shtml. To register for workshops or purchase tickets, call (312)369-8330.
Photo: William Frederking
RECOMMENDED
The members of Margi Cole’s all-female company again take turns directing one another with the return of “COLEctive Notions,” what looks to become an annual evening of new, short works by the Dance COLEctive’s nascent choreographers. Cole has provided an opportunity for the COLEctive to create, direct and critique as peers, and the resources to present their labors for a weekend at Links Hall. Maggie Koller returns with ruminations on love, fear and emotional baggage; Alaina Murray makes her choreographic debut with a piece on life changes and tough decisions; and Molly Grimm-Leasure lucid-dreams the answers to those questions, with a nod to the power of the subconscious. New works by Jessica Post, Kaitlin Bishop and Olivia May are also on the program. (Sharon Hoyer)
At Links Hall, 3435 North Sheffield, (773)281-0824. June 3-5, Friday and Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 7pm. $18.
Photo: Nikki Johnson
Jeremy Bloom is singing the body electric—(almost) literally. The Northwestern alum and Drama League Directing Fellow has gathered more than twenty intrepid performers to “rhythmically chant” Walt Whitman’s greatest hits in the buff this Friday onstage at Links Hall in the Chicago premiere of “Leaves of Grass.”
A fan since high school, Bloom was inspired to put the granddaddy of American free verse onstage when he realized that Whitman’s ultra-famous “Song of Myself” “is a series of instructions to the reader.” “He commands: ‘Undrape: you are not guilty to me,’ and ‘The man’s body is sacred, the woman’s body is sacred,’” and so, Bloom explains, “it became clear that some sort of scene in a play of these poems would have to be a celebratory naked celebration.” Read the rest of this entry »
Aimee Tye, Dmitri Peskov/Photo: Kevin Reed
Dmitri Peskov has the intoxicating demeanor of the man who embraces art in all its manifestations. An active poet with a master’s degree in foreign languages and literature and a background in both drama and martial arts, his conversation is delightfully riddled with unassuming references to Beckett, Kurosawa and Brueghel. “Of Fleeting Things,” the first piece for his newly formed company, takes its name from the rejected title of M. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” and explores, in what might be described as novelistic form, the temporality and beauty of human experience.
“The quest for something more is what makes us human,” Peskov muses via phone. “If we suffer we are alive, but people jump to conclusions about my work. I’ve been called angst-ridden, but I think ‘Of Fleeting Things’ is soothing. Suffering is human, but we do more than suffer.” Read the rest of this entry »
Photo: William Frederking
RECOMMENDED
Artistic Director Margi Cole steps back from choreography to mentor her company members in this evening of short works, which include a collaborative piece by Maggie Koller on the topic of money with live music by AM Brother and a soul-searching self-directed solo by Molly Grimm-Leasure on the subject of self-forgiveness. “Taking Hold,” a piece by Cole that premiered last winter, is also on the program. It will be interesting to see what direction these women, who have danced together under single leadership, fly once they’re pushed from the nest; for example Donnette Cannonie’s hip-hop-infused work, a departure from the TDC’s style. Cole remarked on the pleasures of watching her company engage in collective (erm, COLEctive) critique, conquering goals they set up for one another. She’s so pleased with the project she’s already booked Links Hall to do it again next year. (Sharon Hoyer)
At Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield (773)281-0824. May 21-23, Fri and Sat at 8pm, Sun at 7pm. $18.
"Casanova Takes a Bath"
By Monica Westin
It’s a notable month for Theater Oobleck. With the remount of the company’s recent Rhino Fest contribution, “Casanova Takes a Bath,” at Prop Thtr in late May, and their current ambitious cantastoria project in conjunction with Links Hall (along with recent performances at the Hideout and the Packer Schopf Gallery), the company’s various members are performing and collaborating all over town. We spoke with two Oobleck members: David Isaacson, Oobleck founding member and the writer and performer of “Casanova,” and David Buchen, part of the brains and much of the work behind the cantastoria projects at Links and elsewhere, about the ancient forms and influences in contrast with the contemporary concerns of Oobleck’s various performances around town.
I have to admit that I missed “Casanova” at Rhino Fest. Can you talk a little about the play and how it will be different in this production?
David Isaacson: You’re not the only one! It was easy to miss. I did it along with Beau [O’Reilly of Curious Theatre Branch] and it was a weekend matinee, very easy to miss. For the handful of people who made it to the show at Rhino, this one won’t be very different, but for the rest of us… It’s a show that combines the fun of Casanova’s memoirs with commentary on our current economy. It sounds like a strange connection, but the way it works is to use episodes from the life of Casanova as mini-allegories for aspects of our current financial crisis, where the little vignettes hopefully add a layer of understanding to how we got here. Read the rest of this entry »
Great Small Works' "Marcovaldo Planets"
By Monica Westin
It’s a big weekend for Seth Bockley. In addition to his highly-anticipated performance promenade “The Twins Would Like to Say” with Dog & Pony opening at Steppenwolf Garage on Sunday, Bockley has curated the impressive lineup of artists at Links Hall’s Toy Theater Festival this weekend.
Bockley champions toy theater for its populist roots in nineteenth-century paper theater, which could be made in anyone’s living room as a precursor to television. The form has morphed from living-room entertainment to a cheap, DIY way of making performance that Bockley loves because it’s “not rarefied art.” We spoke to Bockley about this form he wants to be reclaimed as an everyday act.
Toy theater seems to be an exciting and increasingly popular form lately—I’m thinking of companies like Great Small Works, who I know are going to be part of this show. Why do you think there is such a strong interest in toy theater today? When did you personally become interested in the medium?
I became interested in toy theater, and puppetry more generally, through work with Redmoon back in 2004 during my mentorship with Frank Maugeri, now the artistic director there. I originally was more interested in writing and had no intention, really, of getting involved with puppetry, but through seeing what Frank was able to do with the medium, I became extremely excited and interested in this form of storytelling. So oddly, I had become involved as a writer for puppet theater, which was a strange thing to be, and our collaboration allowed me to see the potential of this form. I see it as a form that can both be in dialogue with and in competition with cinema—working with puppetry is closer to the work of a filmmaker rather than a theater director. One of the many cool things it allows is a way of performing animation—performing film really—by other means. Read the rest of this entry »
