Dance Fri May 16 2008
This weekend and next, you'll get the chance to see some acrobatic dancers create a story in the air using ... giant lampshades. And picture frames and clotheslines and boots, oh my! Aloft Aerial Dance presents The Dinner of our Discontent, in which they tell the story--which "veers from heartbreaking to hilarious"--of five estranged sisters returning home after the sudden deaths of their parents. The company has spent some time in China since their last full-length show, and they picked up some tricks from Chinese acrobats who make use of every-day objects to create their art.
The show is May 16-18 and 23-25, 8:00 p.m. at the Aloft Loft, 941 N California Ave. (down the alley, in the back). Go to Brown Paper Tickets for...well...tickets at $20-$30.
As a side note--if you've ever wanted to join the circus but don't want to leave Chicago, you can learn how to be a trapezist right here! Check out the Aloft Loft for all the classes Aloft has to offer.
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Mon May 05 2008
On the first Thursday of the next three months, dance critic Lucia Mauro will be hosting the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs series "About Dance," now in its fourth year. Each event in the series will feature a performance by a local choreographer or dance company, accompanied by a discussion with Mauro about that performer's artistic process. This month's contribution is sure to be entertaining. Matthew Hollis will perform "Let's Go Love!" in which he utilizes modern dance and his faux-self-help technique, the Power of Cheer (as in cheerleading) to pick apart and celebrate everything that is Love.
All of this entertainment is FREE at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 8, at the Chicago Cultural Center's Dance Studio, 78 E. Washington St. For more information, call 312-744-6630.
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Thu May 01 2008
In keeping with the company's goals of inspiring "new perceptions of movement," Inaside Chicago Dance has created an evening of dancing inspired by the drip period of Jackson Pollock's artwork. In the Painting will be a "multimedia dance experience," beginning with a short film by Pedro Brenner (Inaside's photographer and award-winning film director) about Pollock's life and art, and continuing with choreographed works that include a multimedia element.
May 2 @ 8:00, May 3 @ 2:00 & 8:00. Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn. $20 general ($15 student/dancer/senior). Purchase tickets at the Ruth Page box office (312.337.6543).
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Tue Apr 22 2008
The members of the think/dance collective bring their spirited, improvisational movement to the Lincoln Square Theatre this Thursday, April 24. Geared especially toward audiences with limited exposure to dance, think/dance performances incorporate text, video, and imaginative props (i.e., “shoes” made of white bread). Also performing are Asthmatic Kitty recording artist Half-handed Cloud and Olympia, Washington-based ensemble LAKE.
Wear your thinking cap to the Lincoln Square Theatre, 4754 N. Leavitt, this Thursday. The show starts at 8pm, and tickets are $7.
- Laura Pearson |
Dance Sun Apr 20 2008
If your daydreams resemble Fame, then Open House Dance Collective might help you turn your fantasies into reality. On Sunday, May 4, the nonprofit holds its "Reverse Auditions," which link professional choreographers with aspiring dancers to "train" for a three-month period -- regardless of skill level -- in anticipation of performing. Seven different choreographers show their style of movement, with participants choosing their choreographer (instead of the other way around) by movement preference and rehearsal schedules. Just by virtue of showing up, you're in!
Participants get to dance in a professional-quality concert (to be held July 31-Aug. 2 at the Vittum Theater), with a portion of ticket sales going to two local charities.
3-5 p.m. Menomonee Club,1535 N. Dayton Street. For more info, contact info@householdarts.org.
- Lauri Apple |
If you haven’t cleared your calendar for the MCA’s upcoming Hip Hop Live + Reel, you might want to get on that. Born of New York City’s Hip Hop Theater Festival, Live + Reel is a four-day bonanza of hip hop culture. Artists from both coasts – including New York’s Reggie Watts and Bay Area lyricists The Suicide Kings – will be joining forces with local performers like Deja Taylor, whose work from Louder Than a Bomb has been recorded for Chicago Public Radio, and Teatro Luna, Chicago’s all-Latina theater company.
“This new format – two days of film and two days of live performances – creates a mini-festival atmosphere,” says MCA House Manager Surinder Martignetti. “The strength of combining local artists with national performers offers people such a great opportunity to see what’s happening out there and to really get involved.”
With all four days boasting a packed line up of spoken word performances, outstandingly original films and, of course, music (and only $5 for tickets to the films! Five! For the whole night!), the MCA is encouraging everyone to try to make the whole series. If you can only make one, though, I recommend aiming for Saturday, when The Suicide Kings’ In Spite of Everything, a startlingly timely play revolving around a school shooting, will be performed. Louder Than a Bomb 2008 winner Kuumba Lynx will also perform, and beatboxer Yuri Lane will close the night with an excerpt from his show From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: A Beatbox Journey.
Film night tickets are $5 for all screeings; performance nights are $16 member/$20 non-member. Student pricing is available. To see the full list of performances or to buy tickets on line, visit the MCA’s website, or call the box office at 312.397.4010 for more information.
- Jaime Calder |
Dance Mon Apr 14 2008
For the next two weekends, the Chicago company (of which yours truly just happens to be a part) Innervation Dance Cooperative will present its contemporary dance interpretation of the play Everyman, set to music by Led Zeppelin. For those of you who might be familiar with your 15th-century morality plays, this rendition is stripped of religion and focuses on the "you can't take it with you" aspect of what's important in life. Everyman receives a visit from Death and begs for more time to find a companion to join her (it's an all-female cast) on that final journey. After her friends, family, Wealth, Beauty, Strength, and other less loyal compatriots turn their backs on her, she finds that her long-neglected Good Deeds and Conscience are the only support she can bring along. Of course, the ever-present Robert Plant and Jimmy Page refuse to allow the show to get preachy, and push the dancers to moments of passion and hilarity.
Performances are April 17, 19, 24, 25 at 7:30, and April 20, 27 at 2:30. Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater, 3035 N. Hoyne. $15 ($10 students/seniors). Purchase tickets at the door or contact Innervation at info@innervationdance.org or 773-230-2168.
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Thu Apr 10 2008
This weekend at the MCA, you can see what one of America's great modern dance companies has to say about our "mediatized" world, touching on morality, humanity, and violence, the judicial process, and prison. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company has been a major force in American modern dance for nearly 25 years. In this visit to Chicago, they will be presenting Chapel/Chapter, a performance that retells two "high-visibility" news stories and one company member's "reminiscence/confession." The music is performed live, the set plays a role, and video and spoken words are involved, all contributing to the choreographer's desire to create a "self-enclosed world." The show promises to be both intellectually and visually fascinating.
Shows are at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Ave., on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30. Tickets are $35-$40 ($28-$32 for MCA members). For tickets and more information, including a video preview, visit the MCA's website.
- Rachel Zanders |
Art Wed Apr 09 2008
If you're the kind of person who walks by municipal garbage cans piled high with empty Starbucks cups and winces at all the waste, then Monument, a new dance theater work by local multidisciplinary arts collective The Seldoms, is for you. The 50-minute work, which combines dance, music and video, addresses our culture's apparent addiction to consumption and waste, in which the landfill has become an "accidental social sculpture." Recently Monument choreographer Carrie Hanson took a few minutes out of her busy schedule to answer some questions about the performance, which runs April 10-12 at 8pm at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn. (For more info, call 312-328-0303.)
How did the idea for Monument develop?
The Monument project has been developing for over a year. The idea began broadly: The initial choreographic, sonic and imagistic impulses emerged from a consideration of the acts of preservation, creation and destruction. We started from several points of inquiry: in balancing concerns for short-term prosperity/survival with long-term prosperity/survival, what do we preserve? What are the economic forces and cultural ethos that influence our behavior and decisions as consumers? What tensions exist between our dual identities as consumer and citizen, and between private goods and the public good? And finally, what are the personal, social, and environmental effects of our collective and individual acts of production, consumption, and disposal?
As we began our research before going into the dance studio, we easily found a lot of information relating to consumption and waste. The facts, offering mind-blowing figures about the quantity of plastic bottles and tons of refuse, were impressive and daunting, but weren’t readily imaginable. It wasn’t until Doug Stapleton, The Seldoms’ artistic associate, found an article about the immense Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island that our understanding moved from statistics to a physical reality. The article stated that the landfill is visible from space, which helped us to grasp the scale, impact and monumentality of our collective practices of consumption and waste. The work’s title – Monument – makes reference to the landfill as accidental monument.
Continue reading this entry»
- Lauri Apple |
Dance Thu Mar 27 2008
Renata Sheppard, an artist part of Links Hall's residency program, created a performance using non-dancers, exploring how people new to the art of dance would respond and move. These folks included a business exec, medical students and improv actors -- all of whom were total novices when the project began. After months of workshopping, they'll all make their debut in April:
Friday & Saturday, April 4 & 5, 8pm; Sunday, April 6, 7pm; $15
Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, #207. Call (773) 281-0824 for more info.
- Lindsay Muscato |
Dance Thu Mar 27 2008
Here are some options for this weekend (starting tonight!).
- Chicago Moving Company presents Dance Shelter, CMC's annual artist-in-residence concert. March 27, 28 and April 3, 4 @ 7:30. $15 ($12 students), Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater, 3035 N Hoyne Ave. Click here for more info and to purchase tickets.
- Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series opens tonight. If you were to see only one Chicago company this year, I'd say these are the folks to see. Consistently fantastic performances, consistently accessible to a wide audience. Various dates, tonight through April 5. Their site has all the info you could need.
- The final event in Links Hall's Choreographing Coalitions (see earlier GB entries about the series here and here) is Denise Uyehara's Big Head, an interdisciplinary performance piece that "revisits the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and considers current-day treatment of those perceived as 'the enemy now.'" March 28, 29 @ 8:00, March 30 @ 7:00. $15 ($12 students). 3435 N. Sheffield, #207
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Tue Mar 18 2008
For the next two weekends, Corpo Dance Company (born and bred in Chicago) will be performing under a new structural concept--well, at least it's new for dance. Contemporary music has been following the structure for decades: listen to the single, then flip the record to catch the remixed/reworked/rewoven version on the b-side. If you head to the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, you'll see original choreography by Christopher M. McCray (set to Bjork, Amon Tobin, Radiohead) in Act I. After the intermission, flip to the b-side to see "remixed" versions by several other area choreographers. And if that's not reminiscent enough of your favorite record, a local radio DJ will be announcing each piece as if you were listening to a live radio broadcast.
Corpo employs a "blend of urban, technical, and athletic movement styles" to create their dances. Tickets to b-sides are $20 in advance from the company's website, or $25 at the door. Shows are at 8 p.m. on March 21, 22, 28, and 29, and there's a 2:00 matinee on the 22nd. The Ruth Page Center is at 1016 N. Dearborn.
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Sat Mar 15 2008
Choreographing Coalitions: Dancing the Other in the Self, Links Hall's and the Dance Center of Columbia College's month-long festival, continues this week. (See last week's GB entry, Voguing Demystified.) The festival brings together local and national "body-based artists" who base their work on themes of social justice. They assume that "the dancing body is a uniquely qualified instrument with which to explore the complexities of the social world."
In that vein, this weekend's performance by Victoria Marks is titled Not About Iraq. Rather, Marks says it's about "dancing, heroics, valor, and truth," and where the body fits into all of that. What does it mean to be a citizen and an artist? How can dancing speak about the human experience? There will be a post-show discussion after each performance where I'm sure these and many other socially relevant questions will be discussed.
The last two shows are tonight (3/15 at 8:00) and tomorrow (3/16 at 7:00) at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, #207. Tickets are $15 ($12 students and seniors). To reserve tickets, call Links Hall at 773.281.0824.
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Mon Mar 10 2008
From an email sent by the company:
"Gus Giordano, founder/director emeritus of the critically acclaimed Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, author, legendary choreographer and one of the fathers of American jazz dance passed away quietly in Chicago on Sunday, March 9 from pneumonia. He was 84."
See obiturary in the Chicago Sun-Times.
- Rachel Zanders |
This weekend, nine companies and artists will present their interpretation of this year's Full Circle Danztheatre Festival theme, Milestones. Performing new works will be: Kate McIlvain, Shabam! Productions, The Core Project, Shahina, Christy Munch, Soul Theatre, Perceptual Motion, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble, and Wannapa Pimtong-Eubanks.
The festival aims to "blend all forms of art, dance, text, music, and visual art into performances that capture and stimulate the mind." And media isn't the only diverse aspect of the festival. Take a peek at the subject matter. McIlvain's "dance for the camera," Three Men in Two Parts, follows three young men through a night in a bar. Shabam!'s West Side Story Redux views today's racism and division through the lens of the eponymous musical. Munch's Rubber Coated Chlorine takes a stab at "political speak" while the audience hears recordings of Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations in 1962. Performances will range from political and serious to light and warm-hearted, while subjects range from a Baptist church, to mid-life discovery, to death. There are even promises of belly dancing and traditional Butoh dancing!
Tickets are $15 ($10 students). Shows are March 13 and 14 at 7:30 at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater, 3035 N. Hoyne. 773-486-8261
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Fri Mar 07 2008
Tonight marks the start of the latest month-long Links Hall dance festival, Chroegraphing Coalitions: Dancing the Other in the Self, curated by Artistic Associate Peter Carpenter. Three dancers--Darrell Jones, Gesel Mason & David Rousseve--take the stage to examine issues of race, color and sexuality through interpretive performance. Jones, of the 2007 show, Third Swan From The End, lifts the veil off this misunderstood dance form. Voguing started in the 70s and 80s among gays in Harlem who used the dance form of "striking poses," (stolen by Madonna to use in her popular 90s song, Vogue) to settle disputes in a non-violent manner. Yes, voguing is about more than just looking good, or imitating Vogue models, as Jones shows in his performance, in which "gay" and "black" represent a struggle for social justice.
Show opens tonight and Saturday at 8pm, and on Sunday at 7pm. $15, $12 for seniors, students and low-income. Reservations are recommended: 773.281.0824.
- Marla Seidell |
Dance Wed Mar 05 2008
Forget the shimmying “jazz hands” you think of when you hear the words “jazz dance.” Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, whose mission is partly to create “an awareness of jazz dance as a true artistic expression of American life” know how it’s really done. They should: they’ve been around (and at home in Chicagoland) since 1962, and they’re still exploring new directions for this uniquely American movement. If the thought of over-smiling and splayed-fingered bubblegum dancing makes you queasy, and if the image of overly-serious and gazing-into-the-distance postmodern movement puts you to sleep, Giordano is directly up your alley. They’re always good for dance newbies and experts alike.
The music the company dances to is a testament to the claim that GJDC isn’t exactly what the layman might expect from a jazz dance company. They’re performing some of their repertory this weekend, which is set to music as widely varying as Japanese Kodo drums to Judy Garland. They will also be showing their new piece, "Moanin’ Low," which is set to Lena Horne, Miles Davis, and others. Jazz, yes, but not exactly “jazz hands” music.
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8:00 at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park. Find more details in our Slowdown section or on GJDC’s website. Also note that they’re hosting a Young Professionals event before the show on Friday.
- Rachel Zanders |
Dance Mon Mar 03 2008
Chicago Dance Crash has been pushing the boundaries of the Chicago dance world since 2002. In one of their many innovative schemes, “The KTF Championship — Battle of the Belt,” they created an improv dance showdown in which CDC dancers competed for the title of KTF (“Keeper of the Floor”), complete with a forty-pound, gold-plated championship belt. The show was competitive dance meets improv comedy, right down to the audience participation. Talk about making quality dance that’s accessible to an enormous audience beyond the local dance snobbery!
They’re at it again on March 7, 8, 14, and 15 at the Viaduct Theater. One look at the rock-concert-poster-esque intro page for CDC’s website will give you a flavor of what’s on tap at “The Standing Room,” a “rock concert for dance.” And they mean rock concert, right down to the live music, the hand stamp, the coat check, and the standing-room-only. Honestly, I’m still not sure exactly what to expect, but that only attests to the originality of this idea. Will there be choreography in CDC’s ballet-capoeira-acrobatics-breakin’-hip-hop style? Will there be improv? Will the dancers be among the crowd? Can’t wait to find out!
- Rachel Zanders |
