Thursday, December 7, 2017
“They dance to give voice to the voiceless,” said education director Nicole Clarke-Springer at the top of Deeply Rooted Dance Theater’s 20th anniversary season finale, a weekend of per…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:40PMTuesday, December 5, 2017
Twyla Tharp views her career as a linear one, starting at the beginning and following a path up to now. That path includes more than 160 credits in dance, film, writing and Broadway — more…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMFriday, December 1, 2017
On tap through Friday at Hamlin Park, “In the Presence of Chasms” presents five dance tidbits by choreographers Megan Rhyme and Tanniqua-Kay Buchanan. Producer Rhyme’s original spark f…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:35PMSunday, November 19, 2017
In 2002, an actor, a dancer and a martial artist started a fusion hip-hop contemporary dance company. It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke, but one’s got to wonder if Illinois State Un…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AMWednesday, November 8, 2017
Halloween night of 1967 was a special day in Chicago, the highly anticipated grand reopening of the Auditorium Theatre after a 26-year absence from public programming. The theater closed at …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMFriday, November 3, 2017
I first interviewed Milwaukee Ballet artistic director Michael Pink in 2014, and he said, “If we can get you through the doors, we can a have lasting impact.” Pink has kept that promise …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:20AMTuesday, October 31, 2017
Virago is a term typically used to describe women — heroic, strong and courageous to some; shrewd and overbearing to others. In either interpretation, the word implies a transgression of g…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:20PMSunday, October 29, 2017
Giordano Dance Chicago’s two-night fall series at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance opened over the weekend with the 2005 “Giordano Moves.” Created just three years before founder…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:05PMThursday, October 19, 2017
It’s a classic, but not classical. “Giselle” premiered in Paris in 1841, created for the ballerina Carlotta Grisi by choreographers Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot and set to a magnifice…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:40PMTuesday, October 17, 2017
This weekend, Chicago dance artists and venues are opening their doors and inviting the public to stages all over the city to witness excerpts, works-in-progress and studio processes from ou…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:20AMSaturday, October 14, 2017
In Eric Barry’s now infamous “Goodbye Chicago” manifesto published in the Huffington Post, the aspiring comic aired all of Chicago’s dirty laundry — laying out the idiosyncrasies o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PMFriday, October 13, 2017
“We are what we repeatedly do,” said writer Will Durant, describing Aristotle’s observations on the effects of practice. We now understand this as the principle of specificity. If you …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:20PMFriday, October 6, 2017
The marriage of music and dance is what Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre is all about. And though it’s a dance company, this group’s fall series “Alone/Together” relies as heavily on the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMTuesday, October 3, 2017
“Reimagining classical Indian dance for modern times.” I must have written that description a dozen times, about a dozen different works over the past few years. But pulling apart a thou…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:35PMTuesday, September 26, 2017
Links Hall, a well-known incubator and performance venue for dance and performance artists, spent its first 30 years in a raggedy old space above a Wrigleyville pub near the confluence of Cl…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:40PMMonday, September 25, 2017
If audiences turned out to the Auditorium Theatre over the weekend expecting to see an Olympic-style spectacle, they surely left disappointed. While Shen Wei, the MacArthur “genius”-awar…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMFriday, September 22, 2017
It’s been more than 10 years since the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, one of Chicago’s top tap dance companies, last performed at the Dance Center of Columbia College. As the venue’s 20…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PMSunday, September 17, 2017
A small but enthusiastic crowd assembled at Skokie’s North Shore Center for the Performing Arts for Visceral Dance Chicago’s fall offering, the official season opener for the fledgling c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:15PMSaturday, September 9, 2017
The first of two programs in this year’s Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival (through Sept. 16 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts) begins with Alicia Diaz’s “Deep Listening,�…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:15PMThursday, September 7, 2017
While some excellent tours are rolling into town this season, the fall months are primarily reserved for homegrown dance. Especially exciting are two unique, not-to-be-repeated events highli…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00AMConversations about a Hip Hop Studies minor at Columbia College Chicago began about three years ago, as choreographer and educator Onye Ozuzu was transitioning from chair of the dance depart…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00AMTuesday, September 5, 2017
Marie Casimir was still the associate director of Links Hall when she and Steve Marquette conceived the first Instigation Festival in 2016, a joint venture to create a cultural exchange betw…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PMTuesday, August 29, 2017
When Victor Alexander was preparing for the next phase of his career, gradually reducing his stage time as a performer in Hedwig Dances and dabbling with choreography, he never imagined he w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PMMonday, August 28, 2017
In its second year, Collaboraction’s Peacebook Festival shares some commonalities with the now-defunct Sketchbook Festival, presenting an exhaustive display of short, multidisciplinary pie…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMFriday, August 25, 2017
When a play premieres, it feels fresh and crisp, like a new pair of jeans. But living in those “jeans” for a while sometimes yields an entirely different production by the end of the run…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:40PMThursday, August 17, 2017
Wednesday’s heavy summer rain left the Chicago sidewalks steaming as guests filed into the new Defibrillator Gallery space in Noble Square, just a few blocks southwest of the gallery’s l…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:20PMTuesday, August 15, 2017
When Keith Elliott, Todd Kiech and Harriet Ross presented the first Dance for Life in June 1992, Chicago’s dance community was in crisis. Friends and colleagues were dying at alarming rate…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PMTuesday, July 25, 2017
It feels like a long time ago that a band of dance misfits formed Chicago Dance Crash — smooshing dance forms together to create a unique fusion style that has helped launch hip-hop onto t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:57PMSunday, July 16, 2017
Thodos Dance Chicago's performance in the "Made in Chicago" series at the Auditorium Theatre in March marked the end of the group's run as an ensemble company, after artistic director Meliss…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:51PMMonday, July 10, 2017
"I think it's fair to say that dance in Chicago will not suffer under the new commissioner's work," said Mark Kelly just before we ended our phone conversation. After more than 30 years work…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:32PMSaturday, July 1, 2017
Chicago Tap Theatre's "Changes," now at Stage 773, is a full-length narrative tap dance set to the music of David Bowie. There's not nearly enough space on Stage 773's tiny Pro Theater for a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:18PM 
