News

February is nationally designated as Black History Month throughout the United States, but in Chicago, you don’t have to wait for February to experience the strength and vitality of African American culture on our dance stages. SeeChicagoDance spoke with several artistic directors of dance companies that are making a difference through their commitment to the expression of African American identity through dance in the diaspora.

Elizabeth “Nana” Shineflug grew up on the North Shore, following what might be considered an ordinary path. After earning a degree in mathematics, Nana taught briefly at New Trier High School, until her unbridled, creative spirit lead her down a different path. After attempting a dance career in New York, she returned to Chicago during a time in which there were few places and opportunities for modern dancers. In 1972, Nana started a repertory company called the Chicago Moving Company (CMC), in response to this need.

What a wonderful year 2014 has been for dance in Chicago!  So many outstanding creative enterprises in so many different genres make our city an ever-expanding hub for deepening dance traditions, pioneering exciting dance innovation, cross disciplinary collaborating, and world class performance.

Long before the aroma of roast turkey tantalizes our taste buds, Nutcrackers across the world begin flexing their jaws for the holiday season. As countless holiday productions can attest, there’s more than one way to crack a nut. 

It’s fitting that October brings a cornucopia of international connections to Chicago dance stages, coinciding with the national celebration of United Nations Month, which commemorates the signing of the UN Charter, now completing its 68th year.  

With international dance connections ranging from as far away as China and as close to home as Cuba, Chicago audiences have a wonderful opportunity to experience how the cultural traditions, stories, and theatrical conventions of far-away lands enrich and inform our sense of global community. 

Stories are making a comeback on the dance scene, or reinventing themselves as post-post-modernism, take your pick.  Throughout September and October, Chicago dance lovers have an absolutely tantalizing array of dance styles and companies to choose from, with a rip-roaring line-up that ranges from conventional story ballets to innovative collaborations, abstract dance tone-poems to jazz rhythms and tap dance narratives. Here are a just few of the many wonderful stories in dance coming our way this fall:    

When Chicago tap dancer Jay Fagan first entered The American Rhythm Center, home of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project (CHRP) and its resident tap company, BAM!, he was blown away by the vibe “of all these amazing dancers!” And they were all wearing tap shoes.

Dance as a vehicle for social change across the globe fuels The JOMBA! Initiative,  blossoming this summer in its second year of a three-year collaboration between Chicago’s Deeply Rooted Dance Theater (DRDT) and South Africa’s Flatfoot Dance Company (FDC), in residence here for DRDT’s Summer Intensive (July 4-20).

Rhythm rocks, whether you’re tapping, stomping, clicking or clacking, strumming or drumming, singing or humming. The exciting interplay between body and instrumental rhythms figures strongly in a variety of dance intensives throughout Chicago this summer. 

Knock your socks off with classes all day long or choose a single workshop from a sampler of master classes in Tap, Spanish, Flamenco, Afro-Latin@*, or Indian dance. Kick it up a notch with Hip-Hop en pointe, or find your passion in Body Drumming.