Thodos Dance Chicago & Luna Negra Dance Theater

Thodos Dance Chicago (TDC) returns to the North Shore Center after an incredible World Premiere performance last February of the company’s The White City: Chicago’s Columbian Exposition 1893. Thodos Dance Chicago will be joined by the Luna Negra Dance Theater, which celebrates the richness and diversity of Latino culture through the creation of works by contemporary Latino choreographers while steering away from stereotypes and folkloric representations. Artistic Directors, Melissa Thodos and Gustavo Ramirez Sansano will combine creative forces to create a unique world premiere with each director setting choreography on the other company’s dancers.

The shared program will also feature greatest hits from each company’s repertoire.

Set to “Intro” by The XX, Thodos Dance Chicago’s Getting There is a new work that incorporates the same wheel of Thodos’ first work, Reaching There, which premiered in Chicago in 1986 and subsequently earned Thodos a choreography finalist award in the Concours International De Dance De Paris when she performed the piece there in 1988. The company will also perform Thodos’ celebrated early work Chant, a piece created 20 years ago and being performed in celebration of the company’s 20th anniversary.

Luna Negra will present Sansano’s Flabbergast, a 2001 work set to music by Juan Garcia Esquivel that depicts in funny and exuberant ways the bewilderment of experiencing a foreign culture for the first time and Bate by Brazilian choreographer Fernando Melo, a work that uses whimsy, cinematic staging and inventive props to portray the punch-drunk intoxications of love.

Tickets are $36-$46. For tickets and information, visit northshorecenter.org or call the North Shore Center Box Office, 847.673.6300.

This shared program is supported by an Audience Architects grant for the pilot year of its New Stages for Dance Initiative, funded by MetLife Foundation.