Dance lovers visiting Chicago are in store for a hot time on just about any given night. Dance in Chicago is booming! With over 200 professional companies performing on stages downtown and throughout Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods--from grand theaters to tiny storefronts, in public parks, museums, and universities, from world-class ballet, modern dance, jazz, tap, and culturally-specific traditional dance forms--Chicago Dance has something for everyone.
If classical ballet is your thing, Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet is your ticket, or you may like to see what Chicago Repertory Ballet, the Hyde Park School of Dance, Ballet 5:8, Ballet Chicago, The Salt Creek Ballet, or the Ruth Page Civic Ballet are up to.
Do you love cutting edge? The Dance Center of Columbia College, Links Hall, and the Museum of Contemporary Art present year-long seasons of local and touring companies that will challenge you with the unexpected.
Chicago’s best and brightest modern, contemporary, and jazz companies perform regular seasons at the Harris Theater For Music and Dance, including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Giordano Dance Chicago, River North, Visceral Dance Chicago, Lucky Plush, and Thodos Dance Chicago. Catch exciting out of town companies there as well, right in the heart of Millennium Park.
The Ruth Page Center for the Arts on the Gold Coast, and The Athenaeum Theatre on the North Side host mid-size companies all year-long, including Cerqua Rivera Dance Theater, Concert Dance Inc., Hedwig Dances, Winifred Haun and Dancers, The Cambrians, and Ron De Jesus Dance.
April is Chicago Dance Month, with dozens of dance events of all kinds in both conventional and unconventional performance spaces. Check the SeeChicagoDance calendar for listings.
Louis Sullivan’s historic Auditorium Theatre has been a leading presenter of major Chicago and world-renowned touring dance companies for 125 years and is the performing home of The Joffrey Ballet.
The Auditorium Theatre also hosts Chicago’s annual “Dance For Life” each summer, bringing together the best of Chicago’s vibrant dance community in a concert to benefit The Dancers’ Fund and HIV/AIDS research through Chicago Dancers United, providing financial support for dancers experiencing critical health issues. This year’s concert will take place on August 20, 2016.
The open-air Pritzker Pavillion in Millennium Park is host to The Chicago Dancing Festival, a highlight of Chicago’s summer dance events for the past nine years. The four-day festival of major Chicago, national, and international dance is free to the public, but reserved seating goes quickly. Additional venues have included the Harris Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Auditorium Theatre.
Chicago has long been a center for innovation and excellence in tap and percussive dance and boasts an impressive roster of individual virtuoso artists and tap dance companies, including BAM!, Chicago Tap Theatre, jorsTAPchicago, MADD Rhythms, Audible Odyssey, and Jump Rhythm Jazz Project.
The Chicago Human Rhythm Project hosts “Rhythm World,” an annual summer festival of tap and percussive dance at its home base, the American Rhythm Center in the Fine Arts Building. The Festival culminates in JUBA! a week of performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art featuring local, national, and international tap dance companies and solo artists.
“Dance In The Parks” offers free dance concerts all summer long throughout Chicago’s neighborhoods, featuring professional dancers and contemporary choreographers.
You don’t have to go to Ireland, Spain, or India to see great Irish, Spanish, or Indian dancing, or Latin American, Egyptian, Polish, or African for that matter. Chicago has them all! The World-famous Trinity Irish Dancers performs at the Auditorium Theatre this June. Ensemble Español hosts its annual American Spanish Dance and Music Festival at Northeastern Illinois University and other venues June 8-25, 2016.
Tempting? We hope so! Check out http://seechicagodance.com/events for details, discount offers, and tickets.