Dr. Seuss could have been talking about all the many wonderful and diverse locations where dance is happening in Chicago this month, with workshops, master classes, open rehearsals, and performances celebrating Chicago Dance Month (April 1-May 4).
This year’s theme, “Open Doors, Open Spaces,” invites us to open a few of those doors, take a look inside some of the different dance spaces throughout our fair city, and consider just how those differences affect creativity, perceptions, and the way we experience dance.
Theater architecture, interior decor, the size and technical capabilities of the stage, audience capacity, distance between audience and stage, even the geographic location all factor into what happens in performance, and how it all lands on you as an audience member.
For instance, if you are going to see The Joffrey Ballet’s upcoming performance of Romeo And Juliet, (April 30-May 11) you might find yourself blasted by Chicago’s legendary wind across a bustling boulevard, thrust between massive stone arches, and blown through a set of gilded doors into the cramped vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre. You funnel toward the lobby doors, ticket in hand, among a throng of elegantly-dressed fellow patrons. A uniformed sentry with the gravitas of the Queen’s Royal Guard admits you into the palatial splendor of the sepia-toned lobby, opulent with golden curly-cues atop soaring pillars and ornate vines trailing down from the domed ceiling. An usher invites you through one of several aisle doorways and asks if she can help you find your place in the four-thousand-seat hall. Lights dim, the curtain parts. Sonorous strains of the Prokofiev overture spill live from the orchestra pit and inundate the hall with a portending drama that runs chills up your spine, and you expect nothing less than the grandeur of ballet at its best.
“The Auditorium Theatre is a huge stage,” says Joffrey Artistic Director Ashley Wheater. “It’s deep, with a very open proscenium, and the sight lines are very good.” When the Joffrey first moved into the Auditorium space, Wheater pushed the wings out to allow the maximum amount of stage area. It was a physical challenge for the dancers to use the space that was now available. Suddenly, they were able to go to the limits of the choreography. It broadened how they used space and traveled across it. “They have learned to really fill that expanse, and the freedom of being able to conquer that space has made a huge difference in their dancing.” As huge as the Auditorium is, Wheater says, it never feels as if the audience is far away. “Because the company feels so at home there, they know what they’re walking into.”
Alternately, if you are on your way to see MARKINGS: Hedwig Dances Spring Show, (April 4-5 and 11-12) you navigate the crosswalks of six-way traffic at Belmont and Western and hustle under a viaduct toward the speak-easy anonymity of an industrial door which admits you to the spare, urban-cool of Links Hall. A few twenty-somethings in lace-up boots and skinny jeans linger in the no-nonsense lobby before making their way into one of two performing spaces, the black box or the white box, either one of which offers a handful of folding chairs on moveable risers. The lights dim, or maybe they don’t. Music may or may not fill the air, and you expect nothing less than the unexpected.
Hedwig Dances artistic director Jan Bartoszek embraces the forward-looking vibe of Links Hall, which took over the space from the former Viaduct Theater less than a year ago. “It’s a place where new things happen.” She describes Links Hall as “a nurturing space that is helping to cultivate new dance in Chicago.” The black box is ideal for that, she says, “because you can see movement in relief against black.” The intimacy and flexibility of the space are other pluses. With a large performing area, “you’re really close to the audience.” For her piece, Double Helix, Bartoszek plans to position the 120 seats on moveable risers in a diagonal configuration. An unusual perk is her access to the space a full two weeks before opening. The space has definitely had an impact on her choreography. “There are lots of different exits and entrances,” and while you can’t do rigging at Links, there is flexibility in other technical areas, such as lighting. “Our lighting designer Ken Bowen has opted for more ‘specials’ instead of the traditional side lighting.”
If you’re planning on catching the final tour of The Trey McIntyre Project, the 1500-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millennium Park is your destination. Situated just east of “The Bean,” in the heart of downtown Chicago, The Harris is moving and shaking the Chicago dance scene in its own way, presenting both local and touring dance and initiating exciting commissions of new work and innovative collaborations. “I'm fascinated by the intimacy of the space and the closeness to the dancers,” says Harris President and Managing Director Michael Tiknis, “but it’s not so intimate that you can’t get a larger company on stage.” Considered a mid-size theater, The Harris was designed expressly for dance and music, with seating that rises up from the proscenium stage, offering an excellent vantage point for viewing dance. The space lends itself to new work, according to Tiknis, because of the informality of the architecture. “There’s a lack of intimidation, where the focus is never on the space but on the work. It’s an artist’s theater.” McIntyre’s The Vinegar Works, is being created expressly for and commissioned by The Harris. Set to four stories by Edward Gorey and music of Shostakovich (Trio #2 in E Minor), performed live by young musicians from The Music Institute of Chicago’s Academy Program, Vinegar Works will be performed on Thursday, April 3 only, along with Mercury Half-Life, set to music by Queen. The latter will also be presented onFriday, April 4th in a special “Eat and Drink To The Beat” at 5:30 PM, and for family audiences on Saturday, April 5th at 2 PM.
The 268-seat, art deco Columbia College Dance Center in the gentrified South Loop is a modified black-box theater and one of the few U.S. venues designed for and devoted exclusively to dance. “It’s a welcoming neighborhood,” says Dance Center Executive Director Phil Reynolds. When you come to The Dance Center, you’re entering a learning center, with students, faculty and other artists. “People who come here aren’t afraid to leave their comfort zone,” Reynolds says of the dance space that has set the bar high as a steadfast presenter of cutting edge choreographers and performers since its inception in 1969. Measuring 70 feet across wall-to-wall, and with a seating capacity of 268, even people in the back row are only about 50 feet away from the stage. “You’re right there, right on top of the work.” Even with no ‘fly-lock,’ the space has a lot of flexibility, with strong technical support for a black box and high production values. “There’s an element of rawness. It’s not cloaked in a lot of decoration.” Apart from its physical attributes, one reason performing artists enjoy the Dance Center is because it’s a residency of a whole week, not just one-night, and usually includes master classes and community outreach programs that give the performers an opportunity to interact with students, faculty, and audience members. “We take good care of our artists,” says Reynolds. Choreographer Reggie Wilson prefers to have the audience close because it gives his performers interesting information. “It’s easy to forget there are real people there,” says Wilson, who brings his Fist and Heel Performance Group to The Dance Center April 3-5, in a new work,Moses(es), commissioned by the Joyce Foundation and supported in a research residency by The Dance Center and The City of Chicago. Wilson enjoys the big open performance space of the Dance Center, but “the space of the Dance Center isn’t about bricks and mortar,” Wilson says, it’s about people and the quality of his collaborations. He appreciates the directness and lack of pretense in the people he’s encountered. “I have a personal affinity for places of learning.”
Ron de Jesus practically grew up in the 189-seat Ruth Page Foundation auditorium in Chicago’s Gold Coast and has deep emotional connection to the space. “Space can make you experience something out of the norm,” he says, depending on how you use it. The Ruth Page theater is a challenge because it’s old and conventional, there are no flies, and the sight lines are “horrible,” according to de Jesus. “But you surrender to it.” He likens the challenge to that of the cooking show,Iron Chef, where your’e given a few odd ingredients to create a gourmet meal. de Jesus’s solution? “You go against the formula.” That includes laying down a white Marley floor to “brighten the environment,” opening the back drape, and utilizing the small hidden mini-stage at the back of the theater as a shadow box for the jazz quartet performing his new piece, Without A Song Mic Check 1,2, which premieres April 25-26 as part of Hyper Human, his company’s first Chicago full-length season. He quotes one of his mentors, Lou Conte, founder of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, as saying, “It’s all about framing the company--if you have the right space, you look fabulous.”
The Historic Pleasant Home, a site-specific venue, seemed like right space to Winifred Haun for the third installment of Vision, Faith, and Desire, a choreographic homage to Martha Graham. Audience members will move about five rooms of the house to experience the evening’s offerings. Haun’s piece, Don’t Linger, which uses a dining table as a major set piece, will actually be performed in the mansion’s dining room. The audience will migrate to the family room for Lucy Riner and Michael Estanich's RE | Dance, and to the vestibule for Haun’s contribution to the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance Lamentations Project. “Site-specific work gives a frame to the dance,” Haun observes. “Your eyes can be drawn to different spots, not just the dance,” something she hopes will enhance meaning for the audience. Pleasant Home’s architecture is 1890‘s Prairie Style, the rooms long and expansive, with lots of beautiful woodwork everywhere, and repetition of the classic “circle-in-the-square” pattern. Staging the dances in such a different context, Haun finds she has much less control as a choreographer than when she is in a conventional theater. “We could turn Pleasant Home into a pretend theater. Other artists have, but we decided to let the house be itself, enhance it with a few lights here and there, but not use a lot of equipment.” Her expectation? “Audiences in general have limited experience with modern dance. It’s an act of faith for them to come at all. The fact that it’s at Pleasant Home makes it more accessible, a community setting owned by the Oak Park Park District. Some people will come just to see the house.” Even more than a black box, site-specific venues offer logistics of intimacy that can bring the audience even closer to the performers. “The humanity of the dancer in the flesh will allow the audience to read a lot more subtlety up close.”
Opportunities to open new doors and to see dance in diverse spaces abound this month! Check out seechicagodance’s full calendar listing, and try something new this April!