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:
“The Bard Unraveled,” Innervation Dance Cooperative’s collaboration turns three Shakespearean plays inside-out to live rock piano, steampunk, and New Orleans jazz, (Links Hall, Sept. 3-7).
Chicago Tap Theatre’s “Shoestrings” (Athenaeum Theater, Sept. 5-7) spins story based on simple word associations, combining live music with children’s toys and modern physics.
Cerqua Rivera presents its full compliment of dancers and musicians in a unique collaboration of dance with visual art and live music (Ruth Page Center, Sept. 13). The concerts will include In the Depths of the Sensuous, a meditation on gender and choosing a public face;E/last/ic P/ash, inspired by the thrill of a first meeting; and Recuertos, a tribute to a choreographer’s childhood in Honduras and his musician parents.
Joffrey Ballet highlights story in both its September and October seasons at the Auditorium Theatre. “Stories In Motion” presents Anthony Tudor’s Lilac Garden and George Balanchine’s Prodigal Son, in which artistic director Ashley Wheater makes a rare return to the stage in the role of The Father. Also on the program is the Joffrey premiere of Yuri Possokhov’s contemporary Japanese story, RAkU (Auditorium Theatre,Sept. 18-21). October brings the Joffrey premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s creative re-imagining of Swan Lake (Auditorium Theatre, Oct. 15-26).
Soham Dance Project’s “Pay No Mind” (Links Hall, Sept. 19-21) features the original indo-folk-jazz-hop music and prose of choreographer/artistic director Anjal Chande in an exploration of conformity and rebellion through contemporary bharanatyan dance-theater.
Hedwig Dances celebrates its 30th anniversary season “Trade Winds/Aires de Cambio” (The Dance Center of Columbia College, Oct. 9-11) in a special collaboration with DanzAbierta, considered Cuba’s preeminent contemporary dance company. The separate but interlocking pieces--dancers from both companies perform together in portions of the two pieces--use video projections as a backdrop to the relationship of cyclical time in two different cultures: north and south, temperate and tropical.
River North Dance Chicago artistic director Frank Chaves brings a new work for the company’s six men to the Harris Theater for River North’s 25th anniversary season (Oct. 10-11). The piece “travels through the idea of connectivity,” says Chaves, “and how we gradually lose it,” using the metaphor of clothing to reflect the constraints that society, family and religion place upon us. Chaves’ inherent faith in the power of human contact to guide us to our truest selves follows the non-linear story through three duets, each exploring a different aspect of non-romantic male relationships.
Story reigns supreme as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago launches a project about laughter in a unique collaboration with Second City, Chicago’s nationally-acclaimed masters of sketch comedy. (Harris Theater, Oct. 16-19). Four HSDC choreographers team with four Second City writers to develop a series of interlocking stories under the direction of Billy Bungeroth, with musical direction by Second City’s Julie B. Nichols. Thirty dancers from HSDC and Hubbard Street 2, along with six actors will perform the evening-length production.
Choreographer Ray Leeper brings a Broadway slant to his new work for Giordano Dance Chicago (Harris Theater, Oct. 24-25). Roni Koresh’s dramatic Exit 4, Davis Robertson’s Entropy, and Jon Lehrer’s explosive A Ritual Dynamic round out the program.
Jump Rhythm Jazz Project uses “full-bodied rhythm making” to create total theater. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the company with a new, autobiographical solo, artistic director/founder Billy Siegenfeld hopes audiences “will see how energy can be shaped, rather than how shapes can dazzle the eye.” Integrating spoken word, song, and movement, Siegenfeld focuses on the emotional impact of tap dance, using the expressive power of the hands, head, and voice as much as the feet to convey story.
“Because I’m a theater lover,” says the choreographer, “the contract is to use the bodies on stage as possible objects of empathy.”
Visceral Dance Chicago opens its second season (North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, Oct. 26) with Ohad Naharin’s duet from Mabul,and new works by company director Nick Pupillo, Harrison McEldowney, Benjamin Bouldin, and Brian Enos.
Gracing Chicago stages from across the country and abroad are Mandala (Ruth Page Center, Sept. 5-6), BalletX (The Dance Center of Columbia College, Sept. 18), American Ballet Theatre (Auditorium Theatre, Oct. 3-5), Rosas Danst Rosas (Museum of Contemporary Art, Oct. 9), Rosy Simas (The Dance Center of Columbia College, Oct. 16-18), and Beijing Dance Theatre (Harris Theater, Oct. 28-29).
For a complete listing of dance events, and to order tickets, check out the calendar by clicking on “Upcoming Events” at seechicagodance.com.
Lynn Colburn Shapiro, editor