Ballet 5:8’s groundbreaking production uses classical ballet and film to bring a story inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to life.
Scarlet features original choreography by Ballet 5:8 Artistic Director Julianna Slager, film elements directed by choreographer and film producer Preston Miller, spoken word by Chicago-based artist Kylla Pate, and a score by American modernist composer Charles Ives.
My esteemed colleague, Lauren Warnecke, and I look back on a year of strong achievements, innovation, and vitality on Chicago's dance stages. While I've focused on some of the year's more high-visibility events, Lauren surveys the Storefront Scene.
The Nutcracker wasn’t the only Chicago holiday dance tradition that got a reboot this year. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Chicago Tap Theatre (CTT)’s annual holiday offering called “Tidings of Tap” made a big move from the intimate UIC Theater to the 900-seat North Shore Center for the Performing Arts (NSCPA) for a one-day-only matinee Dec. 18.
A trio, a duet, and a solo were on the menu for Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak’s Love With/out Trembling, Dec. 16-18 at Links Hall. There was something new (The Last Minute), something old (And We Shall Be Rid of Them: Until the Moon Has Risen), and something unfinished (Blackbird’s Ventriloquy), although the three pieces, considered together, made two long sentences, separated by a semi-colon.
Gold balloons form a cascading pile in the upstage corner of the room, not unlike the snowdrifts forming just outside Dovetail Studios Dec. 11 for the final showing of “Honey,” Joanna Rosenthal Read’s latest work. The event is a coming out of sorts –Read unveiled a new name for her company – replacing Same Planet Different World with the less committal Same Planet Performance Project – plus a whole new roster of dancers and a promising new performance space at her home studio in Albany Park.
We’ve been buzzing about Christopher Wheeldon’s brand new re-imagining of the classic holiday favorite for over a year, and now that it’s finally here, Nutcracker jaws are clacking with joy across Chicagoland. Finally, a Nutcracker Chicago can claim as its own.
Michael Estanich’s A Place At The Edge Of The World To Call Our Own is inspired by elegant passages from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Estanich’s own personal reflections on solitude and quiet. The work for nine dancers drifts gently among an inverted world—supported by an installation that includes a sky of lavender, a beautiful while Marley floor, and projections of wispy cloud formations, shooting stars, and meteor showers.
It didn’t take more than a quick glimpse of Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in breathless grands jetés across the studio at the end of company class last week to feel the solidarity of a company that has reached its twentieth anniversary charged with unified purpose and spirited determination.
Snowflakes and icicles are on the march, along with an army of toy soldiers, marauding mice, and delicious dancing treats, as multiple “Nutcrackers” once again launch Chicago’s holiday season.
Before there was Misty Copeland, there was Virginia Johnson. A founding member of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH), Johnson was universally recognized as one of the great ballerinas of her generation, a pioneer for women of color in ballet. When she returned to DTH in 2010 it was to lead the organization, whose company was in the middle of an eight-year hiatus; only the school and a small touring ensemble of young dancers remained active. A couple years later DTH was ready to rebuild.