A day or two after the 2016 election, See Chicago Dance held its quarterly convening. Rather than focusing on what was supposed to be the topic of the day—how to be better at social media, or something to that effect—a faction of Chicago’s dance community sat together in a circle to talk about their feelings.
Dance to feel your Power. Grace. Resilience
During the self-isolation period, we are still working tirelessly to enable students to continue to learn to dance their stories. So, on Saturdays mornings, we are streaming our Kathak dance classes to the comfort of your home. Keep busy, stay healthy, and continue to express yourself. In times such as these, it is more important than ever we remember our connections to each other, and work together, body and spirit, to get through it to a better tomorrow and a better self.
Pivot Arts—an organization focused on creating and presenting bold, multidisciplinary performance in unusual spaces—keeps their mission at heart as they move forward with the 2020 Pivot Arts Festival online. The annual festival, this year titled “This Is How We Pivot,” exhibits programming artfully curated to exist on a virtual platform, both in how the works are created and documented and in how they address the circumstances of this time.
See Chicago Dance stands in solidarity with black Americans who are justifiably outraged and exhausted by a society that does not value their lives.
We know we have more work to do as an organization whose mission is to advocate for the dance field in Chicago.
We want to be more than allies. We want to have hard conversations and do our part to dismantle systemic racism and oppression, which harm all parts of our society, including the arts.
We are taking steps as an organization to understand what that really means and know this work is never done.
As a dance service organization, it is our mission to support artists and help dancers, choreographers, studio owners, dance presenters and administrators do what they do best: create, teach and present the art form we love.
The performing arts have gone digital, helping the world endure the devastating losses and hardships of COVID-19 at a time when the pandemic has closed access to live performance world-wide.
In an ironic twist of fate, as artists and arts organizations struggle to stay solvent, free online concerts, recitals, classes, workshops, discussion forums and short videos are creating unprecedented access to the performing arts, stimulating and sustaining a burgeoning public appetite for its message of hope and faith in the human spirit.
Although it first appeared that we’d all be “resting” more than usual, many of us seem to be feeling even more tired and tense after weeks of couch-sitting and phone-gazing. Somatic exercises can add a bit of balance to our often outward-focused dance practice, and provide structure when we feel we need it.
Looking to give ourselves a challenge regarding all the strange non-perishables hiding on your shelves and in your pantries, we asked you, “What mysterious ingredients do you have hiding in your kitchen?” Thanks to everyone who submitted responses on Facebook and Instagram! Here are some great savory and sweet recipes to try in an effort to use some of those less-familiar ingredients you may have acquired—a useful skill to have whether under a shelter in place order not. Have something a little strange or unfamiliar that you’d like to turn into something satisfying and delicious?
The past few seasons revealed cracks at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, an extraordinary dance company that, until recently, seemed untouchable. One could perhaps start the narrative in 2016, when a flood damaged the company’s studios at 1147 W. Jackson—hallowed grounds for generations of Chicago dancers.