It’s my job to watch dance. How cool is that? I wish I could see everything. I wish I could clone myself. I wish we had a bigger budget. I wish it didn’t take 90+ minutes to go 10 miles in this city I love. Until more money, clones or more efficient transit options are a thing, our wonderful SCD writers and I simply have to do our best.

Everyone knows the feeling that comes about when teachers and bosses alike say those dreaded words: group project. There’s the person who does everything and the person who does nothing, and there’s probably a chance someone drops the ball on some aspect come final presentations, so what good can actually come from a group project? Well, “However,” the debut performance of Concept Dances, is the epitome of the good that comes from group projects.

Two dancers stand on stage, near the back wall. One stands with feet together, gazing down at his feet; the other extends a foot forward, with the ball of her foot on the ground, like she’s about to finish a tendu.

I thought it smelled like cotton candy, but the people behind me said it was more like overbaked cookies, a slightly burnt smell. The entire Edlis Neeson Theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art was shrouded in fog as guests entered Friday for the opening of Ligia Lewis’ “Water Will (in Melody).” Heavy puffs of theatrical fog are what filled the theater with that slightly sweet, slightly acerbic smell, and made the handrails more necessary than usual as we descended into an abyss that we couldn’t quite see.

For Kimberly Bartosik, creating work has often meant relying on lineage as much as it has turning away from it. A former dancer with Merce Cunningham who now runs her own company, Kimberly Bartosik/daela, Bartosik is no stranger to jumping between her roots tomore contemporary and experimental movement styles.

Today’s artistic community has a plethora of political turmoil and social injustices to use as inspiration for all art mediums and platforms.

In the program for Anthony Sims’ one-man performance Wednesday at Links Hall, he wrote: “I am placed inside the dome that is constantly being watched, judged and misunderstood. People don’t find black beautiful here. It’s as if my home is in a desolate playground.” I walked into Links Hall’s white box space to find just that—Anthony Sims crouched under a broken jungle gym with a cardboard dollhouse over his head and a circle of white styrofoam heads surrounding him, watching him. 

There was barely enough time to clink flutes and ring in 2020 before several Chicago dance artists found themselves in final rehearsals and performances kicking off the winter dance season in earnest. With Nutcrackers a thing of the past, experimentation is on tap this January.