The dancers entered Links Hall’s Studio A—the white space—in socks. They put on gym shoes and danced for an hour, and then took them off again, leaving the room how they came.

“If you exit this page, if you exit this conversation, any action taken is at your own risk.” The Seldoms dancer Maggie Vannucci mimicked the standard exit disclaimer for when you leave a standard government website. She sat in a toppled, old-fashioned school desk, her cheek against the floor as her words hinted at the confusion of facts and fiction to come as we continued into the performance. 

The Chicago dance community lost an integral influencer just shy of a year ago when Claire Bataille, a founding member of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, passed away due to pancreatic cancer. Her enthusiastic performance quality, innovative choreographic ideas, and inspirational teaching methods all embody what Bataille contributed to our lives as artists. The loss is still felt throughout the city; however, Robyn Mineko William’s one-night-only premiere of “Echo Mine” at the Harris Theater is a tribute that reminds us all about the beautiful, creative, and complex life Bataille lived. 

With the holiday shopping season properly kicked off, twinkle lights lining the Magnificent Mile and more cold days ahead, “Nutcracker” is in the air.

It began with simple, projected text setting the framework for the dancing we were about to see, something along the lines of: “We walk in two worlds, along timelines of ancient past and contemporary society.” In this moment, the use of technology to ease an audience into stories dating back 65,000 years is not lost on me. Nor the next moment, when the tech was stripped away and the performance began with something as simple and natural as a man hiding behind brush. Then another, then BAM.