“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.

We gathered underneath string lights that drape the ceiling like stars in the intimate Filament Theater. Fitting for an evening-length work inspired by the moon and its pull on the tides, on the mystery of night and on ourselves. As co-founder and executive director Lucy Vurusic Riner’s first choreographic work in five years, RE|Dance Group’s “What The Moon Pulls,” running Nov 21-24, celebrated the end of their 10th anniversary season by immersing the audience in an evening of swirling momentum, athletic rigor and quiet contemplation. 

Ailey II—the second company of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (AAADT)—stopped in Glen Ellyn, IL for a one-night-only performance at the MacAnich Arts Center (MAC) at the College of DuPage last weekend.

The evening began with a dark stage, only a small puppet visible. The puppet, who foreshadowed a larger-than-life puppet to come, appeared to speak as a woman’s voice radiated through the theater:  “The struggle is not between ourselves, but within us.” In this moment of modern performance mixed with sage advice, the audience was transported into a story that although mystical in experience, brought to life the very-real division that plagues our world today while advocating for the kind of change that starts in our everyday lives.