Kicking off the 29th annual Rhythm World Tap Festival, the Chicago Human Rhythm Project (CHRP) gathered a full audience into the warm and intimate Jazz Showcase June 22 in Chicago’s South Loop for a night of live jazz and flying footwork. The cabaret-style performance featured tap dancers from young students to Chicago legends, spanning both in age and roots across the globe.
ANNUAL DANCE COMMUNITY CELEBRATION
Presentation of the Distinguished Service to the Dance Field Award Honoring Amina Dickerson
Presentation of the Legacy Award Honoring Lou Conte
Learn more about the 2019 Awardees here.
“We’re the bridge in to concert dance,” said Katie McCann, director of Dance in the Parks (DIP), a series of free summer dance performances at local parks throughout Chicago. Now in its 11th season, DIP will visit 14 parks during the month of July featuring many dance styles, nine professional dancers and eight area choreographers. “We’re not trying to change the dance community. It’s here. It’s awesome. We’re trying to be the ‘bridge’ and get more people into it,” said McCann.
Giordano Dance Chicago (GDC) presents a world premiere work created by beloved choreographer Peter Chu on the Harris Theater’s stage October 25 & 26. Chu adds his signature finesse with bold, liquid movement to the powerful GDC repertoire along with other works selected by masterful programmatic engineer, Artistic Director, Nan Giordano.
While a majority of our bigger dance venues and organizations are on hiatus for the summer, many professional dancers scatter to teach summer workshops. Even here in Chicago, there are a number of high caliber dance intensives for pre-professional hopefuls to keep the month well-occupied. And for those of us who typically spend the rest of the year gazing at dance from the plush chairs of a theater, July is a call to get up, get outside, and put your dancing shoes on.
Links Hall continues with celebrating its 40th Anniversary with the culminating performances of its Co-Missions Fellows: Media McNeal and Silvita Diaz Brown. The two choreographers, each a scholar and performer, blur the lines between history and myth in the culminating performances of their six-month long residencies.
How does it feel to belong, and at the same time not belong? What is the line between reality and myth? Is living in between those lines, the blurring of those lines, essential for survival, for us to be seen? What do we believe, what do we deny as truth, and how we do we tell the difference? Who is in control of shaping our narratives? Who gets to tell the story?
This isn’t the one where his nose gets longer.
After winning the 2017 national award from Dance Magazine for “Most Inventive New Work” with 'The Bricklayers of Oz,' Crash revisits the “breakdance fairy tale” formula by mixing color and energy with universally human (or puppet) life lessons. 19th Century political satirist Carlo Collodi’s original works via newspaper comics and ultimately a novel, “The Adventures of Pinocchio,” are largely considered unsuitable for children today… considering the dismemberments and consistent slandering of formal education.
Ken Gasch and Chris McCray, co-director and artistic director (respectively) of The Vertical Side Show both remember their first Poonie’s Cabaret. Experienced separately, shortly after moving to Chicago (for Gasch, it was his first week here), Poonie’s Cabaret provided a warm welcome to two artists on the verge of establishing themselves in the Chicago dance community—and a look into the fresh voices of Chicago’s queer artists.