RE|dance group's two newest dance works, "The Biggest Wail From The Bottom Of My Heart" and "What Love Looks Like," delve into our reflections on the current state of affairs in our country. We are proud to be using our artistic voices to explore those biases within ourselves and make sense of the world around us. We premiere each of these new works at the beautifully rustic Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater.
This weekend, the Hyde Park School of Dance (HPSD) will once again cap the year with the studio’s annual “Nutcracker” ballet. Now in her 25th year of leadership, HPSD founding artistic director August Tye (who somehow also has the time to be ballet mistress and choreographer for the Lyric Opera of Chicago), started her school’s “Nutcracker” tradition almost from the very beginning.
Hubbard Street’s 41st season, “danc(e)volve: New Works Festival” presents premieres by three Hubbard Street Choreographic Fellowship recipients: Florian Lochner, making his choreographic debut, company veteran Alice Klock, and Rena Butler, in her second season as a Hubbard Street company member.
Santa will surely find out who’s been nutty or nice this December in Chicago, with more Nutcrackers per square mile than plastic reindeer dancing across rooftops. Traditional renderings of the classic Christmas story, inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s 19th century tale, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” and set to Tchaikovsky’s iconic score, proliferate throughout the greater metropolitan area. New spins on the tried and true include none more grand than Christopher Wheeldon’s 1893 Chicago World’s Fair adaptation for the Joffrey Ballet, running the whole month at the Auditorium Theatre.
Wednesday, December 5 from 6 - 9 pm
Chinese American Museum of Chicago
238 W. 23rd St., Chicago, IL 60616
Located one-half block west of Wentworth Avenue and three blocks from the Chinatown Red Line station.
Each year, as a new class of choreographers graduates from the Dance Center of Columbia College, a group of talented dance makers enters the queue. Chicago’s dance field is flooded with more talent year after year, for which there are not enough opportunities to go around. Often, a solution for young dancers and choreographers is to team up and self-produce, as Chloe Grace Michels, Lydia Feuerhelm and Andy Slavin did Nov. 16-17 at Dovetail Studios. Despite the inherent risks, the rewards of putting work “out there” are many.
DanceWest Ballet presents its 25th production of The Nutcracker, one of the world's most beautiful and engaging ballets and an annual holiday tradition in Naperville. Presented in its entirety, DanceWest's Artistic Directors, Regina and Ricardo Moyano, have ensured that their version of The Nutcracker is an accurate depiction of the original ballet, incorporating exceptional and stunning costumes, lights, scenery, and choreography.
The Seldoms are sporting straggly beards and long, free-flowing hair this weekend, which can only mean one thing: “RockCitizen” is back.
Premiered in 2016, this evening-length work came second in a trio of dances by Seldoms artistic director Carrie Hanson. With “Power Goes” (2015) and “The Making” (2017), the trilogy is an exhaustive investigation of power structures and hierarchies within societies, political systems, and the human body.
Video Corpo Festival shifts the lens on movement with the collaboration of three innovative performance presenters: Defibrillator Gallery: Nov. 16–Dec. 7, 1029 W. 35th Street; Zephyr Dance: Nov. 17–Dec. 7, at SITE/less, 1250 W. Augusta Boulevard; and Pivot Arts: Nov. 30 at Chicago Filmmakers, 5720 N. Ridge Avenue.
Seeing Lucky Plush at the Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre, an intimate new black box tucked behind the prestigious theater’s next-door bar and café, is like watching an endangered species in its natural habitat. The dance theater ensemble has moved increasingly toward presenting work at larger venues, which necessarily tugs the work in a slightly different direction. Not that evolution is a bad thing – in fact last year’s “Rooming House,” also presented at Steppenwolf 1700, shares much in common with the revival of “The Better Half,” running through Nov. 18 at the Lincoln Park venue.