A deluge of dance is upon us in Chicago. As restrictions on live performance are increasingly relaxed, the flood gates are newly open and the performing arts, determined as ever, are springing back to life.
Chicago Dance Month is an annual celebration and amplification of Chicago’s diverse dance scene. Established in 2013, Chicago Dance Month, typically in April, draws attention to the wealth of local productions that takes place each spring after national tours of big companies like American Ballet Theatre and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater roll through town in late winter.
Knowing that April was likely to still be quite dormant, See Chicago Dance decided to move Dance Month to June this year. The return to live performances, plus the other quintessential Chicago summer staples likely to return at or near full force, is generating palpable excitement—relief, too.
For those who pass through life creating dance, the past year and a half has been destabilizing, unnerving and, at times, infuriating. Still, for many artists these 15 months have been a period of remarkable resilience, imagination and productivity. There are silver linings everywhere. A lifetime of stories will be told about this extraordinary era.
So, now what? is a question that frequently runs through my head and heart as the performing arts wake from their relative slumber—relative, because the past year has been busier than ever for most people. Is it business as usual, again? Do artists and arts organizations simply pick up where they left off two Marches ago and finish projects forced to close or cancel before some of them were even realized?
For some, the answer is yes. The mission-driven nature of non-profit dance organizations provides a North star from which many artists will not deviate, on principle. These artists will put their heads down and get to work. A huge swath of the community never stopped working in the first place. The digital sandbox in which most Chicago dance companies were forced to play over the past year has shown a variety of approaches to making art happen under any circumstance.
Take Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, for example, which has changed in marked ways, both visibly and under the hood. In addition to introducing a new artistic director, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, the Lou Conte Dance Center and its physical location, home to HSDC since the ‘90s, are gone. An entirely online season of dance films, all created by HS alumni, demonstrates an expanding aesthetic that appears to be breaking away from some old habits. With all touring on hold, the company stepped up community engagement efforts and embarked on various institutional partnerships with Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Final Bow for Yellowface and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Looking to secure more sustainable futures, a number of artists slowed the pace of their public programs, choosing instead to invest more time and resources in organizational infrastructure. Soon, there will be new studios open in the South Loop, Woodlawn, Avondale and Albany Park as the Joffrey Ballet, Red Clay Dance, Visceral Dance Chicago and the Joel Hall Dancers all have new spaces in the works.
Others have opted for a period of dormancy. Khecari, for example, has just now announced a series of open classes beginning June 7 and put time and resources toward inward organizational transformation in lieu of producing pandemic dance concerts. Michelle Kranicke, leader of the 20+ year old Zephyr Dance, has intentionally chosen to eschew digital performance as well. In so doing, SITE/less, the relatively new venue she manages with architect David Sundry, has gone without public facing programming for over a year.
Case studies abound. And are too many to list. Tap dance is having a renaissance, if not a rebirth. M.A.D.D. Rhythms and Chicago Tap Theatre have emerged as the generational leaders of that form in Chicago, in addition to major changes at the Chicago Human Rhythm Project including the recent announcement that Jumaane Taylor will direct the 30th edition of Rhythm World. The slow and steady work of organizations like Mandala South Asian Performing Arts and Asian Improv aRts Midwest is further raising the profile of contemporary South and East Asian dance forms in Chicago. The Harris Theater’s extraordinary series of short dance films, in collaboration with Jacob Jonas the Company, provided a shining example of how to do digital dance well. And Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, Ballet 5:8, Winifred Haun & Dancers and Para.Mar Dance Theatre were among the earliest to bring live performances to audiences safely, as early as October of last year. Keep in mind that Broadway isn’t scheduled to reopen until September.
This is starting to feel like an end-of-year column, particularly as I consider recent losses of so many important dance voices. Just in the past month, Anna Halprin, Verndell Smith, Carla Fracci, Debra Chase-Hicks and Samuel E. Wright have died. Optimistically, one can only hope that the ushering in of Chicago Dance Month, summer 2021 edition, will be looked back upon as the end of an era—a phoenix for the arts and the people who love them.
Indeed, Chicago Dance Month presents copious opportunities to experience dance in a variety of ways. The highly-anticipated return of Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater takes place June 18-20 with a 45th anniversary celebration showcasing Chicago’s prolific flamenco scene.
Noumenon Dance Ensemble, around for awhile and now building momentum under new leadership from Deeply Rooted Dance Theater alums Nina-Rose Wardanian and Erin Murphy, present their choreography and that of Deeply Rooted veteran Dominique Atwood on June 5 in Seward Park.
Dance history nerds best not miss the triptych of outdoor screenings produced by the Dance Center, which will show Netta Yerushalmy’s tour de force “Paramodernities” over three dates in three locations at opposite corners of the city: June 10 at Austin Town Hall Park, June 17 at Indian Boundary Park and June 24 at the South Shore Cultural Center. It’s beyond worth it to venture to all three to experience the full catalog of Yerushalmy’s contemporary interrogation of the classical modern dance canon. Each is preceded earlier in the day by an online discussion with local experts on the luminaries explored in this terrific work: Vaslav Nijinsky, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, Bob Fosse and George Balanchine.
And, as a holdover from early pandemic days, there is an abundance of classes and workshops in which to take part, in a variety of digital and in-person formats, depending on your comfort, preference and accessibility needs.
You can check out all the Chicago Dance Month offerings here on See Chicago Dance by visiting our calendar or clicking over to the Dance Month hub.
See you there.
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Editor’s note: Opinions presented in columns are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of See Chicago Dance. Monthly columns are curated from events and organizations listed on the See Chicago Dance calendar, a free service. To learn more about our journalism program, visit this link.