Dance For Life Unites Chicago Neighborhoods with Joy

Spectacular! Breathtaking! Phenomenal! Electrifying!… Take your pick of superlatives, Dance for Life’s 34th season checks off all the boxes for Chicago’s dance event of the year.

Dance for Life has distinguished Chicago as the home of a unique grassroots festival that began as the response of one dancer, Keith Elliott, to the devastation of AIDS/HIV in the dance community.

Dance for Life has grown into a fundraiser for the Chicago Dance Health Fund, providing assistance to dancers and dance related professionals: musicians, electricians, sound engineers, composers, costume, lighting and scenic designers, stage managers, and more.

Dance for Life’s alchemy of artistry, energy and love happens on stage, backstage, and in the audience, igniting a kind of magic through the universal language of dance.

And magical it was! Stage magic carried the night, from Deeply Rooted Dance Theater’s prayerful “Sacred Spaces,” opening the program, to Jonathan E. Alsberry’s inspiring finale.

The program treated the audience to dance genres ranging from classical ballet to street dance, hip hop, modern dance, jazz, ballroom, tap, Irish step dance, and aerial dance.

“What is aerial dance?” you might ask. Picture a blend of trapeze art, tightrope walking, acrobatics, juggling, and ballet and you’ve got the newest addition to Dance for Life’s roster of performing companies. “Make no mistake,” says company director Chloe Jensen, “we are first and foremost a dance company.” This was abundantly clear in the company’s lyrical performance of Jensen’s “Arc of Heart,” which integrated wooden curveboards into the movement design. Each dancer commandeered a wooden board, which served alternately as prop, rocking horse, balance beam, and an ingenious means to change levels in space. I was swept away by the sheer beauty of the dancers’ movement, but the choreography evoked a sense of longing, remembrance, and connection to something beyond reach. While “Arc of Heart” did not require the dancers to literally “fly,” as much of their repertoire does, their movement soared to the heavens.

The Joffrey Ballet’s exquisite Victoria Jaiani, and Alberto Velasquez, as playful partners, with Xavier Nuňez as a pensive sun-worshipper danced “Andanté,” a pastoral day at the beach, by Yuri Possokhov. Pianist Jorge Ivars played Dmitri Shostakovich’s lilting waltz at an upstage grand piano that doubled as a scenic complement to Possokhov’s sculptural choreography.

Trinity Irish Dance artistic director Mark Howard’s “A New Dawn,” a tongue-in-cheek homage to haute couture, led his battalion of 12 ladies clad in soft “gillie” shoes. For Trinity, rhythm rules. Even without the percussive sound of the traditional hard Irish dance shoe, the dancers’ footwork still generated complex rhythms characteristic of Howard’s choreography. Special guest, tiny spit-fire Eden Soy from Trinity Irish Dance Academy sparkled in both dancing and costume. Two male dancers made a five-second cameo appearance before being swept offstage by the women’s split jumps, cross-hatching footwork, and knees that seemed to knit complex stitches in concentric circles across the stage.

At the opposite end of the dance spectrum, Movement Revolution Dance Crew combined a quirky video, mock film noir elements, dialog, sass, and masks, in a hip-hop romp.

Giordano Dance Chicago closed the first half of the program with a stunning excerpt from Ray Leeper’s “Red and Black.” Sleek and tossing off feats of technical virtuosity with a shrug, the dancers incorporated Leeper’s jazzy collage of percussive gestures, sexy flirtations, and ballroom partnering (the Spanish version of the Tango, called “Paso Doblé) with fun and flair. Of special note was Jacob Snodgrass’s lighting, an equal choreographic partner with the music and movement.

South Chicago Dance Theatre, appearing in Dance for Life for the third time, is a magnificent example of what director Kia Smith’s determination and talent can do. Their performance of Frank Chaves’ “Temporal Trance” combined tough, percussive attack with gauzy costumes that floated with the dancers into soaring leaps, lyrical attitude turns, and flowing couples partnering. Mood alternated between tough and vulnerable, reflecting the neighborhood and community environment that is South Chicago Dance Theatre’s creative canvas.

Chicago Tap Allstars sent a massive number of tappers from the many distinctively different Chicago tap companies onto the Auditorium stage for a mostly unison stomp. Veteran tap dancer, Martin “Tre” Dumas III, took center stage, his electrifying blue tap shoes dazzling the audience with his own infectious brand of dance joy. Mark Yonally, veteran Chicago innovator and director of Chicago Tap Theatre, joined Dumas in impressive riffs. While I missed seeing the unique qualities, styles, and creativity each company brings to the tap genre, the solidarity was emblematic of Dance for Life’s spirit. 

Visceral Dance Chicago’s deliberately over-amplified electronic pulses made Visceral, well, visceral. You could literally feel the sound of their movement energy. Elbows initiating spiral turns, angular body gestures, and impressive technical virtuosity kept a deep pulse throughout artistic director Nick Pupillo’s “Pearl.”

Hubbard Street’s “ROM,” excerpted from Aszure Barton’s “Blue Soup,” immersed the stage in a cool other-worldly dimension, the sensory equivalent of brain freeze. Costumed in electric blue pajamas, the dancers morphed from slippery dives to fast-paced lifts and percussive break dance-like digressions. Hubbard Street, which was on the verge of collapse after losing its home, has emerged stronger than ever under the leadership of artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell and executive director David McDermott.

Jonathan (“Jojo”) Alsberry’s finale orchestrated over sixty dancers representing at least fifteen different companies plus individual artists in a tribute to what it means to be family. The joy, the love, the compelling message that life is dance, and dance truly is life filled the Auditrium Theatre stage and spilled out into the audience and onto the street. What a night!

For more information about Dance for Life or Chicago Dancer’s Health Fund, visit the event page by clicking HERE.