Chicago’s dance season opens full force in September with exciting festivals, company seasons, and premieres of new choreography. New and noteworthy this year for both balletomanes and neophytes is Audience Architect’s Dance Around Town Sampler Pack, a first of it’s kind, limited time offering for dance lovers AND for those who want to discover more dance in Chicago. Get discounted tickets to your favorite Chicago dance company’s Fall 2016 performance and try a few new shows as well! Dance Around Town allows you to select 3 different shows between September and December for between 25 and 58% off the original price of each ticket. These performances represent outstanding artistry in different dance styles at venues throughout Chicago - create your own fall dance season today! Quantities are limited so act fast.
SEPTEMBER HIGHLIGHTS:
An Evening of Dance with MacArthur Fellows (September 16, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater) will honor 35 years of the iconic MacArthur Fellowship program. The program, free to the public, will include Kyle Abraham’s “Dearest Home,” performed by Abraham.in.Motion; Mark Morris’s “Pacific,” performed by Mark Morris Dance Group; Merce Cunningham’s “Springweather” and “People,” performed by Erin Dowd and Forrest Hersey of the Merce Cunningham Trust; Susan Marshall’s “Kiss,” performed by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; and Michelle Dorrance’s “Boards and Chains,” performed by Dorrance Dance.
Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival (September 16-17 and 23-24, 2016, Ruth Page Center for the Arts) presents its 7th annual event. The Festival was founded in 2010 as a way to share and celebrate the work of practicing contemporary dance artists and companies. Producers Nicole Gifford and Melissa Mallinson have gathered a roster of artists and companies from Chicago and around the country. Chicago audiences can see a different lineup of dynamic, innovative dance works each weekend, with the same program offered both Friday and Saturday nights.
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theater’s Fall Concert Series (September 29-30 and October 1, 7 PM, Links Hall; October 1 4 PM and 7 PM) is the one chance this year to see their unique combination of live music, original choreography, and visual art performed by a full jazz band and complete ensemble of dancers. Four brand-new works will be premiered. Renowned Chicago choreographer Sherry Zunker collaborates with CRDT co-founder Joe Cerqua to create “Between Us,” a sexy new piece that explores issues of intimacy and our closest personal relationships. Award-winning choreographer Stephanie Martinez and acclaimed jazz violinist James Sanders explore breaking up and moving on in the emotional “Shiver.” CRDT co-founders Wilfredo Rivera and Joe Cerqua take on immigration to America with “American Catracho,” exploring the reasons people move, their harrowing journeys, and the complicated relationship they find when they arrive. Monique Haley, Marc Macaranas, and Raphaelle Ziemba collaborate with composer Stu Greenspan’s arrangements of Miles Davis’ music to create “Corner Sketches, A Tribute to Miles Davis.”Chicago trumpet great Pharez Whitted takes up the role of Davis.
Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater makes its debut in the Auditorium Theater’s “Made In Chicago” series (7:30 PM, September 29), with “Flamenco Passion,” a showcase of classical, contemporary, and traditional Spanish dance. The program includes Ensemble Español founder Dame Libby Komaiko’s stunning masterpiece Bolero; Mil Clavos, by former Ensemble Español and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago principal dancer Ron De Jesus, which gives modern context to traditional Spanish dance; and Iroko, a Flamenco contemporary ballet piece choreographed by Nuevo Ballet Español founders Angel Rojas and Carlos Rodriguez.
Esemble Español
Lucky Plush returns to the Dance Center with “Trip The Light Fantastic: The Making of SuperStrip” (September 29-30 and October 1) in its signature blend of nuanced dialogue, complex choreography and off-the-cuff improvisation. SuperStrip follows a group of washed-up superheroes attempting to reinvent themselves by starting a nonprofit think tank for do-gooders. Complex training missions and specialized movement techniques bring structure to their collective, but the unlikely supers are unable to find a shared mission and brand. In the struggle to achieve consensus, they discover that real-world problems are far more complex than singular forces of evil, and having power is part of the problem.
Superstrip
ADDITIONAL EXCITING SEPTEMBER EVENTS:
Muntu Dance Theatre performs authentic and progressive interpretations of contemporary and ancient African and African-American dance, music and folklore (September 10, 8 PM, North Shore Center For The Performing Arts). A colorful and dynamic company, Muntu brings audiences out of their seats and into the aisles with its unique synthesis of dance, rhythm and song. In the Bantu language, the word "muntu" means "the essence of humanity," and that’s exactly what the company seeks to express in its work and to impress on audiences. Through its performances, Muntu strives to create an atmosphere of communal participation as well as encourage and inspire audiences and participants to join in the celebration!
MUNTU Dance Theater
Join J. Lindsay Brown Dance at Indian Boundary Park’s Nature Play Center (2555 W. Estes Avenue) on September 10-11 to visit the "Movement Zoo," a free family friendly, site-specific dance event celebrating local wildlife. Audience members can visit the ongoing exhibits from 2:15-4:15pm.
Moses Pendleton and the internationally renowned dancer-illusionist troupe MOMIX join forces for a mesmerizing production that brings the landscape of the American Southwest to the stage with dynamic acrobatic images of cacti, slithering lizards, fire dancers and more in “MOMIX: Opus Cactus” (September 10, 7:30 PM, McAninch Arts Center, College of DuPage).
The Instigation Orchestra and Diasporas (September 10, 8:30 PM, Links Hall) brings together Improviser, Steve Marquette (guitar) and dancer/writer Marie Casimir with an impressive group of musicians and performers in a new collaboration. Inspired by the ongoing and circular relationship of music and movement between New Orleans and Chicago, these two ensembles will meet for the first time for an evening of completely improvised performance.
BELONGING: For Our Purposes // In Sync (September 16, 7 PM, Links Hall) is a premier collaboration between two Chicago-based multidisciplinary artists exploring experiences of embodiment and dance. “For Our Purposes” comes from a love of bodies moving together with music. Four dancers elaborate the possibilities afforded by unison movement in concert with the revelatory melodies and driving rhythms of an onstage musical ensemble. “In Sync” is a movement and installation piece that explores how non-traditional dancers understand and reconnect with the body and mental wellness during and after physical trauma. How does dance save the mind when the body has reached its physical and emotional limit(s)?
"NEW HEIGHTS” (September 16-17, 8 PM, at C5, 5066 N. Kimberly Ave.) is back by popular demand. By combining the art of concert dance and the athleticism of aerial dance, C5 has a created a new and unique art form. Artistic director Jeremy Plummer pushes the limits of movement by not being constrained by the laws of gravity, thus allowing the company to "float" through the space. "NEW HEIGHTS" will feature works choreographed by Jeremy Plummer and Harrison McEldowney for Dance For Life Chicago as well as 2 world premiers created exclusively for C5.
Tadashi Endo brings his “Fukushima Mon Amor” to The Dance Center of Columbia College (September 17, 7:30 PM). Endo, director of the Butoh-Center MAMU and the Butoh-Festivals MAMU in Göttingen, Germany, embodies in the truest sense of the word the wisdom of both the Western and Oriental dance and theatre traditions through the enigmatic and beguiling Japanese dance style butoh. In this solo butoh work, Endo dances the pain and tragedy experienced by Japan in the wake of the 2011 tsunami and resultant Fukushima nuclear disaster—and the hope of reconstruction that carried the nation forward.
Perceptions (September 17, 7:30 PM, Chicago High School for the Arts) features both Simantikos repertoire as well as guest works commissioned from artists Ashley Deran, Connor Cornelius, and NY-based choreographer Nia Shand.
The Chicago Moving Company premierss “MOBIUS” (September 22-23, 7:30 PM, Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater), commissioned from experimental Japanese choreographer /recipient Yokohama Art Foundation Prize. Joining CMC dancers Karla Beltchenko, Rachel Bunting, Ayako Kato, Precious Jennings, and Jessie Young are Visual Art and guest durational-performer Mitsu Salmon; Lighting Designer Jacob Snodgrass; and Photographers Tomoaki Okuyama, Jessie Young. Note: at 7:10 pm, Mitsu will present a pre-show durational performance in the gallery room next to the theater’s lobby. The audience is cordially invited to watch, and may come and go as they like.
MOBIUS
“LinkUP Resident Artists Showcase” (September 23, 7 PM, Links Hall) is Links Hall's six month residency program supporting Chicago based independent artists and collaboratives in the research, development and presentation of new innovative work in movement based arts. Co-produced by Isabel Diepa, Alana Parekh, Joshua Hoglund and Anna Trier.
The Adventures of Tapman (September 25, 2 PM, Stage 773) continues its run in the Inoffensive Theater Series. Follow Tapman, Chicago's premiere tap dancing superhero, through various episodes as he battles his arch nemesis, The MADD Tapper. Along the way, Tapman joins forces with The Modern Marvel, a crime-fighting modern dancer, in his quest to defeat The MADD Tapper. The Adventures of Tapman features light-hearted, 60s-era comic book humor, elaborate projected special effects, and phenomenal tap dancing including the unique tap dance fighting style, Tap-Fu!