Review: Giordano Dance Chicago Gives New Life to Classic American Jazz Music
Gordano Dance Chicago is in season 61 and has given a new visual life to some of the most iconic music by American composers. Founder Gus Giordano is considered one […]
Review: Momix Does a Trippy Remix of Lewis Carroll’s Alice
Lewis Carroll’s tales of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were a staple of my childhood. We read the unsanitized versions and Grimm’s most grim before I saw […]
Review: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Puts Some Heat in Winter With Of Hope
The Hubbard Street mission is to awaken the human spirit through contemporary dance. That is a lofty mission in the contemporary world but I think that they have succeeded with […]
Review: In Studies in Blue, Joffrey Ballet Performs a Visual and Sensual Feast of Movement
Blue is a metaphor for emotions, music, sensuality, and an emotionally wrought period in the life of Pablo Picasso. Like Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” the Joffrey Ballet’s Studies in Blue held […]
Review: Compañía Nacional de Danza Starts Tepid, Ends With Dazzle at the Auditorium Theatre
Spain has a complicated history with dance. Like most European countries, Spain’s cultural leaders would rather have a reputation for the finer arts like ballet but came to accept flamenco, […]
Review: At Adler Planetarium, a Heavenly Collaboration of Dance and the Universe in Cosmic Rhythms
A star is born, and none of them is one of four movies with the same title. A star in the sky comes from dust, gravity, collision, and heat in […]
Review: Complexions Contemporary Ballet Expands the Horizons of Dance with Star Dust: From Bach to Bowie
Complexions Contemporary Ballet emerged in 1994 as the creation of two Alvin Ailey alumni Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden. They moved the parameters around ballet with their careers and then […]
Review: A Harlem Reverie in Sugar Hill: the Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker
Harlem. The name evokes a sense of place, time, and for some, the halcyon days of the Harlem Renaissance. Sugar Hill is a section of Harlem where the strivers lived, […]
Review: Joffrey Ballet’s The Nutcracker Blends Holiday Cheer and Wonder With Its 1893 Chicago Backdrop
The basic plot of the famous The Nutcracker ballet is a familiar story. A young girl, Clara, receives the gift of a Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. That night, she has […]
Preview: Deeply Rooted Dance Theater Kicks Off Made in Chicago Series November 3 at the Auditorium Theatre
Chicago is an arts town and home to some of the finest dance companies in the world. Deeply Rooted Dance Theater was co-founded by Kevin Iega Jeff and Gary Abbott […]
Review: The Joffrey Ballet Flawlessly Dances the Frankenstein Story
I am still in awe from watching the Joffrey Ballet’s Frankenstein at the Lyric Opera House. Choreographer Liam Scarlett stayed closer to Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus than […]
Review: Joffrey Ballet Celebrates Life in Dance with the Arpino Chicago Centennial Celebration
The Joffrey Ballet took up residence in Chicago in 1996. After nearly four decades in New York and the death of Robert Joffrey, Gerald Arpino, his partner in life and […]