CHICAGO—So far, Eighth Blackbird’s attempts at live-streaming a virtual concert series from their production house in Horner Park have not gone well. The series—called Chicago Artists Workshop, or CAW for short (get it? CAW? Like a bird?)—was set to open Oct. 20 with the ensemble’s Grammy Award-winning co-founders Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall accompanying tenor Karim Sulayman in a rangy program…

CHICAGO—Ten minutes before the scheduled virtual opening of Theatre Y’s “We’re Gonna Die,” I heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. I didn’t want to go, even though all that it required of me was to click a Zoom link and log-in. No shoes, no parking, no awkward lobby mingling. These are the luxuries of digitized theatre, with Theatre Y among…

NORMAL, Ill.—My feed is filled with virtual dance classes and obituaries. As COVID-19 continues to tear through this country and redefine ways of life, indefinitely, I find myself busier than ever. It shouldn’t be this way. I spend the majority of my time watching and writing about dance. Now, there are no shows to write about. Instead, a part-time teaching…

Icarus Films—the independent film producer that has created documentaries on Ohad Naharin, Pina Bausch and Trisha Brown—has a new dance film making its way to your laptops and living rooms. Marius Petipa: The French Master of Russian Ballet is currently available for use by academic institutions and libraries, and will be released on home video and streaming platforms May 12….

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Love was in the air at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts Friday, which had big pink hearts projected onto the Illinois Symphony’s white bandshell set onstage. Indeed, many couples braved frigid temperatures and icy roads for this Valentine’s Day engagement called Love Notes, with the ISO offering a smattering of compositions from the Romantic period….

OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL—The band was inconsistent. So was some of the tap dancing, and a couple actors’ French accents sounded, well, more like German. If that sounds harsh, it’s because I wanted to get those things out of the way; they’re the only negative things I can say about “An American in Paris,” playing through March 29 at the Drury…

BLOOMINGTON, IL–As Maestro Ken Lam announced what he called the “main dish” of a three-course musical meal Saturday at Bloomington’s Second Presbyterian Church, musicians adjusted their chairs to make way for their colleagues near Lam’s podium. As the evening’s soloists, Illinois Symphony Orchestra (ISO) concertmaster Roy Meyer and principal viola Nicholas Jeffery took their places at the front of a…

ST. LOUIS–It’s only been a week since the inaugural Big Muddy Dance Festival, and The Big Muddy Dance Company, who produced the expo, performances and workshop series in locations all over Grand Center, only just finished “Such Sweet Thunder” in October. “Such Sweet Thunder” was a collaborative effort with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Jazz St. Louis, and the Nine Network of Public…

CHICAGO—A triptych of films screened Thursday to Sunday, collectively marketed under the header In Focus: Dance, forms an anchor point of the 2019 Chicago International Film Festival, North America’s longest-running competitive film festival. The films—director Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced, Isadora’s Children, directed by Damien Manivel, and Cunningham, a documentary on Merce Cunningham directed by Alla Kovgan—run concurrent to…

ST. LOUIS—With their second edition of “An Evening of Ballet Stars,” Dance St. Louis aimed to find out if lighting does, indeed, strike twice in the same place. Last year’s inaugural program featuring prominent principal dancers at Washington University played to a sold out crowd; on Sept. 28, the Edison Theatre was likewise heartily filled in for a new line-up…