CHICAGO — In April, my partner and I attended the Joffrey Ballet’s performance of Alexander Ekman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. We loved it. Neither of us have seen Joffrey take on something so weird. Case in point: there were three larger than life fish props and a genius incorporation of dancer-like stuffed mannequins that was downright unsettling. But the thing that…

WINNETKA, Ill. — These days, going to high school can be a complicated and tumultuous experience. Far beyond the age-old ups and downs of adolescence, the issues that occupy students today stretch the notion of growing pains in ways that can break down rather than build up the spirit and one’s faith in humanity. In times like these, it is…

CHICAGO — World Dance Day is not merely an annual event to Chicago-based choreographer Nejla Yatkin. After growing up in Berlin with familial roots in Turkey, Yatkin has spent the better part of her dance career on the road performing her own work or with world-renowned companies such as the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance, and Danza…

CHICAGO — As I’ve lately been on something of a hiatus from writing previews or reviews of dance, in order to finish writing a book that includes it as a subject, this brief reflection on the spring edition of wood bone mill (spring sunset, sunrise sunset, sunrise) will have to be quick and dirty. A reflection on age and joy reminiscent…

MILWAUKEE, WI — Milwaukee Ballet is a company that whole-heartedly embraces the story ballet genre. Its latest narrative creation, Beauty and the Beast, will premiere tonight at the Marcus Center and run through April 15. Like many previous productions, the ballet unites the work of Artistic Director Michael Pink and British composer Philip Feeney, who have collaborated together for over 30…

NEW YORK / CHICAGO — I saw Okwui Okpokwasili’s piece Poor People’s TV Room when it premiered at New York Lives Arts last spring and was struck by its richly layered and complex rendering of the lives of four black women. Weaving dance, song, text, video, and stage design, this work draws from African and American contexts to consider the legacies of…

CHICAGO — A line of men struggled to shift along the walls of a cell, backs turned and elbows struggling to fit in and out of the spaces between the cell’s bars. The wall-to-wall screen of Loyola University Chicago’s Damen Cinema amplified these movements so that we the audience felt as though we were there with the men, feeling the…

CHICAGO — It’s been a while since I’ve seen a dance concert. Truthfully, I can’t remember the last time I saw a single company perform eight different pieces in an hour-long evening. Until Friday night, when I attended Coddiwomple, the Spring performance of Cattywampus Dance at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. The all-female company of five twenty-somethings is…

CHICAGO — Dancers, choreographers, and performance makers: Did you know that Joanna Read’s studio, Dovetail Studios (on the north side), transforms into a large, crisp, black box performance space complete with an LED grid, shins, and well-kept marley over sprung wood floors? Next time you are considering the same old haunts to self-produce your new show—because who isn’t self-producing these…

How do I even go about condensing Clare Croft’s “Queer Dance” into a review that you can read on your half hour lunch? This collection of artistic and (mostly) scholarly writings provides such a detailed and comprehensive snapshot of queers in contemporary dance, and queer contemporary dance. I could write an individual review of each article that just might honor the depth…