SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — To describe what happened last Tuesday evening feels a little like a betrayal of trust. I was one of two audience members for an episode of Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s Being/With: Home — available through March 14 via limited digital engagements presented by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, Maine). That…

CHICAGO —I’ve been told by lay dancers many a time that I shouldn’t call myself a choreographer, that they respect that word too much to use it in such a vulgar way, without the force of some verisimilitude beyond the immediacy of composing movement in the imagination. I don’t agree, of course. But as an artist, this sort of disciplinary…

CHICAGO — First, a couple of admissions: Until last night, I had never attended the Fly Honey Show. And I only made it through the first half. A swarm of bodies in black lace, leather and fringe step-touched their way around the Den Theatre’s largest of five performance spaces, which was filled to capacity with tiered seating and standing room…

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…

Author’s note: To read additional coverage of the 2018 Midwest RAD Fest, click here. KALAMAZOO, MI — Gina Kohler walks onstage, naked, and sits on top of a mirror, that’s on top of a muslin drop cloth, that’s on top of a larger plastic drop cloth. She pours a red liquid slowly down her back, across her forehead and across her…

CHICAGO — The New Prairie School, an evening-length performance by composer, writer, and performer, Corey Smith, along with fellow performers and collaborators Ethan T. Parcell and Claire Saxe, debuted last weekend at Links Hall. As the title suggests, the work was partially inspired by research around Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School of architecture of which he is most famously…

Movement Matters is a monthly column by Michael Workman that investigates performers whose work intersects politics, policy, and issues related to the body as the locus of socio-cultural dialogues on race, gender, ability and more. For this installment, we sit down with visual, performance and movement artist Jose Santiago Perez to discuss absence as an appropriate artistic response in performance,…

Movement Matters is a monthly column by Michael Workman that investigates performers whose work intersects politics, policy, and issues related to the body as the locus of socio-cultural dialogues on race, gender, ability and more. For this installment, we sit down with dancer, performance artist and vocalist ALEXA GRÆ (a.k.a. Alex Edgemon) to discuss the influence of community, their mother’s…

Movement Matters is a monthly column by Michael Workman that investigates performers whose work intersects politics, policy, and issues related to the body as the locus of socio-cultural dialogues on race, gender, ability and more. For this installment, we sit down with visual, performance and movement artist Kiam Marcelo Junio to discuss the influence of their military upbringing and career…

CHICAGO — Few dancers in Chicago have broken out as distinctly as Anna Martine Whitehead did in her LinkUP residency-ending performance at Links Hall March 3-5, alongside an opening performance by Chicago mainstay Mitsu Salmon. It was a fitting end to Links Hall’s long-running LinkUP program – a truly punctuated, unforgettable send-off. Fearlessly squaring against issues of race and class,…