ST. LOUIS, MO — I came to this year’s Spring to Dance festival figuring the best-case scenario would be to experience nothing out of the ordinary. Dance St. Louis, the local presenting organization which has produced Spring to Dance for 11 years, had already cut the Spring to Dance line-up from three days to two, drastically trimming its programs and personnel…

CHICAGO — Elevate Chicago Dance came and went in October, and here I find myself near the end of November and still mulling over it. The one-time-only, three-day dance extravaganza known as Elevate Chicago Dance was organized by the Chicago Dancemakers Forum as a culminating festival signaling the end of the multi-year Regional Dance Development Initiative (RDDI), a personalized artist development…

CHICAGO — Working as an arts presenter is a hard job, and though I don’t know for certain, I would imagine that working for the City of Chicago is also hard. As Director of Performing Arts for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), Shoshona Currier is doing both: administering city-funded performance-based programming, and simultaneously navigating the inevitable politics and…

CHICAGO — Through March 25, Instituto Cervantes’ Chicago Flamenco Festival showcases the breadth and depth of Flamenco. The five-week fest includes music and dance performances at a gaggle of venues around the city, with the kick-off event taking place last week at a chic west loop spot, City Winery. Opening night shined a lens on an over-arching theme of this year’s…

CHICAGO — Last weekend’s JUBA! puts a cap on the 26th annual Rhythm World: Chicago Human Rhythm Project (CHRP)’s month-long tap festival including classes, workshops and performances. For more than half of its 26 years, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) has been the site of this culminating event, bringing some of the best and brightest stars of tap dance…

CHICAGO — Producer/choreographer Rachel Katz packed us in tightly for the one-night-only Delve at Menomonee Club’s Drucker Center in Lincoln Park. The fourth of its kind, Katz’s mission is to present a variety of up-and-coming choreographers, and indeed, this bento box of dance contained small bites in a great many flavors with a wide spectrum of jazz and contemporary offerings…

My sophomore year of college, I took an interdisciplinary seminar in ecology and economics.  We discussed how Midwestern prairie lands have changed over time, and the impact of economic development on our natural landscapes. We visited Prairie Crossing – a weird amalgamation of suburbia, farmland and natural prairie, mostly owned by Waste Management. As The Space/Movement Project (TSMP)’s 10th anniversary season…

The 6th installment of the Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival (HCCDF) is trying a new format, with two programs rather than three, spread out over two weekends. The result is fewer artists, more tech time for each artist, and an overall heightened sophistication to one of the few remaining small-scale festivals. The evening opened with a bang in the edge of it,…

The Chicago Dancing Festival‘s annual engagement at the Museum for Contemporary Art has explored a variety of themes throughout its nine year history, most with a focus on maximizing the intimate and close-up setting provided by the wonderful Edlis Neeson theater. This year’s theme, “Modern Women” basically spanned the whole history of Modern Dance in a fascinatingly curated program featuring work…

A conversation between Links Hall’s Roell Schmidt and Suzanne Connor of the Chicago Community Trust was the catalyst for the Chicago Teen Dance Festival, a new initiative mirroring the Chicago Jazz Lions Pavilion and kicking off tonight at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. The Jazz Lions brings together young jazz musicians to perform at the Chicago Jazz Festival,…