EVANSTON, IL — The weather was cold with spitting rain and a swirling wind that no umbrella could fight. But as I crossed the parking lot on campus at Northwestern University’s Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, a woman walking next to me gleefully reminded me to look at the lake. Even on this terrible day, Evanston’s rocky shore and…

EVANSTON, Ill. — Northwestern University’s dance department has presented Danceworks, its annual showcase of contemporary choreography, since the 1980s. A few years ago when Joel Valentín-Martinez took over artistic directorship of the concert, he designed the Danceworks programming as a vehicle to create more choreographic opportunities for faculty whose primary interest was dancemaking, and to create more opportunities for Northwestern students…