CHICAGO — We’re in the home stretch of Chicago Dance Month, a celebration of the breadth and depth of dance in the Windy City. For me, that has included a number of illuminating full-length works from out-of-towners like Bebe Miller and Okwui Okpokwasili, Hubbard Street and Giordano on the same two nights at our city’s grandest venues, and entertaining educational programming…

CHICAGO — Beginning in 2013, Benjamin Wardell dreamed up a process called “The Nexus Project.” He recruited dancers Michel Rodriguez Cintra and worked with a gaggle of choreographers, who developed duets for them, only to have those duets deconstructed and put back together again in a semi-improvised, never-the-same-way-twice series of intimate performances. It worked. The two dancers in a company with…

In 2013, Chicago-based Deeply Rooted Dance Theater (DRDT) became the first American dance company to appear in the 15th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience in Durban, South Africa. JOMBA!’s founder Lliane Loots first connected with Deeply Rooted through the tireless work of Lorna Johnson, a DRDT board member and consultant on international exchange programs. Last year’s appearance, sponsored by the U.S. Consulate General…