Thursday, April 25, 2019
If you’ve ever watched the sun rise from the seat of a red-eye flight, then you have an idea of what Andrew McNicol’s “Yonder Blue” looks and feels like. “Yonder Blue” opens the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMFriday, April 12, 2019
Once upon a time, a boy and his cronies go to celebrate their first holy communion at a candy shop in town. The boy gets a belly ache and falls ill, while the candy shop comes alive with mag…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00AMTuesday, April 9, 2019
As word traveled that American Ballet Theatre (ABT) was making a new ballet based on Richard Strauss’ “Whipped Cream,” I think my reaction was similar to most everyone else: Wait, Stra…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMSaturday, April 6, 2019
A timeline of Western dance history usually starts in France, with the royal courts of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Russia is a key stakeholder, credited with the classical aesthetic which broug…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMSaturday, March 30, 2019
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t call William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” particularly timeless — important, obviously, but a bit of a relic. Modern adaptations of the 400-year-old play contextu…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:50PMTuesday, March 12, 2019
Dancer, choreographer and vocalist Jasmin Williams is moving. The 23-year-old Chicago native has lived in Los Angeles, New York and various places in Europe. Hyde Park is home, but she’s f…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, March 7, 2019
The cornerstone of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s 60th anniversary season is “Lazarus,” the company’s first two-act work in its history, created by choreographer-in-residence R…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PMFriday, March 1, 2019
When “Giselle” premiered in Paris in 1841, it was an immediate success, part of a trend revitalizing ballet for everyday socialites by abandoning the Greek legends preferred by the Frenc…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AMThursday, February 28, 2019
The first time Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed at the Auditorium Theatre was Feb. 11, 1969. “Mr. Ailey is right up with the times,” wrote Tribune critic Thomas Willis of the…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, February 19, 2019
Few productions at the Harris Theater have been more highly anticipated than the North American premiere of English National Ballet’s “Giselle.” Running Feb. 28-Mar. 2, the tour of thi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:40AMFriday, February 15, 2019
Sometimes, a dance can be greater than the sum of its parts. I came away from “Shyamali: Sprouting Words” – through Saturday at the Dance Center by Minneapolis-based Ananya Dance Theat…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:30AMThursday, February 14, 2019
As the overture to composer Ilya Demutsky’s glorious score swelled under the baton of Maestro Scott Speck on Wednesday, haze filled the house of the Auditorium Theatre and billowed across …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:15AMTuesday, February 5, 2019
Dame Libby Komaiko, the founding artistic director of Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater, died Saturday at Chicago’s Illinois Masonic Hospital of pneumonia, according to Ensemble Espan…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMSunday, February 3, 2019
For the company’s first full evening at home in a decade, the Trinity Irish Dance Company commanded the Auditorium Theatre’s big, beautiful stage on Saturday. The engagement is the secon…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMFriday, January 25, 2019
It was in 2013, with the addition of Stanton Welch’s “La Bayadere” and Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello” to the repertoire of the Joffrey Ballet, that I began to notice a concerted effor…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMSaturday, January 12, 2019
Founded in 1992, the Twin Cities-based Ragamala Dance Company made its Harris Theater debut Friday with the company’s 25th anniversary performance “Written in Water.” The hour-long wor…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMFriday, January 11, 2019
When going to a RE | Dance Group show, there are a couple things you can usually count on: 1) unapologetically long passages of pretty dancing; 2) poetry woven into the fabric of the dance w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00AMThursday, January 3, 2019
Winter used to be a rather dormant time for dance, but in 2019 the colder months bring some of the most exciting dance events of the year. Winter is typically a time when touring companies r…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, December 31, 2018
Claire Anne Bataille, founding member of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and director of the Lou Conte Dance Studio, died Sunday morning with her two sons at her side, according to son Isaac So…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMThursday, December 27, 2018
Nan Giordano doesn’t like the spotlight. She’d rather not give curtain speeches, preferring to greet her guests from Row R at the Harris Theater, across the aisle from R1, a seat adorned…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMSunday, December 16, 2018
Since Deeply Rooted Dance Theater kicked off its “Generations” program in 2013, the company has been consciously digging into its archives, pairing new works with old ones to create prog…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:15AMTuesday, December 11, 2018
This year, Chicago’s dance stages were filled with bold, ambitious programming, stunning revivals and work which responded to the present by reflecting on the past. It goes without saying …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, December 10, 2018
Returning to the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts Sunday, Chicago Tap Theatre (CTT) once again delighted Skokie’s dance audiences with the company’s annual holiday special, “…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMThursday, December 6, 2018
The MCA Warehouse is off the beaten path, in a nondescript industrial area of the city that, unlike the now-swanky West Loop, is still rather industrial. Watching a performance on the second…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMWednesday, November 28, 2018
It was a nearly impossible feat, a glorious White City, the size and scale of which is almost unimaginable, glistening at the heart of a city that, 20 years earlier, burned almost entirely t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMSaturday, November 17, 2018
They’re calling it “3-1-2,” this season, a revamp of the Auditorium Theatre’s “Made in Chicago” series, which for several years has provided a platform for local dance companies …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMSaturday, November 10, 2018
Through Saturday at the Dance Center, “Eliki Munda | What Lies Within” has been a decade in the making. Shortly before Vershawn Sanders-Ward formed her Red Clay Dance Company on Chicago�…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:15PMFriday, November 9, 2018
“It’s our birthday!” said Patricia Barretto, president and CEO of the Harris Theater, in her Thursday night curtain speech. It was 15 years to the day since the underground marvel open…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:40AMMonday, November 5, 2018
The Palacio de Bellas Artes is a majestic art nouveau gem in the heart of Mexico City, standing on the edge of the oldest urban green space in the Americas, the Alameda Central. Considered o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMSaturday, October 27, 2018
The Harris Theater can be a tough space for dance companies, swallowing up the subtleties of fine-tuned gestures, text or facial expressions. It’s got a chilly subterranean atmosphere that…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMFriday, October 19, 2018
Choreographer Tere O’Connor splits his time between New York and Champaign, where he is a professor in the dance department at the University of Illinois. As the occasional U. of I. alum h…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AM 
