Susan Marshall & Company, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and More Set for Dance Center's 40th Season

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago celebrates 40 years as Chicago's leading presenter of local, regional, national and international contemporary dance during its 2013-14 season.

Kicking off the season in the fall are Susan Marshall & Company with a world premiere, followed by Dance Center Founder Shirley Mordine's Mordine & Company Dance Theater, Chicago companies Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Peter Carpenter Performance Project on a double bill and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company featuring Jones on stage.

Spring performances include Chicago companies Khecari and The Humans on a double bill; back to back hip hop performance series by the French-Brazilian Compagnie Kafig and artist Raphael Xavier; Asia's leading contemporary dance company Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, co-presented with the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University and The Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium; and Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group performing a work co-commissioned by The Dance Center. All performances (except Cloud Gate) take place at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.

Subscriptions and single tickets go on sale July 8 at The Dance Center, 312-369-8330 and online at colum.edu/dancecenter.

"It is remarkable to reflect back on our 40-year history," said Dance Center Executive Director Phil Reynolds. "The Dance Center has presented more than 250 contemporary dance artists and companies, commissioned or co-commissioned 23 new works and trained a large number of young dancers, many of whom have gone on to create companies of their own in Chicago and elsewhere. We look forward with pride and excitement as The Dance Center launches its fifth decade." For a performance history, click here.

FamilyDance Matinees

The Dance Center's FamilyDance Matinee Series continues for its 15th season, featuring special one-hour family-oriented performances preceded by free parent/child movement workshops with the artists. FamilyDance Matinees feature Mordine & Company Dance Theater (October 5), Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Peter Carpenter Performance Project (October 12), Khecari and The Humans (February 8) and Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group (April 5).

Community Programs

Many of the season's artists will participate in The Dance Center's DanceMasters, leading movement classes open to professional and pre-professional dancers and dance students. Discussions with the artists will follow most Thursday performances, and some programs will feature pre-performance talks with artists and Dance Center personnel or guest lecturers. Most out-of-town artists will provide learning opportunities for Dance Center students and conduct community-based residency and educational activities, which might include master classes, lecture/demonstrations, in-school and community- based workshops, professional development workshops for educators and service providers and panel discussions.

Susan Marshall & Company
September 19-21
Marshall's world premiere, Play/Pause, embraces the collision between high art and pop culture, raiding and transforming popular dance forms from the YouTube zeitgeist. Marshall counterpoints the performance with original online music videos incorporated into the live work. Set to a commissioned score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang performed live by the electric guitar trio Dither, the piece is an ultimate mash-up: postmodern dance theatre meets rock and roll on both real and virtual stages.

Mordine & Company Dance Theater
October 3-5
FamilyDance Matinee: October 5
Dance Center Founder Shirley Mordine revivesI Haven't Gone There....Inspired by Commedia dell'Arte, the piece features six performers and four musicians who, like troubadours, lure the audience on a journey to unknown places, with unexpected encounters. The maverick marching band Mucca Pazza performs Mark Messing's score live, with text by Bryan Saner of the former Goat Island Performance Group. Other work(s) on the program will be announced at a later date.

Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Peter Carpenter Performance Project: Joint Program
October 10-12
FamilyDance Matinee: October 12
Chicago's SPDW is commissioning a new work from Israeli (now based in New York) choreographer Netta Yerulshamy inspired by visual art, as if to suggest a stroll through an art museum. SPDW Artistic Director JoAnna Rosenthal's as-yet untitled new work examines impulsive behavior with the central metaphor of a "white out" to evoke a sense of moral decentered-ness. Dance Center Associate Professor Carpenter continues his cycle Rituals of Abundance with a new work informed by critical theory that interrogates our appetite for domination, power and violence.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
October 24-26
In Story/Time, director and choreographer Bill T. Jones, whose major honors include a MacArthur "Genius" Award, a Kennedy Center Honor and two Tony Awards for Best Choreography, returns to the stage at the center of a new work for his renowned company. Inspired by John Cage's Indeterminacy, Jones has created a collage of dance, music and 70 of his own short stories, arranged anew for each performance by chance procedure. Contains nudity and mature content.

Khecari and The Humans: Joint Program
February 6-8
FamilyDance Matinee: February 8
Khecari, the collaborative duo Jonathan Meyer and Julia Rae Antonick, shares a program with The Humans (Rachel Bunting, artistic director). Three new works by these Chicago-based choreographers include Antonick's detailed movement constructed around themes of decay and fruition, set to original music performed live by Joe St. Charles. Meyer's work presents a desert of human desire etched in a thorny negative space provoking questions of aggression and cooperation. For The Humans, Bunting is exploring feminine cycles with a disparate collage of images and objects.

Compagnie Kafig
February 20-22
Mourad Merzouki, artistic director of Compagnie Kafig and director of the Centre Choregraphique National de Creteil et du Val-de Marne in France, is at the forefront of the international hip hop dance scene. Kafig's double bill of Correria and Agwa derives from Merzouki's encounter with 11 young male dancers from Rio de Janeiro at the Lyon Dance Biennial in 2006. Their individual stories about life in the favelas (Brazilian shanty towns) and their determination to make something of themselves inspired Merzouki to create two works showcasing the young Brazilians' astonishing acrobatic skills and dazzling virtuosity in a combination of samba, hip-hop and capoeira dance styles.

Raphael Xavier
February 27-March 1
The Unofficial Guide to Audience Watching Performance is an evening-length autobiographical dance culminating Philadelphia-based Raphael Xavier's 30 years of experience in hip hop genres-most specifically, breaking. Directed by Ralph Lemon, the new work deconstructs Xavier's lyrics and breaking technique and, through rap cadences delivered as conversations, gives audiences insight into the maturing practitioner's life journey as well as a context for viewing the artist's work.

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Co-presented with the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University and The Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre, 30 E. Congress Parkway, Chicago
March 14 and 16
Cloud Gate will perform Founder/Artistic Director Lin Hwai-min 's Songs of the Wanderers, inspired by the wealth of religious practices throughout Asia and Herman Hesse's account of Siddhartha's quest for enlightenment. A visually stunning paean to spiritual pilgrimage, the work creates a world of intense reverence that is distinctly Asian in its imagery, yet with powerful relevance far beyond. The scenic design includes an astonishing three and a half tons of shimmering golden grains of rice that shower down on the stage throughout the piece. The music is a series of Georgian folk songs.

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group
April 3-5
FamilyDance Matinee: April 5
Moseses (Working Title), co-commissioned by The Dance Center, explores our relationship to leadership and the effects of migration on beliefs and customs. Grounded in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Moses, Man of the Mountains, the work looks at diasporic movement out of Africa and into the rest of the world through the lens of Moses stories in their various cross-cultural and cross-faith interpretations.

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, named "Chicago's Best Dance Theatre" by Chicago magazine and "Best Dance Venue" by the Chicago Reader, is the city's leading presenter of contemporary dance, showcasing artists of regional, national and international significance.

Subscriptions and single tickets go on sale July 8 at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue, 312-369-8330 and online at colum.edu/dancecenter. All programming is subject to change. The theatre is accessible to people with disabilities. For information, call 312-369-8330 or visit colum.edu/dancecenter.

Pictured: Songs of the Wanderers, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. Photo Credit: YU Hui-hung.