CYCLES Comes to Chicago in July

Prepare for an evening of dance works that collectively explore periodicity, repetition, revolution, redefinition, and revisiting. "Cycles" features works by four Chicago dancemakers: Gabriela Chavez, Ginger Farley, Carrie Hanson, and Rigo Saura, and is set to take the stage at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts on July 12th and 13th, 2024.

Presented by The Seldoms, Ginger Farley, and Hedwig Dances, "Cycles'' experiments with nowness and the passages of times and spaces, with choreographers and artistic collaborations at different stages of their careers and artistic journeys. The event celebrates the return of Farley’s artistic work to the stage after leading Chicago Dancemakers Forum. Two of the four pieces presented in “Cycles” originate from dances commissioned in 2005 by Same Planet Performance Project (SPPP).

The “Cycles” lineup includes:

1. "All at Once" by Carrie Hanson (Artistic Director of The Seldoms), performed by Haley Marcin. In making this solo with origins in a 2005 solo made with Joanna Rosenthal Read, Hanson and Marcin attempted to apply principles of cubism to dance, interested in the shaping and torque of the body as the dancer tries to reveal multiple facings and perspectives at once. “All at Once” draws particularly from Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting, Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon, and works also to challenge and deny the gaze, recovering some agency of the figure. Hanson was moved to return to the solo during the 50th Anniversary of Picasso’s death, and the solo was performed recently at the Art Institute of Chicago in proximity to his paintings.

2. "between" Choreographic direction by Ginger Farley; danced by Adeline Else, Jeff Hancock, and Rigo Saura; music by Shannon Budd and Ryan Ingebritsen. With source material from Tibetan Buddhism, adult developmental psychology, Brahms, fiction, the natural world, and lived experience, this dance explores the experience of being between embedded or coalesced states. “between” originated as a solo dance  created with, and performed by Jeff Hancock, with music by Ryan Ingebritsen, commissioned by Joanna Rosenthal Read and Same Planet Performance Project in 2005. The new dance contains vestigial elements from the previous one. 

3. "ciclos" by Gabriela Chavez with the dancers, Damon D. Green and Haley Marcin, is a movement dialogue to understand feelings of numbness and anger within the experience of grief, toward acceptance and redefining ourselves. A tender and quiet duet, “ciclos” is a score celebrating vulnerability as strength.

4. "KUBA" choreographed, designed, and performed by Rigo Saura (Artistic Associate of Hedwig Dances and Links Hall 2023 Co-Mission Artist). KUBA is an exploration of Saura’s cultural roots. Weaving Latin and Afro-Cuban history together, Rigo’s work is set against a backdrop of historical motion pictures of 50s everyday life in Cuba. He focuses on improvisational movement and repetition, emphasizing vibrant Afro-Cuban movement and contemporary dance practices in relation to music, dramatization in relation to and the internalized experience of his roots. Saura’s work proposes a reflection upon the relationship  between Cuba and the United States of America in the 50s and a personal inheritance of his country of origin.

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