Dance Center Presents Eclectic Spring Dance

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago's spring season showcases a range of female choreographic voices-the Bay Area's Margaret Jenkins, followed by Chicago's Molly Shanahan, Rachel Damon, Erica Mott, and the collective known as The Space/Movement Project-then concludes with Ballet Hispanico. All performances take place at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

FamilyDance Matinees
The Dance Center's FamilyDance Matinee Series continues for its 13th season, featuring special one-hour family-oriented performances preceded by free parent/child movement workshops with the artists. FamilyDance Matinees will be presented by Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak (February 25); The Space/Movement Project, Rachel Damon/Synapse Arts and Erica Mott (March 10); and Ballet Hispanico (March 24), led by former Chicago choreographer Eduardo Vilaro.

DanceMasters and other community programs
To facilitate meaningful dialogue with Chicago audiences and artists, Margaret Jenkins and Ballet Hispanico's Eduard Vilaro will participate in DanceMasters, community master classes presented by The Dance Center's Community Outreach and Education office. Classes are for dancers at the intermediate level or higher. 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.

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company-Midwest Premiere
February 9–11, The Dance Center
Light Moves is a collaboration between Margaret Jenkins, multimedia artist Naomie Kremer, composer Paul Dresher and poet Michael Palmer. Kremer's video imagery is interwoven with eight dancers utilizing several projectors and projection surfaces to focus attention on the architecture of the theater while challenging notions of foreground and background, visible and hidden.

Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak-Premiere
February 23–25, The Dance Center
FamilyDance Matinee: February 25
Molly Shanahan characterizes The Delicate Hour, the latest iteration of her multiyear movement exploration, as undulatory, fluid and sensual, using intricately connected gestures and overlapping spatial loops that describe the space as an organic, wave-like terrain.

The Space/Movement Project, Rachel Damon/Synapse Arts, Erica Mott
March 8–10, The Dance Center
FamilyDance Matinee: March 10
A shared program of three premieres by The Space/Movement Project (TS/MP), a dancemakers' collective that creates work weaving together extended segments of unison, simultaneous yet polarized solos, layered gestures, whole body movement and strong weight sharing; Rachel Damon, who uses improvisation to challenge the ability of her collaborators to react to one another in real time, and so invites the viewer to explore how body states are experienced, projected and perceived; and choreographer and installation/visual performance maker Erica Mott, who uses humor and surprise to explore polar opposites: male and female, wealth and poverty, organic and synthetic, animate and inanimate.

Ballet Hispanico-Chicago Premieres
March 22–24, The Dance Center
FamilyDance Matinee: March 24
Led by Eduardo Vilaro (former artistic director of Luna Negra Dance Theatre and Dance Center faculty member), Ballet Hispanico explores, preserves and celebrates Latino culture through dance. For 2011–12, the company has commissioned Espiritu Vivo, from African-American choreographer Ronald K. Brown, which investigates the intersection of the African and Latino diasporas in the Caribbean and Latin America, set to a suite of four songs performed by Peruvian singer Susana Baca. Also on the program is a new work by Vilaro to music by salsa legend Celia Cruz; Naci, choreographer Andrea Miller's investigation of the Moorish influences on Sephardic Jewish culture of Spain; and Locked Up Laura, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's exploration of the human struggle to maintain authenticity in the face of routine.

THE DANCE CENTER
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. Programs of The Dance Center are supported, in part, by the Alphawood Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, the Sara Lee Foundation, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts and Arts Midwest. Additional funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Special thanks to Athletico, the Official Provider of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy for The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, and the Friends of The Dance Center.

TICKET INFORMATION
Each performance series takes place at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $26–30; subscribers ordering tickets for at least three different performances throughout the season save 20 percent. DanceMasters classes are $15 each; space is limited. Each FamilyDance Matinee is $15 for adults and free for children. All programming is subject to change.The theatre is accessible to people with disabilities. Call 312-369-8330 or visit colum.edu/dancecenter.