Dance Center Season To Continues in Winter/Spring 2011

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago has added a co-presentation with the College's Theater Department to conclude its 2010-11 season: the U.S. premiere of Told by the Wind by The Llanarth Group from Wales May 20 and 21. Preceding that joint presentation are performances by Joe Goode Performance Group, Robert Moses' Kin, Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group.

FamilyDance Matinees
The Dance Center's FamilyDance Matinee Series continues for its 12th season, featuring special one-hour family-oriented performances preceded by free parent/child movement workshops with the artists. FamilyDance Matinees will be presented by Joe Goode Performance Group (February 5), Robert Moses' Kin (February 26) and Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre (March 12). This season, children's admission is free.

DanceMasters and other community programs
To facilitate meaningful dialogue with Chicago audiences and artists, most artists 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.
Conversations 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.

Joe Goode Performance Group-Chicago Premiere
February 3-5
FamilyDance Matinee: February 5
Joe Goode returns to The Dance Center with Wonder Boy, his collaboration with master puppeteer Basil Twist, an unexpected tale of a peculiar superhero isolated by his gift of super-sensitivity. A creature too strange to be socially acceptable is paralyzed by the power of his own feelings and unable to interact with others. The piece features music by Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio) and Matthias Bossi. In 29 Effeminate Gestures, a choreographer and a chainsaw provide for an insightful exploration into the paradox of gender language.

Robert Moses' Kin-Chicago Premiere
February 24-26
FamilyDance Matinee: February 26
The San Francisco-based company returns to The Dance Center with a repertory program including The Cinderella Principal: try these on, see if they fit, a collaboration with playwright Anne Galjour centering on the process of identity formation within non-homogenous "constructed" families, i.e., culturally, racially or genealogically diverse, adoptive or otherwise nontraditional familial groupings. The piece features an original score by Todd Reynolds and Kid Beyond. Also on the program are Approaching Thought and Towards September, each highlighting Moses' ferociously demanding movement in a technical tour-de-force, together forming a fully realized presentation of dance as a visceral form and featuring original scores by the choreographer.

Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre
March 10-12
FamilyDance Matinee: March 12
Artistic Director JoAnna Rosenthal will contribute Grey Noise, a work inspired by film noir of the 1940s and '50s, which focuses on the complexity of relationships, the need for self-preservation and the effect of violence and aggression. Minnesota choreographer and Black Label Movement Artistic Director Carl Flink will create a new work on SPDW entitled HIT, which asks SPDW dancers to embrace singular events, such as athletes and fans at a stadium gridiron or around a boxing ring, yet without the goal of victory over an opponent. Collision is the goal itself; HIT allows no middle ground, illusions or deceptions; the collisions are real and the impact felt and heard. To Have and To Hold choreographed by Joanie Smith and Daniel Shapiro (SPDW Premiere 2008) takes the audience on a journey of life's fragility; the work evokes feelings of memory, love and loss.

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group-Chicago Premiere
March 31, April 1-2
The Good Dance - dakar/brooklyn is the result of Reggie Wilson's multi-year collaboration with Congolese choreographer Andréya Ouamba and his company 1er Temps based in Dakar, Senegal. The full-evening work explores the influence of Central African culture on world performance forms and its metaphoric, historic, real-world parallel with Mississippi Delta culture. The set and décor includes about 250 plastic water bottles.

JUST ADDED: The Llanath Group-U.S. Premiere
Co-Presented with Columbia College Chicago Theater Department
May 20-21
Founded in Wales, the Llanarth Group consists of theatre/performance artists who employ psychophysical training and unique artistic collaborations to produce interNational Theatre. Told by the Wind, created by Kaite O'Reilly, Jo Shapland and Llanarth Artistic Director Phillip Zarrilli, is a performance of movement and text that "dances" an inner landscape. Inspired by "theatre of quietude" and String Theory, stories are evoked and told by embodied silences, splintered interactions and slowed-down motion. Intimate and meditative, it is a requiem for the unseen, a poignant duet for two figures who never physically meet.

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 Alphawood Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Boeing Company, The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust, The Irving Harris Foundation and Arts Midwest. Additional funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Special thanks to Friends of The Dance Center.

TICKET INFORMATION
Each performance series takes place at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue. Performances are Thursday (except the Llanath Group), 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. Tickets for the Llanath Group, co-presented with the Columbia College Chicago Theater Department, are $20. 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. For more information, call 312-369-8330 or visit colum.edu/dancecenter.

 

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