Jay Franke News

Peak Performances continues its acclaimed 2017-2018 season of works by women with ink, from award-winning choreographer and TED Fellow Camille A. Brown, February 1-4, 2018, at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater's hit new A Christmas Carol adaptation, written and directed by Artistic Director Mark Clements, is a tale of love, hope and redemption with just the right blend of beautiful music, lively dancing, stunning sets and eye-popping special effects. A Christmas Carol runs November 28 December 24, 2017 in the Historic Pabst Theater. It is a dazzling Christmas feast with enough theatrical goodies to fill any sized stocking hung by the chimney with care.

In fostering The Rep's mission of creating positive change in the community, the A Christmas Carol Families Program raises funds for underprivileged families during the holiday season. This year we are pleased to announce that families from the United Community Center, one of our Mpact Pillar Partners, will be the A Christmas Carol Families Program recipient.

From February 8 through April 29, 2018, the Art Institute of Chicago will present the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978), a visual artist living and working between Beirut, Lebanon, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Started in 2012 in response to the humanitarian and political crises in Syria and the Middle East, Al Solh's ongoing series of drawings, or as she prefers to call them, time documents, emerged from deeply personal encounters and conversations between the artist and Syrian refugees, as well as other people from the Middle East who were forcibly displaced to Lebanon, Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. In the span of five years these conversations have transitioned from hopeful and joyful with the prospect of new opportunities following the popular uprising in Syria to dismal and urgent with the subsequent Syrian Civil War. Each of the drawings made on yellow legal paper to index the bureaucracy that is tied to the status of political refugee is based on the personal story of the people Al Solh meets.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater's hit new A Christmas Carol adaptation, written and directed by Artistic Director Mark Clements, is a tale of love, hope and redemption with just the right blend of beautiful music, lively dancing, stunning sets and eye-popping special effects. A Christmas Carol runs November 28 December 24, 2017 in the Historic Pabst Theater. It is a dazzling Christmas feast with enough theatrical goodies to fill any sized stocking hung by the chimney with care.

Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's THE SEAGULL, as reported by Deadline. The film is directed by Tony winner Michael Mayer and adapted for the screen by Tony winner Stephen Karam.

The 2016 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award Winner, Camille A. Brown, will bring her evening-length work BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play to the Ted Shawn Theatre this summer, August 9-13.

The 2016 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award Winner, Camille A. Brown, will bring her evening-length work BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play to the Ted Shawn Theatre this summer, August 9-13.

In a compressed 2-week period, THE YARD presents two distinctive, critically acclaimed views - through dance-making of a potent American landscape: Taylor in his lifelong survey of popular cultural sources, Brown in her ongoing deep dive into the complex social reality of black identities of both men, women and girls that reaffirms that 'black dance matters" in depicting lives at risk in a dangerous political environment.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, one of the world's premier contemporary dance organizations, together with Event Chair and Chair of Hubbard Street's Board of Directors, Sara Albrecht, and Honorary Chair Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Corporate Honoree, Exelon, held its Season 39 Spotlight Ball on Wednesday, June 7 at the Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park, located at 200 North Columbus Drive in Chicago.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, under the artistic direction of Glenn Edgerton, announces today, programming for Season 39 Summer Series, June 8-11, 2017 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. The program features a look at Hubbard Street through the decades, featuring The 40s and Georgia by Lou Conte, Twyla Tharp's The Golden Section, an excerpt from Resident Choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo's One Thousand Pieces as well as pieces by Jim Vincent, Crystal Pite, William Forsythe, and Lucas Crandall.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, under the artistic direction of Glenn Edgerton, announces today, programming for Season 39 Summer Series, June 8-11, 2017 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

The Jerome Robbins Foundation introduces the The Springboard Project:  Fostering Collaboration in Dance-Driven Musical Theater.

Producers Ken Davenport and Hunter Arnold have announced that Once On This Island, the Olivier Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated Best Musical, is returning to Broadway this fall.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, among the world's premier contemporary dance companies, along with honorary event chair Aurora Abella Austriaco, of Valentine Austriaco &Bueschel, P.C.; honorary event chair Pamela Cullerton, wife of Illinois Senate President John J. Cullerton; event chair and Hubbard Street board member Karen H. Lennon; and a 17-member host committee, welcomed more than 250 guests to the offices of Baker McKenzie, LLP overlooking Chicago's Millennium Park on Thursday, March 16, 2017 for Hubbard Street's 14th annual Bold Moves for Bold Women event.

 The Harris Theater for Music and Dance is pleased to announce its fourteenth season of Harris Theater Presents performances exploring companies and stories of epic magnitude. Experience the 400-year-old cycle of Monteverdi's last surviving operas sung by the Monteverdi Choir and led by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Morris Dance Group's staged production of Layla and Majnun; the love story that has been told for centuries, and America's premier ballet company, American Ballet Theatre. Full performance details are outlined below.

Last night, Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Wu Han, announced the seventh season of the society's residency at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance from the stage. The 2017-2018 CMS season promises a revolving multi-generational and international roster of the world's finest chamber musicians which enables CMS to continue to present chamber music of every instrumentation, style, and historical period.

The Harris Theater for Music and Dance is pleased to present the Chicago premiere of Last Work performed by one of the foremost contemporary dance companies in the world, Batsheva Dance Company on January 27 & 28 at 7:30 PM. Rapier-like one moment, slow and methodical the next, the otherworldly performers of Batsheva Dance Company exemplify the pioneering genius of Artistic Director and Choreographer Ohad Naharin. Batsheva dancers work in the innovative movement language Gaga, created by Naharin, which is informed by a heightened knowledge and self-awareness of the body. In Last Work, Naharin offers an open-ended meditation on the humanism inherent in the body's motion, veering explosively between the political and the excruciatingly personal.

The Harris Theater for Music and Dance is pleased to announce the new details of the first commission by inaugural Choreographer in Residence, Brian Brooks; Terrain, for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago will see its world premiere as part of Hubbard Street's Season 39 Fall Series, November 17-20, 2016.

Following the record-breaking success of Festival 2016 and in the midst of a robust artist residency season, Jacob's Pillow Dance is planning its momentous 85th Anniversary Festival.