For decades, students learned to pirouette, tumble, tap and twirl at Miss Geri’s School of Dance. But last month, owner Geri Mroz Panicko decided to hang up her dance shoes and close the studio permanently because of the pandemic.
Dance
This fall was to mark the Joffrey’s first season in its new home on the Lyric Opera stage after many years of residence at the Auditorium Theatre.
Dancers, perhaps more than any other group of performing artists, have been hit hardest, both artistically and financially, by the fallout from the coronavirus. So this year’s Dance for Life 2020 event will feature a new virtual format.
The city had declared 2020 as Chicago’s “year of music.” Now with live music all but shut down, we’ve been talking with artists who were set to share their sounds before the coronavirus outbreak – including Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers.
Chicago’s dance card is full to bursting. And one of the city’s most beloved “visitors” – the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – is now drawing its usual huge crowds to the Auditorium Theatre.
Chicago native Solomon Dumas is one of 32 dancers in the national touring company of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. This week, he performs at the Auditorium Theatre, where he first saw the company nearly 20 years ago.
A coming change of venue for the Joffrey Ballet is a major shift, and its initial opening season will be of great importance, especially since it also will mark the 25th anniversary of the Joffrey as a formidable Chicago cultural institution.
Throughout its history, the Joffrey Ballet’s dancers have been renowned for their ability to create characters as well as to put their superb technical skills to work. They also are capable of carrying over their acting ability to contemporary “plotless” works.
Two questions invariably come to mind when I see Deeply Rooted Dance Theater: Why is this company not more famous? And why isn’t it championed as Chicago’s counterpart of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater?
This highly original reimagining of the classic holiday tale is a monumental production both in its storytelling and its design, yet it manages to beautifully interweave its grand scale elements with human scale emotions.
Eight of the city’s most prominent dance companies are coming together for a one-night-only concert this week with a single mission: to celebrate the legacy of black dance in Chicago.
British choreographer Cathy Marston’s enthralling production of “Jane Eyre,” is now being performed with stellar artistry and deep emotional insight by the Joffrey Ballet even though not a single word is spoken throughout the performance.
In “Jane Eyre,” Cathy Marston said she creates movement based on quotes taken directly from Charlotte Bronte’s 19th century novel.
The City of Chicago and the League of Chicago Theaters declared 2019 “The Year of Chicago Theatre.” But anyone who has been following dance in Chicago in recent years will attest to the fact that it is now time to declare a “Year of Chicago Dance.”
As highly animated as the show might be, “Lil Pine Nut: The Learning Curve of Pinocchio” is no Disney-style version of a universally popular story.
This year’s gala concert was in many ways the sharpest production to date, with bravura performances by Giordano Dance Chicago, the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, Chicago Dance Crash and a slew of others.
