Mark Hackman doesn't really need an introduction, all you would have to say is "He's the Producing Director of Chicago Dance Crash, one of Crash's founders", and that should do it. There's actually a lot more to that story, but it will have to wait, because in this one we're handing the mic to Mark, and with no further introduction, here are 4PHOTOS (really 5) with introduction and comments by ---- ready? ---- Mark Hackman.
We recently published 4PHOTOS Part 1 for EDE's Viewpoint, featuring four of the eight young choreographers soon to be showing the fruits of their choreographic labor this coming weekend at Studio5 at Dance Center Evanston. Now in its fourth season of production, The Young Choreographers Project gives the teens in Evanston Dance Ensemble to create and produce an original choreographic work. Each of the eight young choreographers is paired with a local professional mentor. DancerMusic's Kristi Licera now brings you Part 2, featuring the remaining four young choreographers.
If you had a chance to read our PRE-View for Ballet 5:8's Compass, then you know that Artistic Director Julianna Slager and her company of expressive dancers have committed their season thus far to spreading compassion in every community they touch. This past Friday, Ballet 5:8 took the stage at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago and delivered an evening of inspired choreography and thought-provoking performance. DancerMusic's Kristi Licera was in the audience for this one-night only performance, and invites you to join her as she RE-Views Ballet 5:8.
The McCallum Theatre's influential annual dance program, The Choreography Festival, will return for its twentieth edition this weekend. One of the performances on Saturday's program is an intensely thoughtful duet choreographed by French choreographer Manuel Vignoulle. The work is entitled Black & White, and Vignoulle performs in the work alongside Rena Butler. Here, Vignoulle shares with DancerMusic a whole range of thought provoking and often inspiring perspectives on the work. **** PHOTO DISCLAIMER: Please note that this article has images that contain nudity. Dancers featured in these photographs appear topless, as it is integral to the presentation of the work's choreographic vision. ***
Chicago Dance Crash has only been tearing up stages, expectations, and entrenched ideas of what a dance company can be for fifteen years? Seems like longer, or at least it seems like more. More than what you could have expected anybody else to do in fifteen short years, but then again, this is Chicago Dance Crash.
The very heart of what a dance company has to share with its audience is the choreography and its performance. Here we've reached out to Amy Sanderson, Ballet 5:8's Executive Director, and along with several of the performers in Ballet 5:8's "Compass", she shares with us some more of what Ballet 5:8's audience at Chicago's Athenaeum Theatre will see.
Ballet 5:8 is an imaginative, hard-working group of artists with some very carefully thought out ideas. On Friday, November 10, they bring their new evening length program Compass, a collection of four works, to Chicago's Auditorium Theatre. As we've learned more about this company, and about Compass, we've become more and more aware of how intricately and carefully imagined the choreography, the construction, and the performance of these four works is, and we asked Artistic Director Juianna Slager to tell us more about it.
Now in its fourth production, Evanston Dance Ensemble's Young Choreographers Project provides young dancers the unique opportunity to have an original choreographic work fully produced in a professional venue while providing mentorship from professionals in the Chicago Dance Community. DancerMusic's Kristi Licera sat down with four of the eight young choreographers in Part 1 of 2 of this 4PHOTOS series. See what these bright young minds have in store, and save the date for their upcoming debut, November 17-19 at Studio5 at Dance Center Evanston.
DancerMusic was at the Hamlin Park Field House Theater this past weekend for Project Bound Dance's premiere of 'Imprint'. Check out Kristi's RE-View and join her as we take another look at this collaborative evening of voice, dance, and theater.
Inaside Chicago Dance begins their fifteenth season with their Fall Concert on Saturday, October 28. Performing for the first time at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, the Company presents an evening of dance that combines ballet, ballroom and jazz, under the direction of artistic director Robert McKee.