In choreography and in life, you might notice an old flame in passing one day and find that you’ve both matured. The spark reignites as you seize the opportunity to rediscover your connection and find more clarity and fulfillment than before. That is what Jessica Miller Tomlinson has done in her new work to be premiered at Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival on September 21st and 22nd. She gave us some insight into reigniting the flame on a decade past work. Read on to find out how it grew into a completely new piece from a deeper exploration of the same idea, plus more insights on being a Choreographer in Chicago. Here is what Jessica had to say:
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theater has been on a relentless build-up to their 2018 Fall Concert Series since last April. It's something they've been doing for years, a very carefully planned series of monthly presentations -- they call them Inside / Out --- that bring their audience, their performers, and the creators of their upcoming works together. The settings are informal but the results always informative, an engaging blend of discussion and performance. The last of the 2018 Inside / Out series takes place on Thursday, September 20th at 7pm at Chicago's Fine Arts Building, and it promises to be a great one. The subject is a new work called The Process Takes a Lifetime, an exceptionally rich and well-thought out story by choreographer Joshua Ishmon and --- in keeping with Cerqua Rivera's trademark practice of pairing great choreographers with great composers --- an original score by Pharez Whitted. Of course DancerMusic wanted to find out more, so we asked Joshua Ishmon if he would give us some insight into The Process Takes a Lifetime. Here's what he told us:
It's great to be bold and imaginative, but it's never easy to keep being bold and imaginative, at least not for long. Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival --- the bold and imaginative two-weekend festival that Nicole Gifford and Melissa Mallinson produce -- has managed to be imaginative, bold and successful every year for eight full years. On September 21, 2018 when HCCDF 2018 opens at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts in Chicago, that will make it nine. It sounds like quite an accomplishment, and it certainly is, and when you find out more about it, about the many dance artists who get the chance to present their own imaginative visions, about the audiences who get to share in them, it starts sounding like even more of an accomplishment. Naturally, we wanted to find out more about it, so we reached out to Nicole Gifford. Here's what she told us:
'Accomplished' is one way that you can describe classical pianist Joyce Yang, and another way that you can describe her is 'widely acclaimed', but there's something you'll want to keep in mind about both of those terms. When you apply them to Joyce Yang, they describe a process more than a picture, because Joyce Yang accomplishes so much, so often, that she gets more widely acclaimed all the time. This year, for example, she and Aspen Santa Fe Ballet have been very widely acclaimed (including by a number of sold-out audiences) for their performances of ASFB's An Evening With Joyce Yang. It's a program of three ballets in which Yang performs live on stage with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, and they will be performing it at The Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe on September 1st. One of Yang's less well-known accomplishments is a beautifully composed article that she wrote entitled "Music and Movement", in which she shares a vivid series of insights into the mysterious interaction of dance and music, insights that she discovered and explored in the process of working with ASFB and Elo. "Music and Movement" first appeared at pianistjoyceyang.com, and now, Joyce Yang has generously allowed DancerMusic to reprint it here in its entirety. Here it is, don't miss it.
Forget for a moment that Aspen Santa Fe Ballet is an extraordinary artistic organization. It's a subject worth talking about, and we'll probably return to it more than once in other stories, but just for the moment, as difficult as it may be, just try to forget that. Or rather (especially since it's nearly impossible to forget), let's start from there and move on. Because in "An Evening With Joyce Yang", Aspen Santa Fe Ballet shows that they're actually something even more remarkable. ASFB is a study in exactly how to be an extraordinary artistic organization. In "An Evening With Joyce Yang", which ASFB will present at The Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe (September 1st at 8pm), Yang will perform live on stage with ASFB, as they perform "Half/Cut/Split" by noted Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo (who collaborated with Yang to bring Robert Schumann’s Carnaval to life), Jiří Kylián’s seminal "Return to a Strange Land", and Nicolo Fonte’s touching "Where We Left Off". That's just part of the start of the story, though. To find out more we reached out to Jessica Moore, ASFB Director of Marketing, to give us a closer look at this extraordinary program. Here's what she told us:
Lou Conte not only has a name that is important to the Chicago dance community, but as the founder of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago he is someone who has changed the history of contemporary dance. He created what is today an internationally acclaimed company that dancers from all over the world dream of being a part of. I myself was one of those young dancers, and Lou helped make my dream come true by bringing me into the company just before he stepped down as director in 2000. Lou will forever hold a special place in my heart, and not only by having initiated my entire dance career. With his values and the standards to which he held his work and company, he helped shape who I am today as a dancer, artist, and now choreographer. Lou is being honored at Chicago's Dance for Life this year, and when I was given the opportunity to talk with him and ask him a few questions, I couldn't help but be thrilled at the thought. Here's what he shared with me:
They say the best gifts are the ones you make yourself. The time, energy and thoughtfulness put into a handmade item is forever ingrained within it, making it truly unique. Here at DancerMusic, some of the best gift makers we know are the ones that create dance. These choreographers often spend countless hours in the studio creating movement, plus an ample amount of time researching and reflecting to refine what they make. No two creations are ever quite the same, and become more unique when you consider that no two performances of the same piece of choreography are identical. As
Among the many arts of the Art of Dance, freestyling is its own special world, but it includes just about every part of what makes dance an art. Great freestyle starts with having such a range of motion and technique and inspiration that you can present any of it at any moment. Although the creative decisions are made faster than even the fastest of movement, those are the same decisions and the same creativity that are always the essence of making a dance. So it's quite remarkable that at Dance For Life 2018, Chicago Dance Crash is there to freestyle -- which is almost unheard of for such a monumental production. Crash Artistic Director Jessica Deahr took some time to give us a little closer look at four moments from Chicago Dance Crash's very rich freestyle history in 4PHOTOS from Crash. Here we go:
Nobody ever got the idea to become a dancer by reading the Encyclopedia of Easy Jobs. It's an exceptionally demanding profession, and one of its constantly recurring challenges is discovering and deciding where to even try to work. Side by side with the widely varied possibilities in Concert Dance is a parallel but largely separate universe: Commercial Dance, and that can be a wide world, in many different ways. DancerMusic spoke to Hedwig Dances' Crystal Gurrola, to find out about one kind of opportunity that a dancer may encounter -- accepting the opportunity to dance commercially overseas. Here's what Crystal told us about her time dancing in Japan.
Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater can fill a stage with excitement like few other dance companies can. In their stated purpose to 'preserve, promote, and present' the many Dance and Music traditions of Spain -- Flamenco, Folkloric, Classical, and Contemporary-- they've developed a unique history, a unique repertory, and a unique choreographic voice. They'll be presenting their Flamenco Passion: A Tribute to Jose Greco’s 100th Anniversary at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts (on Friday and Saturday, June 15-16 at 7:30pm, and again on Sunday, June 17 at 3pm), and the program is an especially important and exciting one. DancerMusic asked Ensemble Español Artistic Director Irma Suárez Ruiz and Executive Director Jorge Pérez to share with us a little more about what we'll see at The North Shore Center, and here's what they told us: