To get ready for Deeply Rooted Dance's "Reaffirmed / Reimagined" at Chicago's Logan Center, we asked Jacquelyn Smiley Robinson about some of the challenges, opportunities, ideas, experience, and inspiration that make her appointment as Managing Director for Deeply Rooted Productions so promising. Here's what she told us:
...what happens when you are at the helm of an artistic operation for decades? How do you stay inspired, motivated and fight the burnout? If you happen to be the Artistic Director of a dance company, your responsibilities are monumental and seemingly endless. Those responsibilities are centered around the all-important preservation and growth of the company’s artistic vision, which can mean lending your own choreographic voice to the repertoire. This is in addition to finding other dance makers, both seasoned and up-and-coming, to keep the season’s programming diverse while still functioning in support of the original vision. Then comes curating
After closing their twentieth anniversary with a massively successful series of performances at Chicago's Logan Center (their performance of Fana Tshabalala's INDUMBA was named Dance of the Year by the Chicago Tribune's Lauren Warnecke), Deeply Rooted Dance Theater is already right back at it. They're performing at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, February 24 at 7:30pm in a program entitled "Looking To The Future". The program includes works by Kevin Iega Jeff ("Church of Nations" and "In a Child's Eye"), Gary Abbott ("Desire"), and by Nicole Clarke-Springer. Clarke-Springer's "Femme" was featured, and widely admired, in Deeply Rooted's Twentieth Anniversary concerts, but their "Looking To The Future" presentation at the North Shore Center will also include the World Premiere of her work "Alice". DancerMusic's Johnny Nevin asked Nicole about "Alice", Deeply Rooted, and about what she sees moving forward from here. Here's what Nicole told us ...
There’s nothing like a good get-together with friends, especially around the holidays. You never know what can happen at these gatherings, and we are certainly curious to know what will happen when the dance artists known as The Cambrians present Chicago Dances, a special gathering of their own running December 14-18 at Hairpin Studios. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera recently ran into Noelle Kayser, and could not help but get the inside scoop on this collaborative evening of original works:
Deeply Rooted Dance Theater is celebrating their 20th Anniversary with a series of concerts entitled Deeply Free (December 8th, 9th and 10th at Chicago's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts). The Company was founded in 1995 and first performed in 1996, building year after year into what they are now: a widely traveled and even more widely admired Dance Company. DancerMusic begins its coverage of "Deeply Free" by asking Deeply Rooted's Artistic Director and co-founder Kevin Iega Jeff to tell us a little more about Deeply Rooted and about their upcoming performances ...
