We talked to CHRP Founder and Director Lane Alexander and Mayumana Co-Founder, Co-Director and Creator Boaz Berman to tell us more about their partnership and the exciting production that Mayumana is bringing to Chicago's Harris Theater stage. Here's what they told us:
If you go to see Trinity Irish Dance Company at Chicago's Auditorim Theatre (on Saturday, February 2nd at 7:30pm), you may very well be enchanted by the riveting visual pageant of intricately imagined movement, and you may be mesmerized by the complex rhythmic score. But if you've read any of the things people have said about this company, you might not be entirely surprised; their performances from New York to Tokyo and a lot of places in between get big time respect. What is more likely to surprise you is how unique, how completely in its own space this exceptionally creative performance is. Mark Howard is the founder and Artistic Director of Trinity Irish Dance Company, and the process, patience, and unending possibilities for inspiration that have become Trinity Irish Dance Company were something that we wanted to learn much more about, so we asked him. Here's what he told us:
JUBA! Masters of Tap and Percussive Dance is not one, but two dance concerts. Although both are presentations of some of the most gifted percussive dance artists you can see anywhere, and both will be an intoxicating mixture of sophisticated choreography and inspired improvisation, they're actually two completely different programs. We talked to Dani Borak, Chicago Human Rhythm Project's Artist in Residence, to find out more about JUBA!, and we couldn't have found a better person to ask. Here's what he told us:
How in the world would you do a PRE-View of Rhythm World, Chicago Human Rhythm Project's amazing annual festival of tap and percussive dance? If you've been to see us at DancerMusic before, you know that our PRE-Views are here to tell the world about events that are interesting, exciting, entertaining and cool, so that everybody can go see them and not miss them. Rhythm World is all of that for sure, so what's the problem? The problem is that Chicago Human Rhythm Project's Rhythm World is like the big, long, eighty-car freight train of cool, entertaining, interesting and exciting. So what did we do? We redesigned our PRE-View format to include a new SPEED ROUND of questions for CHRP's Founder and Director Lane Alexander. Here's what he told us:
At Dance For Life this Saturday, August19, one of the more intriguing performances will be of In the Meantime. The collaborators describe the work as "a celebration of our distinct cultures and a recognition of our common impulses and the universal desire to make rhythm". Here, CHRP's Lane Alexander gives us an inside look at two of the photos from the work ...
Chicago Human Rhythm Project will present JUBA! Masters of Tap and Percussive Dance at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater in a show that will certainly be an important historic event, but is every bit as certain to be an explosively entertaining ride through a brand new world, the world of Tap and Percussive Dance.
