Then. Now. Next.
Celebrating 50 Years of Dedication to
Sharing the Present Moment of Dance
For the first time, all Dance Center concerts are part of the Dance Presenting Series season. This fall, the first half of the 50th season led to multiple impromptu dance parties on stage. Join us for the second half as we dance our way from winter to spring and experience the full cycle of choreographic development in works by established, emerging, and aspiring choreographers and dancers.
Explore On the Ground, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago’s online publication. With support from The Walder Foundation, it features interviews with Chicago dance artists, checking in on dance communities, sharing work from our virtual residencies with choreographers, and exploring the Dance Center’s video archives.
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The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago is the city’s leading presenter of contemporary dance – bringing international, national, and local artists to Chicago audiences. The Dance Center has served as a focal point for dance and performance in Chicago since 1974.
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A canopy of pink blossoming trees showers petals on the audience as we sail down the path, pulled along by a current of wind and sound. Slow and easy, like swirling air, four figures float through the grove, reverently laying hands upon the bark and grass. They caress the breeze and mimic the shapes of the branches and trunks. Ayako Kato—kinetic philosopher, poet and choreographer—pauses to hang from one branch, arm hooked delicately and body unfolding toward the sky. The crowd is hushed. See Chicago Dance reviews Ayako Kato’s ETHOS IV: Degrowth/Cycle/Rebirth.
In January/February 2024, dance artist SJ Swilley held a production residency at the Dance Center of Columbia College supported by Chicago Dancemakers Forum. They invited collaborators Mawu Ama Ma'at Gora and Graciella Ye'Tsunami to help shape their work, Aaliyah Christina as an embedded writer, and Jovan Landry as the photographer to document some of the process. The resulting piece was part of the Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival in April 2024.
Sharon Hoyer of New City Stage interviews our Artistic Director Meredith Sutton: “The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago is a semi-hidden gem just off the path of big-name performance venues in the Loop…Some of the most memorable performances I’ve seen in my near twenty years of covering dance in Chicago have taken place on the Dance Center stage. Experimental work, student and faculty showcases, nationally and internationally revered artists have all rarified the Dance Center’s air for half a century.”
The Dance Center of Columbia College presents the first Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival, featuring works by distinguished Chicago dancemakers Ayako Kato, J’Sun Howard, SJ Swilley, and Erin Kilmurray and Kara Brody in works that expand the footprint of performance beyond the stage.
It’s LaTasha Barnes’ “The Jazz Continuum,” a communal celebration of Black American dance and music running March 7-9 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. Timelines collide as different eras of jazz dance and adjacent forms—tap dance, footwork, popping, break dance, line dance and more—blend together in a seamless juxtaposition of styles.
In the audio series portion of “The 1619 Project,” New York Times cultural critic Wesley Morris says that when he hears American pop music—jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco, even yacht rock—he hears Blackness. Likewise (and inseparably) is American social Black dance, emerging and evolving alongside these genres: bodies unstoppably moved by syncopation and harmony, shot through with ripples of delight only a perfectly landed improvisation can provide. But improvisation lives in the new. And as Black artists push forms and culture forward, older styles can get left behind….
We’re really honored that New City highlighted our Artistic and Producing Directors as part of its Players 2024: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago. Meredith Sutton and Roell Schmidt, in collaboration with dance department chair Lisa Gonzales, are experimenting with ways to erase that “and” by “moving away from the ‘gatekeeper’ model of dance presenting.”
In a preview for Jumanne Taylor’s Supreme Love in the Chicago Tribune, Lauren Warnecke details the waves that Supreme Love made in the dance world in 2016 and its revival now.
Irene Hsiao, contributor to the Chicago Reader, talks to Interim Director of the Dance Presenting Series Meredith Sutton talks to the Chicago Reader about taking the Columbia College Chicago Dance Center into its 50th anniversary season.
Recent praise for FLOCK & Artists’ Somewhere Between calls the Dance Center -- “arguably the best venue to see dance in Chicago!”:
Sometimes in duets, and most often as a six-dancer ensemble, Flock’s Somewhere Between continues to mesmerize with seamless transitions. We lose track of time. It’s not unlike the hypnotizing effect of a lava lamp. All is fluid. Transitions are so seamless we only realize they have happened in retrospect….
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banner image: Hold dear (recall) by Tristen Sanborn, BFA Dance, ‘23 — photo by: Julie Lucas for Columbia College Chicago.