FOMENT: Perspectives in Motion highlights original works by Joey Martinez, Lydia Jacobson, Gabby Sheets, Seniyah Tribble. All aspects of the craft are brought together as graduating Dance BFA students culminate their four years of study and practice with the presentation of their own choreographic works.
RE/VERB features new works by faculty Lisa Gonzales, Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood, Emma Draves, Jane Jerardi, along with celebrated alum choreographer and filmmaker Kierah {KIKI} King (BFA 2020) — all performed by students that forefront the now in embodied practice.
Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival features four award-winning artists that showcase the vibrancy of Chicago’s dance community: dancemaker and poet J’Sun Howard (BFA Dance 2019), kinetic philosopher Ayako Kato, pop-fringe creator Erin Kilmurray (BA Dance 2008) with Kara Brody, and artist/activist SJ Swilley.
Come see original student works and performances of varying styles and genres! A celebration of the diversity of work by students and performed by students at the Dance Center.
LaTasha Barnes’s The Jazz Continuum centers the prolific artistry of Jazz music and dance as a cornerstone of Black American culture and community. Featuring an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary cast of Black dancers and musicians, this offering to the continuum celebrates the joy and sacred power of the Black experience to each artist - and the ensemble.
A DJ’ed dance party and gathering space for the underground street dance community, the B-Series centers around head-to-head freestyle dance battles and performances. World-renowned guest judges include LaTasha Barnes, Bionic, Mikey Disko, and Chicago’s legendary Lady Sol and pioneering Footworker Q.V.I.P..
Lunch with Sonia uses puppets, live actors, music, video, dance and physical theatre to deal with the themes of life, love, and loss. Presented in partnership with the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, the largest event dedicated to the art form in North America.
This concert welcomes cultural ambassador of New Orleans tradition and Second Line Aesthetic Michelle Gibson to Chicago and the Dance Center appearing alongside the Dance Center’s award-winning faculty, all performed by the kinesthetically fluid students of the Dance Center.
Witness new choreographic works by student choreographers mentored by acclaimed dance, film, and theater artist Colleen Halloran.
Fall into new discoveries in this sampler evening of original, brand new, short works by student choreographers – some sharing pieces on the Dance Center’s stage for the first time – lit by Theater’s rising lighting designers.
Ayodele Drum & Dance, BraveSoul Movement, The Joffrey Ballet, and Mordine & Company Legacy Project illuminate the languages, lineages, and connective tissue that have helped to make Chicago an epicenter for dance
Rooted in New Orleans' unique spiritual and cultural traditions, The New Orleans Original BuckShop workshop provides not just a window but a doorway into practices that have sustained communities through joy, rhythm, and resilience. Through her Second Line Aesthetic, Michelle N. Gibson's workshop focuses on improvised movement, interpretation, defined footwork, full body articulation, authentic self, and the embrace of communal ritual. Preceeding the workshop Dr. Thomas F. Defrantz will give a talking dance entitled “Danced to Deliverance: Black Structures of Form Animating Dance” at 10:00 a.m.
In Fruitful Devotion (2023), dance choreographer and Columbia College alum (BFA Dance 2020) Kierah KIKI King (b. 1998 Hartford, CT) explores ideas of body and self-intimacy through a lens of Black Queerness. Patricia Nguyen’s (b. 1987, Chicago, IL) newest sensorial experimentation and haptic performance work Creating Worlds with My Mother (2023) features the artist and her mother, Thuy Ta. Join us for this film screening presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Photography in an evening moderated by Jenn Po’Chop Freeman!
Featuring panels, paper presentations, movement sessions, and workshops, the American Dancing Bodies Symposium: Embodying Our Way Forward, an in-person symposium, will be held October 19-20, 2023 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.
