Welcome the newest class of musical theatre majors making their Columbia College debuts by putting their own shine on songs from the musical theatre canon and beyond!
MOMENTA Dance Company makes its Dance Center debut with the 15th Anniversary of CounterBalance. The 15th anniversary celebration includes the free Inclusive Creative Movement Workshop for all bodies, minds, and experience levels, the 15th Anniversary CounterBalance Inclusive Dance Concert curated by Sarah Najera featuring dance artists with and without disabilities, and the Emerging Artist Showcase co-curated by Ginger Lane and Maggie Bridger.
Bevara Anderson-Selkridge presents her first standalone BĀLA Dance Project concert in Chicago featuring her choreographic range from solos to duets, from small group pieces to large ensemble works and drawing upon her fluency in Umfundalai, House, Modern and Horton dance techniques and practices.
Columbia, are you ready to do the Time Warp again? The fourth annual Rocky Horror Picture Show Shadow Cast makes its Dance Center debut for one night and one night only!
Revel in a sampler evening of original, brand new, short works by student choreographers selected from an open application process. Some artists are sharing pieces on the Dance Center’s stage for the first time, others offer works informed by their years immersed in the Dance Center’s pluralistic curriculum.
Each week’s distinct program features the culmination of eight dance majors’ journeys through the choreographic process: from creative impulse through auditions and rehearsals, outside eyes and design decisions, to presenting their choreographic projects for the first time on the concert stage.
What began as a personal birthday celebration has transformed into a highly anticipated annual event bringing together dancers, drummers, and community members through intensive-style workshops and immersive archival installations dedicated to the Guinean rhythms of Dundunba. AMBER’S DUNDUNBA PARTY 4.0 features West African dance artists/instructors Imania Detry, Zenzile Fatou, and Washington, D.C.-based, master teacher Mama Lesina Martin. Dundunba (also spelled dununba) refers to the drum, a family of West African rhythms, and a traditional celebratory dance originating from the Malinké people of Guinea, West Africa.
Kiswahili for “gifts”, the ZAWADI culminating concerts of 2026 at the Dance Center feature choreographic offerings by guest choreographers Matumbe Himons, Nejla Yatkin, and Assistant Professor Dardi McGinley Gallivan set on students in the Repertory Performance Workshop course. Also on the program will be a new work choreographed by faculty members Darrell Jones and Lisa Gonzales.
A Dance Center commission, this world premiere by South Chicago Dance Theatre Founder and Director of Vision and Strategy Kia S. Smith is the fourth evening-length work by the 10-year-old company. Inspired by Smith’s Great Grandmother Josephine Griffin Jones, the new dance theater work explores how family histories and embodied knowledge can flower into artistic expression and the power of belief and hope to transform and vanquish, survive and thrive.
The fourth annual student produced, directed, choreographed and performed revue featuring Acting, Dance, Design, and Musical Theatre majors bringing their fresh take on musical theatre dance numbers
B-COMING, the 2027 B-Series Festival + Symposium, looks at the changing paths of street, club, and traditional dance forms through the lens of identity, memory, and shared global histories. B-COMING focuses on globalization and cultural exchange, exploring the powerful, in-between spaces where different traditions meet—and sometimes collide—at the crossroads of community and identity.
Michael Estanich and Lucy Vurusic Riner’s RE| dance group makes its Dance Center debut with two Chicago premieres by Artistic Director Michael Estanich. In keeping with RE|dance group’s signature style, both dance theater works merge movement, song and text, and complement and serve as foils for one another through divergent approaches in environment and tone.
IS/LAND makes its Dance Center debut with the Chicago premiere of Until We Fill the Ocean – an evening-length, interdisciplinary work blending sound, dance, and poetry to honor the detainees on San Francisco Bay’s Angel Island from 1910 through 1940.
This festival returns for its second year showcasing student run dance organizations open to all majors at Columbia College Chicago.
Red Clay Dance Company returns to the Dance Center as part of its 18th season. Founded by Vershawn Sanders-Ward (BFA ’02), Red Clay Dance Company has become a leading force in contemporary dance rooted in African Diasporic traditions.
The Dance Center embraces spring’s energetic lift with original, brand new, short works by selected student choreographers. These eagerly-anticipated concerts feature audiences as electric as the performances.
The culminating performances of Dance majors’ journeys through the choreographic process: from creative impulse through auditions, rehearsals, outside eyes, and design decisions, to presenting their choreographic works for the first time on the concert stage.
The Dance Center’s renowned professional Dance alumni and faculty choreograph new works performed by students.
Columbia College Chicago’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance class of 2027: Milenka Aurelio, Lola Jett-Beachley, Courtney Cooper, Sophie Daker, Lizeth Hernandez, Diamond Turner, and Ava-C. Winfrey share new works dedicated to their years of connecting, witnessing, researching, experimenting, practicing, imagining, and growing as dance artists.
Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre’s Chicago Latinx/e Contemporary Movement Festival Concert features CRDT performing an excerpt of a new work by Omar Roman de Jesus alongside six artists/collectives: Anniela Huidobro Castro, Anise Fernández & Amanda Ramirez, Ruben Andrés Castillo Gomez, Mark Travis Rivera | The Professional Storyteller, Paula Sousa, and Victoria Villamil.
MATADORA is a new work of Latine Futurism about an untamable creature and the blistering rage that can smother or unchain her: beast, or diosx? MATADORA confronts Latin American mythologies that make monsters of women’s suffering, and uses dance, physical theater, and visual culture to construct a new Latine archetype that refuses domestication.
A contemporary and tap dance show combining styles to bring communities together!
With live music by Chien-An Yuan to guide, concepts such as childlike wonder, abuse, resilience, sacrifice, and responsibility will be explored throughout.
Chicago's International Festival of American Tap celebrates its 36th Anniversary with a week of rhythm-bending concerts and classes by three generations of extraordinary artists.
A father and his two sons live in a house. The most routine tasks, such as preparing breakfast, bathing, or housework turn into real adventures when tackled by three inexperienced men and their fear of not knowing what are they doing. The journey that the elder brother needs to make in order to leave home, and the fear of saying goodbye to the ones we love, will be the starting point of our story. “The Compañía de Teatro Físico perform universal, speechless, physical theatre independent from time and space to rock the viewers gently with their fears.”
