Dance Center Artistic Director Meredith Sutton sat down with Ayodele Drum and Dance Founding Executive/Artistic Director and Columbia faculty member T. Ayo Alston to talk about BEAUTY AND THE BEAT: MASKED as part of Season 52.

Timothy Tsang (BA, Dance 2017) returns to the Dance Center to present a workshop on his current research into Leslie Cheung, the Hong Kong pop icon whose concerts and films have become central to queer cultural memory as part of our Fall 2025 symposium. Here, Timothy reflects on What is Contemporary?

Corey Smith and Rachel Lindsay reflect on the March 2025 premiere of Nora Sharp’s COSMIC DOCKS at the Chicago Solo Spotlight Festival for Sixty Inches from Center: “Cosmic Docks is one part standup special, one part loop-pedal-karaoke, one part dance-with-an-uppercase ‘D.’”

Corey Smith and Rachel Lindsay reflect on the March 2025 premiere of THICK: a crumbling freak show by Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop at the Chicago Solo Spotlight Festival for Sixty Inches from Center: “The [performance] is a tour de force of Freeman | Po’Chop’s chops.”

It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of our visionary founder, Shirley Mordine, who led the Dance Center from 1969 until 1999.

Red Clay Dance Company is gearing up for its concert series at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and has been featured in New City, on See Chicago Dance, and several TV interviews - including WGN 9’s Midday Fix, Fox 32, and Chicago’s ABC 7.

Red Clay Dance Company’s upcoming program pairs two works created in collaboration with the dancers: Bebe Miller’s Field: New Ground and Vershawn Sanders-Ward’s Written on the Flesh. Asked about how it has been for the company to work with Bebe, for Vershawn it’s something of a full circle moment: “I’m still in awe. I don’t want to get all sentimental – it just reminds me of the specialness of the Dance Center.” Read about the two works and the collaboration between these two artists.

The Chicago Tribune’s Lauren Warnecke chats with Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood and Kelsa “K-Soul” Rieger-Hawyood, Lisa Gonzales, Meredith Sutton and Roell Schmidt in a preview of our annual Hip Hop battle/jam and festival the B-SERIES.

The Chicago Reader’s Irene Hsiao picks the Dance Center’s Chicago Solo Spotlight Festival in its Winter season theater preview highlighting “brilliant Chicago-based artists Jenn ‘Po’Chop’ Freeman and Nora Sharp.”