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
Artistic Director and Producing Director, Dance Center of Columbia College
For fifty years, the Dance Center of Columbia College has been a training ground for generations of dancers as well as a presenter of top-shelf, innovative work in an intimate house with a stage equal in footprint to the seating. Sutton and 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.” The Dance Center kicked off their current season with a symposium that brought students, professional companies and, at moments, audience members together onstage. In the year ahead, the Dance Center celebrates the tenth anniversary of their street dance “B-Series,” hosts performances of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and launches a research project on the effects of dance on loneliness in older adults. (Sharon Hoyer)
