Sharon Hoyer of New City Stage features the Dance Center’s Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival as a part of our 50th Anniversary Season as a ‘semi-hidden gem’ of a venue in Chicago. She spoke with our Artistic Director Meredith Sutton in this April 2024 interview:
The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago is a semi-hidden gem just off the path of big-name performance venues in the Loop. Nestled in an unassuming campus building on South Michigan Avenue, the Dance Center’s black-box theater made this magazine’s best-of list (back when we did such things) year after year. With seating twelve rows deep and a stage footprint that matches the audience area, there isn’t a bad seat in the house. And the programming—informed by Columbia’s educational raison d’etre—embraces the infinite gamut of dance, all for a reasonable ticket price. 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.
As part of its fiftieth season, the Dance Center is showcasing works by local choreographers in its new Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival, April 19–27. Weekend one features “Ethos IV,” the latest chapter in Ayako Kato’s poetic investigation of humanity as a part of nature. The performance begins at the Lakefront with music by the Oka Homma Singers and a water and soil ceremony by biologist Billie Warren, a Pokagon Band of Potawatomi member, then processes to the Dance Center stage. Weekend two features works in progress by Erin Kilmurray and her collaborator Kara Brody, SJ Swilley and J’Sun Howard.
We spoke with Meredith Sutton, artistic director of the dance presenting series, about the new event and the Dance Center’s enduring legacy, heading into its next fifty years.
