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.
“As a dancer myself, witnessing Ayodele Drum & Dance’s performance really reinforced the importance of understanding the cultural and historical context of the dances I perform. West African dance is more than just a series of steps; it's a means for preserving the traditions of a people, for conveying their stories and emotions.”
Expanding our blog to take the pulse on our dance communities
In 2021, through the support of The Walder Foundation, we were able to expand the On the Ground series on our blog. We checked in on the dance communities in our city and beyond by taking the pulse of the moment during the covid pandemic. On the Ground became an online dance journal-magazine that featured interviews with Chicago dance artists, shared work from virtual residencies that we hosted with choreographers, and took deep dives into our video archives.
The Dance Center’s Dance Buffet wrapped up last week and I want to celebrate and thank everyone who helped make it possible. Between mid-September and mid-November 2020, we presented 37 live events, ranging from discussion groups to improvisation workshops to technique classes. These were small-scale events, intentionally designed to preserve as many aspects of liveness and presence as possible…
Columbia College Chicago was invited to participate in a summer intensive at the Centre National de la Danse in Pantin, just outside of Paris. In this blog post, student Kennedy Ward shares their experience of studying with dance legend Germaine Acogny.
In a new initiative called On The Ground, the Dance Presenting Series engaged five Chicago-based dance writers to be present for the week-long residencies that happen at the Dance Center. To start this series, Columbia College Chicago alum Brianna Heath participated in the activities during Ephrat Asherie Dance’s residency, October 15-20, 2019.
