Dance Center Artistic Director Meredith Sutton spoke with Natya Dance Theatre’s Hema Rajagopalan about the company’s upcoming 50th anniversary concerts at the Dance Center March 19 - 21, 2026.
Dance Center Artistic Director Meredith Sutton spoke with The Seldoms’ Founding Artistic Director Carrie Hanson about the long-awaited Chicago premiere of Floe coming to the Dance Center March 12 - 13, 2026.
We were honored that Sharon Hoyer of New City Stage picked our Artistic and Producing Directors as part of their 50 Players for Chicago in 2026.
Chicago Tribune critic Lauren Warnecke highlights The Seldoms’ “Floe” as one of this winter’s top picks for Chicago Dance.
The Chicago Tribune’s Lauren Warnecke celebrates Erin Kilmurray, fellow Dance Center and Columbia College Chicago Alum as Chicagoan of the Year in Dance. Dance Presenting Series artist Kilmurray reflects on what’s next after ‘The Fly Honey Show.’
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.
Critic Lauren Warnecke of The Chicago Tribune highlights the changes afoot at the Dance Center in her conversation with our director, Ellen Chenoweth.
During our spring semester at the Dance Center, there is a small cohort of dance writers viewing, discussing, and writing about each performance in the Dance Presenting Series, guided by Director Ellen Chenoweth. Comprised of Columbia College students and recent alums, cohort members were nominated by faculty members and applied for a position in the group. We collected a few excerpts here from their writings about the recent Dance Center presentation of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan…
In 2015 the BBC produced a short documentary on Tracey Emin as part of their “What Do Artists Do All Day” series. In it, the painter/drawer/fibers/conceptual artist — one of the breakout Young British Artists of the 90s and a personal hero of mine as a young woman studying painting in undergrad — talks about how she gets grounded before approaching a large blank canvas. Throughout the episode, she makes references to needing to feel “confident” or “bold” or “strong in [her] head” in order to step into such a wide open space successfully…
Earlier this year I got to read this piece by St. Louis dance educator and writer Betsy Brandt, and it resonated with me on numerous levels. St. Louis, our Midwestern neighbor, may offer lessons for our own organizing, educating, or reflecting in Chicago, within the concert dance communities or in other circles. In the movement for black lives, around gender equity, or gun control, Betsy’s call to “apply pressure to the cracks in a breaking system” seems not just appropriate, but imperative.
— Ellen Chenoweth, Interim Director, Dance Presenting Series
