606 stories by "Sharon Hoyer"
April dance is in full bloom with large-scale productions on big stages.
For its seventy-fifth anniversary, the legendary New York City Ballet, founded by George Balanchine, performs its first appearance in Chicago in eighteen years. Three programs offer a sampli…
The first delicacy one notices in RE|dance Group's new work is the quality of the light. Illuminated rectangles of varying dimensions are scattered across the black floor, casting a soft glo…
The past, present and future of dance will get you on your feet.
"I know the standards for what is supposed to happen onstage and they are not things that invite that deep improvisational spirit. Things that don't invite that, we thwart."
New York-based Maria Torres, a dancer, choreographer and educator who works in film, television and Broadway, patented a Latin Jazz style that blends her Brooklyn-raised, Puerto Rican/Cuban/…
February brings local favorites like the Joffrey and Hubbard Street, along with international stalwarts to Chicago dance stages.
Steppenwolf is the most recognizable name in Chicago theater. Since 2016 the venerable institution has become an incubator of multidisciplinary and experimental performance as well, presente…
"The puppet is a harbinger coming from a non-human world. It's like a species that arrives porously through myth and imagination and is like an apparition that becomes present. It speaks and…
A new work to kick off the new year.
Coping strategies for a violent, unjust and ever-accelerating world are at the forefront of cultural conversation these days. Enter Joanna Read and Same Planet Performance Project. Read's da…
In 1960, jazz greats Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington infused Tchaikovsky's most recognizable composition with American rhythms and twentieth-century chords. The Ellington/Strayhorn "Nutcr…
It's the season for Nutcrackers and other holiday delights.
London-based choreographer Akram Khan brings his eponymous company to the Harris Theater for the first time, with a near-future version of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" set in a rewild…
Clear your first two weekends: November is front-loaded with dance from mixed-rep to immersive storytelling.
Aszure Barton, who embarks this season on a three-year stint as resident choreographer for Hubbard Street, is reviving "return to patience," a piece she created in 2015 for students at the J…
Molly Shanahan and Mad Shak know that when she says "Bodies are so much more than what is visually perceived," she means not only that the vast interior world of individual experience is hid…
For "S45," Michelle Kranicke and Paige Cunningham-Caldarella invited three choreographers to join them in taking a section of Merce Cunningham's "Suite for Five" as a jumping off point for a…
From Frankenstein to Merce Cunningham, there's dance provocation on stage for everyone.
"We brought old and new friends together to take creative risks at multiple venues across Chicago and magic ensued. We shared a similar non-verbal language. This magic has transpired for the…
From futurism to Jungle Book revisited, this fall dance season has a big range.
On January 14 of this year, the big brother to dozens of ballet luminaries in the United States would have celebrated his hundredth birthday. To commemorate the occasion, the Gerald Arpino F…
The fall season kicks off with a series of festivals.
Harris will kick off its emerald anniversary with an all-day, outdoor festival spread across Millennium Park. Festivities culminate in a three-hour performance in the Pritzker Pavilion of a …
"Dance for Life" is an annual concert that raises money for The Dancers' Fund, which provides health care assistance for dancers and people who work in the dance field. But it also happens t…
