Spring to Dance Festival | Preview

Spring to Dance Festival 2011

• 

  Joffrey Ballet dancer Fabrice Calmels in Age of Innocence

  Photo: Herbert Migdoll326.da.SpringToDance01.jpg147607511
• 

  Natya Dance Theatre in Interior Landscapes

  Photo: Amitava Sarkar326.da.SpringToDance04.jpg147607772
• 

  The Seldoms in Thrift

  Photo: William Frederking326.da.SpringToDance02.jpg147607593
• 

  Chicago Human Rhythm Project's BAM! tap ensemble in Favorite Things

  Photo: Kristie Kahns326.da.SpringToDance03.jpg147607654
• 

  Thodos Dance Chicago in Awakening

  Photo: Cheryl Mann326.da.SpringToDance05.jpg147607835
• 

  Owen-Cox Dance Group in I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

  Photo: Dan Wayne326.da.SpringToDance07.jpg147607936
• 

  Nashville Ballet’s Sadie Bo Harris and Jon Upleger in Satto

  Photo: Marianne Leach326.da.SpringToDance15.jpg147608397
• 

  The Dancing Wheels Company

  Photo: Courtesy of Dance St. Louis326.da.SpringToDance08.jpg147607978
• 

  Hubbard Street 2’s Nicholas Korkos in Getting There, Staying Here

  Photo: Todd Rosenberg326.da.SpringToDance10.jpg147608179
• 

  Ballet Memphis dancers in Being Here with Other People

  Photo: Brandon Dill Photography326.da.SpringToDance13.jpg1476083510
• 

  Mordine & Co. Dance Theater members Atalee Judy and Emma Draves in Illuminations

  Photo: William Frederking326.da.SpringToDance11.jpg1476082511
• 

  Thodos Dance Chicago in Awakening

  Photo: Cheryl Mann326.da.SpringToDance06.jpg1476078712
• 

  Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre in Badoom Boom

  Photo: Cheryl Mann326.da.SpringToDance16.jpg1476084113
• 

  Eisenhower Dance Ensemble’s Morgan Williams and Alicia Cutaia

  Photo: Rick Smith326.da.SpringToDance14.jpg1476083714
• 

  Kansas City Ballet’s Kimberly Cowan and Michael Eaton in Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux

  Photo: Steve Wilson326.da.SpringToDance09.jpg1476080315
• 

  VADCO dancers in I Am Fine

  Photo: Courtesy of Dance St. Louis326.da.SpringToDance12.jpg1476083316

PreviousNext

Joffrey Ballet dancer Fabrice Calmels in Age of Innocence

Photo: Herbert Migdoll

Don’t let this issue’s slim Dance Listings fool you: It’s an excellent week for Chicago dance. You just have to know where to look and, oddly enough, that place is St. Louis.

Thursday 26 through Saturday 28, ten Chicago companies will take stages at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri as part of the Spring to Dance festival. The host city is next-best-represented, with five participating groups.

For the past four years, in fact, Spring to Dance, produced by Dance St. Louis, has been the only way to catch a cross section of dance in Chicago. With each passing year, Dance Chicago’s winter lineups focus more tightly on junior groups and student ensembles. Summer’s Chicago Dancing Festival takes a global view, curating more around choreography than where its interpreters are based. The Other Dance Festival takes the temperature of the contemporary and experimental scene each fall; downtown groups aren’t involved and the stylistic range is narrow. Better 300 miles away than not at all, but seriously: Can we get a comprehensive, annual look at Chicago dance happening in Chicago already? And can we do it for Dance St. Louis’s amazing price point of $10 per night?

But I digress. Here are some picks.

Thursday 26
At 6pm, the Touhill’s smaller Lee Theater presents four companies, all but one of which are from these parts. Catch an excerpt from the Seldoms’ Marchland and Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre in Badoom Boom. In the Center’s grand Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall, see Hubbard Street 2 perform, alongside the premiere of Songs My Mother Taught Me, by Michael Uthoff for Dancing Wheels of Cleveland, a troupe with some differently abled members.

Friday 27
It’ll probably throw you for a, uh, loop, to step out of the Touhill on Friday night and see the Gateway Arch, not the Willis Tower. More than half of the companies slated are Chicago-based: Mordine & Co. Dance Theater, in fine form recently at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, appears in the Lee’s showcase. Natya Dance Theatre, Thodos Dance Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet and Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s BAM! tap ensemble, in addition to the Martha Graham Dance Company, perform afterward in the Busch.

Saturday 28
And on Saturday, there are 11 companies, Chicago being represented by…huh. None of them. Oh, well: It’s still the fest’s most geographically diverse day of programming, with performers from Spain (Paloma Gómez, outstanding last June at Ensemble Español’s International Spanish Dance Festival), New York City (Dance Theatre of Harlem, back from the brink) and Los Angeles (Helios Dance Theater) on the bill.

Chicago dancers invade the fourth annual Spring to Dance festival, at St. Louis’s Touhill Performing Arts Center, Thursday 26 through Saturday 28.