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WHEN and WHERE:
EXPERIENCING TIME / EMBODYING RHYTHM SYMPOSIUM (Sept 19-20, 2024)
There is no denying the presence of rhythm in our everyday. Rhythmic patterns and cadences in movement, music, and language spawn multiple forms and genres and as many ways to perceive them. How it looks isn’t the full story. Rhythmic ingenuity through devising, combining shared space and time, and making connections across different ways of being in the body, are distinctive attributes of the dance curriculum at Columbia College Chicago. The 2024 Symposium raises the question of how do bodies, spaces, places, identities, relationships, and power constructs support rhythm? What corporal geographies subvert it? What will multiple vantage points reveal about this phenomenon that saturates everything and everyone? From the individual to the community, from the simple to the complex, rhythm is the thread.
Tickets: General Public: Symposium Pass ($40), Showcase Double Feature Ticket ($25), Showcase
Ticket ($15), Session Ticket ($10); free to Columbia College Chicago students.
Friday, September 19
Symposium Sessions 9:00 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Friday, September 20
CADENCE Performance Showcase – 1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
Ellas Y Yo Mexicanas: Frida by Silvita Diaz Brown/Sildance AcroDanza, Lady Sol & the Kuumba Felines, an Afro Caribbean Street Dance Experience by Leyda “Lady Sol” Garcia, Let Me Know When You Get Home by Joey Martinez (‘24), Pan Con Timba by Jimmy Payne, Jr., and Vantage Point by Nautica Turner Briscoe (‘24).
FLOW Performance Showcase – 7:30 p.m. - 8:15 p.m.
The Coalition Score by commissioned research partners Peter Carpenter, Paige Cunningham Caldarella, Lisa Gonzales, Darrell Jones, Dardi McGinley Gallivan, Raquel Monroe, Onye Ozuzu, and Kelsa Rieger Haywood, How I Found My Feet Again: an experimental excerpt by Keyierra Collins, ,,,lonely (2 1)... by Thomas F. DeFrantz, and Rhythmic Compass by Sirr Tmo.
SHE’S AUSPICIOUS BY MYTHILI PRAKASH (Sept 26-27, 2024)
Blurring the lines between Goddess and Woman to explore the paradox of femininity, She’s Auspicious is a dance and music work rooted in Bharatanatyam whose starting point is Mythili Prakash’s study of her own identity as a woman, a mother, a performer, a person of color born and raised in the US, and a person of privilege – an upper caste practitioner of a dance form with a complicated history of erasure. Featuring an all female cast, including dancer/choreographer Prakash, three musicians, and a four person ensemble, this work references mythological and cultural practices surrounding the Goddess, as well as the societal expectations of femininity. She’s Auspicious is presented in partnership with Kalapriya Center for Indian Performing Arts and was made possible in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. Tickets: Sept 26: General Public ($30), Elders & Non Columbia College Chicago Students ($20) includes post show discussion with the artists; Sept 27: VIP ($150) includes pre show reception and post show dessert with the artists, General Public ($50) includes post show dessert with the artists.
Thursday, September 26, 7:30 p.m. - 9:15 p.m.
Friday, September 27, 6:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. (VIP Ticket holders only)
Friday, September 27, 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
MURAL DANCES (Oct. 11-12, 2024)
Synapse Arts’ Rachel Damon (‘05) leads student activations of Columbia’s extraordinary murals in
site-specific performances. Exact mural locations TBA.
Friday, October 11, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 12, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
FREE FALL: Student Performance Night (Nov. 14-15, 2024)
A sampler evening of original, brand new, short works by student choreographers selected by faculty from an open application process. Some chosen artists are sharing pieces on the Dance Center’s stage for the first time, others offer works informed by years’ immersed in the DC’s the pluralistic curriculum. Lit by Theatre’s rising lighting designers, these eagerly anticipated concerts feature audiences as electric as the performers. Faculty Advisor: Kelsa Rieger Haywood. Tickets: Free with reservation.
Thursday, November 14, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Friday, November 15, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
CHOREOGRAPHIC PROJECTS (Nov. 21-22 & Dec. 5-6, 2024)
Witness what in-depth, collaborative research into choreography in performance yields from student choreographers setting original works on sibling dance artists whom they have auditioned and invited into their 12-week process. Each weekend’s program is distinct. Faculty Advisor: Colleen Halloran.
Tickets: Free with reservation.
Thursday, November 21, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, November 22, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Thursday, December 5, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, December 6, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
PAMOJA: Repertory Performance Works (Dec. 12-13, 2024)
PAMOJA – Swahili for “together” shares the semester long process of students working with visiting artists: South Chicago Dance Theatre’s Kia Smith and Synapse Arts’ Rachel Damon, and faculty member Darrell Jones on a shared bill of works by faculty Bevara Anderson and Allen Desterhaft with Kelsa Rieger Haywood, and alum Camila Rivero Pooley (‘18). Friday’s matinee performance includes a work created by Dance For Health study participants from Central West Regional Senior Center under the direction of Susan Imus.
Tickets: $15 - general public, free to Columbia College Chicago students.
Thursday, December 12, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Friday, December 13, 1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
Friday, December 13, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
MARAÑA’S ORGANISMO (Jan. 23-25, 2025)
An immersion into an organism created from wool, sounds, colors and textures combined with circus acrobatics, dance, rhythms, and music. The journey through the complexities and layers of the most basic elements of existence weaves a being out of threads, hands, and bodies to unfold a new world carried by the physical precision and blind trust between the performers. Organismo’s Idea and Performance Director Paula Riquelme is a Chilean artist based in Berlin and is presented in partnership with the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, the largest event dedicated to the art form in North America.
Tickets: Through Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival Box Office (TBA)
Thursday, January 23, 7:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Friday, January 24, 7:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, January 25, 4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
MUSICAL THEATRE DANCE CABARET (February 20-21, 2025)
Presented by the newly created School of Theatre and Dance, student choreographers and performers from both Theatre and Dance bring their original take to musical theatre dance numbers. Faculty Advisor: Wilfredo Rivera
Tickets: Free with reservation.
Thursday, February 20, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Friday, February 21, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
B-SERIES FESTIVAL: B-YOND BORDERS (February 27-March 1, 2024)
B yond Borders: Celebrating the kinships and impact of Global Afrodiasporic street and social dancing, co curated by Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood and Kelsa “K Soul” Rieger Haywood, brings together guest artists, students and community members to honor the nuance and specificity of particular Afro street and social dances, the relationships and influences between them, and their immense global impact across bodies, disciplines and cultures through workshops, conversations, film screenings and a dance jam including performances and battles. B yond Borders features pioneering and world renowned Afro Dance artist and Sarah Olaniran, A.K.A. “Sayrah Chips” as well as influential local, regional, and student artists.'
Tickets: Free with reservation.
Thursday, February 27
Afro Dance Hip Hop Takeover – 5:00 p.m. - 6:20 p.m.
B-yond Borders Verbal Cypher – 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Friday, February 28
TBA – Times TBA
Saturday, March 1
Workshops TBA – Times TBA
B-Series Battles and Jam – 2:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
A DJ’ed dance party and gathering space for the underground street dance
community centered around head-to-head freestyle dance battles and
performances. Full line-up of artists and battle formats TBA.
CHICAGO SOLO SPOTLIGHT FESTIVAL (Mar. 13-15, 2025)
The Dance Center continues to spotlight Chicago dance artists who are pushing the boundaries of the form. The 2025 Festival features two world premieres: THICK: a deconstructed freak show (working title) is a multimedia solo performance by Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop that confronts notions of femininity and civility and calls into question the creation of otherness. Freeman asks, “What does the spatiotemporal history of Black women, and our bodies, tell us about consent, commodification, and spectacle?” Origin Story is a dance theater one them show from Nora Sharp, born from the outer space of trans dis certainty that journeys down a choreographic and comedic rabbit hole of intertwined sci fi futurism and personal history. Shaped by repression, resistance, and modestly managed anxiety, Origin Story charts a pathway beyond queer and trans legibility.
Festival Pass: $50 Tickets: $30 general public, free to Columbia College Chicago students.
Thursday, March 13, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. .
Friday, March 14, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 15, 1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. & 3:30 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. (double feature)
SPRING FORWARD: Student Performance Night (Apr. 10-11, 2025)
The spring edition of original, brand new, short works by student choreographers selected by faculty from an open application process. Some chosen artists are sharing pieces on the Dance Center’s stage for the first time, others offer works informed by years’ immersed in the DC’s the pluralistic curriculum. Lit by Theatre’s rising lighting designers, these eagerly anticipated concerts feature audiences as electric as the performers. Faculty Advisor: Kelsa Rieger Haywood. Tickets: Free with reservation.
Thursday, April 10, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, April 11, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
16 (Apr. 17-19, 2025)
Red Clay Dance Company makes its highly anticipated return to the Dance Center in a program exploring emotional depth, technical prowess, and thought provoking themes. The concert features a world premiere by legendary, award winning choreographer Bebe Miller alongside Artistic Director and inaugural Walder Platform Awardee Vershawn Sanders Ward's re staging of Written on the Flesh. 16 is presented in partnership with Red Clay Dance Company. Tickets: $30 general public, free to Columbia College Chicago students.
Thursday, April 17, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Friday, April 18, 7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Saturday, April 19, 7:30 p.m. - 8:45 p.m.
DELVE: Faculty & Alumni Concert (May 8-9, 2025)
The Dance Center’s renowned professional dance faculty and alumni choreograph new works
performed by students.
Tickets: $15 - general public, free to Columbia College Chicago students.
Thursday, May 1, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, May 2, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
WITH INCANDESCENCE: BFA Capstone Concert (May 15-16, 2025)
Season 51 culminates with the graduating class of Dance BFAs Elizabeth Abel, Kayla Hansen, Konnie Kakridas, Aly Owens, and Rhianna Young’s original works drawing upon their years of study and practice.
Tickets: Free with reservation.
Thursday, May 8, 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Friday, May 9, 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
