The New Dances 2010 concerts at the Dance Center presented three nights of some of the most impressive new dance creation you could ask for. The combined creativity of the ten featured choreographers, expressed in the movement of an inspired cast of performers, and with the support of an exceptional production staff, made for a one-of-a-kind presentation. The reviews have been exceptional, with Sid Smith in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, and Hedy Weiss on Tuesday in the Chicago Sun-Times both writing strongly supportive pieces. Hedy Weiss opens with a great paragraph about the daunting challenges of dance creation in an article whose title described the show as "a rich threatrical work". She goes on to describe the presentation as "very thoughtful, richly theatrical work that often was downright virtuosic." Sid Smith described New Dances 2010 as a "worthy potpourri", and observes that "the production is slick, the technical trappings superb and the event is well worth replicating elsewhere". To read either review in full, click on either the Chicago Sun-Times or the Chicago Tribune. To read some of the aotpr.com series on the Choreography of New Dances, click on any of the links below:
Sharon Joyce Kung and "Just Before Now"
Brian Hare and "Temporary Proof"
Wade Schaaf and "Dancer, Net"
Jacqueline Stewart and "Jiffy Pop"
Joshua Manculich and "____versus____"
Danielle Scanlon and "Heart Strings"
Francisco Avina & Stephanie Martinez Bennitt and "Quieting the Clock"
Jeremy Blair and "2:00 AM, Delancy St."
Jessica Miller Tomlinson and "Big Technique"
Yutaka Fujita is a great lover of animals and enjoys making paintings that make people laugh. He has been painting for 15 years and currently resides with his wife Stacy, designing and making fine clothing in Chicago. There's a great article by him at the site of the CJAS about growing up in Japan, adapting to a new life in Chicago, and the development of his artistic vision. Here's a brief excerpt: "The first day I arrived in Chicago, our friend took me to College of DuPage and I enrolled in English as a Second Language classes for a half year. With a student visa, I took many classes including Fashion and Art. I found that I was good at Fashion Design. They taught me how to make patterns, drape, and draw to express the ideas in my head." In addition to many interesting observations about his artistic inspiration and process, the article includes a number of photos of his very broad range of work.
The New Dances 2010 Art Auction is live online at Thodos Dance Chicago, and will continue through the evenings of the performances. Thodos Dance Chicago’s NEW DANCES 2010 will be presented July 16 and 17 at 8PM and on Sunday July 18 at 5PM at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago 60605. (312) 369-8330.
Michael Zak was born and lived in Buffalo, New York until he moved to Chicago in 2004, where he practices video editing and pauperism. His photography varies in subject and is shot on35mm film, bringing interest and life to his beautiful work. Michael has a flair for shooting subjects in moments where they are at their most beautiful and personal.
Thodos Dance Chicago’s NEW DANCES 2010 will be presented July 16 and 17 at 8PM and on Sunday July 18 at 5PM at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago 60605. (312) 369-8330.
This year, there is a yet another artistic dimension to Thodos Dance Chicago's New Dances in the New Dances Art Auction. The auction is live online at Thodos Dance Chicago, and will continue through the evenings of the performances. Thodos Dance Chicago’s NEW DANCES 2010 will be presented July 16 and 17 at 8PM and on Sunday July 18 at 5PM at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago 60605. (312) 369-8330. Here's a look at one of the artists, Jenny Fullerton, and her painting entitled "Acrylic Rose".
Jenny Fullerton, a native of Windber, Pennsylvania resides in Columbus, Ohio with her husband Zane and their new addition Chase Parker Fullerton. Jenny holds degrees in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh and in Wildlife Biology from Ohio State. Despite her busy schedule, she continues to freelance her creativity and art throughout the Columbus area. Her work, "Acrylic Rose" is a 16X20 original Acrylic painting on canvas.
Diane Thodos is a painter and printmaker who lives in Evanston, Illinois. She received her BFA from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University in 1985 and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1989.
In 1984 Thodos studied printmaking in Paris under Stanley William Hayter. Working at Hayter’s Atelier 17, Thodos completed important experiments using automatism, similar to those performed by Jackson Pollock in the mid 1940’s. This Abstract Expressionist method provided the basis for Thodos’ use of spontaneous lines and shapes to energize subconscious imagery.
Thodos was inspired by the powerful graphic techniques of the German Expressionists (1906 – 1932) after meeting Marcia and Granvil Specks in 1992. Over the course of two decades, she was allowed to view their collection of over 450 prints and absorbed the ideas these artists demonstrated in lithography, etching, and woodblock prints. Thodos focused on the Expressionists’ innovation of “painterly” techniques through which they created innovative traditional print processes used in biting etching plates, cutting woodblocks, and print making.
Every spring and summer, Thodos Dance Chicago's New Dances series becomes a vibrantly diverse artistic scene; choreographers, dancers, lighting designers, production staff, sound designers, composers, costume designers and the entire Company community all orbit around the complex process of creating and staging original choreography. This year, there is a new dimension in the New Dances Art Auction, which will take place the evenings of the performances. Here's a look at one of the artists who has contributed work to New Dances:
Michael Freitag is a native of Palatine, Illinois. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Fine Arts and Art Education. He has been teaching art in Illinois and Indiana at levels ranging from kindergarten to high school for the past 13 years. He currently teaches at a middle school in the northwest suburbs.
Michael’s work is primarily done in watercolors and acrylics, and ranges from traditional painting to monotype printmaking. Through his art he often tries to illustrate his inner feelings through abstract imagery. Music often guides his artistic process, influencing his images, color/shape associations, and title.
Thodos Dance Chicago’s NEW DANCES 2010 will be presented July 16 and 17 at 8PM and on Sunday July 18 at 5PM at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago 60605. (312) 369-8330. For ten years, New Dances has been a uniquely successful showcase of new choreography; it's innovative approach to supporting the development of new works has created a whole artistic scene around the rehearsals and studio work, costuming, sound and lighting design that go on each spring and early summer, leading to the July performances. It's a once-a-year opportunity to see a bright and broad spectrum of innovative dance creation, but at major-company levels of performance and production. You can find out more about each of the choreographers and the works they will be premiering here:
Sharon Joyce Kung and "Just Before Now"
Brian Hare and "Temporary Proof"
Wade Schaaf and "Dancer, Net"
Jacqueline Stewart and "Jiffy Pop"
Joshua Manculich and "____versus____"
Danielle Scanlon and "Heart Strings"
Francisco Avina & Stephanie Martinez Bennitt and "Quieting the Clock"
Jeremy Blair and "2:00 AM, Delancy St."
Jessica Miller Tomlinson and "Big Technique"
Before Francisco Avina and Stephanie Martinez Bennitt were asked by Thodos Dance Chicago to be the guest choreographers for the Tenth Anniversary of the New Dances series, they had already begun the discussion and reflection that would lead to their new work, "Quieting the Clock". The work is inspired by a simple and profound question, or rather, by an endless series of interrelated questions. How does the passage of time effect who you are? As time progresses, what is the relationship between who you are now and who you once were --- and may never be again. As the passage of time changes what you are capable of, where do you find balance, and hopefully continuity, in a redefinition that is gradually forced into your life? Avina and Martinez Bennitt expand their exploration to embrace all of the ways in which identity is defined by the logistics of time, by the pressures of schedule and obligation, and more gradually, of age.
Wade Schaaf's new work "Dancer, Net" was inspired by the concept of French impressionist painter Claude Monet's Haystack series, which "is known for its thematic use of repetition to show differences in perception of light across various times of day, seasons and types of weather" (Wikipedia). Even the title of the work, "Dancer, Net" reflects the conventions of painting, where a work will often be identified by it's subject ("Wheatstacks (End Of Summer)") and the way it is made ("Oil on Canvas"). In "Dancer, Net" Schaaf creates three separate solos, each of which features the same soloist and the same net-like fabric bag. The three solos are performed separately, at different points during the concert program, thereby accentuating the impact of the changing perspective from which an audience will see them. Schaaf's most recent work was a successful large-ensemble piece ("Awakening"), and in turning his creative vision to the more raw, more immediately-apparent movements of a solo work, he is able to explore in detail the many facets of a single subject.
In "Temporary Proof", Brian Hare sets himself a challenging task: to portray the process of personal development, to shine some sort of light on the many different ways that someone becomes who they are. In casting his study for six dancers, he makes it possible to explore a multifaceted look at a single individual, an individual trying, as Hare expresses it, to "become a more accurate version" of who they are. Although the subject of many works in many forms of art, this is an examination well-suited to Choreography, where Hare uses the emotion that can be so evident in movement to evoke an immediate identification with struggles everyone is familiar with. "One of the most powerful elements in dance is what the human body is capable of," Hare observes, "It's not so much that I'm concerned with presenting the dancers as performers for an audience; it's more as if they are extremely athletic, moving ideas that, through their physicality, express the idea that we are all ever-changing and evolving versions of ourselves."
