Then a Cunning Voice 

and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars

September 28-29, 2019 • 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 a.m.

All Night Performance

Calumet Park, Chicago

*All tickets are ‘pay what you wish’, but audience members must reserve a ticket in advance.

"It’s a sleepover to beat all sleepovers.” -New York Times

Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars weaves together stories and performance with the exchange of ideas, the sharing of food, and the endurance of spending a night together outside under the stars and sky at Calumet Park. Beginning at dusk and continuing until after sunrise, and including supper, breakfast, and snacks, Then a Cunning Voice… invites audience members into a multilayered, participatory work that focuses attention on the space we share and on envisioning the future.

Throughout the night the audience will be guided through a series of richly crafted events—part ritual, part lyrical adventure—created by Johnson in collaboration with performers Tania Isaac and 14-year-old Georgia Lucas. The performance will begin with an opening ceremony and a group walk that arrives at the shores of Lake Michigan and unfolds on 4,000 square feet of quilts. Designed by textile artist Maggie Thompson, each quilt has been hand-made by volunteers at community sewing bees. The quilts serve as audience seating, performance area, resting area, and “home” for the duration.

October 10-12, 2019 • 7:30 p.m.

*first time appearing in Chicago

“Nothing could have prepared [the audience] for grimes’ electric stage presence. It’s as if his every nerve and muscle was illuminated from within.” -Los Angeles Times

“Black pain is very profitable in this country; we are focused on black joy.”  -d. Sabela grimes

“One of a mere handful of artists who make up the vanguard of hip-hop fusion,” (Los Angeles Times)  d. Sabela grimes brings ELECTROGYNOUS to Chicago from his home of Los Angeles. After years as a company member with hip-hop pioneer Rennie Harris, grimes has developed a movement system derived from black vernacular social-dance practices, music, activism, and their interconnectedness. ELECTROGYNOUS imagines the inclusion of liberated Black bodies at the celebratory center of the work. Featuring video art by Meena Murugesan and digital illustration by Mr. Maxx Moses, ELECTROGYNOUS brings new speculative realities to the stage.

November 7-9, 2019 • 7:30 p.m.

*World Premiere

“Triumphant...an enticing mixture of restraint and abundance.” -New York Times

Chicago cultural treasure Natya Dance Theatre debuts a world premiere on the Dance Center stage with INAI–The Connection. A partnership between Natya’s Artistic Director Hema Rajagopalan and Astad Deboo, a pioneer of modern dance in India who has worked with figures from Pink Floyd to Pina Bausch, the work will explore how to find connection with each other and oneness with the self. Eminent live musicians, a life-size puppet, Deboo, and Rajagopalan herself will perform in this continent-crossing collaboration. 

January 30–February 1, 2020 • 7:30 p.m.

*first time appearing in Chicago

“works of feverish beauty and mystery …. imaginative physical extremes” -New York Times

I hunger for you is a reflection on faith and its power to transform the body. Suspended in a stark and mesmerizing world, the dance creates a space where internalized forces of faith pulse through dancers’ bodies which restlessly, tenderly, and violently confront one another. An alum of Merce Cunningham Dance Company now charting her own course, choreographer Kimberly Bartosik draws on her personal experience with charismatic spirituality and delves into the heart of losing one’s self in ecstasy, ritual, and desire. 

February 21-22, 2020 • 7:30 p.m

**U.S. premiere

“Read is a master at rhythm.” -Art Intercepts

“Baldwin’s wide ranging imagination and affinity for the surreal lead her down a different path for each new work.” -The New Yorker

Same Planet debuts a new work from Artistic Director Joanna Read and a new commissioned work from choreographer Ivy Baldwin, “a bright feature of the ‘downtown’ scene in New York” (The Village Voice). Baldwin’s Ammonite centers on concerns around the steady destruction of the natural world. BAD BUNNY focuses on power, consent, and the many meanings of the word yes. A highly physical meditation on consent from one of Chicago’s most inventive dance companies.

March 13-14, 2020 • 7:30 p.m.

*U.S. premiere

Spirit Child is inspired by the main character in Nigerian author Ben Okri’s Booker Prize winning novel, The Famished Road. The spirit child, Azaro, is restless, caught between life and death, Earth-bound reality and an idyllic spirit world. Onikeku along with Uruguayan artist Fernando Velazquez and musicians, has created an atmosphere of transition between the enchanted world of dreams and spirits and the world of the living, a space where everything glows with possibilities. Spirit Child offers the audience a meditative journey into dreamscapes, creating a poetry that brings a new kind of truth, or an old truth that we stopped paying attention to.

A free mini-festival celebrates the cultures, histories and aesthetics of hip-hop and street-dance forms, such as breaking, popping and Chicago footwork. With a jam as the focal point, blurring the lines between spectator and participant and spotlighting some of the most talented street dancers in the region going head to head in dance battles, the B-Series is a gathering space where all can learn through and connect to the rich culture of hip hop.

April 9-11, 2020 • 7:30 p.m.

*first time appearing in Chicago

“an onslaught of thwacking arms, emphatic kicks, dizzying spins, swift somersaults, perilous balances and slippery contortions.” -The New York Times

Drawing on distinct histories in hip-hop, modern dance, West African, tap, synchronized swimming, and basketball, Abby Z and the New Utility explores the conflicts and possibilities created from aesthetic and cultural collisions in this new work. Radioactive Practice pushes its collaborative team of 10 dancers beyond perceived limits as they create a new tradition built from the inner workings of established forms. Choreographer-on-the-rise Abby Zbikowski has been hailed for her “unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary in complex and demanding structures to create works of great energy, intensity, surprise, and danger.”