By leaps and bounds
- By Harlequin .
- Published 07/30/2007
- Theatre
- Unrated
Harlequin .
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View all articles by Harlequin .By leaps and bounds
by Wynne Delacoma
So much for dog days. August is turning out to be a sizzling month on the local dance scene. The always inventive Mark Morris Dance Group will be in town Aug. 24-26 for performances sponsored by the Ravinia Festival at Millennium Park's Harris Theater. On Aug. 22 the newly formed Chicago Dancing Company, Inc. will present dancers from seven companies ranging from the San Francisco Ballet to American Ballet Theater and the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre at the park's Pritzker Pavilion.
The August dance marathon kicks off this week with an extravaganza of a different sort. The Jazz Dance World Festival, founded in 1990 by Evanston's indefatigable Gus Giordano, moves its 2007 edition into the Harris Theater on Wednesday for four performances featuring 15 dance companies from Canada, Mexico, Italy and Japan as well as Chicago and other U.S. cities. Performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and each evening's program will be different. They are part of the Jazz Dance World Congress 2007 that is bringing hundreds of dancers, teachers, choreographers and others involved with jazz dance from 30 countries to Chicago for four days of intensive master classes, panels and choreography competitions as well as the Harris Theater performances.
"The aim was to elevate the level of jazz dance,'' said Nan Giordano of her father's motivation in organizing the first Jazz Dance World Congress in 1990 at Northwestern University's Cahn Auditorium. Nan Giordano began working with her father's company as youngster and has been artistic director of Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago since 1993. In addition to heading that company, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this season, she is also artistic director of the Jazz Dance World Congress.
"Jazz was always [been considered] much more the low-culture art form,'' Giordano said. "Ballet and modern had much more depth and history in terms of longevity. So it was very important to my father to bring people together and showcase that jazz wasn't just shake your tail and do some isolation [moves]. There was some real substance. Dance magazine [the field's most influential publication] never paid much attention to jazz dance. It was always ballet-modern, ballet-modern. But -- for I don't know how many years now -- August is always the jazz issue. The whole issue is jazz-related things: the direction jazz is taking, influences, hip-hop. It so happens we're on the cover this month.''
This year's Jazz Dance World Congress performances at the Harris offer a wide variety of companies. Local companies include Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Chicago Tap Theatre, Joel Hall Dancers, Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, River North Chicago Dance Company and Thodos Dance Chicago. Those coming from beyond the city are Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Christopher Huggins [a former Alvin Ailey dancer] from New York, Cuerpo Etereo Danza Contemporanea from Mexico, Danza Prospettiva Vittorio Biagi from Italy, Instincts Live Media from Los Angeles, Koresh Dance Company from Philadelphia, Masashi Action Machine from Japan and Odyssey Dance Theatre from Salt Lake City.
Styles range from the grand spectacle and acrobatics of Japan's Masashi Action Machine to Jump Rhythm Jazz Project's story-driven dances. There also will be choreographic competitions at 6:15 p.m. each evening open to anyone with tickets to the 8 p.m. concert.
Joel Hall, active on Chicago's dance scene for more than 30 years, will receive this year's annual Jazz Dance World Congress award. He founded the Joel Hall Dancers in 1974, and while the company's style is rooted in African-American jazz music it also includes a stylistic mix of jazz, ballet, modern and dance drawn from city streets. Hall has long been committed to exposing young people to jazz dance through classes at his studio in Andersonville and in outreach programs.
"Jazz dance is something that has evolved and is in a process of evolution constantly,'' said Hall. "As does most choreography, it reflects the culture in which we're involved. And we [choreographers] are making social commentary on those cultures. My [academic] background is sociology, so most of my work tends to be socially oriented.''
Appearing on Thursday's program, Hall's company will dance to a mix of house music and songs identified with Nina Simone titled "In the Shadow of Nina Simone: I Have a Dream (2), Four Women, Brazilian Transition, Strange Fruit, Wild is the Wind.''
Growing up in Cabrini-Green, Hall became enchanted with dance of all types. In the 1960s, a kindly house manager at the Auditorium Theatre let him into the theater for free. Hall watched performances from the vantage point of a curtain-covered light stand at stage left.
"I had the opportunity see a whole bunch of people at a very young age,'' Hall said. "I was a teen-ager, and I always showed up for everything that was there. I used to get in to see all these phenomenal companies from all over the world for free. I was so fortunate to experience all these different influences.''
Defining jazz dance, an art form that reaches from suave Broadway to hip-hop, can be a slippery proposition. But Giordano doesn't hesitate.
"Jazz is depth and diversity,'' she said. "Jazz isn't only done to jazz music. To me, jazz dance is soul, passion and diversity. The temper of the time has an influence, absolutely. But we will do classic jazz; we will do cutting-edge jazz -- very athletic, death-defying tricks. We will do the more lyrical. But in every single piece, you'll feel something. It's a journey.''
Wynne Delacoma is a free-lance classical music writer and critic.
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/music/classical/487346,SHO-Sunday-jazz29.article
So much for dog days. August is turning out to be a sizzling month on the local dance scene. The always inventive Mark Morris Dance Group will be in town Aug. 24-26 for performances sponsored by the Ravinia Festival at Millennium Park's Harris Theater. On Aug. 22 the newly formed Chicago Dancing Company, Inc. will present dancers from seven companies ranging from the San Francisco Ballet to American Ballet Theater and the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre at the park's Pritzker Pavilion.
The August dance marathon kicks off this week with an extravaganza of a different sort. The Jazz Dance World Festival, founded in 1990 by Evanston's indefatigable Gus Giordano, moves its 2007 edition into the Harris Theater on Wednesday for four performances featuring 15 dance companies from Canada, Mexico, Italy and Japan as well as Chicago and other U.S. cities. Performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and each evening's program will be different. They are part of the Jazz Dance World Congress 2007 that is bringing hundreds of dancers, teachers, choreographers and others involved with jazz dance from 30 countries to Chicago for four days of intensive master classes, panels and choreography competitions as well as the Harris Theater performances.
"The aim was to elevate the level of jazz dance,'' said Nan Giordano of her father's motivation in organizing the first Jazz Dance World Congress in 1990 at Northwestern University's Cahn Auditorium. Nan Giordano began working with her father's company as youngster and has been artistic director of Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago since 1993. In addition to heading that company, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this season, she is also artistic director of the Jazz Dance World Congress.
"Jazz was always [been considered] much more the low-culture art form,'' Giordano said. "Ballet and modern had much more depth and history in terms of longevity. So it was very important to my father to bring people together and showcase that jazz wasn't just shake your tail and do some isolation [moves]. There was some real substance. Dance magazine [the field's most influential publication] never paid much attention to jazz dance. It was always ballet-modern, ballet-modern. But -- for I don't know how many years now -- August is always the jazz issue. The whole issue is jazz-related things: the direction jazz is taking, influences, hip-hop. It so happens we're on the cover this month.''
This year's Jazz Dance World Congress performances at the Harris offer a wide variety of companies. Local companies include Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Chicago Tap Theatre, Joel Hall Dancers, Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, River North Chicago Dance Company and Thodos Dance Chicago. Those coming from beyond the city are Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Christopher Huggins [a former Alvin Ailey dancer] from New York, Cuerpo Etereo Danza Contemporanea from Mexico, Danza Prospettiva Vittorio Biagi from Italy, Instincts Live Media from Los Angeles, Koresh Dance Company from Philadelphia, Masashi Action Machine from Japan and Odyssey Dance Theatre from Salt Lake City.
Styles range from the grand spectacle and acrobatics of Japan's Masashi Action Machine to Jump Rhythm Jazz Project's story-driven dances. There also will be choreographic competitions at 6:15 p.m. each evening open to anyone with tickets to the 8 p.m. concert.
Joel Hall, active on Chicago's dance scene for more than 30 years, will receive this year's annual Jazz Dance World Congress award. He founded the Joel Hall Dancers in 1974, and while the company's style is rooted in African-American jazz music it also includes a stylistic mix of jazz, ballet, modern and dance drawn from city streets. Hall has long been committed to exposing young people to jazz dance through classes at his studio in Andersonville and in outreach programs.
"Jazz dance is something that has evolved and is in a process of evolution constantly,'' said Hall. "As does most choreography, it reflects the culture in which we're involved. And we [choreographers] are making social commentary on those cultures. My [academic] background is sociology, so most of my work tends to be socially oriented.''
Appearing on Thursday's program, Hall's company will dance to a mix of house music and songs identified with Nina Simone titled "In the Shadow of Nina Simone: I Have a Dream (2), Four Women, Brazilian Transition, Strange Fruit, Wild is the Wind.''
Growing up in Cabrini-Green, Hall became enchanted with dance of all types. In the 1960s, a kindly house manager at the Auditorium Theatre let him into the theater for free. Hall watched performances from the vantage point of a curtain-covered light stand at stage left.
"I had the opportunity see a whole bunch of people at a very young age,'' Hall said. "I was a teen-ager, and I always showed up for everything that was there. I used to get in to see all these phenomenal companies from all over the world for free. I was so fortunate to experience all these different influences.''
Defining jazz dance, an art form that reaches from suave Broadway to hip-hop, can be a slippery proposition. But Giordano doesn't hesitate.
"Jazz is depth and diversity,'' she said. "Jazz isn't only done to jazz music. To me, jazz dance is soul, passion and diversity. The temper of the time has an influence, absolutely. But we will do classic jazz; we will do cutting-edge jazz -- very athletic, death-defying tricks. We will do the more lyrical. But in every single piece, you'll feel something. It's a journey.''
Wynne Delacoma is a free-lance classical music writer and critic.
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/music/classical/487346,SHO-Sunday-jazz29.article
