Adult recreational programs are surging in the dance community, creating a space for this demographic to train seriously—and be taken seriously. A growing number of summer programs, specifically, offer a chance for adult dancers to practice with intensity. And while they may differ from pre-professional summer programs, these intensives are strengthening dance’s future. What Adults […]

“Wouldn’t it be better if we all did a triple?” asks Anna in the film Center Stage, despite her teacher having just insisted on a double pirouette. Anna’s quotable sassiness aside, it’s a perennial debate: Is more always more, in terms of turns? Behind every dancer who sails through multiple turns is someone who’s also […]

The first time Jessica Tong auditioned for Hubbard Street’s second company, she made it to the end of the call but didn’t get the job. The next time she auditioned, six months later, she also didn’t get the job, but she did get a note from then-artistic director Julie Nakagawa telling her to keep in […]

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s fall season opener features dances by Lar Lubovitch, Kyle Abraham, resident choreographer Aszure Barton—and Bob Fosse. Yes, that Bob Fosse. The company premiere of Sweet Gwen Suite, by Fosse and his muse, Gwen Verdon, takes place November 15–24 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Finding space to dance is a perpetual, nearly universal challenge for dance companies and schools. But a flurry of recent creative partnerships with real estate developers has resulted in opulent new facilities for a handful of organizations around the country.
At first glance, the trend seems too good to be true. Thousands of new or renovated square feet, at a price a nonprofit dance organization can afford?

Last summer, you had an amazing training experience at your dream intensive. You can see yourself studying at that school full-time—or even dancing with its affiliated company one day. Does that mean you should return to the same program this summer?

From annual staples returning with fresh surprises to thought-provoking new works, here’s what we’re excited to see this December.

The idea that led to plunging a theater seven stories beneath Chicago’s Millennium Park first came in the 1980s. At first called the Music and Dance Theater—MAD, for short—skeptics justifiably wondered if the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance would ever be realized.