Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago Continues 2012-13 Season with Double Edge Theatre and More

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago continues its 2012–13 season with Double Edge Theatre, co-presented with the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department; zoe | juniper, a multimedia husband-and-wife team; Stephen Petronio Company; Nana Shineflug's The Chicago Moving Company, celebrating its 40th anniversary; and Mexico's Delfos Danza Contemporánea. Subscriptions and single tickets are on sale at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue, 312-369-8330 and online at colum.edu/dancecenter.

FamilyDance Matinees
The Dance Center's FamilyDance Matinee Series continues for its 14th season, featuring special one-hour family-oriented performances that follow free parent/child movement workshops with the artists. FamilyDance Matinees in 2013 include Double Edge Theatre (January 19), The Chicago Moving Company (March 23) and Delfos Danza Contemporánea (April 6).

DanceMasters
DanceMasters is an ongoing series of movement classes open to intermediate/advanced-level dancers in a variety of dance techniques, perspectives and styles, led by internationally renowned choreographers. Partnering with DanceWorks Chicago, The Dance Center presents DanceMasters classes this spring with artists from zoe | juniper, Stephen Petronio Company and Delfos Danza Contemporánea.

Community programs
Discussions with the artists will follow most Thursday performances, and some programs will feature pre-performance talks with artists and Dance Center personnel or guest lecturers. Most out-of-town artists will provide learning opportunities for Dance Center students and conduct community-based residency and educational activities, which might include master classes, lecture/demonstrations, in-school and community- based workshops, professional development workshops for educators and service providers and panel discussions.

Double Edge Theatre
Co-presented with the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department
January 18 and 19
FamilyDance Matinee: January 19
Rooted in Jerzy Grotowski's Eastern European theatre practice, Double Edge Theatre is a deeply collaborative, Massachusetts-based ensemble working in a unique form of devised physical theatre incorporating movement, puppetry, object manipulation and circus arts. The Grand Parade (of the Twentieth Century) is the first installment in the company's anticipated five-work, multi-year Chagall Cycle, inspired by the kaleidoscopic paintings of Marc Chagall. Up to five Columbia theatre students will rehearse and perform in these preview performances with the company. The Grand Parade is co-commissioned by the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department.

zoe | juniper
February 14–16
Wife and husband Zoe Scofield (choreographer) and Juniper Shuey (sculptor, photographer and visual/media artist) began their artistic collaboration zoe | juniper in 2004 in Seattle. Their latest full-evening work, A Crack in Everything, uses dance, performance, video projection, lighting and text to examine liminal states of mind--thresholds between conscious and unconscious, action and reaction, before and after, and cause and effect. Contains nudity.

Stephen Petronio Company
March 7–9
Widely regarded as one of the leading dance makers of his generation, Stephen Petronio has not presented his work in Chicago since his last Dance Center appearance in 2000. The company performs the evening-length Underland (2003, revived 2011) to music by Nick Cave; Deborah Jowitt of the Village Voice wrote about it: "I see [the dancers] as survivors, insisting on life while buildings collapse and bombs explode behind them...The beautiful, dangerous Underland progresses toward a more hopeful conclusion...Although black hearts still flourish underground, art, perhaps, offers redemption." Contains mature content.

The Chicago Moving Company
March 21–23
FamilyDance Matinee: March 23
Nana Shineflug's The Chicago Moving Company celebrates its 40th Anniversary Season with a program featuring a new work by Shineflug and several revivals, including Love Songs (2001) a witty, exuberant work set to the droll songs of the Magnetic Fields; Coming Forth by Day (1988), an ensemble work inspired by Normandi Ellis' magical and poetic translation of The Egyptian Book of The Dead, set to the music of Stephen Scott; John Somebody (1987), a mesmerizing quintet with images, movement and tone inspired by Robert Longo's heralded photographic collection Men In Cities; and Windows (1984), a powerful, spare, and emotionally evocative work, called "one of Shineflug's best" by Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune Chief Critic Emeritus.

Delfos Danza Contemporánea
April 4–6
FamilyDance Matinee: April 6
Last seen at The Dance Center in 2009, Delfos Danza Contemporanea is among Mexico's leading contemporary dance companies. Steeped in saturated color and magic realism, the company's 20th Anniversary program of mixed repertoire will include two signature works: Del Amor y Otras Barbaridades (Love and Other Calamities), a work choreographed for three couples who reveal fragments of their intimacy (1997), and Trio y Cordon (Three on a String), in which bodies intertwine, weaving a hidden web that inevitably unties them (1992). Contains nudity.

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, named "Chicago's Best Dance Theatre" by Chicago magazine and "Best Dance Venue" by the Chicago Reader, is the city's leading presenter of contemporary dance, showcasing artists of regional, national and international significance. Programs of The Dance Center are supported, in part, by the Alphawood Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts and Arts Midwest. Additional funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Special thanks to Athletico, the Official Provider of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy for The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, and the Friends of The Dance Center.

Subscriptions and single tickets are on sale at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue, 312-369-8330 and online at colum.edu/dancecenter. All programming is subject to change. The theatre is accessible to people with disabilities.

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