Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble Returns To The Stage

Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble has announced live performances to celebrate its 20th Anniversary Season. Kicking off a two-year retrospective is a remount of 2003's "The Yellow Wallpaper," choreographed by Executive Artistic Director Ellyzabeth Adler with the cast and assistant choreographer Kelly Anderson. This show will be performed on a split bill with RE|dance Group's "The Attic Room," choreographed by Michael Estanich. Performances will be Fridays and Saturdays, November 5 - 20. In 2022, CDE will re-mount 2006's "This is Not a Pipe," directed and choreographed by Adler with the cast, with shows on Fridays and Saturdays, May 6 - 14. All performances are in the Auditorium at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1650 W. Foster Ave. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, September 15, at 12 p.m. Information and tickets are available at Danztheatre.org.

Each production in CDE's return to the stage will include an art gallery reflecting the show's particular themes. The gallery opens at 7:30 p.m. and closes 30 minutes after the performance ends. Also in the gallery area will be representatives of Chicago organizations that complement and expand on the subject matter of each performance.

Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble remounts its September 2003 production of "The Yellow Wallpaper." Based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's gripping 1890 short story, this new interpretation will be positioned as tale of a 2021 post-pandemic landscape. When one woman in the throes of postpartum depression also battles with her own rapidly vanishing sanity, her physician husband gives her the "rest cure." As she retires to her bedroom, she becomes hypnotically fixated on the yellow wallpaper patterns that eventually take on the forms of other trapped women. These women reflect her depression and confinement through both monologues and modern dance as she hypnotically follows the patterns in the paper. The familiar feeling of mental and physical isolation will leave audiences embracing the freedom of a world still reeling from the effects of COVID-19.

Executive Artistic Director Adler wanted to remount this production of "The Yellow Wallpaper" to open the 20th anniversary retrospective season, which will be celebrated through 2022, as a response to the global pandemic. "After a year of shelter in place, many people feel they are similar to these women in the yellow wallpaper, longing for connection and community. Being a single mother by choice, I had my support system in place to help me through the first several months of my daughter's life," said Adler. "When shelter in place happened, my baby was two weeks old. I saw only my doula for six weeks. In the middle of the night, when my baby would cry, I would walk around my house feeling trapped yet scared to go outside because of COVID-19. One day, staring hopelessly at my bookshelf, I saw a copy of "The Yellow Wallpaper." I realized I was living this book. Our world is living this book. My hope through remounting this production with a new understanding is to offer a communal grieving for this last year but also to build collective understanding and healing."

Also performed with "The Yellow Wallpaper"

RE|dance Group

"The Attic Room"

Choreographed by Michael Estanich and performed by RE|dance group

"The Attic Room" is an intimate dance story of escape and desire. The dance theatre work for seven dancers reveals the thin line between resignation and hope. Images unfold through sharp dancing and poetic text in a space filled with the forgotten memories of the past.

"This Is Not A Pipe"

May 6 - 14, 2022

Fridays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Text sources: Sigmund Freud and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Script by Ellyzabeth Adler

Directed and Choreographed by Ellyzabeth Adler with cast

Technical Director and Lighting Design: Joshua Paul Weckesser

Original Sound Design: Joe Griffin with new music for the 2022 performance

Art Gallery Curator: Siobhan Kealy

Set Design: EC Brown and Naomi Flores

Costume Design: Ellyzabeth Adler

Tickets: $20 advance $25 at the door

Originally produced in 2006 as Adler Danztheatre Project, "This Is Not A Pipe" is a groundbreaking collection of dance and theater collaborative pieces based on the paintings of Rene Magritte and the dream interpretations of Sigmund Freud. Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble picks up where Magritte and Freud left off, visually and kinetically discussing themes vital to the surrealists, as well as asking audience members to question their perception of reality. "What is identity? What does it mean to be a woman, a man? What does a bird, a flower or a hat represent in your dreams?" These were the questions that founder and Executive Artistic Director Adler first asked herself when she started creating this work in 2002.

Continuing on Magritte's theme that dance is not reality, "This is Not a Pipe," promises to be an unforgettable foray into our collective subconscious. Audience members will step into a dream-like state as the all-female cast performs pieces that guide audiences through an eye-opening journey to their innermost identity and desires.

Upon entering the theater, audience members will experience a video montage of dreams projected onto the bodies of dancers, who are lying onstage as if asleep. As the performance unfolds, each piece will explore the topic of identity using sources other than Freud - including C. Jung and selected texts of Charlotte Perkins Gilman - that allude to the imagery and sensibilities of thinkers like Magritte, who explored the topic of identity and how it relates to consciousness.

"I'm excited to remount 'This Is Not A Pipe,'" says Adler. "Not only is it one of my favorite performances that I've created, but because the themes of gender identity, perception of reality and the woman's voice are front and center in our society now. We 'deconstruct' Freud and the stereotypes he embedded in our society about identity. I've always been observant to my dreams and the messages that I assign them. They have been a guide to me over the years as I've followed my intuition in starting CDE and my creative journey. As I wrote in the show, that all came from one of my dreams."

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