Echo Mine V2 Premieres At Thalia Hall

Providing audiences with a new perspective on their acclaimed 2019 collaboration, Echo Mine, Califone and Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists premiere Echo Mine v2 in a special, one-night-only engagement, Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 8:30pm, in the round at Thalia Hall, located at 1807 South Allport Street in Chicago. Tickets are $25-$35 and available now at thaliahallchicago.com.

Echo Mine was inspired by and created alongside Chicago dance icon Claire Bataille, one of four founding members of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and longtime director of the Lou Conte Dance Studio. Danced by three Chicago-based artists mentored closely by Bataille, Echo Mine explores the nature of artistic legacy and lineage, as well as the inimitable qualities Bataille brought to her work as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. In October 2017, one month after her first rehearsal with Mineko Williams for the project, Bataille was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she passed away at age 66 in December 2018. Before her untimely death, Bataille encouraged the work's completion.

"The five-minute solo for Claire that we made together serves as the source material, the heartbeat, of Echo Mine," says Mineko Williams. "Only with the guidance and deeply thoughtful contributions of my collaborators was I able to finish," adds the choreographer. "Their brilliance and intuition bring Echo Mine to life in ways I could never have imagined." The resulting work is a dreamlike memoir and meditation on themes of lineage, legacy, loss and hope.

Says Robyn Mineko Williams: "The movement and the music started together and grew together, like two clear entities, at times totally intertwined and at other times bouncing off one another, sort of like reflections, but somehow always connected and listening."

Says Tim Rutili: "I'm not sure how to explain what Robyn does; watching her and the dancers rehearse felt similar to being in front of a Rothko painting. There is a deliberate precision to the movement that pulls the specifics of a story into abstract forms that illuminate a kind of dream logic, deepening without words our sense of what it is to be human in a physical body."

Joining Rutili (bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals) onstage for Echo Mine v2 are longtime collaborators Brian Deck (bass, electronics, percussion, synthesizer) and Ben Massarella (percussion). Joining Mineko Williams onstage are Meredith Dincolo - like Williams a former company member at Hubbard Street - and current company member Jacqueline Burnett. Echo Mine v2 adapts original scenic and projection design by CandyStations (Deborah Johnson), lighting design by Eric Southern, and costume design by Hogan McLaughlin. On February 21, 2020, Jealous Butcher Records released Echo Mine, the first new Califone album since Stitches (Dead Oceans Records, 2013). Echo Mine is available now digitally, as a CD, and as an LP on both colored and black vinyl.

Califone with Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists: Echo Mine v2

June 30, 2020 at 8:30pm
Thalia Hall
1807 South Allport Street

Tickets are $25-$35 and are available beginning February 21, 2020. Echo Mine v2 is presented at Thalia Hall as a special "In the Round" performance, with performance areas located in the center of the venue's main floor and audience members seated or standing on all sides. Previous "In the Round" presentations at Thalia Hall include a 2016 performance by Tortoise, as seen on video here.

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