Ayodele Drum & Dance, BraveSoul Movement, The Joffrey Ballet Contemporary Trainee Program, Mordine & Company Legacy Project, and Dance Center students illuminate the languages, lineages, and connective tissue that have helped to make Chicago an epicenter for dance. Immediately following the MO(VE)MENT Performance Showcase, join in celebrating the Dance Center's 50th Season with professional and aspiring movers and makers.
MO(VE)MENTs created and performed by: Paris Anderson, Amanda Baity, Violet Czerwinski, Shannon Lane, Julius Medina, Naj Muhammad, Malika Okot, J Stephens, Nautica Turner, and Anejha Hines with artistic mentorship by Lisa Gonzales and Darrell Jones.
Be ‘Bout It by BraveSoul Movement premiered at The Dance Center in 2017 and deals with ideas of lineage, accountability and community. It embraces tension and conflict as a way to build. It’s a loving Call-IN, a courageous act of repair, and an aecdote to cancel culture. The sound score mixed an edited by BRAVEMONK traces the geneology of the Wynton Marsalis’ sample in the street dance anthem: Hot Music by S.O.H.O., and in so doing, asks us to consider the complexities of borrowing and the full-circle nature of time. BraveSoul Movement engages in dancemaking, transformed pedagogy, and community-building practices rooted in the languages and cultures of Hip-Hop and Chicago House. Co-Founding Artistic Directors and acclaimed Dance CEnter faculty members, BRAVEMONK & K-Soul, bring the communal vibe and rawness of underground street dance cultures to the stage. Seamlessly interweaving improvised and set composition, their work focuses on deepening our connections to spirit, self and others: key ingredients for transformation!
To: and From: by Mordine & Company Legacy Project is a duet created using the original source material of Shirley Mordine's solo, Letters to my Son,1979. Crreated as a movement letter of Shirley Mordine's family linage, Danielle Gilmore and Melissa Pillarella used this material, creating a story of their own linage, time and history spent working and dancing with Mordine. This duet explores the original material adapted into a duet as the dancer’s journey through what they have taken with them and will leave behind. Gilmore and Pillarella are Chicago based artists, trained, and mentored under the direction of Shirley Mordine since 2011. Gilmore and Pillarella first premiered choreography in 2018 as part of Mordine’s Mentoring Project and have continued to create separately and collaboratively. In 2019 “To: and From:”, in collaboration with Mordine, premiered for Mordine and Company Dance Theater’s 50th Season. Mordine & Company Dance Theater was founded by Shirley Mordine in 1969 - the same year she established the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago to provide a base from which the art form could grow, an opportunity for young artists to evolve, a base for her company, and, beginning in 1974, a platform for presenting local, national, and international companies in Chicago. Mordine served as Chair of the Department and Director of the Dance Center. The Mordine & Company Legacy Project, established in 2020, stages and performs Mordine’s work at festivals, collegiate dance programs and in independently produced concerts. In May 2023, the extensive Mordine & Company Dance Theater archives were entrusted to the Newberry Library’s dance collection.
1792 by Katlin Michael Bourgeois leader of The Joffrey Ballet Contemporary Trainee Program. The Joffrey Ballet was founded in 1956 in NYC, moved to Chicago in 1995, and broke boundaries by combining Modern and Ballet, multi-media, and an inclusive perspective on dance to reflect the diversity of America. The Joffrey Contemporary Ballet Trainee Program provides a rigorous and holistic training model that focuses on classical ballet, contemporary techniques, West African, and Modern.
Rhythms of West Africa by Ayodele Drum & Dance is a high energy expression of the cultural traditions of the West African countries of Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Senegal, Cape Verde, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast. Choreographed by T. Ayo Alston, Imania Detry, and Barakissa Coulibaly, the dances of Balanta and Temate are performed to intricate drum rhythms. The experience is sure to move your body and your soul! Ayodele Drum & Dance exists to foster community from a feminine perspective through the study and performance of diasporic African drum and dance. A Yoruba word meaning "joy in the home" Ayodele is a sisterhood of women who are zealous in our common efforts to empower and strengthen the women in our community through knowledge and education of the her/story, rituals, music and dances of African culture. Ayodele Drum & Dance is led by acclaimed Dance Center faculty member T. Ayo Alston.
