DanceMasters

If you love to dance, come learn firsthand from the choreographers and dancers featured during our performance season. Learn a variety of dance techniques, meet other artists from Chicago and explore different perspectives and styles in movement with live accompaniment by Chicago musicians.

 

2007–2008 DanceMasters Classes

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company

Monday, September 24 * 630–830pm
Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, 2nd floor

Margaret Jenkins’ master class focuses on the clarity and articulation necessary to move the body fully and freely, with both wisdom and abandon. The class begins with a warm-up synthesized from Jenkins’ years with Cunningham and Limon techniques. Engaging the dancers’ mind and body, she will teach a variety of movement phrases and guide students through the manipulation of material toward a deeper understanding of choreographic alternatives.

 

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Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Thursday, October 11 * 630–830pm
The Dance Center Theater,
1306 S. Michigan

Robert Swinston is Assistant to the Choreographer and Dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. His class will be based on the Merce Cunningham technique, which emphasizes developing strength, clarity and precision through a center warm-up, back exercises, and moving and jumping phrases. The technique is flexible, not codified, and helps students respond to physical challenges as well as develop mental acuity. Concepts of space and time exist in a relative framework, one that differs from other contemporary dance techniques. Students in the class are expected to have a strong sense of center and will learn to display clear shapes of movement and to use the maximum range of the spine and torso.

 

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Susan Marshall & Company

Tuesday, February 5 * 630–830pm
Lou Conte Dance Studio of the hubbard street dance center
1147 W. Jackson

Susan Marshall’s choreography fuses modern, ballet, and post-modern styles with everyday actions, transforming simple movements into rich expressions. The class will emphasize understanding the meaning and subtext in created movement. Through a process of questioning, creating, viewing, and feedback, dancers will be provoked to delve deeper into the meanings behind movement and choreography.

 

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Urban Bush Women/Compagnie JANT-BI

Tuesday, March 4 * 630–830pm
Museum of contemporary art
220 E. Chicago, Theater Entrance

Germaine Acogny, Artistic Director of Compagnie JANT-BI, called the “Mother of African Contemporary Dance,” has developed an intense style of movement merging African and Western modern dance. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women, brings peoples’ untold stories to light through dance that is its own force of nature. The class will integrate the African American vernacular, West African Dance and contemporary fusions of African and Western modern dance forms.

 

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Armitage Gone! Dance

Tuesday, April 15 * 630–830pm
Lou Conte Dance Studio of the hubbard street dance center
1147 W. Jackson

The class will begin with a contemporary ballet warm-up including yoga and Balanchine technique, with emphasis on creating a precise instrument capable of articulating exact rhythms and shapes. The remainder of the class will explore movement phrases with a twofold emphasis: first, how to communicate through physical articulation and metaphoric power. And secondly, how the mind affects movement. The class will build toward an understanding that the way a dancer thinks changes movement.

 

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Registration

Register for multiple classes and save more than 20%!

Register early! Space is limited. For more detailed information about the classes or to register, call (312) 344–6600.