Three upcoming, monumental dance events, all with deep ties to Chicago, are on a collision course with your calendar. But it is possible to see the Joffrey Ballet, Twyla Tharp and Parsons Dance next weekend — and you should.
Parsons Dance
David Parsons launched his dance company in 1985. Three years later, he opened the season at Columbia College Chicago.
“For some reason, they gave us a white limousine,” Parsons said in a recent phone interview. “I remember that gig. And I’ve done a lot of gigs.”
Born in Rockford and raised in Kansas City, Parsons credits Chicago with putting wind in the sails of a company that went on to international acclaim.
“Chicago is a major city in the United States,” he said. “You start getting that stuff on your resume, it’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. You’re on your way.”
Since the city’s early endorsement, Parsons Dance has toured 30 countries and five continents, but it has been 30 years since Parsons Dance has been back. That changes on April 12, when they perform for one night only at the Auditorium.
Howell Binkley, Parsons Dance co-founder and lighting designer, is prominently featured, lighting all but two of the pieces on the program. Binkley died in 2020; among his many accolades are two Tony Awards for “Jersey Boys” and “Hamilton.”
“He lit every work I did,” Parsons said of Binkley, beginning with “Caught” in 1982. “Lighting is my muse. Light is the thing that gets me going.”
Parsons was dancing with the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the time. “Caught” uses a flashbulb effect to catch its single dancer in mid-air, and has become a signature work of the company.
“If I didn’t do ‘Caught,’ I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” he said. “It’s just one of those things.”
The piece is second to last on Saturday’s program, which opens and closes with ensemble works from the aughts: “Wolfgang,” an homage to ballet set to the soundtrack from “Amadeus,” and “Shining Star,” set to music by Earth, Wind & Fire. A newer tour de force, “Balance of Power” (2020), and an older one, “Nascimento” (1990), complete the bill’s repertory by Parsons, with the 2024 work “Juke,” by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater resident choreographer Jamar Roberts, completing the program.
7:30 p.m. April 12 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive; tickets $30-$120 at 312-341-2300 and auditoriumtheatre.org
Twyla Tharp Dance
Twyla Tharp Dance hasn’t been here in a while, either, not since her 2017 lecture demonstration on some of her earliest works called “Minimalism and Me” visited the Museum of Contemporary Art. Now, Tharp brings something brand new to the Harris Theater as part of her company’s 60th anniversary season.
“Slacktide,” which premiered last year, is set to music by Philip Glass, realized and played on stage live by Third Coast Percussion and Constance Volk, all from Chicago.
“The Glass is a piece of music I’ve admired for a while in a different format,” Tharp said. “When I was introduced to Third Coast and saw that they could make something old new again—that was very attractive.”
It’s the first time Tharp has used the composer’s music since “In the Upper Room,” which premiered in 1986 at Ravinia Festival before it had a title. Tribune critic Richard Christiansen called it a “breathtaking, big buster of a dance.” Indeed, “In the Upper Room” has long been considered one of Tharp’s greatest dances. “Slacktide” begins where it left off. The front half of the program is taken up by Tharp’s 1998 work “Diabelli,” set to Beethoven’s theme and variations of the same name.
“Theme and variation is a natural form, in that it makes a statement and then it examines the breadth, depth and issues around the theme,” she said, “which provides a natural dramatic unity. It’s both contrast and similarity, and that’s a very attractive thing.”
Tharp wrote a theme “as simple and useful” as composer Anton Diabelli wrote for Beethoven, took it apart, examined it, and put it back together every which way. Unlike Mozart’s one-upping of Antonio Salieri in the film “Amadeus” (which Tharp choreographed), Beethoven wasn’t cynical in his approach, she said.
“There is a lot of humor,” she said. “He does do parodies. But he’s always respectful of the material.”
She’s talking about Beethoven, but the sentiment is easily extrapolated to Tharp’s decades of dancemaking.
“The juxtaposition of what’s old and what’s new is always a pretty thorny problem,” she said. “It becomes kind of meaningless: Old, new, used or not used, A.I., fresh, original — all things that I’ve always had a kind of sense of the mortality of this concept.”
April 10-12 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St.; tickets $74-$225 at 312-334-7777 and harristheaterchicago.org.
CSO x Joffrey Ballet
Lest you think that’s enough dance for one weekend, don’t sleep on the Joffrey Ballet’s two world premieres performed alongside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Harry Bicket. It is the third such collaboration — an unconventional challenge involving an assigned piece of music and an atypical dance space on the CSO’s home turf. At first, Joffrey rehearsal director Nicolas Blanc was taken aback by his selection: Darius Milhaud’s “Le Boeuf sur le Toit” (literally translated from French to mean “the cow on the roof”).
“Despite the fact that it’s written by a French composer, I didn’t know the piece,” said Blanc, a Frenchman himself. “To be frank, when I listened to the piece, I thought, this is really fun, but I’m not sure it’s corresponding to my personality. I’ve been more doing serious works like ‘Under the Trees Voices,’ more nostalgic, more lyrical. It became a lot of fun, actually, to do my research.”
The result is “Les Boeufoons” (pronounced like “buffoons, a theatrical tribute to the piece’s origin story. Milhaud intended “Le Boeuf” to be incidental music in a Charlie Chaplin film. Chaplin didn’t want it. Neither did Serge Diaghilev, the impresario overseeing the wildly popular Ballet Russes in 1920s Paris. Choreographer Jean Cocteau, who had pitched “Le Boeuf sur le Toit,” premiered his ballet without Diaghilev’s help. Blanc employs references to Cocteau, the famous Ballet Russes ballet “Parade” and the haute couture of the era. It’s fun and hedges on ridiculous, without crossing the line into farce. That is miles away from Amy Hall Garner’s work “Second Nature” with visualizes music by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, an American composer whose connection to dance is concretized in the score to Alvin Ailey’s “For Bird with Love.”
For Blanc, it’s been a welcome project that has pushed him outside his comfort zone — particularly with dancers he sees every day.
“I’m really excited this project is happening,” he said. “It’s not been easy to conceive. I’m hoping all my hours of research and thinking and brainstorming are fruitful for what’s going to be presented to the audience. But I do think that in the particular context we live in at the moment, a lighthearted piece is very welcome.”
April 10-13 at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets $55-$399 at 312-294-3000 and cso.org.
Also of note: In her newest piece, Praize Productions artistic director Enneréssa LaNette Davis suggests a slow-down in this work-obsessed chaotic world. Called “Complexions,” the multi-disciplinary piece features dance made by Davis, former Deeply Rooted Dance Theater co-founder Kevin Iega Jeff and two former powerhouse Chicago dancers, Dominique (Atwood) Hamilton and Monique Haley, who have found their choreographic sea legs since leaving the stage. Musicians Junius Paul and Isaiah Collier join for the multimedia performance. 6 p.m. April 13 at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.; tickets $52-$127 at praizeproductions.com
Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic.
