Details are now completed for the Dancing in the Streets project, an outdoor extravaganza in the works for months, aimed at bringing the art of dance to downtown masses and public places.
The project will be put on during the afternoon rush hour Sept. 12 and 13-a Thursday and Friday-in, outside and around the State of Illinois Center, Randolph and Dearborn Streets, assuring a maximum audience of passersby.
A team of local and New York choreographers will work with about 100 Chicago dancers to stage the event, from around 5 to 8:15 p.m. each day. The dancers will perform all around the building, inside in the interior atrium
(including on balconies and escalators) and even on the structure`s famed Jean Dubuffet sculpture.
New Yorkers Stephan Koplowitz and Elizabeth Streb (and her Ringside Inc. company) will work with Chicagoans Shirley Mordine and (in all likelihood)
Timothy Buckley in staging the presentation.
The venture is a co-production by New York`s Elise Bernhardt and her Dancing in the Streets project, founded in 1984 to bring dance to unusual architectural sites and outdoor locales, and Columbia College here.
– Ballet Chicago, fresh from a critically acclaimed outing at Jacob`s Pillow Dance Festival in Lee, Mass., will present four works new to Chicago in an engagement Oct. 23 to Nov. 2 at the Dance Center of Columbia College, 4730 N. Sheridan Rd.
”Verdi Divertimenti” and ”Time Torque” by artistic director Daniel Duell, ”The Sleep of Reason” by resident choreographer Gordon Peirce Schmidt and ”A Hairy Night on Bald Mountain” by David Parsons will be on the two separate programs during the engagement.
Last week, the young company won glowing notices at Jacob`s Pillow. The New York Times` Jack Anderson found Duell`s ”Verdi” ”an unabashed showpiece” and his ”Time Torque” ”clever.” Anderson had especially high praise for Schmidt, whose ”Reason” features music by Maurice Ravel and is inspired by etchings by Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
For more information, call 312-993-7575.
– Actor-director Kenneth Branagh will be on hand for a benefit Aug. 22 for the International Theatre Festival of Chicago.
Branagh will be a special guest at a screening at 5:30 p.m. of his new film, ”Dead Again” (starring himself, wife Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia and Robin Williams), followed by a dinner at the Embassy Suites Chicago catered by Lettuce Entertain You. For more information: 312-664-3370.
– A memorial service will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday for John Schmid, for several years development director for Pegasus Players, at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, 215 W. Superior St.
Schmid, 33, left Pegasus a year ago to review theater for Gay Chicago and other publications. He died this month. Call 312-878-9761.
