They’ll be dancing in the streets tonight in front of the Athenaeum Theatre. In the hundreds. After the third annual local dance fest known this year as Dance Chicago ’97 opens at the Athenaeum, the enterprising puppeteers known as Red Moon Theater and the enterprising dance percussionists known as Jellyeye will team up for a carnival in front of the theater’s tall steps at 2936 N. Southport Ave. Clad in Halloween skeleton wear and various puppet disguises, some 50 performers will begin the frenzy. “The audience members are likely to join in,” predicts Fred Solari, who runs the Athenaeum.
The celebration is well-deserved. The rebirth of the Athenaeum Theatre from a mostly shuttered, neglected 900-seat jewel into a thriving performance center and, as of a few weeks ago, a bustling arts complex, is a rare success story for the struggling smaller arts. Solari andhis business partner, John Schmitz, whose fundraising skills have been a key component in the Athenaeum’s renaissance, truly have wrought a minor miracle.
The shoestring nature of their not-for-profit operation keeps them a mom-and-pop outfit Solari’s mother, for instance, has been known to man the intermission candy counter.
On the other hand, as one longtime arts enthusiast noted while standing in the lobby for a show last week: “What a wonderful thing they’re doing here!”
The story is a complex saga involving both the re-birth of a ne-glected theater and a new chapter in the evolution of North Side gentrification and artistic experiment. Solari sees the whole thing as one of strength in numbers, even when the numbers are made up of the little guys.
Right now the Athenaeum operation is three-fold. Solari and Schmitz run their dance festival each fall, they rent the space to a variety of other performance organizations throughout the year, and they’ve begun to operate a complex of arts offices.
“The mission in a nutshell is collaboration,” he says. “Each of these groups could put on a concert or program alone, but nobody would notice. By themselves, none would probably ever turn out to be a Goodman Theatre or Chicago Symphony Orchestra or Lyric Opera. But by banding together, we can forge some semblance of power and maybe make up a mini-Symphony or mini-Lyric. The vision keeps getting bigger.”
Four years ago, Solari, who for years ran the spring dance festival when it was part of the Civic Center for the Performing Arts downtown, and Schmitz, who worked behind the scenes for Ballet Chicago, set up shop in the theater. A year later, they launched the first Dance Chicago enterprise, a fall series stitching together various small dance troupes in a kaleidoscope of revolving programming. Cross-pollination was the idea, and it worked. Fans of jazz dance found themselves scratching their heads at the artier segments from other groups on the same program, and some returned for more. Eventually other groups, including some impressive out-of-town ventures such as Performing Arts Chicago’s Robert LePage spectacle, helped fill the Athenaeum year-round. Modest rents, meanwhile, allowed such upstarts as Ballet Theater of Chicago a presentable showcase.
This year’s Dance Chicago festival, the biggest yet, opens Wednesday and runs for six weeks. Its overall budget has grown to $300,000, and its donated income is now at $160,000, with the Chicago Community Trust on board for the first time this year.
The Athenaeum now serves an invaluable role in providing small companies with theater space (next to impossible for some of these troupes to find) and a kind of umbrella imprimatur. Tonight’s opening, which has evolved into a kind of omnibus send-off, boasts some of the most interesting groups in the city all on one program.
Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, the Joel Hall Dancers, Trinity Irish Dance Company, tap meisters Steppin’ Out and the River North Dance Company will be joined by soloist Bob Eisen (one of the city’s more iconoclastic and progressive artists), Jelleye, Redmoon, hip-hop choreographer Elaine McLaurin and Randy Duncan, the popular choreographer of the annual Dance for Life finale, providing a brand-new work for three dancers.
Jazz, tap, hip-hop, Irish and the avant-garde — all of that even before they take over Southport Avenue. (There’s an alternative lobby ending in case of rain.)
Meanwhile, Solari and Schmitz have taken over two more floors of the former German community center that houses the theater. Until last summer, the Athenaeum producers shared the building with other non-arts tenants. No more. The Redemptorist Fathers of Denver, who operate St. Alphonsus Church next door and own the entire complex, have turned the three-story building over to the theater. The result is a bustling new arts center.
A few weeks ago, the new residents were unpacking boxes, moving in belongings and generally delighting in all the chaos. “It was a little like the first day of school at a college dormitory,” Solari says with a sanguine smile. “That is exactly the feeling around here I wanted to create.”
About 15 tenants now share office space on the second and third floors of the building, groups as disparate as Lookingglass Theatre, whose penchant for visual theatrics is now echoed in third-floor quarters lit by a giant skylight, and Arts Bridge, an umbrella support group for various arts organizations, including a film group, a poetry collective and a Chinese music society. Tucked into one of the new cubby holes in the warren of offices are the Saints, a theater support organization that provides shows around town with ushers and other services.
A freshly painted, 1,300-square-foot green room on the second floor, just outside the entrance to the theater’s balcony, soon will play host to receptions and benefits. There’s also much more restroom space, thanks to the expansion; the third floor boasts a large rehearsal room available to troupes from all over the city, and there’s even a brand-new 80-seat studio theater, which is booked through June. The Effective Theatre’s revival of the musical “Sweeney Todd” launches the theater Nov. 2.
Does the city really need another small theater? “For every group I sign up,” says Solari, “I turn three away.”
Gentrification has put a premium on space in the area bounded by Irving Park Road, North Avenue, the lake and Ashland Avenue. “In a few years, I doubt there will be any small theaters left in that area — they’re being forced to Bucktown or Uptown,” says Solari, who holds a 20-year lease.
