Steppenwolf Theatre’s performance series that presents the work of artists and companies across genre and form, proudly announces its Spring 2024 season, showcasing the work of Chicago’s vibrant community of dancers, choreographers and movement makers. Highlights from the lineup of seven unique engagements include Anjal Chande’s solo work The Next Cup of Tea that is the culmination of seven years of development; Maggie Bridger’s multi-media and universally accessible inquiry of pain and care; and a work exploring Black futures against the backdrop of empire from interdisciplinary artist Benji Hart.
Additionally, the LookOut Series is excited to announce the return of its curatorial residency program, offering an opportunity for a Chicago dance practitioner to curate a series of performances over a two-week span. Following the success of last season’s series work around curated by Kara Brody and Amanda Maraist, this season Helen Lee curates a series entitled MERGE, colliding musicians and dancers in unexpected configurations.
LookOut Series Associate Producer Lauren Steinberg comments, “When we hosted work around last spring, we were struck by how many members of the local dance community showed up to support the series. Since then, it has become abundantly clear that Chicago practitioners need more resources and space to show their work. We’re thrilled that Helen Lee will continue this mission with MERGE, which will feature more than a dozen artists.”
“Whether it’s controlled movement or all out expressive dance, it’s all part of the beauty of live entertainment,” says Life and Times chief theatre critic Rikki Lee Travolta. The scribe is himself a former ambassador for National Dance Week, having taught dance on the collegiate level.
“I celebrate Steppenwolf for giving the LookOut platform to choreographers and dancers to show off their talents, inspire thoughts and feelings, and maybe even make our hearts skip a beat,” adds Travolta.
All LookOut performances take place in Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater, the intimate venue nestled behind Front Bar, 1700 N. Halsted St.
Tickets, which range in price from $5 – $35, are now on sale by visiting steppenwolf.org/lookout or by calling the Box Office at (312) 335-1650.
The full LookOut Spring 2024 Season (in chronological order):
The Chronicles of Fabulous Freddie: That Love
By Fabulous Freddie
Dates: Friday, February 16 & Saturday, February 17 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $20
Description: Fabulous Freddie brings his lived experience to the stage for an unforgettable night of dance, soundscapes and wearable design. This multi-practice and multi-media performance weaves a story of healing, heroism and humor into a FABULOUS tale of alchemizing surviving into thriving and shining.
Radiate
By Maggie Bridger
Dates: Thursday, February 22, Friday, February 23 & Saturday, February 24 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $5 – $20
Description: Radiate explores the mundanity, humor and time-bending experience of pain and care. Working across video and movement, Radiate centers access through the open use of tools like captions, Artistic Sign Language and audio description, as well as various tools that will allow audiences to attend to and curate their embodied experience of the work.
Note: Masks are required in the theater for all performances of Radiate.
WORLDS END…WORLDS BEGIN
An evening with Kao Ra Zen and Friends
Dates: Friday, March 1 & Saturday, March 2 at 8 pm Sunday, February 18 at 3 pm
Ticket Price: $20
Description: An evening of multimedia performances that take you on a journey through worlds and words, dimensions and dances, multiverses and music. Featuring performances by: Kao Ra Zen, Il Worood Il Beledi, Devika Dhir, Chicago Mask Ensemble, Allen Turner, Shalaka, Vivian Meretrix, Jason Winslade, Christophe Preissing, Kyle Gregory Price, Alanis Zoe Castillo Caref and Marisela Tapia.
The Next Cup of Tea
By Anjal Chande with special guest Sharon Udoh
Presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Dates: Friday, March 8, Saturday March 9, Thursday, March 14, Friday, March 15 & Saturday, March 16 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $11 – $33
Description: The Next Cup of Tea is a solo dance-theater performance by Anjal Chande that investigates how to make sense of the never-ending impulses that run through our hearts, our everyday moments and our contradictory experiences. Through improvisational dance and storytelling, Chande, accompanied by Sharon Udoh on the piano, reflects on money, her grandfather, the politics of art and more.
Accessible performances: Closed captioned (Friday, March 15), ASL interpreted and audio description (Saturday, March 16).
World After This One
By Benji Hart
Dates: Friday, March 22 & Saturday, March 23 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $27
Description: Looking through the lenses of three Black art forms: the queer street style of vogue, the Afro-Boricua dance and drumming tradition of bomba, and gospel music, World After This One uses movement and spoken word to examine how Black people have historically reclaimed the materials of empire to construct portals to impossible futures.
MERGE
Curated by Helen Lee
Dates: March 28 – April 6
Description: MERGE is a portal into the works of various movement and sound artists from all walks of life. Each program moves like a concert with an opening gesture followed by a headlining performance. Together these pairings collide creating a world where the entanglements of the chaotic and harmonious facets of dance and music can offer us a place to ruminate, delight and sometimes heal.
Program One:
Desert Turtle by Mitsu Salmon
bones fragile by Hannah Marcus
Dates: Thursday, March 28, Friday, March 29 & Saturday March 30 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $35
Description: The evening begins with Hannah Marcus performing bones fragile, a movement and live sound looping piece that explores moments of infiniteness, tenderness and memory. Afterwards, artist Mitsu Salmon draws from her own family history, voice and geology in her work Desert Turtle.
Program Two:
Kissing The Earth by Kinnari Vora
Freedom From and Freedom To featuring Cristal Sabbagh, Scott Rubin, Amanda Maraist, Sharon Udoh, Kara Brody & Krissy Bergmark
Dates: Thursday, April 4, Friday, April 5 & Saturday April 6 at 8 pm
Ticket Price: $35
Description: Freedom From and Freedom To, led by Cristal Sabbagh, invites a pair of movement and sound improvisors from across Chicago to gather in front of a live audience, where they are grouped by chance. Artist Kinnari Vora dives into ritual with her piece Kissing The Earth, an offering to the ancestors who lived and breathed and at the same time are alive within us.
