Displaying items by tag: chicago danztheatre

At first glance, the performance space for Architecture of Memory feels less like a theater and more like a living museum of human experience. Before a single performer moves, the audience is invited into an art installation featuring the work of three artists whose visions quietly prepare us for the emotional terrain ahead: multidisciplinary artist Hart Ginsburg of Digital Tapestries; Candance Casey, whose photography examines abandoned urban ruins and the possibility of rebirth within decay; and director and creator Ellyzabeth Adler, who transforms discarded letters, notes, and forgotten objects into vessels of memory and meaning.

Scattered throughout the space are boxes labeled “generational trauma,” “pain,” “hurt,” “reflection”, “rebirth” and other life experiences. The symbolism is immediate but never heavy-handed. These fragments of emotional inheritance become the foundation for Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble’s Architecture of Memory, a deeply personal yet profoundly universal meditation on how memory shapes identity, relationships, and healing.

Divided into nine interconnected chapters - Intersecting Voices, Petals, Directions, Cliffside Postcards, Pathways, Carry Forward, Carry Back, Enough, The Red String That Has No End, and Beginning Again—the production unfolds like a stream of consciousness. Rather than relying on traditional narrative structure, the work moves through movement, visual imagery, soundscapes, and emotional association. Remarkably, the transitions between sections feel fluid and organic, as though each chapter emerges naturally from the emotional residue of the one before it.

Founded in 2001, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble has built its reputation on socially conscious, politically engaged performance work rooted in community activism and social justice. Architecture of Memory represents something of a departure. While the production still carries the company’s trademark emotional honesty and collaborative spirit, it turns inward rather than outward. This is not overtly political theater. Instead, it is reflective, intimate, and autobiographical in feeling. Yet its themes - loss, memory, connection, generational wounds, and renewal - resonate broadly.

The ensemble performers - Nik Graves, Maya Paletta, Austin Rambo, collaborator Anthony Taylor, and Virginia Vanlieshout - bring extraordinary vulnerability and physical precision to the piece. Because the production relies less on dialogue and more on movement, gesture, and emotional presence, the performers must communicate interior states through embodiment alone. Each artist contributes distinct emotional textures to the work, whether conveying longing, grief, tenderness, or release. Together, they function less as individual characters and more as collective carriers of memory itself, moving through Adler’s fragmented emotional landscape with remarkable cohesion and sincerity.

The production’s visual language is especially striking. Props are used extensively and intentionally throughout. Door frames become portals between emotional states and remembered spaces. Mannequins suggest the ghosts of former selves or absent loved ones. Clothing carries traces of identity and history. Nothing onstage feels accidental. Every object appears charged with emotional residue, as though memory itself has physical weight.

Hart Ginsburg’s multimedia projections add another evocative layer, creating dreamlike environments that blur the boundaries between physical and emotional landscapes. The integration of movement and projection often produces images of startling beauty.

Most impressive, however, is the emotional sincerity at the heart of the work. Architecture of Memory is not interested in tidy conclusions. Instead, it acknowledges the messiness of grief, the persistence of memory, and the complicated process of carrying pain while still choosing renewal. The result is a production that feels cathartic and quietly healing.

By the final chapter, Beginning Again, the audience is left not with answers but with a sense of release. Architecture of Memory reminds us that memory can imprison us, but it can also connect us, sustain us, and ultimately help us begin anew.

As Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble celebrates its 25th anniversary season, Architecture of Memory feels like both a reflection on the company’s artistic journey and a reminder of its continued evolution. And while I am not at liberty to discuss a project slated for next season, audiences would be wise to keep a close eye on Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble. If this production is any indication, the company is entering an exciting new creative chapter.

Highly Recommended

When: May 3 to 18 Friday/Saturday @8pm

Where: The Auditorium at Ebenezer Lutheran Church

               1650 W. Foster Avenue

Running time: 80 minutes with a 10 minute  intermission

Tickets: $10 - $25

www.danztheatre.org

As we left the theatre my companion said, “I’d give that an A- if I knew what the heck we just saw.” From the mouths of Friends!

THIS IS NOT A PIPE is a compilation of several genres packaged together into a 2-hour production. Each of these moieties are excellently performed, though I had trouble piecing it all together into a whole.

Ellyzabeth Adler^sh/h, Chicago Danztheatre’s Executive Artistic Director, with Assistant Director Hannah Blau^sh/h, choreographed and directed THIS IS NOT A PIPE; you can’t tell me “That Is Not Multi-Tasking!

The show begins with the all-female cast dressed in identical business suits and bowler hats – all but one, who floats about in a gauzy white 1920’s gown and enormous leghorn hat. Oh yeah, many of the actors don’t enter the stage on foot. The first half-dozen entrances are made slithering gracefully on the floor of the center aisle.

Oh, and by the way, nobody speaks. We’re nearly ten minutes into the show before one of the bowler hats says “Molly?”, followed by a lovely exhibition of … what?  Geometric dance? Gymnastic pirouettes? Balletic castelling? with various bowlers emitting infrequent yips of “Molly?” “Molly!”

The action is really launched when Dr. Freud (Jenise Sheppard^th/th) takes the stage in dapper [male] evening dress, wielding a cane (which, no doubt, Is Not A Cane) and reciting passages from the writings of her male doppleganger Sigmund. Sheppard has an awesome stage presence and held me transfixed. They play ‘Red Light/Green Light’ with the ensemble, pointing the cane and barking “Nein!”, at which the person selected freezes until the next dancer is “Nein!-ed”, while continuing their soliloquy of Freudian maxims, unsurprisingly dominated by the word ‘penis’.

The final quarter hour of the action I found beautiful to watch but just as difficult to reconcile with the other sections. Adler defines her mission as taking “the works of Sigmund Freud, Rene Magritte and the birth of modern psychology… apart to question identity, sexuality, womanhood and dream interpretation, while bringing some of Magritte’s images to life’. This is quite a diverse and arduous task, and I didn’t quite see it realized, though the production certainly achieves a dream-like quality throughout.

I already said this, but it deserves saying again: every segment is superbly performed. Costumes are brilliantly designed, particularly as several quick changes occur onstage. Stripping is more than just taking off your clothes! but they pull it off, Sheppard and all twelve dancers: Angel Page Smigielski^th/th, Courtney Reid Harris^sh/h, Emma Parssi^sh/h, Julie Peterson^sh/h, Keila Hamed-Ramos^sh/h, Kristen Secrist^sh/h, Laura Sturm^sh/h, Lila Rubin^sh/h, Mary Iris Loncto^sh/h, Mia Hilt^sh/h, Morgan Van Dyne^th/th, and Wannapa P-Eubanks^sh/h.

Joshua Paul Weckesser^h/h and Joe Griffin^h/h do very well with light and sound design, especially given the technical constraints of the venue. Adler designs the set, with EC Brown^sh/h responsible for the original 2006 bird backdrop, Naomi Flores^sh/h for Rose Construction, and Matthew Gregory Hollis^h/h doing Photography. The remainder of the crew includes Managing Director Carly Davis^sh/h, Community Engagement Director Naomi Flores, and Gabrielle Foreman^sh/h as Stage Manager and Assistant Production Crew.

Kudos to all for a unique and very absorbing evening!

Through November 19^th, in the Auditorium at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1650 W. Foster Ave.

Dancing normally isn't my thing, but literature is. And "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is, surprisingly, a better candidate than most short stories for a dance interpretation. It starts as something quaint, recognizable, and spirals its way into madness: something dance and music can convey potently.

Gilman's feminist classic "The Yellow Wallpaper" brought much-needed light to the issue of women's mental health when it was published in 1892, and it still sheds light on this often misunderstood experience today.

The postpartum-suffering protagonist of this story wants to be heard, but her husband silences her at every turn — confining her to the house, isolating her from friends, even discouraging her from writing — leaving her anxiety and confusion nowhere to turn but inward. She starts seeing things in the yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. She sees a woman trapped behind bars, her own situation playing out in the wallpaper every night. By the end, she and her hallucination are one and the same. With no other outlet for her emotions, she's turned herself into something flat and silent, but weirdly free.

And to see this all acted out through dance is visceral and wonderful.

This joint production by Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble and RE Dance Group comprises of two shows: "The Attic Room" by RE Dance and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Danztheatre. The choreography by Michael Estanich and Ellyzabeth Adler, respectively, is desperate and graceful, the characters losing control in one moment and suspiciously, blithely sedated the next. The dance incorporated into the story was emotive and seamless. As a dance dummy, these vague terms are the best I can use to describe it, but what I can say is it made me feel things.

What was an unreliable narrator on paper, too wrapped in her psychosis to describe herself objectively, is now right in front of us, slowly losing it and crying out for help. While "The Attic Room" is more abstract, both productions depict a slow undoing of a character's reality, and the helplessness and confinement of not understanding her own mind.

"The Attic Room" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" are playing November 19th & 20th at 8PM at 1650 W Foster Ave. Tickets at Danztheatre's website.