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When the going gets tough, the tough start dancing: That’s the premise behind “Dance of Urgency,” a recently opened exhibit at MuseumsQuartier Vienna that features photos, video and other documentary material relating to the use of dance as political protest or social uprising. The groups featured in the show, largely based around clubs and electronic […]

Memorial Day is notoriously one of Chicago’s bloodiest weekends. Last year, 36 people were shot and seven died that weekend. In 2017 and 2016, the number of shootings was even higher. When Garley “GiGi Tonyé” Briggs, a dance teacher and Chicago native, started noticing this pattern, she was preparing her second annual Memorial Day workshop […]

The United States has never had a strong tradition of government support for the arts. But we take what we can get and, since its founding in 1965, American artists have gratefully accepted whatever the National Endowment for the Arts is willing and able to give. Though the NEA has at times been aggressively politicized, […]

The midterm elections are less than three weeks away on November 6. If you’re registered to vote, hooray! But you can’t fully celebrate before you’ve completed your mission. Showing up at the polls is what matters most—especially since voter turnout for midterms doesn’t have a fabulous track record. According to statistics from FairVote, about 40 […]

They say that not all heroes wear capes. It’s true: Some, like Meredith Harper Houston, wear leg warmers. A few years back, Houston, who is black, began thinking about how none of the students at her Los Angeles dance studio looked like her. Her desire to use dance to serve her community eventually led her […]

Dance has a long history of social activism. Heck, our website even has a whole section devoted to it. But tackling social justice causes has typically been the territory of mature dance artists and brainy college students. Not anymore. This year, teenage dancers throughout the country have started getting involved to highlight an issue that […]

At a time when the political climate is increasingly divisive, it’s no wonder people want to compartmentalize. Some want their pirouettes separate from their politics, and can be quick to protest when dancers challenge that both on and off the stage. Most recently, American Ballet Theatre principal Isabella Boylston was scrutinized when she shared this […]

In May, Iranian authorities quietly arrested four women. Their crimes? Posting videos of themselves dancing on Instagram. Modesty laws in Iran forbid women from dancing in public. Last week, one of the four women arrested for her videos, teenage Insta-star Maedeh Hojabri, made what many believed to be a forced confession on Iranian state TV, […]

Rebecca Warthen was on a year-long assignment with the Peace Corps in Dominica last fall when a storm started brewing. A former dancer with North Carolina Dance Theatre (now Charlotte Ballet) and Columbia City Ballet, she’d been sent to the Caribbean island nation to teach ballet at the Dominica Institute of the Arts and in […]

When Kevin “Iega” Jeff saw Fana Tshabalala‘s Indumba at the annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience in South Africa, he immediately knew he would ask Tshabalala to set the work on his company. “There’s an ancient energy in Fana’s movement, a deep and trusted knowing,” says Jeff, director of the Chicago-based Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. “Because […]