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City Pleasures

Theater-Food-Music in Chicago

Mitchell Oldham

Complexions Contemporary Ballet’s Toast to Bach and Bowie Brimming with Eclectic Energy

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The creative offspring of two dance professionals, one an acclaimed dancer and the other a celebrated choreographer, New York’s Complexions Contemporary Ballet has had a few decades to establish its identity.  Since its debut in 1994, the company has become known for exciting innovation, choreographic daring and dance virtuosity.  Some have gone so far to …

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Selling Kabul Lays Bare the Perils of Vulnerable Alliances

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When the United States hastily and clumsily pulled out of Afghanistan in August of 2021, chaotic became the single word that reverberated through the news cycle regarding its exodus.  Although both promised and anticipated, the departure proved an abrupt and awkward end to a record twenty-year investment in U.S. blood and U.S. dollars.  Scenes of …

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Elmhurst Art Museum’s Jazz Drenched Exhibition Splendidly Unveils How Arts Converge

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A newly opened two-part exhibit at the Elmhurst Art Museum looks into how profoundly one art form can impact and influence another.  A Love Supreme:  Norman Teague, chronicles how John Coltrane’s 1964 jazz masterpiece has and continues to inspire pioneering Chicago designer and educator, Norman Teague.  A Love Supreme:  McCormick House Reimagined expands the dialogue …

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Porchlight’s Anything Goes Keeps the Magic Firmly Intact

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There are a lot of things this world could do with more of and that includes Cole Porter musicals.  Porchlight Music Theatre must have sensed that void when it decided to launch its 90th anniversary production of one of Porter’s timeless jewels, Anything Goes.  Now playing at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, the …

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Young Playwrights Festival Strikes Gold in Chicago High Schools

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Arming each new generation with a viable education will always be the overriding mission of our schools.  While fulfilling that goal, schools influence another important objective.  They help prepare students to become engaged, responsible and competent adults.  By any measure, the scale of just one of these goals is massive.  Combined, they are daunting.  A …

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Jazzy Nutcracker an Achievement Writ Large

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For purists, there’s only one version of a classic that’s worthy of widespread regard and admiration.   Tchaikovsky’s 1892 lighter, more whimsical adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King may well fall in that category.  In 1960, two musical titans and collaborators looked at Tchaikovsky’s masterful score, saw it in a …

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Web-series Delivers Humor From a Different Slant and Through a Different Voice

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Long noted for the excellence of its live dramatic work, Congo Square Theatre Company branched out and began offering digital content in 2020.   Partly a response to the impact remote learning had on parents during Covid, the company brainstormed outlets for expressing rampant parental frustration during the epidemic.  At the time, director Anthony Irons; the …

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Chi Town Becomes Tap Town in Winter Wonderland

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You don’t ordinarily think of this time of year as a period of discovery, but a concert of dance and music at Harold Washington Cultural Center recently changed that notion.  Using the holidays to bring a wide assortment of tap artists together for a celebration of the season, Winter Wonderland delivered plenty of dance fire …

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