Eras Night is one of my preferred Dancing With the Stars theme nights when done to its best — reasonable tributes to a period or a style, less so when involving odd mash-ups or blatant inaccuracies. Last night’s offered its own mixed bag, but on the whole presented a fairly enjoyable line-up — even if…
Tag: social dance
Dance, Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite
For this post-World Ballet Day Wednesday Watch, enjoy Twyla Tharp’s efforts to integrate the feel of social dance and a little retro style into the world of balletic technique, with this 1984 broadcast of her 1983 Sinatra Suite — a truncated version of the previous year’s longer Nine Sinatra Songs, which calls for casting a…
Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: The Blango
For fans of both blues dance and ice dance, the fusion concept is both familiar and — perhaps for some in the latter group — occasional cause for consternation among purists. A perfect meeting of worlds comes in the blues tango: the blango. While blues is a mandatory rhythm and style to be skated by…
Dance, Feature, Profile
Suspending Animation: Dance photographers capture a motion
by Jacquelyn Thayer For photographers of dance, the trick of creation comes in capturing the most active of arts in still form. The challenge is the addiction for Bill Frederking, professor of photography at Chicago’s Columbia College, where he has taught since 1983. Frederking, not a dancer himself, first stepped into the field in 1989…
Dance, Feature
Dancing Their Blues Away in Sweet Home Chicago
by Jacquelyn Thayer Originally published November 15, 2012. For one late Friday night a month, the Loop’s Enso Karate Dojo studio — all white walls and mirrors — is transformed into a dusky dance hall. Strings of lights embrace supporting columns while vintage blues music wails from the stereos set up at a DJ’s table…
