Joffrey Call for Choreographers

photo by Herbert Migdoll

by karen Krolak

Listen up everyone. You have exactly one month to get your application in for Joffrey’s Second Annual Choreographers of Color Award, designed to recognize promising young choreographers of color. The three winners will be notified by November 1, 2011.

Selected choreographers will receive:

• 30 rehearsal hours to set their pieces on the Joffrey Academy Trainees, 
• $2,500 stipend,
• the opportunity to work directly with Joffrey Artistic Director, Ashley C. Wheater, and Academy Artistic Directors, Alexei Kremnev and Anna Reznik,
• and housing for the duration of the two-week residency if your permanent residence is more than 100 miles from Joffrey Tower,

Choreography created for the Joffrey Academy Trainees will be presented at the Joffrey Tower and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance and must be:

• original work developed by the applicant,
• minimum of 10 minutes and maximum of 12 minutes long,
• and created by applicants 18 years of age or older who are naturalized or permanent residents.

photo by Herbert Migdoll

To apply, interested choreographers must submit the following by mail: 

• a DVD with a five-minute or less excerpt of their choreography with a brief written description; 
• a letter of intent describing their interest in the competition and the kind of work they will create; 
• a headshot and curriculum vitae with three references; 
• and, a general application, which can be found online at joffrey.org/choreographersofcolor.  

There is no submission fee.  Materials can be mailed to:  

The Joffrey Ballet, 

Attn: Choreographers of Color Competition Selection Committee

10 E. Randolph Street

Chicago, IL, 60601.

Email Interview with Melissa Thodos (Part 3 of the Save the Stage Series)

by karen Krolak

One of my first teaching gigs was at Northwestern University for the National High School Institute, whose students are often referred to as the Cherubs. Melissa Thodos was one of the other faculty members there and I remember envying her athletic power and her gymnastic vocabulary. I moved out to Boston at the end of that summer. While I manage to bounce into town for a few performances by friends each year, I have yet to catch one by Melissa's company. When I discovered that she would be closing out the Inside/Out season, I thought it would be great to catch up with her and to include her interview in our Save the Stage series. As of the last report I had heard, Jacob's Pillow only needs to raise $7000 to match their Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund Grant.

kK: Chicago is still feels like my artistic home and it will always be one of my favorite cities for dance. What are your thoughts on being an artist there?

MT: The dance community in Chicago is an immensely rich one. Chicago sports 90 dance companies of all sizes and genres. It is a wonderful city for an organization to be based and a great city for dancers to live and to grow with so many options for training and professional opportunities.

kK: The Joffery Ballet relocated to Chicago right around the time that I headed out to Boston. I heard that many smaller companies were concerned about how that might influence the funding landscape. How do you feel about their presence there?

MT: I love the fact that the Joffrey Ballet made its home in Chicago over a decade ago. I had the opportunity to become friends with the late co-Founder and Artistic Director, Gerald Arpino, and the company truly captures the innovative essence of the American voice in ballet. We just performed with Hubbard Street and the Joffrey Ballet at the Harris Theater in Chicago last Saturday.

kK: Oh, I am glad that you mentioned Hubbard Street. Can you describe them for our readers?

MT: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, a company founded in Chicago, brings many beautiful and innovative creations by international choreographic voices to our city under the wonderful artistic direction of Glenn Edgerton. They are performing later in the same evening that we are at Jacob's Pillow. We really enjoy working with our colleagues in our community.

kK: Which other companies or choreographers would you recommend to people visiting Chicago?

MT: Julia Rhoads has an immensely innovative company titled Lucky Plush as does Margi Cole of the Dance COLEctive. And, there are many many others from Billy Siegenfeld’s captivating Jump Rhythm Jazz Project to Libby Komaiko’s fantastic Ensemble Espanol.

kK: Yes, I truly miss Julia Rhoads and Billy Siegenfeld and I wish that I was able to attend their performances more often. I did hear a rumor though, that someone from Jump Rhythm Jazz Project will be teaching in the Boston area soon. Just talking to you makes me a little homesick for Chicago. It is unfortunate that Monkeyhouse will be presenting a new quartet at the Massachusetts Dance Festival tomorrow night as I would love to see your company. Is this your first appearance at the Pillow?

MT: This is our second time performing at Jacob’s Pillow. Our first time was last year and we are delighted to be closing the festival this year.

kK: I assume that you have heard about the efforts to preserve and improve the Inside/Out stage. Since you were there last year, what do you think makes the stage so special?

MT: Inside/Out is valuable because it is free to the public. Besides providing artists and companies the important opportunity to have their work presented, growing new audiences is critical to the art form.

kK: I totally agree. So since I won't be able to be there, can you tell me about the pieces you will present?

MT: Our program will open with a work that I created titled Cascade. It was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and I was given the theme of water by the presenter to be the inspiration of the work. I had the flexibility of choosing the composer and selected music by Ravel. Opening our concert at Jacob’s Pillow with this work based on the natural properties of the flow of water, seemed like a great fit given the organic beauty of the environment in the Berkshires.

kK: That does sound like a wonderful choice for Inside/Out's bucolic backdrop. What else is on the program?

MT: Two other works are created by Thodos Dance Chicago Ensemble members. In order to be a part of Thodos Dance Chicago (TDC), an artist needs to posses a talent and passion for choreography and teaching in addition to performance. TDC ensemble member, Jessica Miller Tomlinson, was the grand prize winner of the Chicago A.W.A.R.D show sponsored by the Joyce Theater Foundation. We are presenting an innovative work of hers titled Architecture: Splintered and Cracked. This work premiered in Thodos Dance Chicago’s annual choreography performance series, New Dances, and is inspired by the idea of architecture and building walls. Ensemble members, Mollie Mock and Jeremy Blair, collaborated with our resident sound designer, John Nevin, to create the rhythmic and sensual work, Reflect. Reflect also premiered in the New Dances series. In it a solo character views parts of her past and present to come to terms with her future. Closing our program is Quieting The Clock, a brand new work by Chicago collaborators Francisco Avina and Stephanie Martinez . It addresses the passage of time and it’s ominous inevitability and continuum and TDC will premiere it here at Jacob’s Pillow.

kK: Well, I hope you enjoy your appearance at Inside/Out. Thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions for me.

MT: Great to hear from you.

Thodos Dance Chicago

August 28, 2010 • Inside/Out • Saturday, 6:15

For more information about Thodos Dance Chicago and it’s performances , projects classes and workshops please visit www.thodosdancechicago.org

Ashley Wheater on Othello

by Karen Krolak

As I mentioned in the post on Peter Carpenter, Chicago is chock full of tempting dance concerts this month. I was especially intrigued by the Joffrey Ballet's production of Lar Lubovitch's Othello as I will be Assistant Directing Othello in March for Actors' Shakespeare Project in Boston.

Fortunately, Eric Eatherly, one of my first dance students from the National High School Institute at Northwestern University now works for the Silverman Group who manage public relations for the Joffrey Ballet. Thanks to Eric and Farrah Malik at the Silverman Group, I was able to email a few quick questions out to the Joffrey's Artistic Director Ashley Wheater who graciously found time to answer them for us.


karen Krolak: Presenting the Midwest premiere of Othello is an enormous project involving 42 dancers, sets by George Tsypin, costumes by Ann Hould-Ward, recreated projections by Wendall K. Harrington, and a score by Academy Award® winner Elliot Goldenthal. What drew you to this piece and why did lanch your season of Legends with it?

Ashley Wheater: For me it is a profound piece of dance. There are very few contemporary full length ballets at this same level in terms of technique, choreographic content and such creative collaborations. I worked with Lar Lubovitch from the birth of this work with the joint venture between American Ballet Theater (ABT) and San Francisco Ballet (SFB). I looked after it at SFB through various seasons and was very involved with televising of the work on PBS. I wanted to bring this to the Joffrey, but knew that I would wait a few years to do it. I wanted the dancers to really have an understanding the movement and why this full length should be seen in and should, of course, be presented by The Joffrey Ballet.

kK: How have you liked working with Lar Lubovitch?

AW: I have of course enjoyed it very much! Lar and I have a great understanding and respect for each other’s creativity. He has trusted me with his work many times. I feel we have a fantastic working relationship. Both Lar and I have the same high expectations.

kK: What have you enjoyed as you have watched your company rehearse with him?

AW: For me it was watching the full company work with Lar and let everyone take in his vast knowledge of dance and his connection with this story. Experiencing the dancers learn about themselves and really challenge themselves was most exciting. I feel they have exceeded even their own expectations, which as an artistic director is what one can only hope for.



kK: That's wonderful. Now, what are some of the challenges from your end when you re-created this massive production?

AW: The challenges are mostly on a technical level - especially with Othello using back projection video. It was also important that the Joffrey did not try to recreate what ABT or San Francisco Ballet did with Othello, but instead makes it unique to the Joffrey without losing the integrity of the piece. We had to recreate the back projection for the stage that we dance on, which of course was a huge undertaking, but I can always overcome a challenge and here we are!

kK: So, I have never heard anyone talk about why a company chooses to present an existing work instead of commissioning a new piece. Can you explain that process?

AW: This is a good question for many reasons, some of which I have explained above. As an Artistic Director I am of course very interested in new works. I have brought many new works to the Joffrey over the past two years, will be doing so again in the spring, and will continue to in the company's future! The risk involved in staging new work is that it can be very, very expensive so if you are going to do a new work you must be sure that you are able to deliver the highest artistic qualities and that it will be a success. I have sat through many new works and have been disappointed and wonder how a company recuperates from that. In this day and age, we should not shy away from new work, but need to understand the risk involved and be ready to take it on. As I mentioned above, we are bring two world premiere works to Chicago in the Spring, one by Jessica Lang and the other by James Kudelka, which I am thrilled about. This will be our only mixed repertory performance of the season and is sure to be just as captivating as our production of Othello.

THE JOFFREY BALLET OPENS ITS 2009-2010 SEASON OF LEGENDS

WITH THE MIDWEST PREMIERE OF LAR LUBOVITCH’S

OTHELLO

WITH MUSIC BY ACADEMY AWARD® WINNER ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL

& DRAMATIC, CONTEMPORARY COMPUTER PROJECTIONS

AT THE AUDITORIUM THEATRE, OCTOBER 14-25

Single tickets, priced from $25 to $145, are available for purchase at The Joffrey Ballet’s official Box Office, located in the lobby of 10 E. Randolph Street, as well as the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University box office, all Ticketmaster Ticket Centers, by telephone at (800) 982-2787 or online at www.ticketmaster.com.

Politics are dancing

by karen Krolak

Last night I was on a panel for the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston discussing their Business Volunteers for the Arts program. Through this program, Susan Hammond has donated an incredible number of hours creating a strategic plan and Advisory Board for Monkeyhouse. (Thank you, thank you, thank you, Susan!) This is a phenomenal program if you are a business person who wants to volunteer your expertise to an organization. I can't emphasize enough how many nonprofits are desperately seeking business volunteers.

After the panel, Alan Kravitz, Founder/President of the Infinite Inkwell, approached me with an interesting fact: Rahm Emanuel, who will soon be Obama's Chief of Staff, studied dance at the Joffrey Ballet and Sarah Lawrence College. According to Joshua Green's Rolling Stone Article, "Friends jokingly theorize that his toughness is actually an outgrowth of being a ballet dancer: With that sort of thing on your resume, you had better be ready to fight if you hope to survive in Chicago politics. " How delightfully ironic!

Thanks for drawing this to my attention, Alan. I hope you get matched with a deserving arts organization.