After 23 years as Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer of River North Dance Chicago, Frank officially retired in December 2015. Having produced more than 20 original works for the company, he now looks forward to concentrating solely on his choreography, creating new works and finding new homes for his existing body of work.

As a performer, he has danced with Ballet Concerto of Miami, New York’s Ballet Hispanico, Giordano Dance Chicago, and for six years with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago In 2000, he received a Ruth Page Dance Achievement Award for Mission, co-created with Sherry Zunker, Co-Artistic Director Emerita of River North, in honor of the Company’s 10th anniversary. He was also recognized with a 2008 Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography from the Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation for Tuscan Rift and  had the great honor and privilege of being named “Chicagoan of Year in Dance” by The Chicago Tribune in 2014.

For more than 10 years, Frank has been dealing with a degenerative spinal cord disease, Syringomyelia, which has no known cause and no known cure. 

“It’s been quite the journey — of all things, a dancer and choreographer losing his physicality, accompanied by a multitude of symptoms that manifest into chronic pain, make it much more than losing the use of my legs. However, the one thing this disease cannot take away is my imagination. So long as I have that and there is music and motivated dancers, I have and will continue to create.” -Frank Chaves