SCDT X Giordano
Happy New Year and Happy first week back in the studio for both us and our friends at Giordano!
We have exciting news for everyone to kick off your 2023! For Giordano's 60th Season Celebration, they commissioned a work by our Artistic Director and resident choreographer, Kia S. Smith, AND nine of us from South Chicago Dance Theatre get to be a part of it!
Last season, us dancers got to join Giordano in one of their "Dance Circles" in which we took company class with them and their Artistic Director, Nan Giordano. It was their way of getting the dance community together and sharing the space. Giordano participated in multiple dance circles throughout their season. The energy between our two companies just clicked right off the bat, and as Nan serves as one of Kia's biggest mentors, the idea sprouted for this project! The 26 of us are dancing together on stage at the Harris Theater in Chicago on March 31 and April 1! Be sure to mark your calendars!!
One of the coolest parts of this process, in addition to being inspired by new dancers in the room, is watching others take part in Kia's process. We are so accustom to how Kia works with her dancers, that it's interesting to have outsiders in on the process as well. Kia is extremely collaborative with her artists and allows them to make choices, string movement phrases together, and contribute their own artistry to the piece. Having extra dancers in on that process has made for one of the most intricate and exciting pieces to date. The talent in the room is unmatched, the Giordano dancers have unending energy, and the work ethic is hard to beat. After a full five days of working together, we are all exhausted and worn out, but thrilled to share this piece with an audience!
The piece is high energy with a lot of partnering, a familiar music score, and so many dancers to fill the space. You won't want to miss it and we can't wait to share it.
Harris Theater, March 31 and April 1, 2023...BE THERE!
Elijah Richardson: 25 to Watch
You know him, you love him, we love him...it's our amazing Guest Artist, Elijah Richardson! He's in DANCE MAGAZINE, one of our country's top publications for all things dance! AND he's featured as one of 2023's 25 to watch.
Each year, Dance Magazine comes out with a list of 25 dancers to watch and for as long as I can remember, I've been looking at this list to see which companies I should look out for, which artists are excelling, the new talent on the rise, etc. As I've gotten older, I have started to look out for people I know or who I have danced with at intensives around Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and so on. This list is full of prestigious names that really go on to great things and now I feel like Buddy the Elf in the Christmas movie "Elf" because guess what..."I KNOW HIM!!!!!!!"
Elijah is an insanely hard worker and a beautiful natural mover. The way he can effortlessly glide across the floor, turn 10 straight times in a row without stopping, and simply move from his heart's own rhythm is a joy to watch. It feels so special that I get to watch him and learn from him each day in rehearsal. That's exactly what we do as a company - learn from one another and inspire each other. I always joke that if we took the "best" part of each of us on SCDT, we'd have the perfect dancer. Some of us have a beautiful memory, some are insanely flexible, some have impeccable timing, and some (especially Elijah) have artistry that is unmatched. Dance Magazine speaks of his infectious smile and I think that so perfectly describes Elijah's spirit - he's a joy to be around and I'm proud that I get to learn from him.
Dance Magazine, too, mentions Elijah's stand-out work in our 5th Anniversary show. Elijah was featured in Wade Schaaf's trio as well as a duet in Ron De Jesus' piece. His strength alongside his comfort in partnering was truly worth a mention. He has such a quiet brilliance and we are thankful that Dance Magazine recognized our star!
Elijah, CONGRATULATIONS! This honor is huge and we are so happy for you!
Check us out in the Chicago Tribune!
Happy December and some BIG happy news we have for you! Check out the post above, but also feel free to check out the article in the latest edition of the Chicago Tribune! South Chicago Dance Theatre was named one of the best dance of 2022 as "local companies bounce back from pandemic". How exciting!
I will always refer back to it - but Kia Smith (our lovely artistic and executive director) had no "off-time" or slump during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, you could say that she used that specific time to grow her company to what it is today. Myself, alongside two of my fellow company members, auditioned in 2020 while Kia kept dance alive. We participated in virtual shows and festivals. While 2021 still felt some of the sting of the pandemic, 2022 truly was our "bounce-back" year. We had our Harris Theater debut and it was a performance with five pieces of repertoire we will never forget.
The best part about reading this article for me was the fact that the buzz around this show still exists. It was one of my favorite shows to perform in to date and I still feel honored that I had the opportunity to perform so many well-know choreographers' works! As dancers, we spend the majority of our time in studio working on and refining the dance routines that we have. Our shining moment on stage is one we don't get as often and that we cherish when we do. For the past three weeks specifically, we have been working on new choreography and the day-to-day is creatively and mentally challenging. It was nice that in the midst of this tough everyday work that we received this honor from the Chicago Tribune. It was a great reminder that all the hard work in studio truly pays off.
What a big thank you to the Chicago Tribune, to our loyal audience, and to our donors and supporters that make this all possible for us to live out our dream each day. We loved performing the Harris Theater Show and can't believe it was named a top moment of Chicago dance for 2022. We hope to do the same in 2023 with our Auditorium Theater debut! We are looking forward to it and hope you are too!
10 things we are Giving Thanks for this Holiday!
A yearly classic - and we are back for year three's edition of what we are thankful for as a company. South Chicago Dance Theatre is more than grateful for the opportunities we've had, for those to come, and everything in between. Here's our 2022 edition of 10 things we are thankful for!
- Daily company class. Between Jessica Miller Tomlinson, Sarah Schaefer, Kim Davis, and Ethan Kirschbaum, we are well-trained and begin each day of rehearsal with a LOT of sweat!
- Our 3ARTS Chicago Artist support and grant. We are so thankful to feel supported in our own community!
- The partnership we've gained through Music of the Baroque. Declan, Patrick, and the whole orchestra was nothing but kind to us this Fall and we can't wait to collaborate further!
- Our residency with Grand Valley State University. We loved sharing our repertoire with you and felt so welcomed and loved by the department!
- Our new company members, emerging artists, and associate artists! Each year our team grows and we love adding on to our family of SCDT dancers!
- Erin Harner - our brand new General Manager is organized, detail-oriented, on top of everything she does, and all-around amazing. We are so thankful to add her to the team.
- The addition of our Rehearsal Director, Jessica Miller Tomlinson. We appreciate your hard work with us and enjoy having you around!
- Our upcoming residency with Western Michigan University come 2023. We can't wait to spend time teaching the students and staying in the beautiful Kalamazoo, Michigan!
- 2023's evening length jazz piece by Kia S. Smith that we are thrilled to present at the Auditorium Theatre! It's our debut there and every single one of us is so excited to perform on this beautiful stage.
- Every single year we are continuously thankful and in awe of the hard work Kia Smith puts into our company. Without you, there is no SCDT. We are beyond grateful for your dedication to us as humans, dancers, and your employees!
That's the list, y'all! Enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday surrounded by the one's you love. We, too, are taking a much needed break in preparation for new material and new dances! See you back in the studio in a week!
SCDT on Tour - Grand Valley State University Edition!
Our first tour of season six was quite the success! We are insanely thankful to have performed four of our repertory pieces with the students, faculty, and community in Allendale, Michigan at the Louis Armstrong Theatre of Grand Valley State University.
To give you all a snapshot of our quick tour to Michigan, here's a day-by-day recap:
Saturday, November 5: All twelve members of our touring group arrived at Union Station by 5:30pm. We boarded the train, ready, excited, laughing, and the largest group on board for sure. Grand Rapids, Michigan - we were coming for you! Upon arrival at 11:30pm, all of us got on a shuttle to our hotel in downtown Grand Rapids. Straight to bed for all of us!
Sunday, November 6: A morning of breakfast on your own and a call time of 10am in the hotel lobby. We took a giant van over to the GVSU campus and were welcomed into their dance department's beautiful studios. The largest one that we were able to be in was absolutely beautiful - high ceilings, a large sprung Marley floor - we were in heaven! All of us took a 90-minute ballet class given by our rehearsal director, Jessica Miller Tomlinson, and were quickly escorted to our dressing rooms where we prepared for tech rehearsal. Each dance got 60-minutes on stage to rehearse, space, and try out the dance with it's corresponding lighting (shout out to our favorite lighting designer EVER, Julie E. Ballard!). It was a LONG day on stage and afterwards we all couldn't wait to enjoy a big family dinner out together. Directly after dinner, we all rested and went to bed for the big day ahead!
Monday, November 7: A morning off!! All of us chose to do separate things. I'm an early riser, so I was up by 7am and got my body moving. Others rested, walked around the city, grabbed lunch together, explored downtown Grand Rapids, hit up the hotel hot tub, and so forth. By 4pm, we all met up and ventured back to Grand Valley State University. Company class on stage for an hour, followed by hair and makeup, and we were all in costume ready to roll by 7pm! The show went by so quickly and was thrilling as always. We love sharing our company and our repertoire and felt so welcomed and well-received by our new audience. We are all very thankful to have worked with GVSU! Post-show, all of us dancers and artistic team went over to Main St. Pub for a late night dinner. We were delirious, tired, silly, loud...everything we always are. To be honest, I think my legs are STILL recovering from the show...it's a tough one!
Tuesday, November 8: Happy Election Day and happy 5am call time to the hotel lobby! Our train left at 6am, we all slept the whole way home and returned to Chicago by 9am. What a wonderful trip!
A big shout-out and THANK YOU to everyone at GVSU for having us - it was a privilege to share our art with you and we hope to see you again soon!
When will you see us on stage Next?
The hustle, the grind, the day-in-day-out...whatever you call it, we sure have been in the thick of it! We are constantly gearing up for our next thing. We have ONE more big performance before the holiday season arrives and for those out-of-town friends and supporters, we may be nearing you!
Come Monday, November 7, SCDT is on the road and touring to Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan! As a full group, we are not only excited to be back on stage again, but to also be touring as a full company! Traveling together, rooming together, and being around each other 24/7 is bound to make our already close-knit family even closer...and maybe drive Kia and Jessica up a wall with all of our inside jokes and excessive laughter.
So, what have rehearsals been looking like in preparation, you may ask. Well, for us dancers who were around for the Harris Theatre debut last May, it feels like a deja vu of the month of May. This last half of October has brought us to full-out run-throughs of the show with 5 minute breaks between pieces. We do this so that we can feel exactly how long we would have to catch our breath during a quick-change. Many of us dancers are in three of the four pieces we are presenting at GVSU, which means that rehearsals have been quite and endurance workout for us the past few weeks.
Regardless, it is preparing us for the show and making us feel ready to grace the stage yet again. After all of these performances in the past month, I sure will miss the stage lights for awhile. Surely going to soak it up while we have it!!
Pre-Show Jitters - how SCDT calms them Down
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October has been QUITE the busy one for South Chicago Dance Theatre. We are what the kids say...booked and blessed! In all seriousness, we have been very lucky to have so many performance opportunities in the past month. Between the Chicago Live event at Navy Pier, Harvest Contemporary Dance Festival, Elevate Chicago Dance 2022, Mayfair Arts Center North Side, South Side, One Side Festival, AND our partnership with Music of the Baroque...we've really been all over the place. It has been more than a privilege collaborating with and meeting so many new people through these events and we feel very honored to have been a part of them. Putting on our stage makeup feels like second nature at this point.
With so many shows, I've started to think about the pre-show rituals that we have. It's such a fun question that I always get asked as a dancer - "Is there anything you do before a show every time? Any superstitions?" Being a dancer since age 4, I've seen it all. I've had friends who needed their alone time - checked out in a corner with their headphones on. I've had friends who would talk a-mile-a-minute prior to shows to let out nervous energy. Some dancers shake out their muscles from head-to-toe or have a very specific warm-up their body needs prior to the stage. I have one friend who claimed that before every performance she had to listen to Shania Twain - that one really gets me.
As individuals, all of us on SCDT have our own thing. For me, I always have to take a couple seconds to close my eyes and take a few centering, deep breaths while I'm backstage. If I partner or come into contact with another dancer during the choreography, I like to make sure I've hugged them or shared weight and touch with them before approaching the stage. This way I feel connected and in-tune with them prior to doing it in front of an audience. With certain pieces, we like to practice a big lift that happens to make sure our dancers are safe. I will say, in addition to taking an hour company class together prior to each performance, our SCDT classic is breathing together. It's finding that collective energy for us. We gather in a circle backstage, huddling up, and without talking, we synchronize our breathing. We take about four or five slow deep breaths. Speaking for everyone, it calms us down, makes us feel as one, and provides a lot of support for our fellow dancers. We never grace the stage without doing so. I guess you can call it our "lucky charm".
Whatever it is, I think everyone has a little pre-show ritual of their own. Prior to our jobs each day, or before an event, we all have something that makes us feel calm, cool, and collected and prepares us for what's ahead. Ours is just always before hitting the bright lights and marley floor. We live to perform, after all!
Dances From Terpsichore: Our Baroque Era Adventure
Image courtesy of Andrew Weeks Photography
We are in the midst of our first collaboration with a music ensemble during live performance!! In a previous blog, I mentioned our partnership with Music of the Baroque and our upcoming performances with them. As previously stated, we began pre-season with an intensive week of choreography from Kia and have been perfecting, changing, and enhancing the work since then. It all has come together in the past week and we are 2/3 of the way through our performances with the music ensemble.
This past Saturday, the eight of us dancers traveled to Hamilton Park as a part of a free outreach show that the ensemble put together. We performed Wade Schaaf's "Coeurs Separes" as well as "Dances From Terpsichore" by Kia S. Smith. It was our first go-around after a tedious technical rehearsal at the Harris Theater this past Monday. Trying the piece in real time with the musicians and performing for our first audience was exhilarating. There's nothing quite like blending the talents of musicians and dancers. As a dancer, hearing the live music vibrating the floor and having to adjust to the tempo and passion being put forth is much more rewarding than performing with a pre-recorded track. The appreciation we have for the musicians and that they have for us is gratifying and humbling.
Following the outreach show, we performed on Sunday for a much larger crowd at the North Shore Performing Arts Center in Skokie, IL. Our dance floor was at the very edge of this beautiful stage. It was slippery and small, so adjustments were made to the choreography accordingly. Having to work on our toes like that and being adaptable is one of the many skills I've acquired and am thrilled to possess as a dancer. We know how to pivot quickly and work with what we have sans-stress.
Rounding out our weekend of performing, you can still catch us with Music of the Baroque at the gorgeous Harris Theater this Tuesday, October 11 at 7:30pm. Tickets are available at the Harris Theater website and...hint hint...use code SCDT25 for a discounted ticket!! We hope you'll join us to see Kia's beautiful new work and to appreciate the wonderful Music of the Baroque ensemble.
New Faces...Who's Who?
I've told you before, but we've added a lot of new friendly faces to our team since our debut at the Harris Theater for Season Five! Season Six welcomes new energy, but also a few new faces who bring such a load of talent and grit to our already tenacious team.
We are thrilled to welcome new members in all four tiers of our organization - Main Company members, Guest Artists, Associate Artists, and Emerging Artists.
You've met the old and seen them perform, now it's time to welcome the new. Beginning with our Emerging Artists, we have welcomed Maddie Counsell, J'Nae Howard, and Faith von Atzigen. Maddie recently stepped in to understudy a role at Navy Pier and J'Nae will soon grace the stage to understudy at this weekend's Harvest Festival performance. All three of our emerging artists have learned three pieces of our repertoire in a short month of rehearsals and are always prepared to step in if a member is absent!
Next up, we have the privilege of dancing with two new Associate Artists - Marissa Thomas and Mya Bryant. Both dancers have roles in Ron De Jesus' work as well as a role in Kia Smith's new Baroque composition. We've loved getting to know these two dancers and appreciate their energy and diligence.
Moving on to Guest Artists, Trey Alexander and Michael Battle have been insanely busy learning and understudying some major parts in our repertoire. They are the quickest learners and I have been nothing but impressed by both of their work ethics. It's truly an honor to dance next to them.
Finally, we welcome Sophia Vangelatos as our newest Main Company Member! Sophia is the kindest person with a brilliant movement quality and I'm personally so excited to get to know her more.
All around, we have the most wonderful team of artists and we are thrilled to continue to grow each season. A big thank you to everyone for coming in with such a warm energy and the ability to dive right into our family known as SCDT! We love you all!
Our FIRST Performance of Season 6
Chicago LIVE was our first event of the season, and it sure was a weekend filled with dance and other artistic performances. South Chicago Dance Theatre was thrilled to be a part of this event for our second year.
Meeting new dancers and having them all learn new repertoire within three short weeks was no easy task, but our team was more than up for the challenge. Five of our dancers had the project to learn and perfect Ron De Jesus' twelve-minute work entitled "HYbr:ID Line" during the month of September and let me tell you, they fit right in and made the piece their own. As a returning dancer to this work, it was exciting to explore new textures and push myself further in this choreography while also teaching and reviewing details to the dancers who joined. I always enjoy performing this piece because of it's grit and undeniable energy. The piece ends with a series of lifts and an intense unison section that is sure to raise the excitement level of the audience. Our Navy Pier audience on Sunday, September 25 seemed to be engaged throughout the entire piece.
In addition to Ron's piece, we also performed Stephanie Martinez's "On A Lark" which features five dancers and is another crowd pleasing dance with well-known music and character-driven choreography. Trey Alexander, our new guest artist, stepped into a featured role in the piece and absolutely swept the stage.
Post-performance, the entire cast enjoyed our free Ferris wheel ride and bonded over dinner together. It was an amazing night of dance and getting to know each other outside the dance studio even more!
As far as future performances, we are excited to perform as a full SCDT team throughout the month of October at multiple engagements. Check out our website or instagram for more info on where to catch us next!