Ashley Browne of Keigwin + Company, left, rehearses the cast of Bolero Chicago at Nicholas Senn High School in Edgewater. Photo: © Araceli Arroyo

Dancers Gary Schaufeld and Ashley Browne, both of New York troupe Keigwin + Company, wear plain white tops with royal blue bottoms (shorts for Schaufeld, jeans for Browne). The two swear it’s a coincidence. They’ve met with a group of Chicagoans six times before at Senn to create and rehearse choreography to Ravel’s Bolero, for next week’s sixth annual Chicago Dancing Festival. Bolero Chicago will be featured twice: on August 20 during “Chicago Dancing” at the Harris Theater, whose capacity is roughly 1,500; and on August 25 during “Celebration of Dance” at the Frank Gehry–designed Pritzker Pavilion, which can accommodate about ten times as many people.

Browne and Schaufeld have sketched about half of the dance; choreographer Larry Keigwin’s about to watch what the group’s accomplished so far and start filling in the remaining blanks. Keigwin calls for everyone — including me, another reporter from Gapers Block, and other observers — to convene in a huge ring in the middle of the gym. Counterclockwise, everyone in the circle shouts his or her name and does a little dance, made up on the spot. Everyone else echoes back.

Festival cofounder Jay Franke lunges forward and chops upward with his right arm. “JAY!” I put my right foot in and do a little twist like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. “ZAC!” A woman hops once, looking up, with both arms over her head. “SKY!” The rehearsal begins.

Gary Schaufeld of Keigwin + Company, center, rehearses the cast of Bolero Chicago at Nicholas Senn High School in Edgewater. Photo: © Araceli Arroyo

Chicago is the seventh of Keigwin’s Boleros; the project dates back to 2007. He tells me that, each time, he tries to identify and play up his cast’s strengths and special talents. “It’s about making everyone look good. I excavate the personalities.” Lamar, a tall black man wearing a University of Illinois T-shirt, plays trumpet as a kind of overture. When he finishes, Keigwin asks him to repeat the tune while strolling across the floor from left to right. “Like you’re coming home from a club late at night.” As if on cue, Lamar’s encore is accompanied by the faint wail of a siren in the distance.

Keigwin later asks the Bolero group to raise their hands if they rode a bicycle to Senn. About a dozen arms go up. He chooses Julie, a slim brunette with a high ponytail, in a black T-shirt that reads “I ♥ VOLUNTEER.” (The URL for City Church Chicago’s website is printed on the back.) Keigwin pulls Julie aside and explains how many six-count phrases of Ravel’s music she can use to bike onstage, circle another performer, and exit the opposite side.

The cast of choreographer Larry Keigwin’s Bolero Chicago rehearses at Nicholas Senn High School in Edgewater for the 2012 Chicago Dancing Festival. Photo: © Araceli Arroyo

Another vignette, which Keigwin creates in about 90 seconds, is “like Busby Berkeley spokes,” he explains to the five women who dance it. Lamar gets another starring role, as a guy mobbed by female fans. He lets them chase him backward, egging them on by flexing and kissing his biceps.

Larger groups fill the floor, using their own umbrellas and cellphones as props. Delicia, who wears a summer dress dyed brown, copper, orange, Navy and light blue, and who has a magenta flower tucked behind one ear, follows Lamar’s opening trumpet solo. As Ravel’s theme begins to play softly, Delicia mimes frustration with a losing battle between her Chicago Tribune and a stiff breeze. She’s got some acting chops.

As rehearsal winds down, a few stretches of music remain in need of action.

“Anyone else have tricks up their sleeves that they’re dying to tell me about?” Keigwin scans the group intently, his eyebrows mischievously raised.

Choreographer Larry Keigwin’s Bolero Chicago premieres on opening night of the 2012 Chicago Dancing Festival, August 20, and repeats August 25 at its finale. Click here to learn how to participate in the project. Full disclosure: I’m hosting a festival event, “Chicago Now,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art on August 24. Fun fact: Festival cofounder and renowned choreographer Lar Lubovitch attended Nicholas Senn High School.

Still from Samsara. Photo: Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

A planet-sized coffee-table book of a film, the 99-minute Samsara by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson routes unnarrated, untitled footage from 25 countries through a lens drawn to repetition, patterns and epic scale. Many of its 70-millimeter frames could pass for photographs by Andreas Gursky or Edward Burtynsky. One scene looks like it was shot in the same chicken-processing factory in China that Burtynsky documented in 2005.

Collated with these postcards for overpopulation and consumerism are portraits of men, women and children with penetrating stares. By the time Samsara ends, we’ve met dozens of today’s Sharbat Gulas: a maimed veteran whose entire head looks rebuilt through plastic surgery; a Himba woman from Namibia; a dancer at the front of a line performing the Guanyin dance of a thousand arms; a white man and two teenagers, presumably American, posed proudly with their rifles in a garage.

Samsara vacillates between an indictment of what we’ve done to the world — and to ourselves in the process — and wide-eyed wonder at the glorious mess of it all. Grand civic, religious and royal architectures receive similar treatment to natural wonders like glaciers and Arches National Park. (Shots of cliff dwellings at Betatakin, in Arizona, and carved-from-rock facades at Petra, in Jordan, bridge the gap, as we see in details how these miracles of the built environment are being reclaimed by time. A brief glimpse of Mali stings, as holy sites there were damaged this summer by Islamist Ansar Dine militants.)

This journey extends a branch of globally minded, somewhat abstracted documentary filmmaking that began 30 years ago with Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, for which Fricke was cinematographer. Fricke and Magidson collaborated on the subsequent Chronos (1985) and Baraka (1992) and Samsara feels familiar, if you’ve seen those two films, not least because they share some names in the soundtrack department (Michael Stearns, Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance).

Still from Samsara. Photo: Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

In its strongest stretches, Samsara locates our world’s borders, temporary and eternal, philosophical and concrete. Stunning aerial views show where favelas and luxury high-rises meet in Brazil, and where a wall divides Israel and the predominantly Palestinian West Bank. Time-lapse photography captures day becoming night above the stone finials on the roof of a Gothic cathedral. The camera pans across hauntingly still, deserted schools, shops and homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and blanketed with mud split geometrically by desiccation cracks. The film’s second scene is an immersive view of an erupting volcano, a place where the planet’s vast, hot interior bursts forth through a relatively thin, shifting crust.

With its steadily metered rhythm of cuts between slow tracking shots and tableaux, Samsara slides early on into a leisurely, page-flipping pace. Its images are seldom less than gut-punching, shocking and arresting but Fricke and Magidson, its co-editors, are always there to hold your hand. It remains, from beginning to end, a Guided Tour of Earth in the Early Twenty-First Century. Even its most potentially upsetting subjects — poverty, mass production, incarceration — are displayed in ways that foreground the mechanics and orders of those systems, rather than identifying and communicating their effects on living beings.

Still from Samsara. Photo: Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

That’s an expected handicap for a film in which no one talks. A sort of exception is a cameo by French performance artist Olivier de Sagazan, who desperately tries different masks made of wet clay he slaps on and scrapes or shakes violently off of his face. His work is a jolt, discordant with the rest of Samsara (a Sanskrit word for the ongoing cycle of reincarnation). We watch Tibetan monks painstakingly create a mandala out of colored sand, then see them ruin it and scoop most of the grains into a little bowl. Their ritual is one of peace, calm and acceptance. De Sagazan’s performance suggests he’s trapped, bound by chains that must be broken.

An exclusive engagement of Samsara in Chicago opens September 7 at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema (2828 N Clark St). The film shows in New York City and Seattle beginning August 24; further release dates are available here. This post was updated after publishing for clarity. View the trailer below.

I’d like to kick off this Linkage post with a hearty thank-you to the folks I follow on Twitter. There are 932 of you as of August 2 and you’re doing an amazing job of helping me keep up with the world. You make me laugh a lot, too. Big hug.

Speaking of Twitter, Talking Points Media ran an interview recently with Anthony De Rosa, social media editor at Reuters. David Taintor asked De Rosa excellent questions and De Rosa gave Taintor great, focused answers. Also:

The Guardian ran an article about subeditors.

The New York Times ran an article about a place where pianos go to die.

At a hotel restaurant in Toronto, Tracy Letts, William Friedkin and Ben Kenigsberg had a chat.

Brain Pickings gathered “the most compelling and profound of [Susan] Sontag’s thoughts on writing, arranged chronologically.”

Gore Vidal died and Salon collected seven of his memorable appearances on television.

“That’s me, talking to me, six years ago,” said Lupe Fiasco, after rewatching an old interview he gave about his Chicago neighborhood for MTV News. He was crying. “And that stuff is the same. You just feel like— You feel hopeless, you know? It’s a terrible thing, and I see it everywhere.” Fiasco continued: “If you stay here, you’re gonna die, and you’re not gonna die for anything heroic. You’re not gonna die for anything meaningful. You’re gonna die for something that’s worthless, and nobody’s gonna remember your name.”

Four troupes were selected for DanceMotion USA, a program that “sends American dance companies overseas to connect with audiences and communities, especially underserved youth, through dance workshops, lecture demonstrations, public performances and other arts education activities.” In 2013, NYC’s Doug Varone and Dancers will visit Argentina, Paraguay and Peru; Hubbard Street Dance Chicago will visit Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia; Philadelphia’s llstyle and Peace Productions will visit Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; and Seattle’s Spectrum Dance Theater will visit Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. DanceMotion USA is “designed and funded by the [U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs] and produced by [the Brooklyn Academy of Music], with additional support from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.” [Source (PDF)]

“Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, said, ‘In more than 15 years of investigating political corruption, I’ve never seen a more suspicious set of facts.’ ”

Thanks to a post on the Comic’s Comic, I learned that Montréal comedy festival Just for Laughs includes a keynote address. This year, it was given by Patton Oswalt, in the form of two open letters.

Thanks to a post on BuzzFeed Sports, I learned about the 20 openly gay athletes at the 2012 Olympic Games.

New York City Ballet member Justin Peck had a big July. The young dancer-choreographer received a positive review from Alastair Macaulay and, ten days later, was the subject of a profile by Claudia La Rocco, both in The New York Times.

“Brace yourself: Freelancing is not for the faint of heart,” warned Amy Brandt in an article for Pointe magazine.

“Should artists have to work or should they be supported by the state?” asked Elizabeth Day of London’s The Observer. Over on this side of the pond, Megan Stielstra assessed her situation, beautifully and frankly, as a working writer, wife and mother.

My French is bad and Google Translate isn’t much better, but I can gather why this Observateur story about Brigitte Lefèvre, director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, caused such a stir online.

An estimated 32,000 people protested in Hong Kong over the “coming introduction of Chinese patriotism classes,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung doctored a photograph of a family reportedly fleeing the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo to make it look even worse. Not that the situation in Aleppo — Syria’s largest city, with a population of more than two million — isn’t bad enough, as shown by a report by the BBC’s Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway, and an update today in The New York Times.

An unidentified Australian newspaper got creative on one of its pages, in differentiating between North and South Korea.

The parents of Aly Raisman, an Olympic gymnast representing the United States, were moved while watching her compete from the stands.

“I drew the line at endorsing books with condescending remarks about my own work,” noted A. J. Jacobs in his confessional about penning blurbs.

I saw some photos of what might be the world’s hiddiest house, built for an Indiana “cigar king” in 1995.

An episode of You’ve Cott Mail focused on cultural criticism and an article in The Hedgehog Review went in-depth on a current “master term,” sustainability.

“Are we a sector defined by our permanently failing organizations?” asked Diane Ragsdale.

Dimensions Dance Theater member Laura E. Ellis contributed a post to Dance/USA’s eJournal, From the Green Room, that begins what the service organization says will be “a conversation on diversity in all its forms.”

Inbox zero.

Dancer Yuji Uragami. Photo: Makiko Yamamoto

This kid knew how to make a move without leaving a trace. But he probably also knows how to make noise. The Edlis Neeson Theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art on August 1 was full of adults, yes, but also many young ones and teenagers. “Solitary Soles,” the first of three programs this week of Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s annual series, “JUBA! Masters of Tap & Percussive Dance,” coincides with “Rhythm World,” its summer festival of master classes and workshops, now in its 22nd year.

Since July 23, a crop of rising talent has spent its days training with Jason Janas, Derick K. Grant, Dianne “Lady Di” Walker and CHRP’s Lane Alexander, at the newly christened American Rhythm Center in the Fine Arts Building. Through August 5, “Rhythm World” continues with courses including a three-day session for hoofers ages 9 to 12 and two programs for tap ensembles. At night, the students watch their summer teachers — among today’s top talent worldwide — perform live, and learn even more.

Uragami is a thin man from Tokyo with wild hair. He’s quiet, for a tapper, and his moves are quiet as well. But the precision of his timing and the velocity of his rhythms are hard to believe. He’ll bend a string of hundreds of taps, which pass in a matter of seconds, gently into peaks and troughs of volume. He’ll slide around himself in a squarish path along the floor in a sort of crip walk, peppering his slick steps with witty tangents of percussion. He finished one of two solos with a series of eight-count phrases during which audience members snapped their fingers on each sixth and seventh beat. This participation was requested, fulfilled and finished with such subtlety that the interaction seemed choreographed in advance.

Ten other dancers performed and the onstage jazz ensemble, the Greg Spero Trio, performed a set of its own. Opener Janas delivered a solo so wide-ranging in its structure that Alexander, who hosted, joked afterward, “I think he used up all the steps.” Janas began in response to the trio’s repeat of three simple chords, which opened up into a rendition of “Unforgettable” by Nat King Cole. Janas, breathing heavily, finished his performance with a tidy turn and a salute. The audience roared.

Chicago native Jumaane Taylor. Photo: Kristie Kahns

Chicagoan Starinah “Star” Dixon is one of 11 dancers I named last year who made huge first impressions. She takes the stage with a deep seriousness and pounds it with rhythms as if she’s digging them up out of the ground beneath her. Among the performers in “Solitary Soles,” she’s young and relatively rough around the edges, but it’s impossible not to connect with the emotions that drive her feet. Dixon danced to an arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” in a way that recalled Coolio’s track “Gangsta’s Paradise” (which samples Wonder’s tune).

A step-for-step recreation by Glenn Leslie of Gene Kelly’s famous barn dance, from the 1950 musical Summer Stock, was a tender nod to tap history on a program otherwise focused on its future. (This August 23 would be Kelly’s 100th birthday.) Nicholas Young, dapper in a brown jacket, bow tie and hat brought Kelly-esque charm to his interactions with the Spero trio and, at one point, with a circle of light on the raised floor custom-installed for the “JUBA!” programs. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Young clicked his heels together twice to tie off his segment, then strutted like a dandy offstage right.

Another Chicagoan, Jumaane Taylor, represented contemporary tap with a hipness. From his beige shoes to his skinny jeans and studded belt, paired with a Ben Sherman–looking shirt and narrow tie, to his full beard, shaved head and bright smile, Taylor was totally today. Spero turned away from his grand piano to play a Roland synth for Taylor’s set; Eric Hochberg traded his upright bass for an electric one and drummer Ernie Adams coaxed a shimmering landscape from his cymbals and hi-hat.

I’ve seen Taylor tap before but his solo for “Solitary Soles” was a revelation. Like Grant, he builds for himself physical challenges out of big movements. Both hoofers live on the edge of not being able to bring that other foot down in time; of skating too fast to not fall down; of tripping themselves up into pretzels. Grant might be the reigning king of high stakes: His own solo, to “My Funny Valentine,” brought me to the edge of my seat. Taylor might be the prince.

Joining Grant in the second half were Alexander, Walker, Sam Weber and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards — a veritable “who’s who” of American tap. Each commanded the stage in his or her own unique, signature style. Alexander’s is elegant, refined and intellectual; his take on two works for solo piano (Bach’s French Suite No. 3 in A Minor, and a B-minor prelude by Liszt), played by Joffrey Ballet principal accompanist Paul James Lewis, showed profound knowledge of classical music. The night’s energy seemed to put an extra spring in Alexander’s step.

Tap star Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards. Photo: Eduardo Patino

Walker, whom the audience greeted with thunderous applause, asked Spero’s trio to play a short encore of “Autumn Leaves,” which she heard while waiting to perform. The ingenuity with which she decorated the standard seemed effortless — and she even posed a few times for an unseen photographer in the wings. Weber — the first tapper to win a “Bessie” award, according to his bio — was introduced by Alexander as “the Glenn Gould” of the art form. He’s a tall, gentlemanly performer who shoots off creative sparks lightly; his flights of fancy were to his solo as his red pocket square was to his black silk shirt, tucked neatly into black-belted black trousers.

In contrast, Sumbry-Edwards was all red — literally. She strode onstage in tight crimson pants and a matching top, with gold shoes like Michael Johnson’s to match her earrings, necklace and pants buttons. (Whoever helmed the lighting board bathed the stage backdrop red in reply.) Stopping and starting, taking breaks to listen to the trio, Sumbry-Edwards closed the show the way a perfectly pulled espresso shot closes a long and satisfying meal. She, like no other tapper I’ve heard, actually caffeinates space.

“JUBA! Masters of Tap & Percussive Dance” continues August 2 and concludes on August 4; according to the Museum of Contemporary Art website, both performances are sold out. “Rhythm World” classes continue through August 5.

Brian Hare, left, and Caitlin Cucchiara with Thodos Dance Chicago in “Lullaby” by Brian Enos. Photo: Cheryl Mann

The in-house choreography workshop performance was once a rare bird. Most members of concert-dance companies went from debut to retirement without calling a single shot. They’d spend year after year learning steps to dance onstage, but never dream up their own, coach or direct. There’s no downside to the fact that these series have become more common, in both classical and contemporary dance. There’s no shortcut to what you learn from being the one in charge.

Locally, Thodos Dance Chicago’s workshop is one of the oldest: This weekend’s shows, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, mark the 12th year of “New Dances.” As you might expect, a night of choreography by young dancers — some trying their hand at the craft for the first or second time only — yields uneven results. But it’s always worth seeing, as are Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s similar “Inside/Out” annual, and “COLEctive Notions,” produced by the Dance COLEctive. For every shot in the dark, there’s a curveball; for every plainly derivative exercise, a new voice takes shape.

There are nine “New Dances” this year and, per tradition, one is by an established guest choreographer. Duration limits seem better adhered to than in years past; the program is lengthy but mostly free of bloat. Two short duets and a transitional quartet called meet-cute, by Annie Deutz, open the show on light notes. Deutz connects with George Gershwin’s Three Preludes, as interpreted by Yo-Yo Ma and Jeffrey Kahane, in a most traditional but sensitive manner. Her four dancers are dressed smartly like mannequins in a Banana Republic window, and the open-ended symbolism of each couple’s exchanges suggests she’s seen a fair amount of work by Jerome Robbins.

Scaled Gray, by Brian Hare, is approximately as close (not overly) to its reference point: Wayne McGregor’s Infra, seen in February at the Joffrey Ballet. The two share some music composed by Max Richter and a steely palette but Hare’s movement wears its weight a little lower on the hips. Brandon DiCriscio, one of a few non-Thodos guest performers, holds focus as the abstract quintet’s putative protagonist. Jacob Snodgrass’s lighting scheme locates the goings-on in a kind of stark sewer. The work’s episodes are sequenced somewhat arbitrarily but each is compelling and well-made; Scaled Gray leaves little more than the sense of a mood, but it’s a specific mood, built deliberately.

From rough and aggressively cheery beginnings, Antio sas, a women’s quartet by Jeremy Blair, collects substance as it continues. What seems at first a girly romp in cute skirts and prim blouses becomes bittersweetly about one, guest dancer Katie Graves, joining a group and then leaving it behind. With more inventive structure and movement vocabulary, it could be a sharp little poem about moving on.

Jon Sloven’s duet Phylum has structure down — it’s as tight as a drum — and two fine performers in Ray Doñes and Cecilia Ferguson-Bell. And kudos are due to Sloven for being the one choreographer who commissioned an original score. Unfortunately, that score, by Joshua McGehee, is as New Agey as its title: “Vibronic Volitation.” Slightly less conventional are the beats by Kaskade used by Doñes for his ambitious ensemble work, how it’s been. But he, like Sloven, can build a work that makes sense, that teaches you the language of itself as you watch it and, furthermore, uses that language to say something. how it’s been needs a few more rehearsals but it’s a promising introduction to Doñes as choreographer.

At last year’s “New Dances,” the discovery was Michael McDonald, who teams this year with Jessica Miller Tomlinson, at this point a seasoned dancemaker in her own right. Their collaboration, 93  83, declares plainly in the program that it’s a “movement investigation.” Set to the stylings of “experimental whammy twang bar czar rhino King Crimson stunt guitarist” Adrian Belew, jarringly paired with a Christian Matjias and Crispin Campbell track — which fades in and out — 93  83 is unwieldy. But it’s also firmly out on its own. Wearing drop-crotch black pants and off-the-rack tops, the two choreographers plus three dancers create a parade of strange images, from two main motifs: both arms out in long arches in front of the face, as if supporting an awning for the dancer’s body; and a steadily metered clap of one palm against the back of the other hand, either in front of or behind the dancer’s torso.

Against variations on these themes, petite powerhouse Caitlin Cucchiara moves prone across the stage like an inchworm. Dancers subgroup and form factions that regard each other with some hostility. They reconvene, face the audience and deliver itchy, sassy poses reminiscent of Bob Fosse. A bright-green spotlight illuminates the downstage-right corner of the floor. Dancers hop off of the stage apron to perform a sequence in the dark, for the front row. McDonald and Tomlinson tumble complexly over each other. The women stiffen their bodies while sitting and rock as one piece from the backs of their legs to their shoulders, their fingers splayed, their hands jazzed into rigor mortis. It doesn’t quite all cohere but it’s a fun ride while it lasts.

The same applies to Privilege of Being, also cochoreographed, by Chelsea deVera and Joshua Manculich. Their duet among ’50s-style, workaday metal chairs uses for most of its soundtrack stock audio of footsteps and people whispering and clearing their throats in a crowd. The piece ends with an image that recalls the following lines from Robert Hass’s poem of the same name:

…they look at each other;
two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,
startled, connected at the belly
in an unbelievably sweet
lubricious glue, stare at each other,
and the angels are desolate.

(Between 93  83 and Privilege of Being on the program is a quartet, Two Too, by John Cartwright. It’s a naked attempt to recreate Jiří Kylián’s 1986 Sechs Tänze and I will say no more about it.)

Show closer Lullaby is by guest choreographer Brian Enos. Among interesting lighting effects (by Nathan Tomlinson) and lots of haze, the octet seems at first to draw blindly from Enos’s bag of tricks: sexy street ballet in ever-shifting arrangements, interrupted by short, heterosexual duets during which the woman gets tossed around. Everyone wears black tank tops and leggings and their movements are machined, sharp-edged and freezing cold. But then, Cucchiara walks onstage, in white, and stands, and stares into the audience, and does nothing while the pandemonium continues around her unabated. Hare, bare-chested and wearing baggy pajama pants, then joins her. Driving, machined, sharp-edged and freezing-cold beats produced by Enos fade out, and an a capella arrangement of Billy Joel’s “Lullaby” by the King’s Singers comes in. Hare and Cucchiara’s movements interpret the song simply but tenderly. It works whether you take it as “the numbing routine will eventually put you to sleep,” or as a pure-dance supercollider that slams two deeply different atmospheres against each other.

Thodos Dance Chicago’s “New Dances” closes July 29 at 5pm, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. Click on any photo below to enter the gallery.

It’s hard to go through a full month’s worth of choice internet to collect some highlights for you but, folks, I’ve been busy. Keep an eye out for stories in upcoming issues of Dance International, Pointe, Dance Spirit, Dance Magazine and more, and I hope you’ll join me August 24 at the Museum of Contemporary Art for “Chicago Now,” a free event of the 2012 Chicago Dancing Festival. Directors Lane Alexander (Chicago Human Rhythm Project), Ron De Jesús (Ron De Jesús Dance), Carrie Hanson (The Seldoms) and Julie Nakagawa (DanceWorks Chicago) will discuss the state of dancemaking in Chicago today, where it’s been and where it might go. Hanson’s and De Jesús’s groups and FootworKINGz will perform. (Full disclosure: I’m super excited about the evening.)

In addition, at 9am on July 25, you can join me at the Chicago Cultural Center for a Dance Community Convening organized by Audience Architects, to continue conversations begun at Dance/USA’s annual conference last month in San Francisco. Deeply Rooted Productions artistic director Kevin Iega Jeff, choreographer-director Shirley Mordine, meeting attendees and I will share our points of view on diversity and equity in Chicago dance. Amina Dickerson and Julia Perkins will moderate; please RSVP here.

Between work on these projects, I’ve continued to drop notes to self in my Gmail inbox for this series of aggregate posts. Among internet I filed away between the 21sts of this month and last are the following items of — to me, anyway — interest:

Tablet, “A New Read on Jewish Life™,” posted International Center of Photography adjunct curator Maya Benton’s in-depth article about the removal in May of a provocative work by Marc Adelman at New York’s Jewish Museum. Benton’s article is dated June 21; the following day, the museum issued a statement about its decision, saying that it’s planning for this fall a “panel discussion, in consultation with a range of experts, [to] examine the evolving and complicated areas of image appropriation, privacy with respect to images that are posted on the Internet, and First Amendment rights for artists and museums.”

“For 20 years, the city of Ephraim had a gentlemen’s agreement with the Central Utah Art Center,” begins a July 17 story by Ben Fulton for the Salt Lake Tribune. “That agreement ended June 25.”

On July 20, Jeffrey Deitch, director of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, published a statement in which he acknowledges that “the recent events and board resignations at MOCA have prompted a number of critical articles about the museum.” Those recent events include the departures of all four artist-trustees: John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie and Ed Ruscha.

Northern Ballet, based in Leeds, “planned to reduce its dancers from 40 to 30 after a 15% real terms Arts Council cut,” reported BBC News on June 25. Fundraising campaigns called Buy Back A Dancer and Sponsor A Dancer restored the size of NB’s roster, plus two, “but many sponsors have committed for one year only.”

Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li, of whom I’ve been a casual fan for some time, shared on June 26 a quizzical note that said in part that she’s “been embedded in Egyptian cotton and a rogue hand has slapped [her] where needed.” Another pop star, Frank Ocean, dropped a note July 4 via Tumblr that launched a nationwide discussion about homo- and bisexuality in hip-hop. Another Tumblr post, by author Cassandra Clare, addressed casting an actor to play a character she created, Magnus Bane. “There are plenty of roles out there for white actors,” reads her explanation in part. “Most roles are for white actors. This is not one of them.”

To know me is to know my love for performer Mx. Justin Vivian Bond. V got yet another high-profile profile recently, in The New York Times.

The Arts Desk, based in London, recently won Best Specialist Site at the Online Media Awards.

Film critic Andrew Sarris recently died at age 83. My former colleague Ben Kenigsberg published a thoughtful remembrance of his onetime teacher at Time Out Chicago’s #Chicago blog.

“Before the curtain goes up, I’m a little nervous, as always,” says Margot Fonteyn in the introduction to this video of her performing Sir Frederick Ashton’s Salut d’amour à Margot Fonteyn, choreographed for her 60th-birthday gala at Covent Garden. Behind another kind of curtain — a paywall — lives a recollection for The New Yorker by John McPhee about trying to get the word “motherfucker” onto the hallowed publication’s pages.

Comic Drew Droege’s short videos as Chloë Sevigny, name-dropping a storm and oddly mispronouncing words, went through a rough patch but, oh boy, Chloë’s back — and she’s getting “ex-SARE-sees.”

“It is worth remembering that ‘Billy Budd’ is a product of the gay closet,” wrote Zachary Woolfe in his Times notebook entry on a new production at the English National Opera.

I’ve been wondering aloud for some time about how the technology developed by Sony for its Xbox 360 peripheral Kinect might change methods dancers use to teach and/or archive choreography. Now entering that conversation: Leap Motion; David Pierce of the Verge calls it “Kinect on steroids.” PBS recently asked on its Idea Channel, “Has the Microsoft Kinect revolutionized art?” The host of a short, sort-of-silly video says that an open-source driver for the peripheral is “stupid exciting” for artists. That much is true, especially for dancers.

“A human being can tell that Chekhov’s monologue about giving up tobacco is actually a revelation of existential despair,” wrote Kelly Kleiman in her blog post June 29 for WBEZ about a computer-generated newscast and its implications for criticism. “Could a robot understand that, or would it object to the constant divergences from the ostensible topic?” For another intersection between the human and the mechanical, read this article by Luke Jennings from June 30 about Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, a collaboration between London’s National Gallery and Royal Ballet.

On Twitter, critic Eric Taub declared that the Mariinsky’s Ekaterina Osmolkina and Mikhail Lobukhin’s Diana and Acteon is “how it should be done.” The video is janky but I’ll agree it features some knockout dancing. An impressive feat of video editing yielded this demystification of a famous solo danced by Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951). Please also watch this video of choreography for plastic army figures.

“For Arts Institutions, Thinking Big Can Be Suicidal,” read a June 27 headline in The New York Times. Dance critic Claudia La Rocco tweeted “Shocker.” in response.

On July 8, the blog BiblOdyssey published a lovely set of hand-colored etchings of Paris boulevards from the 1870s. And here’s an incredible hi-res photograph of Rockefeller Center on December 5, 1933. Here’s an advertisement for coffee from the 1650s and here are some photos I want to walk right into, of the 1882 building at 5 Beekman in Lower Manhattan, whose atrium has been boarded up since 1940. (It may soon become a hotel.)

In April, the first of 26 “superhighways” for bicyclists opened in Copenhagen. “Copenhagen failed spectacularly,” Bill McKibben declared in a July 19 Rolling Stone article, in reference to a conference on climate change held there in 2009.

What do you get when economic crisis meets online commerce? Entire Italian villages for sale on eBay.

“I think that [austerity] is used as a cliche because people don’t have ideas,” said architect Zaha Hadid to The Guardian’s Kath Viner.

A recent episode of “truth is stranger than fiction” details the story of a man named Adam Sandler — not the former SNL star — who dresses up like Elmo from Sesame Street and goes to New York’s Central Park. Another recounts an episode, also in New York, wherein a couple in their fifties were arrested after dancing on a subway platform.

“If it seems odd that a federal regulator was scooped by a sleep-deprived student,” wrote Peter Maass for ProPublica in a story about the Federal Trade Commission, “get used to it, because the federal government is often the last to know about digital invasions of your privacy.” Four days later, The Guardian ran this profile of ProPublica and its founder, Paul Steiger.

A guy named David Johnson is tracking rapper Jay-Z via email read receipts.

Said Michael Mullen: “I do worry that it’s just, ‘Please go off and fight our wars — we don’t wanna be bothered,’ and that the whole country isn’t in.” Watch NPR’s Steve Inskeep interview Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011, at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. (Aspen Journalism posted the entire exchange here on SoundCloud.) Another event at the festival brought together five heavy-hitters — former Hulu CTO Eric Feng, Path founder-CEO Dave Morin, new Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Insight Venture Partners cofounder Jerry Murdock, and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly — to speculate about the Next Internet. From The Atlantic’s recap: “Mayer believes that mobile technology will disrupt everything from cab services to currencies. ‘We are likely to see the end of paper and physical currencies in our lifetime,’ she predicted.”

This is the Evolution of the Web.

On July 14, The New York Times published this piece by Arthur S. Brisbane about the paper’s review policies, practices and strategies.

“Critics perform two essential tasks in the cultural ecosystem,” wrote Johann Hari in a June 6 article for British GQ, “and as with any ecosystem, if you knock out one part, the entire network is at risk of unravelling.”

Not new, but new to me: Ismene Brown’s interview with fellow dance critic Clement Crisp, ahead of his 70th birthday (September 21, 2001). On his 60th birthday, choreographer Ohad Naharin was interviewed by Theo Panayides in Cyprus. On July 14, Brown reviewed Matthew Bourne’s Play Without Words, and on June 18, video was posted to YouTube of an interview with choreographer William Forsythe and dancer-turned-filmmaker Brock Labrenz.

“If lower salaries mean companies are appointing staff who are less able to deliver on a development strategy, exploit opportunities and generate revenue, then short-term savings may be outweighed by long-term cost to the organisation. Leadership and development training are vital when organisations are taking on new staff, and so a further issue arises if a reduced budget for salaries is matched by a lack of investment in training.” —From Lise Smith’s July 2 article for Arts Professional

From a July 4 post by Andy Horwitz for Culturebot: “As the dance world (finally!) starts to deeply question its existing models and frameworks, the way we write about dance and the role of writing in relation to dance is going to change. Big Traditional Dance is, for most communities, unsustainable.”

Finally, this, oh my God this. I wonder what Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker thinks of it.

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Sofiane Sylve and Vito Mazzeo of San Francisco Ballet in Continuum by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. Photo: Erik Tomasson

As always, first to come will be first-served for Saturday night’s closing blowout, at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Ditto the aforementioned “Dancing Under the Stars” event, Thursday evening in Grant Park; and Tuesday’s daylong run of dance films (including Wim Wenders’s Pina) at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

For the other three festival events, you’ll need to reserve tickets in advance — limit two per person — on the following days this week:

Tuesday, July 17, beginning at noon CST, reservations will be available for “Chicago Dancing” at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park. The program, August 20 at 7pm, features Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet, Keigwin + Company and more in choreography by Twyla Tharp, William Forsythe, Alexander Ekman and others. Go to the Harris Theater box office at 205 East Randolph Drive or call 312-334-7777.

Wednesday, July 18, beginning at noon CST, seats will be available for “Dancing East & West of Chicago” at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University. That show happens August 22 at 7:30pm and features dancers from Phoenix’s Ballet Arizona, Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, San Francisco Ballet, and New York’s Martha Graham Dance Company and Brian Brooks Moving Company. Head to the Auditorium Theatre box office at 50 East Congress Parkway, call 1-800-982-ARTS, or visit ticketmaster.com.

Thursday, July 19, beginning at noon CST, get free tickets to “Chicago Now” at the MCA’s Edlis Neeson Theater. August 24 at 6pm, yours truly, Zachary Whittenburg, will emcee an evening of performance by Chicago artists, plus a conversation about how dance gets made in the city today, where it’s been and where it can go. Get to the box office at the MCA, 220 East Chicago Avenue, or call 312-397-4010.

Fair warning: As I wrote in my article for Dance Magazine about the fest’s fifth anniversary, these events tend to fill up within an hour or two.

Over coffees in the lobby of the Chicago Cultural Center on July 9, the two explained why this “leapfrog” schedule of creating dance works best for them. “We’re developing work through performance,” said Antonick. “We can take it to a point, but need to show it before we know where to go next.”

Pales enlists Meyer’s frequent collaborator Christopher Preissing for its score, to be performed by another quartet: musicians Andrea R. DiOrio, Mary Galime, William Jason Raynovich and Katherine Young. Lowesleaf continues the pair’s partnership with a solo composer-musician, Joseph St. Charles.

The double bill has been beset by obstacles during its creation. Staffing changes at the Storefront in April threw into question whether the company would have access to the manpower and resources it needs to realize Lowesleaf’s ambitious production elements (a Khecari trademark). A fire in May decommissioned one of its three spaces for rehearsals, the fieldhouse at Indian Boundary Park. St. Charles lost some of his one-of-a-kind musical instruments in the blaze. But Khecari soldiered on and, to judge by a short look at Pales after our chat, its show will go on uncompromised.

Khecari’s two other homes, Overdier Hall in Rogers Park and North Center’s Revere Park Fieldhouse, absorbed easily the dates and times the company was scheduled to meet at Indian Boundary, the couple explained. And in an eleventh hour, the Storefront’s Jim Moore was renewed as technical director at the venue. “We were lucky,” said Meyer.

It’s more earned fortune than luck that Pales’ cast features three of the freelance scene’s major talents: Edson Cabrera and Michel Rodriguez, regulars with Hedwig Dances; and Jessie Young, seen in April at Links Hall during “The Wrecking Project.” Pales costumes are by Grace Johnston under the guidance of German-born designer and former dancer Katrin Schnabl. Lighting for the run is by Jacob Snodgrass.

Chicago photographer Ryan Bourque, member of hot interdisciplinary creative consortium the Inconvenience, documented Khecari’s process extensively this spring and summer. The 16 images below are among approximately 8,000 he says he has on file of Khecari creating Pales and The Clinking, Clanking Lowesleaf. Click on any image to enter the gallery.

Khecari presents The Clinking, Clanking Lowesleaf and previews Pales July 20–29 at the DCA Storefront Theater, 66 E Randolph St in downtown Chicago. Admission is $25, low-income $15. This post was updated after publishing for clarity.

Rendering of the reception area at the American Rhythm Center in downtown Chicago’s Fine Arts Building. Image courtesy of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project.

Last spring, it went by the Collaborative Space for Sustainable Development and involved six performing-arts organizations. Per a public announcement today, it’s called the American Rhythm Center, includes nine organizations and has a confirmed home: the Fine Arts Building.

Built for car and wagon manufacturer Studebaker in 1885, the richly detailed landmark stands adjacent to the Auditorium Theatre, facing Grant Park on Chicago’s South Michigan Avenue. Lead partner the Chicago Human Rhythm Project says it’s raised about half of $2.5 million for the ARC’s initial, multiphased capital campaign. The facility will first see foot traffic by the end of CHRP’s 22nd annual “Rhythm World” festival, July 23 through August 5; a grand opening with the founding partners will follow in September.

Those partners are, in addition to CHRP, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, the Chicago Chinese Cultural Institute, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, Giordano Dance Chicago, Luna Negra Dance Theater, Ping Pong Productions, River North Dance Chicago and Kalapriya, Center for Indian Performing Arts. Phase one of the project builds out and renovates a lobby, dressing rooms and administrative offices, plus three studios ranging in size from 750 to 1,500 square feet. During subsequent construction phases, the ARC plans to add more administrative room and spaces for programs, plus a black-box theater for performances. The architect is JGMA and Ujamaa Construction, Inc. is the general contractor.

In a joint interview by phone on July 5, CHRP founder-director Lane Alexander and new executive director Frank Sonntag explained the thinking behind this model for supporting performing-arts management and education in collaboration, and how it found a home in the Fine Arts Building.

Planning and fundraising for the ARC were accelerated, says Alexander, by Ballet Chicago’s vacation of offices and dance studios at 218 South Wabash Avenue. Two blocks northwest of the Fine Arts, that space had long been central to Chicago’s dance scene, hosting classes and rehearsals during various periods of the Joffrey Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and other area institutions. “It was already in our strategic plan to find a space, but not at that moment. There were still some things to do before we were in position for a move but, as you know, life is not linear.” Alexander explains that that property was larger than CHRP alone required, “and what we found was almost universal need within the community for the exact same thing we were looking for, which was administrative, rehearsal and education facilities all” — he laughs — “in the same place.” With partners on board and fundraising underway, the Wabash building’s owners decided to rent to different tenants. As Alexander puts it, “we found ourselves in the enviable position of having resources but not a space.”

Rooms at the Fine Arts occupied by the Boitsov Classical Ballet and Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra were already being sublet by CHRP for its 2010 and 2011 “Rhythm World” festivals. “And then Elizabeth Boitsov decided to close her doors and [the Fine Arts] went on the list of more than 70 properties that we ended up evaluating for suitability,” says Alexander. “We went looking far and wide, and it turned out that the best place ended up being where we were already doing business.”

“That building is a gem,” Sonntag interjects, “but a little underutilized.” With consensus among the member organizations, a deal was finalized and because the CYSO was already in residence there, the ARC gained a new partner. Repurposing the Boitsov’s two studios on the third floor and creating a third by gutting the company’s offices and storage has been the first order of business, says Alexander, “so classes can begin as quickly as possible and we’re all able to start generating revenue and stabilize operations.” As CHRP programs tap and percussive-dance forms, while other partners focus on dance performed in soft shoes or bare feet, two studios will have multipurpose Timestep floors by Stagestep.

When I ask whether further details about the process and practices might be available to those interested in following the ARC’s lead and emulating its hoped-for success, Sonntag says, “Absolutely, because I think that this will be the way of the future. For the foreseeable future, anyway, it seems like resources are going to be very limited. Collaboration is the name of the game now.” (To his point, four female-led Chicago dance companies, for example, recently announced that they’ve begun a strategic partnership for audience development and resource-sharing called FlySpace.)

Alexander notes that collaboration can take various forms, and that the ARC is dedicated specifically to institutional cooperation as opposed to artistic exchange, “although some artistic collaborations may grow out of the institutional collaboration.” Discussions among ARC members have started about which “back-end” functions might be better combined than sandboxed, such as bookkeeping, fundraising, marketing or programming. Alexander and Sonntag are already talking with educators about opening the project up as “a laboratory” for undergrad and graduate arts-management studies.

“Ultimately, we want to see this grow organically,” says Sonntag. “We don’t want to be the 800-pound gorilla, saying, ‘This is how you’ve got to do it.’ But I can definitely envision the day when we’re jointly marketing this place. I mean, put all of these class offerings together: It’s more diverse than any one of us could do on our own.” MINDBODY software will facilitate unified online registration and class-schedule information, with clear notation of which partner is offering each class. “One of our promises is to make it simple for the student,” says Alexander.

And therein lies the crux of this joint venture: Performing-arts organizations’ education programs tend to be much more reliable and stable as business investments than theatrical presentations, which can hit or flop and, either way, aren’t likely to pay for themselves through ticket sales alone. “So frequently, when resources are limited, the tendency is to contract, to cancel programs and outreach efforts,” Sonntag observes. “What happens then is, the size of your audience diminishes and it creates a downward spiral. In my mind, the beautiful thing about the American Rhythm Center is that we’re enabling organizations to enhance their community-outreach efforts and become stronger financially. It’s a win-win.”

Adds Sonntag, “I think one of the most important things here is that we create opportunities for cross-pollination. We all want to find new audiences, and crossover will encourage that to happen.… The key to this place is that we’re offering something not just to artists, but to the public at large.”

Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s 22nd annual “Rhythm World” festival begins July 23. By its end on August 5, the American Rhythm Center will begin initial operations in the Fine Arts Building at 410 South Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, with a grand opening scheduled for September and further development ongoing.

Tobi Tobias reviewed on June 7 two of this year’s graduation performances at the School of American Ballet. Also that day, Judith Mackrell reviewed the considerably darker and more adult Viktor by Pina Bausch, which opened a monthlong celebration of Bausch’s choreography in London. A special edition of The Guardian’s excellent MoveTube series focused on Bausch the previous day.

For something still more adult — or maybe less — read this great profile of male strippers by Francesca Steele for The Independent, occasioned by Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Magic Mike. Wanna hear a bunch of gay comedians dish on the film? Here you go.

“I feel every cut, especially the ones that sever the balls.” Film director Terry Gilliam on editing, courtesy of Boing Boing.

There was a “rampage” involving about 100 workers, The Guardian reported June 8, at a Foxconn factory in southwestern China.

Feeling nostalgic about faxes? Consider moving to Japan.

Feeling nostalgic about aristocracy? Enjoy high fashion and Depeche Mode? Watch this filmlet, shot at Versailles, promoting designs from Dior. Not that being creative is haute couture and gilt palaces for all. Blind spots, false equivalences and generalizations have stymied the recent debate about dancers and poverty, at The Huffington Post and elsewhere, but this weigh-in from Candice Thompson for DIY Dancer is solid.

This is how promotions to étoile (“star”) go at the Paris Opéra Ballet.

“Thanks to a new, two-tiered system meant to separate the serious from the speculative, VIPs have been awarded either black cards or purple ones. Those holding the black have four extra hours to spend their money over two full days before Thursday’s public opening.” —From Linda Yablonsky’s June 16 post for Artforum about Art Basel 43.

There’s a pop-up Design Museum in Humboldt Park, Fridays and Saturdays through June 30. I like design and I live in Chicago, so this is good news.

Voyager 1 is far out.

Imagine San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge, or Seattle without the Space Needle, “and you have some idea of what it’s like when cities stop dreaming of gravity defiance on a grand scale.” That’s from Timothy Egan’s blog post “Miracles in the Clouds” for The New York Times, which is worth a read.

“There is a growing worry,” warns Times media columnist David Carr, “that the falling value and failing business models of many American newspapers could lead to a situation where moneyed interests buy papers and use them to prosecute a political and commercial agenda.” Carr also recently assessed The Huffington Post’s new weekly magazine for tablets.

“There’s simply no legitimate rationale,” argues Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, “for selling off a critically valuable public revenue stream to private interests.”

On June 10, I read this obituary for Canadian dancemaker Rachel Browne in The Winnipeg Free Press. On June 18, I read this obituary for Ballet San Jose dancer Tiffany Glenn. I’ve spent the last ten days working on my first obituary, a remembrance of ballet teacher Truman Finney for Dance Magazine. The result? A lot of thoughts about mortality.

Not sure what balletomanes mean when they talk about ballon? Watch Stuttgart Ballet principal Friedemann Vogel in Swan Lake’s Black Swan pas de deux. (Polina Semionova’s Odile ain’t bad, either.)

“man, this is the future. stuff gets crazy around 2:00,” tweeted technology reporter Chris Ziegler about this on June 11. Ziegler writes for the Verge, which on June 13 published Lessley Anderson’s giant feature article titled “Snuff: Murder and torture on the internet, and the people who watch it.”

Twelve artists were reportedly arrested and detained in Myanmar on May 24, during the Beyond Pressure performance-art festival in Mandalay.

Dance, technology and corporate public relations collided head-on in Norway recently. From this GeekWire story: “ ‘The words MICRO and SOFT don’t apply to my penis…or vagina,’ as the on-stage slide added, strangely.”

According to DESIGNTAXI, “social media is getting serious. Finally.” Semi-related: Boy, that @sweden Twitter account sure got interesting, didn’t it?

According to Randy Kennedy, writing for the Times, if you build, over time, a personal relationship with a work of art, that work becomes, in effect, unique to you.

According to Frank Rich, Barack Obama needs to go all-in on going negative if he wants to be reelected.

On June 19, Isaac Butler looked at critical consensus about plays in relation to the Stagegrade project.

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