trailerpilot

The Chicago Dancing Festival‘s marketing machine has been burning virtual rubber all over the internets this week, so there’s a good chance you’ve already heard that the free tickets to this year’s three performances will be released tomorrow. You won’t have much time to grab a seat for the Harris and MCA programs, though, so listen up:

Ticket reservations can be made by phone or in person beginning Friday, June 12 at noon at the Harris Theater box office, (312) 334-7777, and beginning at 10:00am at the MCA box office, (312) 397-4010. There’s a limit of two tickets per person per performance.  Saturday, August 22‘s performance at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, also free, does not require tickets.

The first Harris Program, August 18 at 7:30pm, is entitled New Voices, a mostly-accurate moniker. Oregon Ballet Theatre will dance Trey McIntyre, Richmond Ballet is performing a Jessica Lang, River North Chicago Dance Company and the Joffrey bring back Robert Battle’s Train and Edwaard Liang’s The Age of Innocence respectively, and Aszure Barton’s New York company will dance her Ah! Crudel.

Call the MCA box office to attend August 19‘s 6:00pm discussion Artists Up Close, a talk with some of the artists affiliated with the Festival; depending on who’s scheduled to attend, it could be fascinating.

August 20, also at 7:30pm, the Harris hosts Modern Masters. The pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s Arvo Pärt ballet After the Rain will be danced by NYCB stars Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall, and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will of course also appear, in his Jangle – Four Hungarian Dances. The Joffrey looked its best this season in Robbins’ In the Night, although Aspen Santa Fe Ballet could run away with the evening in William Forsythe’s Slingerland. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, as they did last weekend, will perform Nacho Duato’s Gnawa.

The Pritzker Pavilion show rewards packing an early dinner and staking out a spot. Chicago Human Rhythm Project featuring Step Afrika! will relieve Muntu of their program-opening duties, likely supplying a comparable amount of syncopated energy and good vibes. Houston Ballet, who haven’t been here since who-knows-when, will massacre a few pairs of pointe shoes for Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company will dance the piece Ulysses Dove made for it in 1986, Vespers. Lubovitch’s company will preview Coltrane’s Favorite Things, Linda Denise Evans from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs Ailey’s solo-as-religious-experience Cry, and Hee Seo and Cory Stearns from ABT will dance Le Corsaire. Interestingly, the program also includes Les Ballets Grandiva, who will presumably projectile-radiate patriotism en travesti in Marcus Galante’s Star Spangled Ballerina.

All in all, this year’s roster is most certainly a “breakout,” as Sid Smith put it in last week’s Tribune. If you want to get in on the Harris action, bring your phone to lunch — those tickets will be gone by sundown.