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Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear from “the mother of contemporary African dance,” Germaine Acogny and Pina Bausch lead dancer Malou Airaudo! The two will be featured in an upcoming performance of epic proportions at Harris Theater, and they will be discussing this internationally-collaborative, historically-significant re-mounting of Pina Bausch’s choreography for Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on a powerful double bill with Acogny and Airaudo’s common ground[s]
Read on for more info.
The idea of ‘exchange’ is central in a groundbreaking two-part program coming to the Harris Theater this month. It will mark the first collaboration between the Pina Bausch Foundation (Germany), École des Sables (Senegal) and Sadler’s Wells (UK). Bausch’s (1975) The Rite of Spring is danced by a newly assembled company of dancers from African countries. common ground[s] is a new work created, performed and inspired by the lives of two remarkable women: Germaine Acogny, “the mother of contemporary African dance” and founder of École des Sables and Malou Airaudo who has performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works.
Chicago-based Red Clay Dance Artistic Director and CEO Vershawn Sanders-Ward (herself a graduate of École des Sables under Acogny’s tutelage) sits down with Acogny and Airaudo to discuss the many layers of exchange across dance vocabularies, countries, and eras.
November 30, 6:00 – 7:00 pm
In conjunction with an exhibition of works by painter Suzanne Jackson, an intergenerational group of artists have a conversation with the aim of exploring the latent potential of Black abstraction. More specifically, the conversation will examine the relation between abstraction and affect, how abstraction can teach us about the historical and political dimensions of existential longing, especially as it relates to Black subjectivity, and will probe the limits of the argument that at the hands of artists who happen to be Black, abstract idioms are inherently radical or liberatory. For this occasion, moderator Camille Bacon will be joined by artists Richard Hunt, Caroline Kent and Robert Burnier.
Free and open to all (remote and in-person options)
Register here:
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Thursday October 13
Lunchtime Program: The Path Toward Racial Equity
Arts Education Panel
Free Virtual Program 12:15 pm
Arts Club Board President and Chicago Tribune Contributing Columnist Laura Washington leads a conversation exploring the field of arts education as we navigate the road to a more just and equitable cultural sphere. Washington is joined by Nicole Upton of Ingenuity, a nonprofit founded to increase arts education access, quality, and equity in CPS; Charlique Rolle of Congo Square Theatre, a company whose education work is deeply embedded in their theater-making and extends into school and community partnerships; and Jim Duignan of the Stockyard Institute, which brings together art, social activism, and experimental pedagogy with deep roots in Chicago communities and neighborhoods.
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Wednesday September 28
Lunchtime Program: Art
Artist Tonika Lewis Johnson in Conversation with Janine Mileaf
Free Virtual Program 12:15 pm
Photographer and social justice artist Tonika Johnson speaks with Executive Director Janine Mileaf in the midst of multiple Chicago projects. Currently featured in the We, Women photography exhibition on the Bloomingdale Trail, Johnson’s Folded Map Project (formerly shown at the MCA) visually investigates disparities among “map twins”—Chicago residents who live on opposite ends of the same streets across the city’s racial and economic divides—and brings them together to have a conversation. In 2019, she was named one of Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago and is now serving her second year as appointed member of the Cultural Advisory Council of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events by the Chicago City Council. In her role as the National Public Housing Museum’s 2021 Artist as Instigator, she has worked on a project titled Inequity for Sale, which highlights the living history of Greater Englewood homes sold on Land Sale Contracts in the 50s and 60s.
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Saturday October 15
Open House Chicago
9:00 am – 5:00 pm
An annual tradition, The Arts Club’s galleries and permanent collection will be open to visitors during the Chicago Architecture Center’s Open House Chicago.
free and open to all
