Hedwig Dances choreographer and artistic director Jan Bartoszek has taken the company's 33 years' plus reputation as an interdisciplinary creative force to new heights in her latest collaborative work. Futura applies principles of the Bauhaus modernist art movement to dance. In this new work, Ms. Bartoszek explores how dance shapes, and is shaped by, society, art, architecture, and design in the 21st century. Futura focuses on space, particularly the ideas of confinement and freedom.
Futura premieres Thursday — Saturday, November 1-3, 2018 at 7:30 PM at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois as part of The Dance Center's 2018-19 dance series. Tickets are $24 - $30 and are available online at the Dance Center box office, by phone at 312-369-8330 and online at the Dance Center's revamped website, dance.colum.edu .
Additional events include a Post Performance Conversation on Thursday, November 1, immediately following the performance in the theater and a Pre Performance Talk: Friday, November 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School Recital Hall, 1312 Michigan Avenue. Hedwig Dances will host the BAUHAUS BASH, a closing night fundraiser at PianoForte, 1335 S. Michigan, on Saturday November 3rd, following the final performance. BAUHAUS BASH ticket prices begin at $175 and include a ticket to that evening's dance performance. Advance ticket purchase is required for this special event, and will be available for purchase after August 15 at EVENTBRITE
In Futura, Bartoszek applies core Bauhaus principles such as abstraction, playful thinking, and experimentation to the development of choreography and production elements, the use of 21st century media, and the ways in which performers interact with the audience. Through playful experimentation with her dancers and collaborators, Ms. Bartoszek builds a novel and richly theatrical movement playground threaded with an evocative musical score and a vibrant, colorful visual design.
The dance draws upon Ms. Bartoszek's recent research trip to Germany where she visited the three original sites of the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin. During her travels, she met with historians, researchers, educators, and presenters related to the living Bauhaus movement. Notably, her ongoing discussion with Torsten Blume of Bauhaus Dessau led to an invitation to Hedwig Dances to perform Futura in Germany at the September 2019 celebration of the Bauhaus Centenary in Dessau. Further, they invited Dean Denis Weil of IIT Institute of Design ( ID ) to engage a group of students and faculty to create a prologue for the dance. ID was founded 80 years ago in Chicago as the New Bauhaus by LÃˇszlÃ" Moholy-Nagy, one of the original Bauhaus masters.
In the creation of this prologue, Bartoszek and Torsten Blume of Bauhaus Dessau will work alongside ID faculty member Jeffrey Mau who will lead strategy and act as prologue project lead/producer, Jason White of Leviathan who will serve as creative director, and several ID students . Weil, Blume and Bartoszek all see this as an exciting way to deepen connections among these Bauhaus centers and explore the varied directions they have taken since their inceptions. They see the joint anniversary celebrations of 80 years for ID and 100 years for Bauhaus in Germany as the perfect vehicle for celebrating their roots and the international impact of Bauhaus design principles in the world.
From a press release
