Chicago’s Ballet Scene: A Tapestry of Tradition and Innovation
Chicago, a city celebrated for its dynamic arts scene, boasts an array of ballet companies that each bring a unique flair and richness to the city’s cultural tapestry.
The Joffrey Ballet: A Fusion of Classic and Contemporary
Leading Chicago’s ballet community is The Joffrey Ballet, a company with a diverse repertoire, equally known for its classical elegance and its modern edge. The Joffrey Ballet’s September to May season at the Civic Opera House (previously the Lyric Opera House) presents the classics, from Giselle to Swan Lake, and creatively interprets modern works, like Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain. The company’s annual, holiday production of ‘The Nutcracker’, set at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair since 2016, has become a tradition. In 1987, the company made history in the world of dance by recreating, with the approval of Igor Stravinsky’s estate, the original choreography of The Rite of Spring, which had been lost for almost 70 years. The work of the dance historians Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer led to the Joffrey becoming the company entrusted with the responsibility for this iconic performance. Its headquarters at Joffrey Tower, 10 East Randolph Street in the centre of downtown, include extensive educational programmes, community outreach and artistic collaborations.
Ballet Chicago: Shaping the Future of Dance
Ballet Chicago trains classical dancers in institutional dance settings to maximise their chances of professional employment. The organization is committed to mentoring new dancers and artists while promoting professional development, scholarship opportunities, and performance experiences. Its summer programming is its busiest time of year, with an audition tour, two-week intensive, and week-long camps with different themes for different levels of instruction. 17 N State St Ballet Chicago forms both talented dancers and teaches the valuable life skills that young ballet dancers can cherish for life.
Chicago Repertory Ballet
Chicago Repertory Ballet is an incubator of inventiveness, in which creative choreography intersects with powerful storytelling. The company strives to keep its work relevant to contemporary experiences by transcending romantic, heteronormative and stale stories of the past. Its repertoire often explores human experiences through the lens of isolation and resilience. A Symphony for Hope (2020) is an example of the company’s narrative craft. Inspired by Covid isolation, this piece portrays a reflection, perhaps of all of us, and tells a story of surviving loneliness. The company is committed to making ballet relevant to a through its accessibility.
Together, these institutions weave a diverse and vibrant ballet scene in Chicago, offering a rich array of performances that cater to purists and modernists alike, thus enriching the city’s cultural heritage.
New York City Ballet
The New York City Ballet brings a wealth of genius and treasures to Chicago this week. One of the world’s premier companies, it boasts a repertoire that includes 115 ballets created under George Balanchine and continues to balance adherence to traditional standards of classical technique with an incubator for modern choreographic talent.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Chicago gets in on the action as well via The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a hotbed of cultural expression and accessibility, which pioneers a modern dance style influenced by ballet techniques and African dance. The company’s expressive, story-filled live shows celebrate the African American experience through vibrant, passionate artistry.
American Ballet Theatre
From the classics to the contemporary, the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) will demonstrate its versatility like never before, as it journeys to Chicago with a dauntingly broad repertoire. ABT is one of the world’s great classical ballet companies, offering season after season of technical mastery, theatrical narrative and artistic excellence.
Over the course of the season, for example, Chicago’s theatres will serve as gateways to ecstatic, eloquent worlds of feeling, witness, and expression, as distinguished companies provide vehicles for audiences to experience enchanted flights, often to places far off, to worlds beyond their own, carried on the wings of dance.