Akram Khan’s “Jungle Book reimagined”/Photo: Ambra Vernuccio
S45 (SITE/less) October 19-22 Zephyr Dance founder Michelle Kranicke and her husband and creative partner, architect David Sundry, have built a singular outpost for performance wedged between the Kennedy and the Metra tracks. SITE/less is more than a venue; it’s a partner in the dances that take place between its brick and concrete walls. In October, the wedge-shaped space will converse with Merce Cunningham’s “Suite for Five”—restaged by former Cunningham company dancer Paige Cunningham-Caldarella—and a first-ever deconstruction and response to the piece by five award-winning choreographers working across disciplines, including modern, vogueing and butoh.
Funk in Futurism (Auditorium Theatre) November 3 With all-female leadership at the creative and executive levels and a nearly complete capital campaign for construction of a Washington Park-based dance center, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater is on a roll. What better time to see Chicago’s longstanding modern and contemporary African American company than in their big annual concert? Especially when it includes a new Afrofuturist piece set to Parliament-Funkadelic and Prince, with live music by trumpeter Sam Thousand—assuredly the most fun on a Chicago stage this fall.
Jungle Book reimagined (Harris Theater) November 9-11 Chicago has gotten acquainted with Akram Khan’s thrilling choreography: Last year with the post-apocalyptic, twilight sleep nightmare “Creature” and in 2019 with his unforgettably spine-tingling interpretation of “Giselle,” both danced by the English National Ballet. This year Khan brings his own kathak-contemporary company to the Loop, with a revisioning of the Rudyard Kipling story for our age of climate-driven migration. In Khan’s version, the jungle has a lesson for humanity and Mowgli will help us hear it.
