Dance in the Parks

Description

Dance in the Parks (DIP) is a professional dance company that produces dance concerts specifically for temporary, outdoor venues such as public parks. DIP aims to lower financial, geographic, and cultural barriers to concert dance. We believe the quality of live performance is what creates the initial curiosity that leads to becoming a dance lover, and there is no better way to reach audiences than in their own neighborhood spaces.

Our concerts present works in a broad spectrum of dance styles, themes, and moods created by industry professionals from diverse backgrounds and voices. Pieces have ranged from thought-provoking works of modern dance focused on what community and cooperation look like to contemporary dance works purely for showing off amazing athletes in motion to silly balletic romps about blind-dates-gone-wrong.

DIP's production set-up is stripped down to a stage, a sound system, and some changing tents. The dance is the main show, but the off-stage is open for observation, too. Theater rules don't apply, so kids can dance along, teens can check their phones, and everyone is welcome to kick their shoes off and stick their toes in the grass while they experience live dance on their home turf.

Work Sample

https://vimeo.com/485179048/b9bab2ba70 - 2019 Reel clips (our last outdoor season pre-covid). Digital 2020 season can be watched at danceintheparks.org

Works included:
Grassy - choreography by Becca Lemme
Surface Area - choreography by Ela Olarte
Love du Jour - choreography by Todd Rhoades
Trixie - choreography by Craig V. Miller
How Did I Get Here? - choreography by Paige Fraser
Like a Fish Pulled from Violet Water - choreography by Paige Cunningham Caldarella
Our Town - choreography by Joshua Blake Carter

Dancers:
Stephanie Cihlar, Marco Clemente, Katy Fedrigon, Sydney Foley, Irina Goldman, Jesse Hoisington, Craig V. Miller, Abby Morris, Natalie Tursi,

The submitted work sample shows clips of the 8 works on our 2019 season (our most-recent outdoor season). Thought he clips are only a minute-long, they show the variety of one of our performances, the skill level of our performers, and the bare-bones, up-close-and-personal nature of our performance set-up. Our entire 2020 digital season can be watched at danceintheparks.org

History

Dance in the Parks' mission is to bring free, professional dance performances to new audiences in the most accessible of venues - neighborhood parks. We hope to expose new dance audiences to the art form in a relaxed, casual atmosphere, and build a bridge for new audiences toward future dance experiences.

Dance in the Parks (DIP) aims to lower barriers to concert dance in neighborhoods underserved by professional dance organizations. DIP hires professional choreographers and dancers currently working in the Chicago dance community to create a concert of works of different moods, themes, and dance styles to demonstrate the scope of professional concert-dance. Our performances are outdoors, in shared public spaces, on temporary stages which enable a more casual interaction with the performance than experiences in formal theater settings. Our partnership with Chicago Park District's Night Out in the Parks initiative has allowed us to keep our performances free of charge to all audiences.

In its 11 outdoor performance seasons, DIP has reached over 12,000 audience members through over 100 performances in 42 parks throughout 35 Chicago neighborhoods. Our 12th season moved to a digital format due to COVID, but we produced free online dance performances "“ recorded in the parks. Our hope is to reach more of Illinois' dance audiences.

Artistic Vision

The vision for every DIP season is to create a high-quality and easily-accessible (financially, geographically, culturally) production showcasing works by industry professionals from diverse backgrounds, with unique voices, in a variety of dance styles. Themes, styles, music choices, and mood are as different piece to piece as the choreographers who create them. Works have ranged from through-provoking works about the meaning of community and cooperation to purely entertaining works about a blind date gone wrong to purely abstract works of dance for dance's sake. Though our works aren't specifically aimed for children, all performances are family-friendly.

We aim to offer a small peek into the huge scope of options in the contemporary dance world in hopes that at least one piece will pique audience's interest enough to pursue future concert dance experiences. Our hope is that our novel and casual performance venues encourage audiences to interact with the artform in a more personal way "without the etiquette and formality of traditional theater venues" and get excited to seek future dance experiences.

Programs for Specific Audience(s) Expertise

DIP can offer dance masterclasses and workshops with intermediate to advanced students and professional dancers. These can be tailored to age and ability in a variety of dance styles. Upper-level dancers can learn repertory from DIP's show. DIP company dancers and artistic staff who teach have between 5-20 years of in-studio teaching experience in different dance styles and for different age/development groups.