Dancing With—Not Around—The Issues

Chicago-based dance company The Seldoms is steadily gaining a national profile, thanks in large part to artistic director Carrie Hanson. By skillfully applying dance's tools of abstraction to powerful effect—and illuminating nuances in the process, without being trite or preachy—Hanson and The Seldoms address current political, economic, and environmental issues with aplomb. And boy, can they dance! In this program, The Seldoms performs excerpts from the 2010 work Stupormarket (which tackles the economic crisis) and Exit Disclaimer: Science and Fiction Ahead, a new work on clean energy technologies that will premier this fall. Zachary Whittenburg, former dancer/choreographer and current dance and culture writer, then joins Hanson for a discussion about the development of these works and, more broadly, about how dance can uniquely address current issues.