Hedwig Dances, the Chicago-based contemporary dance company, presents its 40th Anniversary Gala + Performance on Friday, June 20th at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. This special, milestone fundraising Gala honors 40 years of the company’s legacy and impact in Chicago dance history.
The evening begins at 6pm with a pre-performance wine reception. A welcome at 6:30pm by Artistic Director Jan Bartoszek is followed by a performance of her first choreographed pieces. The keynote address, delivered by Paul Sacaridiz, Executive Director of The Ragdale Foundation, is to follow and precedes the dinner buffet. The dinner buffet includes select soul warming fare, Mexican cuisine, and Japanese confection menu items from the MCA’s in-house restaurant and bar, Marisol.
A silent auction will be held once the evening begins, as well as a paddle raise that will commence at 8:15pm. All proceeds go towards fundraising efforts to support the company’s programming, performances and dancers, as well as their upcoming tour of META | MOR | PHOS as part of the Bauhausfest 2025 in Dessau, and performances in Leipzig and Magdeburg, Germany.
The performance will be staged in the theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art, accessible via the Griffin Entrance on the north corner of the museum at Pearson Street and Mies van der Rohe Way.
The 40th anniversary performance features four dances which will be interspersed with Video Sections reflecting Hedwig Dances aesthetics and achievements over the past 40 years.
Since Time Began, an excerpt from “Dances of Many Lands I” (1981) is an ode to dance. For this production, Hedwig company members collaborated with Bartoszek to re-imagine the work.
Lunette, an excerpt from “Sweet Baby, Baby Suite” (1993) portrays an intimate night scene between a mother and child framed by a moving window. This vignette conveys the overwhelming joys and fears of early motherhood.
After the Fall, Desire (1999) is a contemporary reflection on the biblical first couple Adam and Eve and the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box. The dancers shift from sympathetic co-dependents to feral challengers, enacting the essence of human duality. With powerful lifts that require equal parts control and abandon, the path of this dance offers only brief glimpses of unison and unexpected reversals of partnering.
Point, Line, Plane an excerpt from Futura (2018) is a colorful exploration of how dance shapes and is shaped by architecture and design. Utilizing a set of 8-foot-long red poles, the dancers create a moving spectacle of bold geometry and rich theatrical movement that probes Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky’s ideas of “Point, Line and Plane.”
Individual tickets for Hedwig Dances’ 40th Anniversary Gala & Performance are priced at $300 and include the pre-show reception, performance and buffet dinner/bar access; performance only tickets are available at $85 and include the pre-performance reception and a glass of wine. Tickets are on sale now at bit.ly/HD40-GALA or via HedwigDances.com.
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