Dance Companies
DanceCircus celebrates over 40 years of inspiring, challenging,and entertaining performances marked by artistry, clarity, elegance, and simplicity. Artistic Director Betty Salamun weaves together movement, words, and music to create dances of power and meaning for audiences of all ages. Working with award winning poets, musicians, and visual artists she creates interdisciplinary performances. These collaborative performances incorporate non-dancers, students, people in agencies and diverse performers connecting the creative process of DanceCircus with life and work in the community.
The Company’s purpose is to bring a high artistic level of dance to the community. The company accepts an elite few from The School of Dance West Ballet at auditions held in August each year for the upcoming season. Junior Apprentices are considered to be in training and therefore may or may not receive performing roles.
Members of DanceWest Ballet Company perform in The Nutcracker and a spring repertoire performance. Dancers also participate in the school concert presented every June, as well as attending the Regional Dance Association Festival held at one of the Mid States companies, usually in May. Company members participate in performances that are scheduled as opportunities for performances arise.
Fort Wayne Ballet feeds the spirit and sparks the imagination through the highest caliber of dance education, performance experiences, and community engagement.
As Indiana’s only professional ballet company, Fort Wayne Ballet provides our region with the highest caliber of dance education, performance experience, and community engagement. But more than that, we feed minds and souls.
Because dance is a lifelong passion, we meet people where they are, whether exploring movement for the first time, performing in the prime of life, or experiencing the magic from the audience.
For more than 50 years, Giordano Dance Chicago has brought the excitement of American jazz dance to audiences throughout the United States and in countries around the world — including Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, the Bahamas, Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. GDC serves as host performing company at Jazz Dance World Congress, which has been held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at the University at Buffalo, in Japan, Germany, Mexico, Costa Rica, Phoenix, Point Park University in Pittsburgh, and Chicago.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, under the artistic leadership of Glenn Edgerton, celebrates its 39th season in 2016 and 2017. Among the world’s top contemporary dance companies and a global cultural ambassador, Hubbard Street demonstrates fluency in a wide range of techniques and forms, and deep comprehension of abstract artistry and emotional nuance. The company is critically acclaimed for its exuberant and innovative repertoire, featuring works by master American and international choreographers. Hubbard Street’s artists hail from four countries and 12 U.S. states, and comprise a superlative ensemble of virtuosity and versatility. Since its founding by Lou Conte in 1977, Hubbard Street has grown through the establishment of multiple platforms. Each is dedicated to the support and advancement of dance as an art form, as a practice, and as a method for generating and sustaining communities of all kinds.
The Joel Hall Dancers express contemporary urban life through dance while educating, entertaining, and inspiring their audience. The signature dance style of JHD incorporates ballet, jazz, modern, funk, and “street dance” using contemporary jazz and house music to create an innovative and continuously evolving dance style that is appealing, relevant, and approachable for those frequently underserved by the arts.
The Joel Hall Dancers maintain a citywide, national, and international reputation, not only for their diversity and innovation, but also for their substantive sociological content and engaging aesthetic style. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Joel Hall, the Joel Hall Dancers have carried their unique yet universally accessible voice to venues that span the world.
Both JHD and its audience exhibit a rare diversified spectrum of cultural, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds.
Kanopy Dance Theatre, Inc. was organized to: “promote, encourage, and increase the public’s knowledge of and appreciation for the arts, including the art of dance; to coordinate and provide services to the arts to foster their growth and practice; and, to engage in activities relating to the aforementioned purposes.” (Articles of Incorporation, 1976)
Li Chiao-Ping Dance creates and presents concerts of contemporary postmodern dance, featuring highly physical, elegant and inventive works. LCPD was founded in 1990 and had its first concert in Madison in 1995. It is a resident company of the Overture Center for the Arts and works hard to spread the benefits of dance.
Reflecting and supporting the artistic vision of choreographer Li Chiao-Ping, Li Chiao-Ping Dance produces and presents original performance works, provides mentorship, education and training, offers opportunities for residencies and collaborations, and promotes tolerance and respect.
Limanya Drum and Dance Ensemble, under the direction of Mandjou Mara and Maya Kadakia, performs traditional music and dance from Guinea and Mali, West Africa. By incorporating song, dance, drum and theatre, Limanya’s performances are high-energy entertainment for all audiences. Perfect for schools and community events, Limanya’s shows create cultural connections and provide engaging educational experiences. Limanya is composed of a diverse group of dancers and drummers who share a love of African tradition, celebration, and culture.
Lucky Plush Productions is an ensemble dance-theater company based in Chicago, led by founder and Artistic Director Julia Rhoads. The company is committed to provoking and supporting an immediacy of presence—a palpable live-ness—shared by performers in real time with audiences. A unique hybrid of high-level dance and theater, Lucky Plush’s work is recognized for its layered choreography, nuanced dialogue, surprising humor, and socially relevant content.