Dance for Life announces lineup for 2025, its biggest in decades
The list of Chicago-area dance companies participating this summer includes the Chicago Tap All-Stars, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Giordano Dance Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet, Movement Revolution Dance Crew, South Chicago Dance Theatre, Trinity Irish Dance Company and Visceral Dance Chicago, plus a first-time appearance for Aerial Dance Chicago. Choreographer Jonathan Alsberry, who contributed in 2024, will return to create the performance's finale, a work including dancers from across the Chicago area.
Dance for Life 2025 co-chairs are Jamin and Ekua McGinnis.
This will be the 34th annual fundraiser for the nonprofit Chicago Dance Health Fund, and according to an announcement Thursday, it will have the largest lineup since 1993. More information about the works the companies are performing will be announced in June.
Dance for Life was launched in 1992 to raise money to support Chicago-area dancers in response to the AIDS crisis. In the years since, it formed as a nonprofit and expanded its mission to provide financial support for preventive health care and medical needs for members of Chicago's professional dance community.
6 p.m. at The Auditorium, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive, followed by an After Party Gala at Venue SIX10, 610 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets ($45-$125 for the performance only, $500 for performance and gala) go on sale June 3 at 312-341-2300 and auditoriumtheatre.org. A presale runs May 13 to June 3 with $125 tickets available for $75; use code DFLPRESALE.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
No Script, No Problem. The Improvised Shakespeare Company Turns 20
Founded in Chicago in 2005, The Improvised Shakespeare Company regularly appears at The Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles and around the world. From left, troupe members Ross Bryant, Brendan Dowling, creator Blaine Swen, Randall Harr and Joey Bland. Jill Petracek At The Ford, in fair L.A., one recent night, Six players wrought a show to wild delight. In Elizabethan couplet, sharp and true, They spun a play from one small, shouted cue. Such is the magic, rare for all to see, Of The Improvised Shakespeare Company. Founded in aught-five, they roam far and near, Oft gracing Largo's stage to crowd's loud cheer. (Sir Patrick Stewart once did join their game; I saw it, aye, and can attest the same.) Jason Alexander, center, joined the Improvised Shakespeare Company on stage at The Ford in Los Angeles on Saturday, August 9, 2025. The company has a rotating cast that includes improv veteran Thomas Middleditch and celebrity guest stars, including Sir Patrick Stewart. Andrew Levy Yet Ford, that jewel-box Bowl of leafy frame, Did lift their craft to heights of nobler fame. With twelve hundred seats—moon, trees and uplights green, As though wood-nymphs designed the sylvan scene, It stands among the finest spots in town— My first time there, and worthy of renown. Blaine Swen, troupe founder, the Duke of Verona played; A wit with Ph.D., in verses well-arrayed. Alongside him, Ross Bryant's rhymes took flight, Turning 'Shark Tank' to scenes in Shakespeare's light. Joey Bland, Randall Harr, Brendan Dowling, too, Did craft a world from that single audience cue. The Company, with Jason Alexander, at The Ford this past weekend in Los Angeles. Swen, at center standing, opens each show with the only scripted lines of the night: assuring audiences that everything they are about to see is made up on the spot. 'If you were wondering where the story is going,' he says, 'so are we.' Andrew Levy That cue? 'Red stockings,' called out too fast— A peril for some, yet they made it last. From such slight cloth they cut a comic feast: Sour-milk-drinking Paduans, automatons released, Lusty asides, courtesan jests that zing, And 'Pewter Peter,' a most mechanical thing. Lo-Jason Alexander, guest star ever-spry, Appeared as 'Truncle Dimple,' to steal the eye. The Improvised Shakespeare Company may pretend to invent each performance line by line, but the shows come out of rigorous rehearsals in which troupe members are quizzed on Shakespearean words and witticisms. Jill Petracek It all seems impossible—these wits, so bright— Yet certain tropes they wield to shape the night: From courtship to bloodshed, bawdy joy between, A song-and-dance to crown the comic scene. They binge the Bard, scan word lists odd and old, Till nimble tongues spew iambs of gold. Though never penned, the structure swiftly grew: A wedding, fights and callbacks — Peter, too. Mistakes embraced, names mangled mid-debate, Yet every jest recalled, however late. Two hours fled like minutes—how nights do fly When minds so quick let no fair moment die. In this bot age, their art stands human-pure: They weave, recall and spin with skill secure. So if they grace your town, make haste to see, The marvels of this mirthful Company.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
She turned herself into an 'LA 10.' It's part of a growing 'unrecognizable makeup' trend.
She's an 'Los Angeles 10' but a 'Chicago 7.' A 'New York 9' but a "Miami 5." That might be meaningless at first glance, but these taglines are part of a growing 'unrecognizable makeup' trend on TikTok, in which makeup looks are so transformative that they make the wearer appear to be an entirely different person. TikTok creator @lottiestarrs has been spearheading the "LA 10" trend. In a video with nearly 60 million views, she goes from pink-haired and barefaced to a blonde bombshell, transforming downturned eyes into a smoky, upturned look with a heart-shaped lip. She 'got bored one night,' and in another video with 22 million views, turned herself into an 'LA 10' — not only looking unrecognizable from the previous clip, but completely different from her other "unrecognizable makeup' looks. Praise flooded her comments section: 'Girl this is talent… art even,' one user wrote. 'I stood and applauded,' quipped another. Other creators hopped on the trend, including Marylyn Chukwuekezie, a beauty content creator based in Nigeria. She recreated celebrity makeup looks — from SZA to Sabrina Carpenter (her favorite look so far) — and used wigs, contour, blush and eye makeup to turn herself into an "LA 10." Debates around makeup and 'undetectable plastic surgery' have already been popping up on social media. Last year, Lindsay Lohan and Christina Aguilera shocked fans with fresh looks. Now, makeup is entering the conversation. In July, 'Bridgerton' Netflix star Charithra Chandran stole Andrew Garfield's spotlight at Wimbledon after a video of her seated behind him went viral. But the replies just as quickly turned sour when the internet began picking apart Chandran's appearance, posting side-by-side photos of her with and without makeup, calling her "mid" and accusing her of having filler and plastic surgery. Some people are upset about these unrecognizable looks. However, others argue that it's all in good fun and we shouldn't take everything on the internet quite so seriously. Makeup is an 'enhancement' and 'art' The problematic joke, 'Take her swimming on the first date,' has been around for nearly a decade — it's tossed around by men who claim that seeing a woman without makeup early on is the only way to avoid getting 'bamboozled' into dating someone unattractive. In 2021, actress Sydney Sweeney — who has often been praised for her looks (and is recently the subject of heated debates over her American Eagle ad) — cried on Instagram Live while trending on X (then, Twitter) for 'being ugly." In October 2024, Sweeney was photographed on set with a brunette curly wig, baggy clothing and no apparent makeup. Then, she was featured in an X thread with 11 million views titled 'Catfish of the Year,' comparing a photo of her on a red carpet to candid paparazzi shots. Another user came to her defense: ''Sydney Sweeney is a catfish' sir if you cannot recognize that a blonde woman does not wake up with jet black eyelashes and face glitter then you might be too stupid to reach.' Many women have pushed back against criticism of makeup, arguing that makeup is 'art' and not 'a form of lying.' "A beautiful woman, we've been taught, is beautiful naturally with no visible effort on her part," Leora Tanenbaum, author of "Sexy Selfie Nation," previously told USA TODAY. "But we all know that it's impossible to conform to our societal beauty ideals with no effort." Chukwuekezie likes the way she looks without makeup, but wearing it gives her a confidence boost. 'I don't feel less pretty when I'm not wearing makeup, but I actually do feel more pretty when I'm wearing makeup,' she says. 'It doesn't affect the way I see myself; it's like an enhancement. It's a form of art for me, and I just love doing makeup.' When criticism goes too far Chukwuekezie says people upset about a lighthearted makeup trend are taking it a step too far. "Makeup does enhance your features, but it doesn't change your features," she says. "It still doesn't mean that the person wearing makeup is wearing makeup because she feels ugly." Even amid praise in her comment sections, she admits that there are always people saying, "You're not doing it right." Others have speculated that she is using makeup to emulate Eurocentric features. "I don't even understand that at all," she says. "I have to be like, 'Calm down.'" "I had a comment that was, 'LA 10 girls are skinny, white and blonde or brunette,'" she continues. "I'm like, sorry, I don't think this has anything to do with the makeup." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Unrecognizable makeup' is taking with 'LA 10' trend
Atlantic
8 hours ago
- Atlantic
Israel and Gaza, Held Hostage by Fundamentalism
Apart from mourning the attack on the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, which felt like it happened while U2 was onstage at Sphere Las Vegas, I have generally tried to stay out of the politics of the Middle East … this was not humility, more uncertainty in the face of obvious complexity. In recent months, I have written about the war in Gaza in The Atlantic and spoken about it in The Observer, but I circled the subject. As a co-founder of the ONE Campaign, which tackles AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, I felt my experience should be focused on the catastrophes facing that work and that part of the world. The hemorrhaging of human life in Sudan or Ethiopia hardly makes the news. The civil war in Sudan alone is beyond comprehension, leaving 150,000 dead and 2 million people facing famine And that was before the dismantling of USAID in March and the gutting of PEPFAR, lifesaving programs for the poorest of the poor that ONE has fought for decades to protect. Those cuts will likely lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children over the next few years. But there is no hierarchy to such things. The images of starving children in the Gaza Strip brought me back to a working trip that my wife, Ali, and I made 40 years ago next month to a food station in Ethiopia following U2's participation in Live Aid 1985, amid another man-made famine. To witness chronic malnutrition up close would make it personal for any family, especially as it affects children. When the loss of noncombatant life en masse appears so calculated—especially the deaths of children—then evil is not a hyperbolic adjective. In the sacred text of Jew, Christian, and Muslim, it is an evil that must be resisted. The rape, murder, and abduction of Israelis at the Nova music festival and elsewhere in southern Israel was evil. On the awful Saturday night and Sunday morning of October 7–8, I wasn't thinking about politics. Onstage in the Nevada desert, I just couldn't help but express the pain everyone in the room was feeling and is still feeling for other music lovers and fans like us—hiding under a stage in Kibbutz Re'im then butchered to set a diabolical trap for Israel and to get a war going that might just redraw the map from the river to the sea. Hamas's leadership was willing to gamble with the lives of 2 million Palestinians. It wanted to sow the seeds for a global intifada of the sort that U2 had glimpsed at work in Paris during the Bataclan attack in 2015, but it could succeed only if Israel's leaders fell into the trap that Hamas set for them. Yahya Sinwar didn't mind if he lost the battle or even the war if he could destroy Israel as a moral as well as an economic force. Over the months that followed, as Israel's revenge for the Hamas attack appeared more and more disproportionate and disinterested in the equally innocent civilian lives in Gaza … I felt as nauseous as anyone, but reminded myself that Hamas had deliberately positioned itself under civilian targets, having tunneled its way from school to mosque to hospital. When did a just war to defend the country turn into an unjust land grab? I hoped Israel would return to reason. I was making excuses for a people seared and shaped by the experience of Holocaust, who understood the threat of extermination not simply as a fear but as a fact. I reread Hamas's charter of 1988; it's an evil read. (Article Seven!) But I also understood that Hamas is not the Palestinian people. Palestinians have for decades endured and continue to endure marginalization, oppression, occupation, and the systematic stealing of the land that is rightfully theirs. Given our own historic experience of oppression and occupation in Ireland, it's little wonder so many here have campaigned for decades for justice for the Palestinian people. We know Hamas is using starvation as a weapon in the war, but now so too is Israel, and I feel revulsion for that moral failure. The government of Israel is not the nation of Israel, but the government of Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, deserves our categorical and unequivocal condemnation. There is no justification for the brutality he and his far-right government have inflicted on the Palestinian people, in Gaza or in the West Bank. And not just since October 7; well before it too—though the level of depravity and lawlessness we are seeing now feels like uncharted territory. Curiously, those who say these reports are not true are not demanding access to Gaza for journalists, and they seem deaf to the revealing rhetoric. Examples that sharpen my pen include: Israel's heritage minister claiming that the government 'is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out'; its defense minister and security minister arguing that no aid should be let into the territory; its finance minister vowing that 'not even a grain of wheat will enter the Strip.' And now Netanyahu has announced a military takeover of Gaza City, which most informed commentators understand as a euphemism for the colonization of Gaza. We know the rest of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are next. What century are we in? Is the world not done with this far, far-right thinking? We know where it ends … world war, millenarianism … Might the world deserve to know where this once promising, bright-minded, flawed, but only democratic nation in the region, is headed unless there is a dramatic change of course? Is what was once an oasis of innovation and freethinking now in hock to a fundamentalism as blunt as a machete? Are Israelis really ready to let Benjamin Netanyahu do to Israel what its enemies failed to achieve over the past 77 years, and disappear it from membership in a community of nations built around even a flawed decency? As someone who has long believed in Israel's right to exist and supported a two-state solution, I want to make clear to anyone who cares to listen our band's condemnation of Netanyahu's immoral actions and to join all who have called for a cessation of hostilities on both sides. If you will not listen to Irish voices, then please, please, please stop and listen to Jewish ones—from the high-mindedness of Rabbi Sharon Brous, to the tearful comedy of the Grody-Patinkin family—who fear the damage to Judaism, as well as to Israel's neighbors. Listen to the more than 100,000 Israelis who protested in Tel Aviv this week for an end to the war. Listen to the hundreds of retired Israeli generals and intelligence leaders who say that Netanyahu has gone too far. Our band stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine who truly seek a path to peace and coexistence with Israel and with their rightful and legitimate demand for statehood. We stand in solidarity with the remaining Israeli hostages and plead that someone rational negotiate their release—maybe someone like the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, whom a former head of the Mossad, Efraim Halevy, described as 'probably the most sane and the most qualified person' to lead the Palestinians Our band is pledged to contribute our support by donating to Medical Aid for Palestinians. We urge Israelis, the majority of whom did not vote for Netanyahu, to demand unfettered access by professionals to deliver the crucial care needed throughout Gaza and the West Bank that they best know how to distribute, and to let enough trucks through. It will take more than 100 trucks a day to seriously address the need—more like 600 —but the flooding of humanitarian aid will also undercut the black marketeering that has benefited Hamas. Wiser heads than mine will have a view of how best to accomplish this, but surely the hostages and Gazans alike deserve a different approach—and quick.
