Modern dance pioneer and Dance Center founder Shirley Mordine dies at 89

Chicago Tribune

02-05-2025

Dancer, choreographer and dance educator Shirley Mordine has died. Her five-decade career in Chicago included founding the dance department at Columbia College Chicago and originating the college's revered Dance Presenting Series. A prolific performer and choreographer, Mordine also served as artistic director of Mordine and Company Dance Theater from 1969 to 2019.
Mordine died early Friday from complications of Alzheimer's disease, according to her daughter Ann Mordine. She was 89.
Born Shirley Ann Macaulay on Jan. 8, 1936, Mordine grew up in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California. She attended Fremont High School there and received dance training from the San Francisco Ballet School. Mordine also studied with noted choreographers Anna Halprin and Welland Lathrop, who were key influences in forming Mordine's idiosyncratic, theatrical style of modern dance.
Mordine graduated from Mills College in 1958, where drama professor Arch Lauterer deepened her interest in theater. It was a boom time for modern dance on the West Coast. Several of Mordine's contemporaries moved to New York to pioneer a burgeoning postmodern movement (Simone Forti, Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer among them), but Mordine initially stayed in the Bay Area, piecing together freelance performance and teaching work. She met Glenn Mordine in an Oakland bar while listening to Dave Brubeck. The couple married and quickly had three children, Alex, Ann and Michael, settling in Chicago's northern suburbs in 1967. Mordine lived in Evanston for decades and was a longtime member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. She often tapped into Chicago's architecture and culture as sources of inspiration.
'She loved Chicago,' said Ann Mordine. 'She loved the grittiness and tapped into that as a resource.'
Mordine picked up teaching gigs at Hull-House and Urban Gateways. She was an artist-in-residence at Evanston Township High School and took a part-time job teaching dance in the theater department at Columbia College Chicago. In 1969, Mordine simultaneously launched The Dance Troupe (later called Mordine & Company Dance Theater) and a new dance department at Columbia College. She would chair that department for 30 years.
'It is impossible to fully measure the profound and lasting impact Shirley has had on the Chicago dance community,' said Chicago Dance History Project executive director Michael McStraw, a dancer and managing director for Mordine & Company Dance Theater. 'What can be measured, however, is the transformation she elicited in me as a dancer, arts administrator and admirer of her incomparable artistry and body of work.'
In 1972, Mordine spearheaded the formation of the Dance Center Columbia College to house the school's dance department. By the late 1990s, the Dance Center had outgrown its landmark building on Sheridan Road in Uptown, moving to the heart of Columbia's South Loop campus in 2000. In 1974, Mordine originated the Dance Presenting Series, which brought prestigious contemporary dance companies and artists to Chicago, often for the first time. In 1991, Mordine produced the first Dance Africa Chicago, which ran for well over a decade and has periodically been revived by other organizations.
To date, Dance Center Columbia College remains the city's only arts presenter dedicated exclusively to dance.
During and after her time at Columbia College, Mordine's insatiable curiosity kept her creating dances for Mordine & Company, which made regular appearances on the Dance Presenting Series.
'I always think of making dances in terms of what I observe in the world,' she said in 2017. ''Every dance should be new, strange and beautiful.' I don't remember who told me that, but I like it.'
Mordine & Company Dance Theater operated as a repertory company for 50 years — earning credit as the Midwest's longest-running modern dance company. Mordine relocated to California in 2021. Former dancer and longtime board president Philip Martini dissolved the company in 2023, handing Mordine's extensive archive to the Newberry Library. A network of former dancers, led by longtime company member Danielle Gilmore, remounts select works for various companies and festivals.
'There are so many of us that can say with conviction that we genuinely owe Shirley for what we became,' said Martini. 'From the few companies that used gymnasiums and storefronts to stage their work, we now have a vital community that extends far beyond the borders of this state and the Midwest that can trace its beginnings back to Shirley.'
Indeed, generations of 'Mo & Co' alums form the fabric of Chicago's contemporary dance scene. Several still teach at the Dance Center. Among the qualities they hope to impart to students today are Mordine's uncompromising standards and tenacity.
'Shirley surrounded herself with visionary artists, collaborators and dancers who shared her passion for dance and theater,' said Pamela McNeil, who joined Mordine & Company in 1992 and recently retired from the Dance Center. 'She was uncompromising when it came to the work, never settling — always pushing for more.'
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Shirley Mordine watches her dancers rehearse for an upcoming 50th season celebration at Links Hall on April 24, 2019, at Indian Boundary Cultural Center in Chicago. Mordine & Company Dance Theater was founded in 1969. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune)
As an observer of her choreography for more than three decades, former Tribune dance critic Laura Molzahn said her eager, restless mind stood out.
'She often seemed to rethink and revise her works,' said Molzahn. 'And she was always looking for the source of the next dance, whether it was a novel or a new aspect of current culture or an abstraction or the way that modern dance might intersect with classical Indian forms. Shirley was tough, in a way most women choreographers had to be to get by.'
'She wasn't just a dancer,' said Ann Mordine. 'She did something big and lasting, contributing to dance, to Chicago and to other people's lives. I'd like her to be remembered in that way. She worked hard and left something meaningful behind.'
Mordine is survived by her former husband, Glenn Mordine, and their three children, Alex, Ann and Michael.