About this project
Chicago's Leopold Group dance company will present "dancing," August 26-28 at the Fasseas White Box @ The Drucker Center.
Working to take the pretense and confusion out of modern dance and call it what it is - bodies, space, movement, communication - we will premiere two new works. Donations will help pay for the concrete necessities - costumes, lights, props - allowing us to take dance out of the studio and produce it fully on the stage.
TWO WORLD PREMIERES:
une elephante, supported by the Chicago Cultural Center's DanceBridge residency, is a duet accompanied by composer John Adams’ John’s Book of Alleged Dances. It explores ideas of duration and endurance, borrowing inspiration from portraiture. For dance, an art that is so defined by its ephemerality, une elephante works to challenge both the dancers and the audience to sit with a single (movement) idea for many minutes. Task-based choreography hopes to animate the still, painted relationship, finding emotion innate to the movement and the body/bodies themselves. The work’s title, borrowed from the inside of a bathroom stall (and gendered incorrectly), references the phrase “an elephant in the room.” When two bodies meet, within a picture frame or on the stage, what is left unsaid is often the loudest conversation in the room.
Lips of Their Fingers grows out of the historic tradition of pantomime as a part of dance. With a musical score by the Beastie Boys, Lips brings new meaning to the phrase "body language." Gradually peeling off layers of clothing, the cast of five pits Leopold's intensely physical movement against the most inanimate of objects to pose questions of embodied communication. Lips brings to light the questions that constantly plague modern dance - Is it possible to see the body separate from the dance? And more simply, what does it mean? - asking the audience to accept this repurposing of body parts as "they try to make lips of their fingers."
Tickets: $20 at Brown Paper Tickets (discounts available at SeeChicagoDance)
- Friday August 26 at 8pm, special guest Theater Un-Speak-Able
- Saturday August 27 at 8pm, special guest Winifred Haun & Dancers
- Sunday August 28 at 5pm, special guest CCB Danceproject
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Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on August 28.
Pledge $10 or more Pledge $10 or more
Your $10 donation will get you a LEOPOLD GROUP TEMPORARY TATTOO! We know you've always wanted one. (Wear it to a Leopold Group event and get a free ticket.)
Pledge $25 or more Pledge $25 or more
Your $25 donation will get you the above reward plus AN AUTOGRAPHED PHOTOGRAPH OF A LEOPOLD GROUP DANCER'S STAGE DEBUT. (Keep in mind most of us started training at age 3...)
Pledge $50 or more Pledge $50 or more
Your $50 donation will get you the above rewards plus A LEOPOLD GROUP DANCER WILL CREATE A UNIQUE DANCE MOVE IN YOUR HONOR. You will provide the inspiration and direction and we will provide the move. Videotaped and shared with the world, soon everyone will be "doing The Nicole."
Pledge $100 or more Pledge $100 or more
Your $100 donation will get you the above rewards plus A COMMISSIONED VIDEO-DANCE, CREATED AND DEDICATED IN YOUR HONOR. You chose the music, the costumes and the theme. We will do the dancing and editing and post a new work in your honor.
Project By
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Lizzie Leopold holds a BFA in dance from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Performance Studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, with thesis work at the intersection of choreography and commerce, specifically focusing on Le Sacre du Printemps. In fall 2011 she will begin work on an Interdisciplinary PhD in Theater and Drama Studies at Northwestern University, continuing to focus on the intersection of dance and business. Her work has been presented at the Congress on Research in Dance 2011 Special Topics Conference and the Cultural Studies Association Conference 2011.
Lizzie is the founder and Artistic Director for the Leopold Group, a Chicago based not-for-profit modern dance. In addition to choreographing, Leopold has danced with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
