The 2008 Dance Chicago festival, a three-week long dance smorgasbord featuring 130 companies performing over 300 works, kicked off last Friday with three opening weekend performances packed with a variety of dance genres and styles. Among the many dancers and dance companies hitting the stage at the Athenaeum Theatre were the World Champion Trinity Irish Dancers, Moscow Ballet, Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago and Chicago's Mexican Dance Ensemble, all coming together to create a diverse program......

We admit we’re fans of America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV (don’t hate), and with the mass popularity of shows like Dancing With the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, we know we’re not the only ones into it lately. (Please note, we draw the line at Your Mama Don't Dance, the creepy show where young adults bump n' grind with their parents.) But this weekend the poppin’ and lockin’ comes out of......

Select Media Fest 6 (warning: flashy link) kicks off tonight and runs through November 17. Public Media Institute’s celebration goes sci-fi, transforming their exhibition space into the CPS1 space colony. This year’s interstellar gatherings include a Saturday night film screening at the Hideout, the SANDWITCH zine’s Sunday night launch, and weeklong discussions of democracy at Loyola. A festival pass is $25 and no program costs more than $10. Dance Chicago continues through early December at......

Here’s what you missed while you were reading Harry Potter… and while Harry Potter got stinking rich: Grab your composition paper and get to work. The Chicago Chamber Musicians are searching for the next great chamber piece by a brilliant composer age 32 or younger. They’ll perform the winning entry at a CCM concert next June. Entries are due December 1, so check out the rules, then find your muse. Thirty years ago, the Sears......

Dance’s big guns prance around Chicago each spring, so we won’t have to. That’s for the best, since a few too many evenings on the couch and bar stool have robbed us of our best stage leaps. At least these folks haven’t lost a step: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to the Auditorium Theater this weekend, bringing new work and a few of their gorgeous, athletic favorites. Influences range from traditional Indian and West......

Chicagoist hasn’t really covered tap dance and, if you’re like most people, you probably haven’t thought much about the art form either. Chicago Tap Theatre is out to change all that. Since their 2003 incorporation they’ve spread the love for an often neglected American art form, performing in Dance Chicago and collaborating regularly with other Chicago tap companies and the French troupe Tapage. Tapage’s work has been described as Martha Graham meets Marcel Marceau. Chicago......

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago shares our midwestern stubbornness, treating this day forward as spring, windy snowy forecast be damned. So it is with their 2006 Spring Season, a celebration of past and present Hubbard Street artists and choreographers which opens tonight at the Harris Theater. Touring extensively to win friends across the modern dance world, limiting their Chicago engagements to build the hometown hype, HSDC’s contemporary work is provocative enough for the die hard fans......

Dance Chicago, the uber-showcase of rising dancers, choreographers and companies, continues through December 4 at venues throughout the city. The Athenaeum Theatre hosts three more weekends of eclectic fare, particularly with tonight’s Dance Everywhere program of Caribbean, Spanish, Turkish and Indian styles among others. There’s a professional Best of New Dances showcase and an American Idolesque Dance Slam, paring down 60 young acts over three nights into a “Best of” evening November 29. They’ll......

Aida Elton John lovers beware: it’s not what you think it is. This is Verdi, in Italian, dig? This is opera. Lyric Opera of Chicago Tickets: $128–$170 Available for Nov. 24 and Nov. 27 only Jazz Fusion The best bargain around: Dance Chicago 2004 celebrates its tenth anniversary with a month-long festival. This weekend’s program features the River North Chicago Dance Company. Athenaeum Theatre Tickets: $20 Nov. 26–Nov. 28 Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years......

Now in its 13th year, Dance For Life has raised over $2 million in the fight against HIV & AIDS by bringing together Chicago's premiere dance companies for an evening of performances. This event, which takes place on August 28, benefits the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Chicago House, Project VIDA and the Dance for Life Fund. The dance companies participating include Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago,......