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CONCERT DANCE INC.
Founded in 1981, Concert Dance Inc. (CDI) is the official contemporary dance company and an artist-
in-residence at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. CDI creates and presents contemporary works
that evolve from a choreographic collective under the artistic direction of Emmy Award–nominated
choreographer Venetia Stifler, often using live music, video, and other media in its performances.
This approach to dance and choreography drives the company’s artistic vision and sets an example
of artistic collaboration. CDI’s rich performance history over more than three decades is a testament
to its presentation and promotion of American contemporary dance at the local, state, national, and
international levels. The company toured to Edinburgh in 1999 and performed as part of the Edin-
burgh Fringe Festival, where it was highlighted as one of the “best of the fest.” In 2003 Stifler was
commissioned by the American Composer’s Forum to collaborate with a composer in the creation of
a new work; that same year, Ravinia commissioned Stifler to create
Aftermath: The Dance
to music by
renowned composer Ned Rorem. This commission marked the beginning of an ongoing relationship
between CDI and Ravinia in the creation and premieres of new dances. For 2009, CDI was com-
missioned by Ravinia for a new dance that was presented as part of its yearlong Abraham Lincoln
Bicentennial Celebration:
The Better Angels of Our Nature
featuring the music of Lawrence Dillon with
spoken word borrowed from Lincoln’s personal letters. The Lincoln Trio performed the music live
and Ravinia president and CEO Welz Kauffman narrated. CDI’s 30th anniversary celebration in 2011
featured a performance retrospective of the dances commissioned by Ravinia along with the premiere
of
A Soul Enlightened
, a choreography to the music of Franz Liszt that featured live accompaniment
by mezzo-soprano Tracy Watson and pianist Mikhail Yanovitsky. International projects have been and
continue to be an important part of CDI’s focus. In 2006 the company traveled to the Prague Interna-
tional Dance Festival for several performances at the weeklong dance festival, which brought together
dance companies, educators, and dance artists from around the globe. In May 2009, CDI was awarded
grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund
and the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Program of the Illinois Arts Council to travel to Chi-
na as part of a cultural exchange program. The program, “The International Dance Learning Project,”
was piloted by CDI and allowed the company to perform, teach, and present its unique brand of
American contemporary dance to an international audience. It also created the stepping-stones of a
new work that was presented at Ravinia in 2010.
VENETIA STIFLER,
artistic director
Emmy-nominated choreographer and director Venetia Stifler is the executive and artistic director of
The Ruth Page Center for the Arts, guiding the vision of the organization left to Chicago by the dance
pioneer Ruth Page. She is also the artistic director of Concert Dance Inc., an artist-in-residence of the
Ruth Page Center. Her work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and
she has received several grants from the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund.
Trained as a dancer, Stifler worked in both Chicago and New York with such legendary artists as Jen-
nifer Mueller, Alwin Nikolais, and Merce Cunningham. She went on to an international performing
career that spanned over a decade. Stifler’s reenvisioned production of Ruth Page’s groundbreaking
1947 “ballet cartoon”
Billy Sunday
came alive again in 2007 with several stage productions and in a
PBS documentary produced by HMS Media. A two-year project,
Billy Sunday
not only brought this
masterpiece work to new audiences, but also garnered several Emmy nominations. Stifler holds a PhD
in dance and choreography and is Professor Emerita at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.
Stifler was selected in 2015 to
NewCity
’s annual “Players 2015” list, which honors leaders within the
Chicago arts and culture community by recognizing those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to
make art happen in Chicago.
Words With Music and Dance
Celebrating poetry through dance, this new
choreographic project is inspired by the original
1940
Dances With Words
by Ruth Page. During
the lean years of World War II, Page created a
novel concert,
Dances With Words
, in which she
simultaneously embodied and vocalized poems
of Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
E.E. Cummings, Ogden Nash, Archibald Ma-
cLeish, Federico García Lorca, and Langston
Hughes. Page sought to find a distinctly new
voice in ballet with this groundbreaking dance
set to spoken word. We hope to find a new hear-
ing of the great poets Page chose for her work
while creating a distinctly new movement vo-
cabulary. What do these poets have to say to us
about our angst, our time, our present culture?
This work is supported by the Ruth Page Center
for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.
The Chicago Project: Future Present
If you could revisit one of your first successful
projects 30 years later and reinterpret it, would
you take the risk? In 1985, CDI artistic director
and Emmy Award–nominated choreographer
Venetia Stifler created the critically acclaimed
The Chicago Project
. Her goal in 2017 was to re-
imagine this favorite dance using today’s tech-
nology and with the eyes of a choreographer
whose creative process and point of view have
evolved.
The Chicago Project: Future Present
is more than
just a performance—it’s unique storytelling for
those who love Chicago architecture, inter-
preted through movement, image, and sound.
With the city as context, especially its flair for
dynamic engineering and architecture, Chicago
architecture has been an expression of creativity
at once inspirational and practical, physical and
social, dramatic and introspective. The project
begins with sketches from Louis Sullivan’s
A Sys-
tem of Architectural Ornament: According with a
Philosophy of Man’s Powers
, which sets the tone.
Section follows section exploring the spiritual
and formal relationships between architectural
and kinetic design. The music and choreogra-
phy interact with sets consisting of photograph-
ic projections. Thus it is conceived as an inter-
weaving of movement, image, and sound.
This work is partially supported by a CityArts
Independent Artist grant from the Department
of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
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Program notes provides by Concert Dance Inc.
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