It’s no secret every new dance season is filled with its own undercurrent of anticipation. Regardless of the company, audiences who follow them silently wonder what will be the prevailing theme that will dominate a troupe’s next major performance. What attributes will signal growth and maturity.  What kind of insights are going to be shared through a gifted choreographer’s storytelling skills.  What unexpected feat of technical or physical prowess is going to once again prove dance’s unmatched ability to translate the full scope our humanity.

Some companies can always be relied on to provide brilliant responses to those kinds of musings.  Giordano Dance Chicago (GDC) is one of them and their Ignite the Soul program at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance Friday night demonstrated that even with more than 60 years’ experience dancing at the top, the growing process never ceases.  The will and desire to keep striving, learning and absorbing does much more than simply avert atrophy.  It fuels the kind of energy that invigorates everyone on the stage and in the seats.  And it enables some of the galvanizing moments found in Ignite the Soul.

A broad ranging show that spanned genres of dance and artistic temperaments, half of the program’s six dance roster consisted of works that have never previously been performed publicly.  Two of the three world premieres were made possible by donors who, not so uncommonly, prefer to remain anonymous.

The show opened with resident choreographer Al Blackstone’s Latin inspired, Sana.  Receiving its own world premier last year, the dance lives as comfortably in the realm of contemporary dance as it does jazz.  Meant to evoke notions of healing, Sana highlights the beneficence of community and the power of the collective.  Thrillingly dynamic and often probing, Stahv Danker’s original score makes for a potent force that enhances Sana’s appeal.

Over the years, GDC has fine-tuned the way it incorporates film shorts to provide supporting information about the company, its history, its dancers, the choreographers it partners with and the wealth of community initiatives it conducts.  Each season these interludes become more polished and prove more indispensable.  One preceded each of the evening’s new dance segments; providing priceless insights into what fuels a talented choreographer’s creative process.  By the time tap dancer, choreographer and arts executive Mike Minery finished his explanation on how My Kind of Girl came about, you couldn’t wait to see the world premier he collaborated with GDC’s Artistic Director, Nan Giordano, to produce for the company. 

Adam Houston and Sasha Lazarus - photo by Zach Kemper.

Through his lead in, we learn how crucial tap is to much of modern dance and how instructive it can be to a dancer’s technical foundation.  Then we were reintroduced to how therapeutic and beautiful the dance form can be when Minery himself took to the stage with GDC’s splendid Erina Ueda to enrapture the hall with a gorgeous tap duet.  In this hyper-digitized, infamously disconnected world, My Kind of Girl is as analog as a warm hug and twice as pleasing.  Loaded with dance prowess of the highest level and bathed in Frank Sinatra’s silky voice backed by Count Basie’s band, the audience couldn’t help but cheer heartily after My Kind of Girl came to its swoon worthy close. 

Following that welcome touch of sweetness, the company brought out the flame throwers with Sabroso, a 2011 torcher crafted by Del Dominguez and Laura Flores.  Quintessential Giordano in its presentation, dancers shimmied and strutted their way through a sassy half dozen Latin dance styles that came packed with plenty of sensual heat.  Flaunting knock-out sequined costumes designed Nina G., the women in the company made sultry soar while their male counterparts wrapped machismo in a thick layer of sophistication.  Adam Houston and Analysse Vance picture perfect Bolero highlighted the exceptional individual artistry dancers bring to a performance.  The kind that always guarantees delight.

Something of the transformational arrived with Jon Rua’s namuH, a dance signifying the power and importance of love at its most basic and pure.  Rua’s video explanation of his personal background and the trajectory of his career from street dancer to choreographer ideally framed the dance that followed.  The word “Human” spelled backward, namuH feels as if it has one foot in the present day and one in the future.  Bjork and Stateless’s music draw an intense landscape.  Rugged and difficult.  Coupled with neutral, utilitarian costumes worn by the dancers and you sense a sterile almost bleak world.  The energy and magnetism come from the dance and the dancers who, despite any obstacle or hardship, invariably end up leaning on each other to keep on keeping on. 

The music, the way the dance unfolds, the unorthodox movements whose origins clearly derive from the grit of urban streets, all draw you in and leave you captivated.  As rewarding as the choreography itself is, the company’s dancers give it life by fully internalizing its precepts and projecting its message so beautifully.   

This is about as far away from jazz dance as you can get, but namuH’s central theme of cohesion and co-dependence; as well as the way it helps us see the latent generosity in all of us, make it an ideal match for this venerable dance company that can shape shift so elegantly.

Excerpts of Ronen Koresh’s 2015 Crossing/Lines preceded the night’s finale and final world premiere, Dumb Luck!, choreographed by Mr. Blackstone.   A salute to the country’s upcoming 250 anniversary and an intentional lighthearted salve to our erratic times, Dumb Luck!, with its nautical pastiche and post-war verve, is a happy escape to nostalgia.  Nina G.’s period sailor outfits take you right back to the grand old days of splashy Hollywood musicals.  Coasting on jazz gold via the sounds of The Nate King Cole trio, the Manhattan Transfer, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, dancers cavort while maintaining tight but jaunty dance formations.

A very fine effort, strengthening the dance’s core character would make it more even more distinctive.  

Whetting the appetite for more is what Dumb Luck! and the rest of the dances making up Ignite the Soul’s program do all too well.  Placing those expectation reveries about their next stage outing on high boil once again.

Ignite the Soul

Giordano Dance Chicago

April 10-11, 2026

Venue: The Harris Theater for Music and Dance

205 E. Randolph Street

Chicago, IL  60601

For more information about Giordano Dance Chicago:  https://www.giordanodance.org

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

Many decades ago, my mother enrolled me in ballet classes, hoping the classical training would somehow turn her rotund preteen into a graceful swan. On my way to those tortuous lessons on Davis Street in Evanston, I passed another door marked “Gus Giordano Studio.” The typeface was cooler than the ballet studio’s script and so were the jazzy strains of music that drifted downward. If only I’d climbed Giordano’s narrow stairway instead, I might have lasted longer on the dance floor.

Fortunately, plenty of other students chose Gus Giordano’s door. His infusion of jazz into contemporary dance has endured and manifested under the leadership of his daughter Nan and other creative contributors. Now in its 63^rd season, Giordano Dance Chicago presented its Ignite the Soul program at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts last weekend with the vibe that emanated from its original studio.

Sing, Sing, Sing, set to Louis Prima’s penetrating drumbeat, gave us three dancers and six white-gloved jazz hands having the time of their lives. After that joyful salvo came the lengthier and more reflective Gershwin in B.  Choreographed by Al Blackstone to a mélange of Gershwin classics, the 2024-piece features Erina Ueda who pulls us into the abstracted narrative by reaching for a red fedora that slides away before she can grasp it. Joined by the expressive and sleek ensemble in Branimira Ivanova’s glorious black and white costumes, the dancer strives for that fedora of success. Along the way, she finds love, partnering with Eduardo Zambrana and then moving on as she reaches for the next fedora.  

From Gershwin’s signature American jazz idiom, the program shifted to an Afro-Cuban sensibility. Liz Imperio’s La Belleza de Cuba set the entire Giordano company in motion, coupling and uncoupling with such intensity, the dancers seemed electrified by the mere presence of their partners. Almost like a palate cleaner, Interlinked by company member Simon Schuh did indeed interlink bodies with rapid-fire precision that suggested gymnasts as much as dancers.

Erina Ueda returned for different challenge in 333. Choreographed by Nan Giordano and Cesar G. Salinas to the music of Otis Redding, the solo piece further showcased Ueda’s emotional and technical range.

The final work of the evening, Red & Black, was created by Dancing with the Stars choreographer Ray Leeper for the company in 2024. With music selections from Eartha Kitt, Michael Bublé and others, the work has men stalking women and women stalking men, everyone seductive in their red and black attire. Lifting bar chairs, grouping and regrouping, forming alluring tableaux, they project an almost predatory energy. At one point, the women remove their jewelry and a single shoe, leveling themselves with great control as they continue their interactions with the men.

With its nightlife setting and the dancers’ charged, sophisticated moves, Red & Black brings another nighttime revelry, The Wild Party, to mind. Leeper’s extended party, however, doesn’t disintegrate into darkness; it simply keeps unfolding. Where exactly Red & Black arrives at the end is unclear and perhaps doesn’t need to be. The journey for this recent offering – so many years and countless stairs climbed by gifted dancers since I felt the Giordano magic on Davis Street – is destination enough.

For more information on Giordano Dance Chicago, go to https://www.giordanodance.org/

Dance performances can often be moving events but rarely do they hold the density, breadth and depth of emotions Giordano Dance Chicago’s (GDC) Spring engagement encompassed Friday night at the Harris Theater.  Part tribute, part commemoration of a milestone, and a total celebration of life, Soaring: Life, Light and Legacy spanned the gamut of all the things that can be interpreted more eloquently through the beauty of the arts.

Nan Giordano, celebrating her 40^th year at the helm of the dance company her father, Gus, created 62 years ago, lost her son and only child Keenan Giordano Casey suddenly and unexpectedly last year.  Each of the six dances performed in the Spring lineup touched on, either directly or tangentially, an aspect relating to these two events.  The skill in which GDC accomplished this feat makes the title given to the program a quiet touch of genius.

Opening with the first public performance of Sana, a work created from the verdant and sometimes ground shifting imagination of Al Blackstone, the dance centers on the notion of healing by striking notes reverberating with lightness and possibility.  Strains of calypso could be detected in percussionist’s Stahv Danker’s animated original score.  That same airiness and sense of optimism could also be found in the expectancy shining through the dancers’ movements and in the understated vibrancy of Devert Monet Hickman’s costume designs. They all coalesced to telegraph a message of hope.  It’s not unusual for a work’s newness to expose areas that could benefit from a bit more honing.  And it’s clear that once that sharpening occurs with Sana, its palliative message will ring with even greater resonance.

Some brand-new works though arrive in the world perfectly and 333 certainly counts as one of them.  A solo piece designed specifically for GDC principal dancer Erina Ueda by Ms. Giordano and GDC Associate Artistic Director, Cesar G. Salinas, it is quite simply a mesmerizing tour de force.  Dance can often be summed up as a combination of three parts.  Music, choreographic design, and execution. Here they are in a ravishingly flawless balance.

The rawness of life is something we often prefer to deny, despite its centrality to our very being and existence. Representing angel numbers that connect Ms. Giordano, her son Keenan and her father together, 333 embraces it, glorifies it and opens itself to its power.  Danced to the timeless and near magical appeal of Otis Redding’s signature rendition of Try a Little Tenderness, 333 simmers, explodes and stews in the vicissitudes of life.  I can’t imagine anyone being a better vessel for translating the impact of its mysteries than Ueda, whose expressive range seems boundless and appears to expand with the arrival of each new season.

It also proved the ideal prelude to Soaring, the dance tribute created for her son by Giordano, Salinas and the GDC dancers themselves.

A film introducing the audience to who and the type of person Keenan Casey was, and exposing the respect and love mother and son shared, preceded the dance itself, creating an atmosphere of compassionate awe.  Dancers in Nina G.’s costumes of wispy white then swept from both wings of the stage; ethereal and yet still grounded in the gravity of earthly cares.  Solemnity and exaltation danced in harmony as the entire company was later joined by 25 Keebirds, friends of Giordano’s son, Keenan.  Keebird was the sobriquet they used when referring to their fallen comrade.  Also dressed in white, feet bare and carrying lighted symbols of renewal they walked through the aisles and up to the stage in stoic silence while Antonio Pinto’s music filled the hall.  Striking, poignant and deeply touching, it symbolizes how wrenching great loss can be and how it can be willed into the spiritually restorative.

After a brief pause to absorb Soaring’s impact, lightning struck in the form of, what looked like to these eyes, a totally revamped version of Red and Black.  Created last year by Ray Leeper, the sultry jazz-soaked wonder, already sizzling with energy in its original format, seemed even more kinetic, electrified and polished to a blinding gleam. Opening to an extended version of an obscure Eartha Kitt jewel, female dancers in clinging gowns with long slits let it be known it’s a woman’s world.  One misstep and you’re likely to get scorched, bringing a whole new dimension to the term “deliciously provocative”.  In a program that covered a range of dance styles, this was vintage Giordano in peak form.  Confident, irrepressible, dazzling, athletic, brash. Bonji Duma’s musical expertise helped pump up the adrenalin to power it all.  Along with Ms. Kitt’s vocal brilliance, the music of Moloko, Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, Michael Bublé and Club De Belugas kept this rocket zooming.

Respite came with the visually enchanting Taal, an East Indian concept piece choreographed by Ms. Giordano in 2001.  The name derives from the traditional rhythmic pattern found in classical Indian music, brought to life here with works from Anuradha, Suno A.R. Rahman and S. Jhaia.   Asifa Imran’s graceful and culturally reflective costumes did their part to transport us to another place and time.  An important part of classical Indian dance, hand gestures are used to express a wide range of emotions and were incorporated extensively within Taal.  The effect was to fuse the identities of two dance cultures to create a unique artistic hybrid and something refreshingly new.

Following another short film shedding invaluable insight into what it takes to make a successful dance company thrive and the passion, talent and grit required to be a dancer within it; the program closed with Pyrokinesis. Living up to everything its name implies, this little stick of dynamite in the company’s repertoire, developed by Christopher Huggins in 2007, was a delight to see again. Dressed once again in red and black, this time sleekly styled by Branimira Ivanova, dancers showed what it means to be members of the most elite jazz dance company in the country, if not the world.  The dynamism found in Ray Leeper’s earlier piece simply takes a different form here, but the infectiousness of its joy, verve and vitality were just as powerful, energizing and uplifting.  A fitting close to a night commemorating life, light and transformational legacy.

Soaring: Life, Light and Legacy

Giordano Dance Chicago

April 4-5, 2025

Harris Theater for Music and Dance

205 E. Randolph Street

Chicago, IL   60601

*This review can also be found at Theater in Chicago.

I’m actually not a dance critic. I don’t know enough about dance; I‘m not fluent in the language of dance; I have limited experience with dance. But whenever GIORDANO DANCE COMPANY performs, I put my name in, purely because I love their work!

GIORDANO DANCE COMPANY’s 62^nd Season, SOARING, is a very special one for GDC. Artistic Director Nan Giordano is celebrating her 40^th year at the helm of the company her father Gus started in 1963.  Says Giordano, “I enter my 40th year with possibility, gratitude, energy & an untouchable source of energy.”

In this celebratory season Giordano has chosen to work with choreographers with whom she has special relationships. Ray Leeper's connection with GDC began decades ago with company founder Gus Giordano, who pulled the young Ray up on stage at a dance convention. Since then, Leeper has choreographed three full company works for GDC: “Feelin’ Good Sweet” in 2014, “Soul” in 2018, and now “Red & Black”, appearing in its world premiere.

GDC company dancer Adam Houston's "unconditional" featured a love story told with tender and impeccable partner work by Sasha Lazarus and Fernando Rodriquez. The choreography, more balletic than the classic jazz vernacular of the company, laid a serene aura across the auditorium. 

GDC Dancers in Red and Black.

GDC frequently punctuates its acts with brief videos that divulge historical and personal elements of the work. I particularly appreciated this with Marinda Davis’s extraordinary “Flickers” (2019). In the video Davis courageously describes her personal health journey through darkness, celebrating her indomitable spirit and unflinching quest for light. Davis enlivens the jazz-based aesthetic with brief paroxysms of ballet beats and hectic percussive shifts. See Chicago Dance calls “Flickers,” “…practically a genre unto itself.”

Emmy Award-winning choreographer and educator Al Blackstone created "Gershwin in B" to mark the 100-year anniversary of "Rhapsody in Blue". "Gershwin In B" moves the dancers about the stage with the joyous athleticism and buoyancy that GDC is known for. Using nine of Gershwin’s songs ranging from the less familiar to the acclaimed, Gershwin in B depicts the journey of one woman from youthful innocence to fearless maturity, with a red fedora appearing incidentally but significantly throughout her odyssey. The central character, danced superbly by Erina Ueda, carries the dramatic weight of the narrative on her shoulders.  As a whole the dance exhibits GDC’s professional skill and passion, impelling the dancers to go beyond dance to move the story forward. 

The theatre was filled with familiars of the company, making the performance feel very special and personal. Marinda Davis was seated just in front of us, and we enjoyed watching dozens of people battle the crowds to laud her personally. Seated just behind us were a couple of rows of youngsters who applauded many of the dancers so enthusiastically that I had to ask, “Do you know them?”  A lovely girl of eleven or twelve replied exuberantly, eyes sparkling, “They’re our teachers!”  If devotion and fervor are any measure, we will be seeing several of those girls onstage before long!

GIORDANO DANCE CHICAGO usually appears in brief runs, just 2-3 performances. Keep a close eye, for anything they do is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!