Hedwig Dances Announces 40th Anniversary Season! 

Hedwig Dances, the Chicago-based contemporary dance company, presents HEDWIG +The BAUHAUS, featuring three visually stunning pieces of Bauhaus-inspired works choreographed by Founder/Artistic Director Jan Bartoszek.

The performances will be staged in the theater at the Ruth Page Center, 1016 N. Dearborn, Chicago, IL. Evening performances will take place on Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m. with a matinee Sunday, April 27 at 2:30 p.m.

HEDWIG + The BAUHAUS, part of Hedwig’s milestone 40th Anniversary Season, is an ode to the multi-year artistic partnership between Hedwig Dances and the modernist art institution the Bauhaus in Germany. The trio of dances, developed as a conversation with history, brings to life the playful, experimental, abstract Bauhaus world, incorporating futuristic costuming, innovative design, and novel themes.

META | MOR | PHOS – A Triadic Fiction, lauded as “an experimental arrangement and practice model of human transformation,” by Neues Deutschland-Berlin, is a sequel to Oskar Schlemmer’s 1922 “Triadic Ballet,” an icon of dance and performance art. While Schlemmer oriented his work toward a man-machine symbiosis, the ideas in META | MOR |PHOS are redirected through the metamorphosis of insects to an existential connection to the natural world.

Futura is an eye-popping spectacle of bold geometry, rich theatrical movement, and a rousing musical score, described as a “visual metaphor for Bauhaus’ revolutionary ideology,” by the Chicago Reader. Bartoszek applies the principles of the Bauhaus modernist art movement to dance and explores how dance shapes and is shaped by society, art, architecture, and design in the 21st century. A ground-breaking performing arts collaboration in 2019 between Hedwig Dances, Bauhaus Dessau (Germany) and Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design (ID) (originally established as the New Bauhaus by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy), the dance work re-imagines the past into the future through a creative alchemy of diversely talented collaborators.

LightPlay is a visual symphony that includes interactive design, colorful geometric props, and multiple forms of projections in the exploration of abstraction and visual metaphor. Inspired by the life and work of Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Bartoszek reflects on artistic experimentation, process, and development. A series of vignettes structure the dance which interweaves significant chapters of Moholy-Nagy’s life and artistic development as he moved from his birthplace in Hungary to his adult years at the Bauhaus and in Berlin, Germany to his final home at the New Bauhaus in Chicago.

Hedwig Dances is a contemporary dance theater ensemble under the artistic direction of its Founder, Jan Bartoszek. In-Residence at the Ruth Page Center, Hedwig Dances’ bold, interdisciplinary collaborations combine poetic choreography, projected images and haunting original music. The critically acclaimed and award-winning dance ensemble has presented over 1,500 performances at prestigious national and international venues. Hedwig Dances and its associated artists have been honored with two Ruth Page Awards and a Chicago Dance Award.

 Tickets prices to HEDWIG + The BAUHAUS range from $30 to $60 and are on sale now at https://bit.ly/HD-SPRING25 or HedwigDances.com.

Jan Bartoszek’s LightPlay, Photo by William Frederking