aMID at Links
No one single festival in the city coalesced the potential of dance to break down barriers and provide cultural corrective than the aMID Festival, organized by Michelle Kranicke and Zephyr Dance company earlier this year at Links Hall. In the face of systemic ageism, the program lineup included prominent dance-historical figures Deborah Hay and Bebe Miller and illustrated how dancers become even more refined with age despite the popular obsession with the ballerina body stereotype and the notion that beauty belongs only to the young and lithe. The aMID Festival also provided visitors with a lineup that opened up conversations around race and class, expectations and blind spots within the wider dance community, and helped shine a light on Chicago as a location for vanguardist work that you’d be hard-pressed to find outside the coasts.
Best of Chicago 2016