CHICAGO – Ballet 5:8 will visit Madison, WI, for the first time in April with Compass Project, a collection of one-act ballets on navigating cultural tension with compassion. The performance, which stretches across time and space to explore some of the most pressing topics of our day, will feature both Ballet 5:8 and local Madison ballet company Magnum Opus. Ballet 5:8, a 12-member professional company based just outside Chicago, is dedicated to engaging communities in conversation of life and faith through innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance. Now in its second season, Magnum Opus is Wisconsin’s newest professional ballet company. Two collaborative performances will be held on Saturday, April 27 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm at the Verona Area Community Theatre, 103 Lincoln Street, Verona, WI, 53593.

CHICAGO – Ballet 5:8 will visit the Atlanta area for the first time in March with Compass Project, a collection of one-act ballets on navigating cultural tension with compassion. The performance, which stretches across time and space to explore some of the most pressing topics of our day, will feature both Ballet 5:8 and local Atlanta dance collective Bluebird Uncaged. Ballet 5:8, a 12-member professional company based just outside Chicago, is dedicated to engaging communities in conversation of life and faith through innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance. Bluebird Uncaged, a dance collective, is dedicated to bringing hope and dignity through dance via artist development, workshops, live performances, international adventures, and multimedia. A single collaborative performance will be held on Saturday, March 30 at 7:00 pm at the Sara D. Williams Fine Arts Center inside Greater Atlanta Christian School, 1575 Indian Trail Road, Norcross, GA 30093.

CHICAGO – Known for its commitment to bringing innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance throughout the Midwest, Chicago’s Ballet 5:8 will visit the Memphis area for the first time in March with Compass, a collection of one-act ballets on navigating cultural tension with compassion. In Chicago, Ballet 5:8’s work has been called “exceptionally well done” and “these are serious, talented dancers.” The 12-member company’s Compass program stretches across time and space to explore some of the most pressing topics of our day. At times witty and satirical, and at times deeply emotional, Compass is full of athleticism, power, and poetry. A single Memphis performance will be held on Saturday, March 23 at 7:00 pm at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts, 225 South Main Street, Memphis, Tennessee.

CHICAGO – Known for its commitment to bringing innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance throughout the Midwest, Chicago’s Ballet 5:8 will visit the Champaign/Urbana area for the first time in March with Compass, a collection of one-act ballets on navigating cultural tension with compassion. In Chicago, Ballet 5:8’s work has been called “exceptionally well done” and “these are serious, talented dancers.” The 12-member company’s Compass program stretches across time and space to explore some of the most pressing topics of our day. At times witty and satirical, and at times deeply emotional, Compass is full of athleticism, power, and poetry. A single performance will be held on Saturday, March 2 at 7:00 pm at the Urbana High School, 1002 S Race St, Urbana, IL 61801.

CHICAGO – Ballet 5:8 will close out its Sixth Performing Season this April with an encore performance based on the company’s popular 2017 premiere Compass. The April engagement, scheduled as part of Chicago Dance Month, features all four works from the original program on the topic of navigating cultural tension with compassion. The performance will be presented as Compass Project, with a portion of each ticket sold donated to World Relief. World Relief is a national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago and Aurora, IL. The nonprofit stands with refugees and immigrants and partners with local churches to end the cycle of suffering, transform lives and build sustainable communities. Ballet 5:8’s single Chicago performance of Compass Project will be held on Saturday, April 28 at 7:00pm at Moody Bible Institute - Solheim Center, 930 N Wells St., Chicago, IL. Attendees are additionally invited to attend a post-performance Q&A with artists and choreographers from the performance.

CHICAGO – Ballet 5:8 will return to the Mark O’Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center in Brooklyn this April with the New York premiere of its collaborative program Compass Project. The two performances feature a range of original dance performances by Ballet 5:8 and guest companies Vivid Ballet (Hartford, CT) and Emma Elliott Dance (New York, NY) on the topic of navigating cultural tension with compassion. Compass Project stretches across time and space to explore some of the most pressing topics in our country and in our cities today. At times witty and satirical, and at times deeply emotional, the program is full of athleticism, power and poetry. The two performances (which are not identical) will be held on Saturday, April 7 at 7:30pm and Sunday, April 8 at 2:00pm at the Mark O’Donnell Theater at the Actors Fund Arts Center, 160 Schermerhorn St, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Attendees are additionally invited to attend a post-performance Q&A with artists and choreographers from the performance. Tickets are $28 for adults, $24 for students and seniors, and $15 for children 12 and under.

If you had a chance to read our PRE-View for Ballet 5:8’s Compass (which you can read here), then you know that Artistic Director Julianna Slager and her company of incredibly expressive dancers have committed their season thus far to spreading compassion in every community they touch. This past Friday, Ballet 5:8 took the stage at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago and delivered an evening of inspired choreography and thought-provoking performance. The program touched on a number of politically sensitive topics including race, abortion, and immigration, but when these charged topics are approached through Julianna’s choreographic lens of compassion, it is clear that the purpose of the program is not political at all. Its true purpose is to inspire empathy and kindness, and all artists involved in Compass deserve congratulations for successfully emoting and delivering this message with grace. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera was in the audience for this one-night only performance, and invites you to join her as she RE-Views Ballet 5:8.

If you had a chance to read our PRE-View for Ballet 5:8’s Compass (which you can read here), then you know that Artistic Director Julianna Slager and her company of incredibly expressive dancers have committed their season thus far to spreading compassion in every community they touch. This past Friday, Ballet 5:8 took the stage at the Athenaeum Theater in Chicago and delivered an evening of inspired choreography and thought-provoking performance. The program touched on a number of politically sensitive topics including race, abortion, and immigration, but when these charged topics are approached through Julianna’s choreographic lens of compassion, it is clear that the purpose of the program is not political at all. Its true purpose is to inspire empathy and kindness, and all artists involved in Compass deserve congratulations for successfully emoting and delivering this message with grace. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera was in the audience for this one-night only performance, and invites you to join her as she RE-Views Ballet 5:8.

CHICAGO – Celebrating its sixth performance season, Ballet 5:8 will return to the Athenaeum Theatre this November with the Chicago premiere of Compass, presented by Dance Chicago. Ballet 5:8’s Compass features four one-act ballets inspired by the challenges of navigating cultural tension in the present day. From an alien society to 1970’s Chicago, Compass stretches across time and space to explore some of our country’s most pressing topics. At times witty and satirical, and at times deeply emotional, Compass is full of athleticism, power and poetry. A single performance will be held on Friday, November 10 at 7:30pm at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 North Southport Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Tickets are $30 for adults, $20 for students and seniors, and $15 for children. 

There’s an art to just being a dance company, but it’s a complex one. There’s a choreography to all of the moving parts, a movement to all of the emerging challenges and a design to how they’re met. At Ballet 5:8, you can see this art a lot of ways, and one of them is the way the Company presents to the world what it is they have to share. This is usually called “marketing” or “promotion”, but when done well, it’s a real art, not that different from arts like choreography and music composition, where an artist shares a vision, or a feeling, or a perspective, or a hope. At a dance company, marketing at its best is the art of sharing what the company’s artists have to share, both telling people about a program like Compass (Ballet 5:8’s evening length work at Chicago’s Athenaeum Theatre on November 10th), and making it possible, through all the arts of content creation, for people like us at DancerMusic do so as well.

There’s an art to just being a dance company, but it’s a complex one. There’s a choreography to all of the moving parts, a movement to all of the emerging challenges and a design to how they’re met. At Ballet 5:8, you can see this art a lot of ways, and one of them is the way the Company presents to the world what it is they have to share. This is usually called “marketing” or “promotion”, but when done well, it’s a real art, not that different from arts like choreography and music composition, where an artist shares a vision, or a feeling, or a perspective, or a hope. At a dance company, marketing at its best is the art of sharing what the company’s artists have to share, both telling people about a program like Compass (Ballet 5:8’s evening length work at Chicago’s Athenaeum Theatre on November 10th), and making it possible, through all the arts of content creation, for people like us at DancerMusic do so as well.

Ballet 5:8 is an imaginative, hard-working group of artists with some very carefully thought out ideas. Founded by Julianna Rubio Slager and Amy Kozol Sanderson in 2012, they have steadily built Ballet 5:8 into an aesthetically ambitious gathering of dedicated dance artists. From just six dancers their first year, “performing wherever there was an opportunity” as their site tells the story, their season — still growing — now includes forty performances a year.