Creating a masterpiece can take a lifetime. There is a certain process in crafting each detail that cannot be rushed, but in a world of limited time and tight funding, modern day artists have been forced to find creative ways to make the best of their resources. This is especially true in the world of dance, where choreographers are tasked not only with making movement to communicate their stories and ideas, but must also make considerations for the perfect musical score, costuming, and lighting and stage design. So how do dance makers begin to approach the task of bringing all of these elements to life on stage? Consider the masterpieces that Artistic Director Julianna Slager has created for her company, Ballet 5:8. Since the company’s founding in 2012, Julianna has worked to nurture her creative process to produce a number of works that had the dancers touring nationally just two years later. This is no small achievement for any body of performing artists – many spend five years or more in their home cities before the possibility of presenting work across the country is even on the table. It speaks volumes to the quality, originality, and artistic and technical prowess both choreographer and dancers bring into the theater.

Creating a masterpiece can take a lifetime. There is a certain process in crafting each detail that cannot be rushed, but in a world of limited time and tight funding, modern day artists have been forced to find creative ways to make the best of their resources. This is especially true in the world of dance, where choreographers are tasked not only with making movement to communicate their stories and ideas, but must also make considerations for the perfect musical score, costuming, and lighting and stage design. So how do dance makers begin to approach the task of bringing all of these elements to life on stage? Consider the masterpieces that Artistic Director Julianna Slager has created for her company, Ballet 5:8. Since the company’s founding in 2012, Julianna has worked to nurture her creative process to produce a number of works that had the dancers touring nationally just two years later. This is no small achievement for any body of performing artists – many spend five years or more in their home cities before the possibility of presenting work across the country is even on the table. It speaks volumes to the quality, originality, and artistic and technical prowess both choreographer and dancers bring into the theater.

There are classic American novels that every high school student will leaf through in their academic careers. But if you are or were like most high school students, you read the book, scratched your head, and rallied through your assignments, often without fully grasping the gravity of the story at hand. Instead of relying on Wikipedia and Spark Notes to understand Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, consider seeing it on stage through Ballet 5:8’s full length, original ballet, Scarlet. Choreographer and Artistic Director of Ballet 5:8, Julianna Slager, has spent years meticulously researching and fine-tuning her choreography in preparation for Scarlet to return to the stage this February at the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin, IL. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera sat down with Julianna to learn more about her research, creative process, and the importance of taking time to edit an artistic work:

There are classic American novels that every high school student will leaf through in their academic careers. But if you are or were like most high school students, you read the book, scratched your head, and rallied through your assignments, often without fully grasping the gravity of the story at hand. Instead of relying on Wikipedia and Spark Notes to understand Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, consider seeing it on stage through Ballet 5:8’s full length, original ballet, Scarlet. Choreographer and Artistic Director of Ballet 5:8, Julianna Slager, has spent years meticulously researching and fine-tuning her choreography in preparation for Scarlet to return to the stage this February at the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin, IL. DancerMusic’s Kristi Licera sat down with Julianna to learn more about her research, creative process, and the importance of taking time to edit an artistic work:

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.

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.