company

Dance That Moves You
Zephyr Dance has been a strong presence in Chicago for twenty years committed to artistic excellence in dance and to sharing that excellence with diverse audiences through performance and education. Led by artistic director Michelle Kranicke, Zephyr Dance explores ideas and questions related to our common experience through an intellectual feminine lens. Known for its striking imagery and seamless choreography a Zephyr dance unfolds, sculpting clear movement patterns that ebb and flow like waves. Intricate, distinct gestures, strong lines and tight groupings and formations are set against seamless meditative movement that opens out to engulf space, then reforms elsewhere. Zephyr’s dances build from an idea that resonates on many levels—physical, emotional and intellectual. Zephyr’s work has been described as having “a composer’s sense of form…dances that progress through episodes, rather like Bach fugues.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) Zephyr’s work is conceptual, metaphorical, and layered. Zephyr strives to go beyond the familiar in dance to discover the unique and the sublime within each piece. Audiences and critics alike have described the work as “fascinating and authoritative” (New York Times), “evocatively structured” and “entrancing” (Chicago Tribune) and “remarkably subdued and elegant,” (Chicago Reader, Critic’s Choice)

Zephyr has been recognized for creating innovative programs to promote both artistic collaboration and audience development. In 1995 Zephyr created Dancing Across State Lines, an interstate exchange of regional dance companies designed to serve as a vital catalyst for creative growth and dialogue among artists in the Midwest. Since the program began, Zephyr has hosted fourteen different dance companies from Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin, and has toured to critical acclaim in each guest company’s hometown. Zephyr’s Stepping into a Dance: Open Rehearsal Series is an annual informal performance series that invites individuals interested in learning more about dance and its creative process to follow a piece as it develops. Zephyr’s work has been presented in Chicago at, the Dance Center of Columbia College, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, the Athenaeum Theater, the Duncan YMCA Chernin Center for the Arts, Links Hall, and the Beverly Arts Center.

Zephyr Dance has a history of impressive awards and accomplishments. In January 2006, Michelle Kranicke was awarded a prestigious $15,000 Lab Artist grant from the Chicago Dancemakers Forum. Her work was nominated for Dance Achievement Awards from the Chicago Dance and Music Alliance in 1998, 2001 and 2003 and Associate Artistic Director Emily Stein was nominated in 2001 and 2003. In 2003 Zephyr Dance received a $10,000 award from the Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation’s oldest and largest community foundations, for the creation of new work and the development of Stepping into a Dance: The Open Rehearsal Series.

In addition, Zephyr Dance has a strong touring resume, performing and teaching throughout the United States from as far north as Fargo, North Dakota to as far south as Miami, Florida. In January 2009 Zephyr performed its riveting evening length work Just Left of Remote in the town that inspired the piece, Marfa, Texas. In January 2005 the company performed three benchmark concerts in New York City at the Mulberry Street Theatre. The engagement earned Zephyr significant critical praise from national dance critic Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times who said of Zephyr’s work “... you couldn't look away. What happened onstage throughout the evening was too authentic-looking and authoritative.” Zephyr’s ability to navigate space and adapt to a variety of performance venues has brought its artistry to proscenium stages, historic churches and 100-year-old auditoriums.

Artistically exciting and technically assured, Zephyr Dance has been consistently praised throughout the past 20 years for its “knack for puncturing and partnering space,” (Lucia Mauro, Chicago Tribune) and its virtuosity as “an extremely tight company, powerful in their imagery” (Jay Rath, Wisconsin State Journal).