The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of Chicago’s event curators to get much more creative when providing entertainment to the masses.
The Drive-In Fest, which is scheduled for Aug. 22 at Soldier Field (doors open at 6 p.m.), is the brainchild by five local Black promoters: Mike “Orie” Mosley (AFROTRAK); Ronald Platt, Bobby Burke, Charles Martin and Sigma Chris.
Concertgoers should expect feature performances from “a few of your favorite artists from the ’90s and early ’80s hip-hop/R&B era,” according to festival officials.
The festival lineup includes chart-topping singer-songwriter Lloyd, Pleasure P of R&B/hip-hop group Pretty Ricky, Atlanta-based singer Bobby V., and West Side hip-hop artists Do or Die.
As for keeping the artists — and the concertgoers safe — the event plans to adhere to social distancing guidelines by requiring those folks to park their vehicles (car admission ticket allows up to four guests per ticket) one space apart. Lawn chairs and blankets are allowed. No coolers, umbrellas, tents, grills other furniture will be permitted.
The event organizers aim to provide eats for sale via food trucks, with the goal of pumping revenue back into local restaurants.
“Chicago, unlike many of the other major cities across the nation, has a much smaller window of warmer weather,” said Mosley in a statement. “While it’s very important for us to continue to take safety precautions, we also realize that once this window is gone and fall comes, the weather might possibly make it even harder for everyone to gather. The drive-in concept provides this safe, summer alternative.”
Tickets (starting at $210 for up to four occupants) for the Drive-In Fest can be purchased at Ticketmaster. Vehicles will be charged and additional $55 for more than four occupants.
Need some COVID-safe entertainment? Drive-in music festival coming to Soldier Field
Sun-Times photo
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of Chicago’s event curators to get much more creative when providing entertainment to the masses.
The Drive-In Fest, which is scheduled for Aug. 22 at Soldier Field (doors open at 6 p.m.), is the brainchild by five local Black promoters: Mike “Orie” Mosley (AFROTRAK); Ronald Platt, Bobby Burke, Charles Martin and Sigma Chris.
Concertgoers should expect feature performances from “a few of your favorite artists from the ’90s and early ’80s hip-hop/R&B era,” according to festival officials.
The festival lineup includes chart-topping singer-songwriter Lloyd, Pleasure P of R&B/hip-hop group Pretty Ricky, Atlanta-based singer Bobby V., and West Side hip-hop artists Do or Die.
6:38 p.m. City will issue tickets for quarantine violations, ‘flagrant’ social activities spotted on social media
Dr. Allison Arwady, Chicago’s public health commissioner, offering an update on coronavirus. File photo.Tyler LaRiviere / Sun-Times
Ticketing is coming for Chicagoans who travel to any of the 20-plus states subject to Chicago’s 14-day travel quarantine, Dr. Allison Arwady, the city’s health commissioner, said Tuesday. Previously the city has relied on voluntary compliance to the order.
Arwady told reporters on a conference call that tickets can be issued during course of an investigation into COVID spread. She also mentioned the possibility of fining city employees who may not have abided by quarantine.
Tickets also may result from “social media examples” where people are “flagrantly posting social activities,” Arwady said.
The additions to the order — Wisconsin, Missouri, Nebraska and North Dakota were all announced Tuesday — bring the tally to 22 states now covered. Under the order, people traveling or returning to Chicago from one of those states are required to isolate for 14 days upon arrival.
When the order, in effect indefinitely, was announced, the city had offered no details on exactly how it would be enforced. But under the order violators are subject to city fines of $100 to $500 per day, up to $7,000.
There are exemptions, such as travel for medical care, or for essential workers who are required to travel to Chicago from a covered state, or travel from Chicago to work in one of the covered states.
The rest of the list: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
3:15 p.m. They call themselves the ‘Rona Quartet after the disease that has kept so many musicians apart
The music floats down a narrow, weedy gangway to a backyard on the North Side, where four French horn players sit, socially distanced, their instruments gleaming in the late-morning sunlight.
A cardinal somewhere up in the high branches of a huge silver maple adds its own accompaniment to the piece they’re playing, “Fripperies for Four Horns,” by Lowell Shaw. A middle-aged couple step out onto their deck overlooking the garden to listen.
“There are a lot of bees out here. What’s going on?” said Mary Jo Neher, swatting at the little insects buzzing around her ankles during a pause in the music.
It’s a small inconvenience for Neher, 42, and her fellow Chicago-area horn players, who are thrilled to be playing with other human beings after months of isolation at home.
“One of the things I’ve missed was the feeling of throwing my case on my back and going into the garage to go to work,” said Neher, a freelance musician. “There is so much in that moment: I have a purpose. I’m not just Mom, keeping everyone alive and teaching at home. I just yearn for that basic feeling.”
The Miami Marlins’ season was suspended by Major League Baseball amid an outbreak of COVID-19 cases that resulted in 15 players and two staff members testing positive from Friday to Tuesday, according to a baseball official with direct knowledge of the decision.
The official spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because it has not been officially announced.
The action is a remarkable but pragmatic pause, sidelining one of the 30 MLB teams attempting to play a 60-game schedule through a pandemic, with one potential outcome being that the Marlins — and their upcoming opponents — may not play the season in full.
The Marlins’ outbreak had already resulted in a handful of postponements Monday and Tuesday: Two Marlins games against the Baltimore Orioles in Miami, and a pair of Phillies-New York Yankees games in Philadelphia, site of the Marlins’ three-game weekend series.
Now, the Marlins will have up to seven games to make up: Four against the Orioles and three against the Washington Nationals, their weekend opponents in Miami.
11:45 a.m. Andrea Bocelli recovered from COVID but says lockdown made him feel ‘humiliated’
ROME — Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, who had COVID-19, said the pandemic lockdown made him feel “humiliated and offended” by depriving him of his freedom to come and go as he wanted.
Bocelli spoke at a panel Monday in an Italian Senate conference room, where he was introduced by right-wing opposition leader Matteo Salvini, who has railed against the government’s stringent measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
The singer’s announcement in May that he had recovered from the virus came weeks after his Easter Sunday performance in Milan’s empty cathedral. At the time, Bocelli said that when he learned on March 10 that he had tested positive, just as the nation was going into lockdown, “I jumped into the pool, I felt well” and had only a slight fever. He apparently was referring to a private pool at his residence, as public gym pools were closed by then.
Bocelli told the conference at the Senate that he resented not being able to leave his home even though he “committed no crime” and revealed, without providing details, that he violated that lockdown restriction.
10:38 a.m. CPS parents — and teachers — bombard district officials with questions about classroom safety
The first of five community meetings hosted by Chicago Public Schools officials about a potential fall reopening featured hundreds of questions from parents and teachers, many of which were steeped in skepticism over whether in-classroom learning could be done safely in the middle of a pandemic.
Will there be more hand-washing stations at schools? What will happen when a student tests positive for COVID-19? Are teachers expected to move between “pods” of students? What type of instruction will students receive when they opt out of in-person learning?
Top CPS leadership, including CEO Janice Jackson, gave live answers to many questions — though they only got to a fraction in the 45 minutes set aside for a Q&A session, and there were many they couldn’t answer.
Responding to a question about potential cases at schools, CPS’ chief health officer Kenneth Fox said families will be expected to self-report to the district’s Office of Student Health and Wellness, providing their symptoms, noting when they first felt sick and other personal information.
The district would then gather information from that student’s school, such as which 15-student pod they were in, who else they had contact with and what part of the school they had been in. An entire pod would be sent home if one of its students tests positive, and anyone directly in contact with the positive case would be told to quarantine for 14 days.
8:04 a.m. Lightfoot showcases $33 million in relief for renters and property owners
Three months after unveiling a non-binding “Housing Solidarity Pledge” that appeased no one, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday showcased $33 million in relief for renters and property owners bankrolled by federal stimulus funds and local philanthropies.
Shortly after the stay-at-home shutdown triggered by the coronavirus, Lightfoot offered 2,000 Chicagoans struggling to stay in their homes grants of $1,000 apiece. The $2 million was nowhere near enough to meet the demand from 83,000 applicants.
Now, those who struck out in Round One will be “automatically transferred” to a $25 million Round 2, “more than ten times” the initial investment made by the Chicago Department of Housing There is no need to re-apply.
Together with $8 million from the Department of Family and Support Services, Chicago is dedicating $33 million to “eviction and foreclosure prevention,” officials said.
“Thanks to this investment, more Chicagoans will be able to stave off foreclosure, eviction and homelessness and the pain and insecurity that comes with it,” Lightfoot told a City Hall news conference.
6:13 p.m. I’m a teacher and parent. Our schools aren’t ready to reopen and keep children and families safe.
With the start of a typical school year right around the corner, discussions are taking place about what the eventual return will look like. As an educator and a mom, I am torn between options: Full remote learning to ensure that children and students stay healthy; or a hybrid, with some in-person instruction.
But two major questions loom in the minds of every educator and parent: Can our nation keep children and families healthy, even with limited classroom teaching? If remote learning continues, will students lose too much educationally?
As a former teacher in three Chicago public high schools on the South Side, I think the answer to the first question is a clear “No.” Our nation can’t keep our kids and their families healthy without strong federal leadership, which is needed to have any chance of slowing the spread of coronavirus.
A case in point: One of my grossest days in CPS was the time a student threw up in the library entryway. It was flu season and only two janitors were working that day, so it took around six hours for one of them to clean up the vomit. The student went to the nurse’s office, but she wasn’t at our school that day, so he returned, still sick, for his library lesson. Meanwhile, students and teachers continued to fill the room.
4:45 p.m. Four must-haves in Congress’ next pandemic rescue package
No sooner did professional baseball return last week, after months of planning to make the games safe during the pandemic, than the entire season was thrown into doubt when COVID-19 swept through the Miami Marlins.
There is a lesson in that not only for professional sports, which we’re really feeling the loss of right now, but also for lawmakers in Washington who are crafting a massive new pandemic relief bill:
All our man-made plans are doomed if designed for a wished-for world.
At the core of almost every disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about how big the federal relief bill should be — and what it should include — is a fundamentally different view about how long it will be before life in the United States can return to normal.
Democrats, listening to the scientists, think it could be many more months or even years. They are proposing a $3 trillion relief bill. Republicans are leaning hard into that wished-for world. They are pushing a $1 trillion bill.
With that in mind, here are four provisions of any relief bill we’d like to stress:
2:45 p.m. If we’re in hell, we might as well read Dante
John Took’s new book Dante is very heavy lifting. From the first sentence — “Exemplary in respect of just about everything coming next on the banks of the Arno over the next few decades was the case of Buondelmonte de’Buondelmonti on the threshold of the thirteenth century.” — it is a waist-deep slog through the muddiest of academic creeks.
Pressing forward, I grew to hate him. Just for taking something so valuable and rendering it into turgid academic blather. Grew to hate Princeton University Press for foisting this upon a trusting public. Hate the scholars who blurbed it. “A beautiful book that reflects decades of thinking and teaching,” begins literary critic Piero Boitani.
Maybe he meant the cover. It is indeed a beautiful cover.
And I grew to hate myself for buying the book, impulsively, because, heck, it has such a nice cover and it is about Dante. For insisting on grimly, joylessly grinding through it, page after page, trying to glean some shred of knowledge from this field of chaff. I blame my own cheapness. I bought the thing, paid, geez, $35 for it. I have to read it. It grew to feel like penance, a hair shirt. Enduring a homebound summer in a brainless era during the realm of an imbecile? Here’s some grist for the mill, perfesser. Chew on this!
8:43 a.m. Marlins outbreak sobering, scary for NFL teams on eve of camp
On the eve of training camp, the NFL was visited Monday by its worst nightmare. Dressed in Marlins blue and black, the Ghost of Coronavirus Yet to Come showed the worst-case scenario: a season on the brink of cancellation before it really gets started.
At least 13 Marlins players and coaches have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to national reports. It’s a full-blown outbreak, after only three games.
Major League Baseball postponed the Marlins’ game Monday against the Orioles. The Phillies-Yankees game also was called off because the Phillies had hosted the Marlins for three games. Baseball will be play-the-Lotto lucky if that’s the only damage done. A growing crisis would lead to the cancellation of the season.
Even in the best of circumstances, the virus presents a new reality that baseball must cope with every day. White Sox manager Rick Renteria woke up with a cough and nasal congestion Monday, went to a Cleveland hospital for tests and, out of caution, stayed away from the ballpark. He reportedly tested negative for COVID-19 and is expected to be back with the team Tuesday.
Since this spring Chicago singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Xoe Wise has been parking her scooter at intersections around town for small, outdoor pop-up performances–a series she calls “Curbside Live,” where she collects tips via Venmo to donate to local venues and businesses. Wise plays magisterial indie folk that retains its grandeur even when she pares her instrumentation down to just acoustic guitar, so the al fresco format of Curbside Live doesn’t handicap her at all. While she was working on her new third album, Air (Xoechan), she couldn’t have predicted the pandemic or the resulting societal upheavals, but its music nonetheless hinges on the feeling that she could pick up everything and go at a moment’s notice–just as she’s been doing with her scooter. The nuanced drama in Wise’s commanding performances practically begs for a live big-band treatment–and the symphonic highlights in “Late Parade” demonstrate how resplendent her vision can get when she articulates it fully. But you can really tell she’s a force to be reckoned with when she relies on little more than strumming a guitar. She opens “Cross Eyed Rose” with a lonesome acoustic melody and gentle, lilting, nearly whispered vocals that make her sound like she’s entrusting us with something dear to her heart–a simulacrum of closeness that’s especially welcome now that physical intimacy of any kind has potentially lethal consequences. v
When theaters closed their doors for COVID-19 in March, it looked like curtains for performing artists. With distancing guidelines in place for a virus with no cure in sight, an industry based on contact and physical presence was forced to retreat behind a screen–to video, video calls, and livestreams–where dimension and shared space is reduced at best to the illusion of shared time. In the absence of spaces verified by the lives of others, never has time seemed so fictional (“What is time?” we all ask). And yet dancing has never ceased.
In the shock of sheltering in place and as the city has begun to reopen, dancers and dance companies have found ways to come together in person, rediscovering ways to make contact at a safe distance. Their methods favor the small, the nimble, and the improvisational–and create more community than cash.
After the May 25 passing of George Floyd, at the rallies, marches, and vigils that have proceeded since, people are coming together again, driven by the need to take space and express what can only be experienced in the fragility and resilience of the body.
There is risk to dance, but also passion, power, beauty, and love. Bodies are continuing to speak.
MAY
May 24: In a parking lot in Bridgeport, 12 cars gathered beneath a blazing sun at high noon. For 30 minutes, in a city that had been under lockdown for ten weeks, with theaters worldwide abruptly and indefinitely shuttered, humans gathered for live performance. Three masked dancers (full disclosure: I was one of them) on cracked concrete, surrounded by a canyon of industrial edifices. Beyond them, quiet streets and closed doors–a city hibernating through its loveliest season. And yet, for a moment, alive and beating.
“We had a show March 14 on Navy Pier, for the Holi celebration for the arrival of spring, that got canceled,” recalls Kinnari Vora, codirector of contemporary Indian dance collective Ishti. It was a moment every performer has by now experienced: “We realized, this is real. Getting together, moving, and sharing what we have is not happening and doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.”
“We had been trying to do Zoom classes and rehearse together, but physically we hadn’t seen each other since February,” says codirector Preeti Veerlapati. An Instagram post of a diagram by set designer Emanuele Sinisi showing cars arranged in a circle with headlights shining inwards to light a performance space set Ishti into motion. With parks and the lakefront closed, parking lots could serve as a space for people to gather safely in the shelter of their own cars.
“We have done pop-ups before,” says Vora. “You don’t need a stage, you don’t need a tech. You just take your speakers, set up in the middle of a square, and start performing there. And drive-in concerts exist all over the world.”
They began to envision an array of cars at night tasked with lighting cues to create a theatrical experience. Composer and collaborator Bob Garrett, who assisted at the event, intervened. “He said, ‘Guys, 16 cars is too much. Don’t worry about the formation,'” remembers Vora. They queried an artist friend about the parking lot at the Zhou B Art Center. “He said, ‘When?’ I said, ‘This weekend?’ We talked on Wednesday night, and we performed Sunday.”
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Ultimately, keeping the event small and simple was essential for safety and success. They decided an even dozen cars would allow for ease of distancing and direction by just two volunteers. To limit the size of the gathering, Ishti announced the location two hours before the start time to a restricted list of guests, who had agreed to their own costume and choreography: arrive on time, park where directed, wear a mask, and remain in or near your vehicle.
The program opened with Sparsh, developed by Vora and collaborator Tuli Bera in 2019. “Kinnari and Tuli were exploring touch last year in the Bharatanatyam space, which has an absence of touch and physical contact. It was an opportunity to say, ‘We built this on touching and sensing, how do we continue to do that today in this new world?'” says Veerlapati. The experiment was conducted in real time: like the audience, the dancers came together for the first time that day to explore what was possible at a safe distance. “They talked about what they were going to do and did one rehearsal on Zoom. That day was like, ‘All right, what is this going to look like?’ We had to take the risk.”
Yet they entered new territory with little fear. “Let’s think of this as a family backyard gathering,” recalls Vora of an audience largely composed of artists. “The people who were there would be there with us even if we failed, to stand with us. The people who said, ‘Yes, we’ll come’–that was enough. That empowered us to be present. And being there and being together was the most important aspect. As soon as [dancer and choreographer Ayako Kato’s] car came in, with Ayako popping out of the top, I knew everything would be good–however it happened.”
“The drive-in performance was like returning home,” says Bera. “I was surrounded and witnessed by those I hold dearly in my soul. The sun was out. The ground was hot. It was a huge hotspot of energy and a performance where I truly felt alive!”
“We want to do many outdoor series, not just one,” says Vora. “We are thinking about organizing and cocurating with other artists. This platform can be shared with different people in different neighborhoods working in different media–dance, music, painting, sculpture.”
“After the first one, we were thinking, ‘Why can’t we take over United Center’s parking lot?'” laughs Veerlapati. “But we also need to be mindful of our capacity in this moment: keeping it intimate, connecting, and expanding a network by including other curators and other forms of art. At the end of the day, I want to be sharing space with you.”
JUNE
June 12, 18, 22, ongoing: the Seldoms are bringing dance to residential neighborhoods in a privately commissioned series called Sidewalk Dances that brings live music and dance direct to your doorstep.
“Like everyone, I felt completely derailed [by the lockdown],” says artistic director Carrie Hanson. Following the Wisconsin premiere of FLOE, a dance theater piece on climate change, the Seldoms were on the cusp of bringing the work to the Art Institute of Chicago and touring it to Cincinnati. “It wasn’t as if I was in a process where I could keep steadily working, and it would come out in a different form. We were ready to do shows!”
In contrast to many companies that shifted work online, Hanson says, “I felt no attraction to figuring out how to do things online or virtually.” Instead, she focused on a different project, GRASS, currently scheduled to premiere in March 2021, and turned to analog modes of connecting: storytelling and house calls: “I wanted to invite people to talk about their relationships to turf grass and cannabis. And maybe folks will want to have a small dance ensemble perform outside their house or apartment building.”
Three commissions in the month of June affirmed the desire for live performance. “I think people have been almost relieved to have a live event. It’s energetically, visually, and sonically revitalizing after so much time in the same four walls and probably too much time on a screen.” In contrast, Sidewalk Dances is “totally low tech. We take along a live musician, Bob Garrett, who has worked with us for 15 years. We show up 30-40 minutes ahead of time to look at the lay of the land. In Hyde Park, it was a one-way residential street, so we moved into the street, with 25 to 30 people standing in masks on their front yards. In Edgewater, it began to pour, Bob played his instruments from his hatchback, and the dancers went on for 15 minutes in solid rain. We’re all a little bit numb right now. To have this opportunity to be in a small crowd, with a group of people and a musician creating something outside your home, a really familiar space on this street you see all the time, it changes how you see that space.”
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Sidewalk Dances has also given Hanson the opportunity for on-the-ground research, allowing her to test movement phrases for GRASS with the dancers and meet people at their homes to discuss lawns and weed. “My past work has explored the environment and political power, and GRASS [inspired by Paul Robbins’s 2007 book Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are] bridges both,” she says. “The American lawn is a green space but also a white space, hand in hand with the American suburb. Monoculture is a key word: how do we look at biodiversity and what is gained there in terms of resiliency, and how do we think about social diversity?” Robbins considers lawns in conjunction with cannabis, the legal status and licensing of which has transformed an illegal drug into a profitable business–for some. Says Hanson, “The people able to access those licenses and gain profits are white, to the detriment to Black and Brown communities decimated by war on drugs–in other words, a plant is upholding white capitalist culture.”
The performances, which have lasted 15 to 20 minutes, have been commissioned to celebrate events including graduation and retirement. They have also required more logistical work by Hanson. “I’ve never worked in this model,” she says. “It feels really direct. Usually I work through a venue, and they’re selling the tickets.” Practical matters dominate the conversation: “What is the street like? How wide is the sidewalk? Is there a place for the musician? Can we go to the bathroom? How long would you like us to perform?”
Yet the work has been “invigorating for the dancers,” she says. “And I’m able to give 20 percent of our fees to Forward Momentum Chicago, an organization committed to increasing access to dance, founded by former Joffrey dancer Pierre Lockett. That feels good.”
JULY
July 10, 19: “A tap jam is a gathering of tap dancers, a cypher, or ‘trading,’ as musicians call it. It’s all about dancers getting together, motivating one another, inspiring one another, stealing from one another–that’s how the original tap dancers created the art form,” says Bril Barrett, founder of tap company M.A.D.D. Rhythms. “We honor that tradition of stealing from each other by holding tap jams twice a month. It’s all levels. Some people come and watch and get motivated to try it, some people just come dance, some people just come watch. It’s really whatever you want it to be. We have fun sharing each other’s energies, rhythms, and steps.”
For almost 20 years, Barrett has upheld a practice that dates back to the early development of the dance in the nineteenth century. Every second Friday and third Sunday of the month, he and other members of M.A.D.D. Rhythms can be found at the Harold Washington Cultural Center in Bronzeville in a circle of dance anyone can join. “The last one we had in person was the third Sunday in March, which was literally when the stay-at-home order went into effect. In April, May, and June, we did them virtually. I was determined to not let the virus or the circumstances take that joy away. It was cool because people joined us from all over the world, but in terms of sharing energy with each other, it wasn’t the same.”
In July, as the city moved into new phases of reopening, the tap jam reconvened outside–which both observes guidelines for safe gathering during a pandemic and carries the jam closer to its origins. “From Master Juba to Chuck Green, Hoofers would create, practice and perfect this artform….OUTSIDE!” Barrett wrote in a letter explaining tap jams last January. “In those times, the United States still had a long way to go when it came to black people and their treatment. Many dance schools didn’t allow African Americans, so the streets became our studios and the dance became our resistance & perseverance at the same time.”
“Art forms based in choreography are privileged over art forms based in improvisation,” notes Barrett. “It follows the hierarchy of the white supremacist power structure that is of this country. This society is used to privileging documented forms. But [in improvised forms] you have to take the years of training and apply them in an instant. We don’t have the luxury of working through the thing. Our process is done in front of your eyes.”
“That’s why the jams are so important for us. M.A.D.D. Rhythms rehearsals are part improvisation, part choreography, part technique. The tap jam is a way for us to improvise with people whose style we don’t know, whose cadences we aren’t familiar with, and sometimes it gives you a new way to think about or approach something. A lot of times their level is not even important to that process. It is simply that I never would have thought to do that step in that way at that time!”
Beyond building community among dancers, the jam brings people from around the city to Bronzeville–and thus more awareness of the neighborhood and more economic opportunities for its residents. “Little by little, with jams and classes, we’ve broken down the barrier of the south side being unreachable. We used to think we couldn’t be an internationally renowned company based in our own neighborhood, because that’s what we were taught growing up.”
On July 10, tap dancers came together again for the jam on a wooden floor set up in the parking lot of the Harold Washington Cultural Center. “It was only supposed to last an hour, but we were so happy to be in the same space that we went almost two hours,” says Barrett. “Even though we were all out of breath, and our stamina was not the same because we haven’t been dancing as much, the joy of being together and having the opportunity to be in that space with each other was very different. We’ve all reexamined the value of being able to connect with other souls.”
“Jamming with a group of people is the most selfish and unselfish thing you can do at the same time,” he says. “When that one person is dancing, everybody else is holding time for them, i.e., supporting them. When you really get into it, some people ‘sing’ together–one person will be wrapping up, and another will start, and they’ll start dancing together. We have this conversation before we pass it on. But usually it’s about each person taking their turn to say what they want to say, and we all support, and we all listen. The jam is the perfect opportunity to be heard but also to hear.”
“No matter what we’re doing, we try to always have the jam,” he says. “We do them for ourselves, and if people come, it’s a bonus. We’re going to have them, and if nobody ever shows, it’s still going on, and we’ll have a great time.”
AUGUST
“I was a participant in Cairo during the 2013 occupation of the Ministry of Culture,” says social practice dance artist Shawn Lent. Though the Fulbright she had been awarded to teach at the state-run Higher Institute of Ballet had been suspended because of the Egyptian revolution, Lent, who first went to Egypt on a UN Alliance of Civilizations fellowship in 2010, stayed to stand by artists and activists against a regime that sought to ban dance and other forms of art and expression (“I was supposed to be there six months and stayed almost four years”). “Every night for 33 days, not only did activists occupy the complex, they did street performance. As it led up to June 30, the biggest political demonstration in modern history, I was realizing all the marches coming to the square were all led by artists–film artists, musicians. There were pop-up installations, ballet performances–it was so infused in the arts.”
When Lent moved to Chicago in 2016, she continued to support and participate in social movements. “One of the first things I did coming back to the U.S. after years abroad was join a Black Lives Matter march. I noticed that while there were witty signs, there wasn’t much artist leadership of the march or the movement. The morning after Trump was elected, there was a big rally in front of Trump Tower. I just felt it in my body. I couldn’t do the witty signs. I did a solo demonstration for about a half hour by myself at that rally and then decided to mobilize other dancers to join.”
These demonstrations, initially organized over Facebook, began to grow as Chicago dancers joined Lent in peaceful expression. “We had a pretty big one for Inauguration Day. We had a big one for President’s Day. People brought their babies and danced with their children. During the health-care crisis, dance movement therapists came. Sometimes they’ve been very planned, with choreography people rehearsed. Other times, like after Charlottesville, there was just one young woman who said, ‘I need to do something.’ And no one else came, so it was just the two of us.” Most demonstrations have taken place at the Heald Square Monument, a sculpture on Wacker Drive directly across from Trump Tower that depicts the Statue of Liberty on its base, reaching her arms out to all people, beneath George Washington and two financiers of the American Revolution (“It’s about diversity”).
Though initially organized by Lent, the dance demonstrations have frequently been collaborative in nature and led by others in the city, incorporating marching bands and entire dance companies, with Kristina Isabelle Dance Company joining for the 2017 March for Science.
In recent demonstrations, Lent says, “I’ve been reconsidering my role as a white woman. It was my time to listen and not lead. I’ve been joining others, following, supporting.” However, when word of the Black, Indigenous Solidarity Rally July 17 at Buckingham Fountain reached her, Lent was moved to act. “When I saw the theme and the 16 organizations that were putting this one on–and that it was a solidarity rally–I thought, ‘If I can get a few people there, I think it will mean a lot to them. I need to move. I need to be there. Solidarity for the Indigenous and Black community right now! I put the word out the night before.”
Five dancers joined Lent at 5 PM that day for a 20-minute demonstration. “The prompt was, ‘Do we all want to dance together? Yes.’ That was it. Solidarity. A circle. Twenty minutes of dancing together. There was no other agenda, plan, or structure.” As they finished, two more dancers arrived, and the crowd had begun to march. “It’s very common for a rally to turn into a march, and usually we try to dance as we march, and we try to collaborate with musicians in the crowd. We found some drummers who were interested in collaborating, but there was a lot going on, social distancing, and we didn’t know where the crowd was going.”
The march arrived at the Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park. “Protesters were spray painting and throwing things at the statue. There were fireworks. One person was climbing and trying to put ropes around it. From Cairo I knew property damage is symbolic and important. I thought the police must be standing back and letting this happen.” Minutes later, however, riot police arrived. “They came in and beat two protesters heavily and started attacking a medic who had come to their aid. One of the cops was trying to push me to leave over the wall. I said, ‘Shame on you.’ He said, ‘This is city property! Trump 2020!’ and spat in my direction.” As violence intensified, the dancers decided to hold their ground. Finally, they were marched out, hands up, down Lake Shore Drive. “I’ve been through many large-scale rallies and demonstrations in Cairo, and never felt the fear I felt on Friday,” says Lent. “The cops had their batons ready to use on anybody, no matter where you were standing or what you were doing.”
“I do not use the word protester,” she says. “Within the movement, people say, ‘Are you here to demonstrate or to protest?’ There’s an inside language that a protester is there for action and ready to defend the other protesters. There’s a lot more risk involved. A demonstrator bears an undertone of peace. I felt uncomfortable asking dancers to choose that level of risk. If they want to protest and put their bodies at more risk, that window is open, but what I’m organizing is demonstration through the body. I’m now questioning if it is even possible to do a dance demonstration on city property even with a permit. By inviting people to join me, am I setting people up? Are they at risk? I think I will continue myself, but [do others] really know what they are signing up for if they come to dance?”
“In Cairo there were farmers doing installation art pieces, gestural or sculptural expressions in [Tahrir Square]. Not because they’re artists but because they’re fully expressing what they wanted to express. There were pop-up galleries. Murals. Anywhere there was destruction of property, there was some sort of art: original song, dances everywhere, a full expression of what the protester was trying to get out of their body or tell the world or realize for themselves. It’s a claiming of space: we are not leaving the square; we have built a whole gallery. It is important for the individual protester to realize what they’re trying to say, and to build a collective message and common ground for demands, [whether] in song, in artwork, or in the gut–in the body.”
“Here we march in a straight line. We hold comedic, witty, satirical signs, and we’re flanked by police on both sides who tell us what we can do. When I started dancing in demonstrations, I felt I was saying so much more from myself to the world. That’s the importance of the arts.”
Among those who have joined Lent in dance demonstrations is Kierah King, a 2020 graduate of Columbia College. “A lot of my work in dance and empowerment started in school,” says King, who majored in dance and minored in Black world studies. “I have worked with different communities and socioeconomic backgrounds, particularly kids dealing with traumatic experiences, bringing dance into programs and educational settings.” King and Lent first met working with Educare Chicago, teaching dance to children in Bronzeville. When she joined the dance demonstration Lent organized for the Women’s March in 2017, King says, “I began seeing how the power of dance could be used to change people’s perspectives.” She has since participated in several dance demonstrations, including the Black, Indigenous Solidarity Rally.
“I think all artists bring something beautiful to a space,” she says. “Especially at a protest, having dance in the space creates a certain energy, where you see not only the work that goes in but also the beauty that comes out of it. A dance demonstration is such a strong way to say something, be political, create community, and be empowering: this is what joy looks like. This is what freedom can look like. This is what it can be when we come together and create something beautiful. This is what a movement is, and this is what it’s supposed to be, because this is the natural movement of our body.”
During a march the weekend after George Floyd’s death, King recalls a particularly potent expression. “They were raising all the bridges. The last one was the one at Trump Tower, and [police] started getting really violent with protesters on that bridge. And this one girl started dancing at them. People started screaming, ‘Black Girl Magic!’ Everyone started running towards her and being in this moment and encouraging her. This is beautiful! This is what a woman is! She was twerking, doing African dance, jazz dance, ballet, high kicks, and ended up in a straddle on the ground and just stared at the cops. She just sat there for a good minute. It was a beautiful moment to witness.”
“At that protest, there were people dancing throughout. And I’ve noticed people starting to bring speakers to the protest to play music and dance along as they’re walking. So you see these little dance parties going on as protesters are walking down the streets, and in these little groups you see this joy and happiness and all these different moods and emotions depending on the music, as people are chanting. There are so many different energies going on. People are using it as a way to continue the movement and progress it forward.”
King is determined to continue the work, beginning with a dance demonstration she is organizing this August. “My ultimate goal is to create a really big dance demonstration in Chicago with social distancing, masks, being completely respectful. We did a similar one in Indiana with 25 dancers. It was beautiful and healing for people to connect in that way, even though we can’t touch right now. Right now people are gathering for protests in a state of rage–which is completely understandable–being up front with the cops and having them scream and yell and seeing the physical violence and feeling so upset and overwhelmed with emotion that you can’t feel anything other than that. Dance can bring a sense of calmness, joy, and connection while continuing the movement. It’s so important to maintain that connection when we’re coming together to protest in a way that can take so much out of you. It’s exhausting, being out there for hours all day, with everything in your face, tear gas, yelling, screaming. Remembering why we come together, why we connect, what is the purpose of it–dance has always been a way to express all of those things.
“That sense of community is the biggest thing, and art has been a huge catalyst. Right now, when the arts are standing at such a dire time, people are stepping into roles that have never been held before. It is going to affect the next years and generations to come.” v
With the Black Lives Matter movement taking center focus in Chicago and outside our city walls, the community is teeming with active engagement and empowerment. We see this with protests, public art, music, and even Columbus statues coming down: racial justice activism is uniquely alive after months of pandemic hibernation. A new multigenerational coloring book called #BlackArtMattersseeks to contribute to the cause by highlighting Black artists, representing the breadth of Blackness and the importance of racial and gender equality.
The coloring book is the brainchild of Mya Cavner and Ethan Switall, two 17-year-old Whitney Young students who put their artistic skills to the digital page and worked with nine Black local artists to create #BlackArtMatters, which was released July 12. The 44-page book features drawings of influential Black artists, inspirational quotes, and grim statistics about the Black community that are meant to educate. One stat hits on the reality for some Black trans women in North and South America: their life expectancy is on average 35 years, according to a study by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In the book, juxtaposed with that stat is the popular phrase, “Black trans life is sacred.” “We need to do something about the statistic so it can change in the future,” Cavner says.
The coloring book also celebrates Black joy with illustrations of people holding hands, smiling, and hugging–including visuals of influential Black icons on the front and back covers, such as Noname, Solange, Misty Copeland, Basquiat, male model Alton Mason, and Black trans disabled model Aaron Philip, who has made history in the fashion world.
Cavner and Switall, both visual artists who interned at the Art Institute of Chicago and led their school’s Acting for Gender Equality Club, collaborated on some pages and picked the other, trailblazing contributing artists with inclusive representation in mind, as well as artists’ activism work within the Black community.
Cavner is one of nine other Black contemporary artists who submitted work for the book: Anthony Conover, Corinne Salter, Idia Aikhionbare, Juliana Lebron, Kristle Marshall, Leeya Rose Jackson, Lo Harris, and Sabrina Dorsainvil each contributed to the project and brought different artistic styles and messages that added to the book’s diversity. The curators say the artists–whose work they were familiar with, though they’d never met–made the project possible. “They were willing to participate with two young people they’d never met–they took a chance with us in allowing us to use their work and to have people purchase their work,” Switall says.
The art project is meant to be accessible and showcase less-prominent perspectives that are seeing bigger platforms because of the Black Lives Matter movement. And after working at the Art Institute, both teenagers saw the power of historical representation that art can carry as an education tool, but also were acutely aware that not everyone can experience it, especially in low-income Black communities, and during a pandemic no less.
“The coloring book [is] a new way to have a full experience and can introduce children to ideas of Black Lives Matter and what it means to be a Black trans person while you are talking about it with your kid,” Cavner says. “We wanted to put our skills together to see what we could do to find ways to make it as meaningful and accessible as possible.”
The coloring book sells for $25 for paperback or $35 for a hardcover version, and 50 percent of proceeds are going to the Brave Space Alliance, the city’s first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ resource center, located in Hyde Park. The remaining 50 percent will go to the featured artists who contributed original artwork. Cavner says that after attending a recent protest organized by Brave Space Alliance, she wanted to help the organization grow, which she felt wasn’t getting as much funding attention from the public compared to other Black social justice groups. But the center has seen rapid growth since the pandemic, when it began its crisis pantry and started an $800,000 fundraising campaign to settle into its new home. Since then, thanks to community support, the center hired two new program coordinators. “We felt that highlighting Black trans people and Black queer people was important because there are a lot of organizations getting a lot of money but Brave Space has some of their first paid positions now and we wanted to help contribute to that,” she says.
Witnessing youth take charge of the movement has been nothing short of inspiring for me, and the #BlackArtMatters collaboration has the same effect. For the curators, their project helped them find their place in the movement and also see the power youth have–the power to create impactful change through socially conscious art. v
Silkroad, the acclaimed international musical collective with a social conscience, has a new face — and a fresh sense of purpose.
Grammy-winning folk singer and instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is Silkroad’s new artistic director, taking the baton from renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who founded the group two decades ago, Silkroad said Tuesday.
The 43-year-old North Carolina native is the first woman and first multiracial artist to lead Silkroad. The Boston-based organization is known not just for its touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe, but also for its efforts to use the arts to bridge differences across races, countries and cultures.
“My keenest desire for Silkroad is a sharpening and reinterpretation of what it means for the ‘right now,'” Giddens said in a statement, adding: “What is more American than the gathering of influences from disparate areas of the globe to create something unique and fantastic?”
She makes her debut Wednesday evening with “Recitals from the World Stage,” a virtual presentation prerecorded for Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.
Ma, who launched Silkroad in 1998 and stepped down as artistic director in 2017, called Giddens “an extraordinary human being and musician.”
“She lives Silkroad’s values, at once rooted in history and its many musics, and is an advocate for the contemporary voices that can move us to work together for a better world,” Ma said.
“In addition to her enormous musical talent, she fosters an immense social consciousness and creates unity through her art,” said Kathy Fletcher, Silkroad’s executive director.
Silkroad has recorded seven albums, including “Sing Me Home,” which won a Grammy in 2016 for best world music. Founded to “seek and practice radical cultural collaboration in many forms,” it holds training workshops and residency programs for music teachers and musicians around the globe.
The group takes its name from the ancient Silk Road trade route that linked China to the West, with the two hemispheres exchanging not only goods but ideas.
Giddens, the daughter of a white father and Black mother who married three years after the Supreme Court struck down all bans on interracial marriage in 1967, has won accolades for spotlighting African-American contributions to banjo, bluegrass and folk music.
She won a Grammy in 2011 for best traditional folk album with the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, and last year, she was the first recipient of the Americana Music Association’s inaugural Legacy of Americana Award.
ChicagoCubs (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
The Chicago Cubs bullpen is still a mess.
If you are a Chicago Cubs fan, you have to have enjoyed what you have seen thus far in the 2020 season. Yes, it is still very early in the season, but the Cubbies have taken three out of the first four, which included a three-game series win against division rival Milwaukee Brewers. For the most part, the team has looked sharp, with the exception of the biggest concern coming into this year — the bullpen.
If the Cubs want to be serious contenders this year, they are going to need a solid performance from their pen — particularly closer Craig Kimbrel — and they certainly did not get that last night.
Kimbrel was a huge disappointment in his first season with the Cubs. After missing most of the season, Kimbrel had a lackluster run with the Cubs in 2019 in limited time. In just 20.2 innings pitched, he gave up 15 earned runs, 9 home runs, and 12 walks. While he did strike out 30, he was far too boom or bust for the North Siders.
He is going to have to be much more consistent and reliable if the Cubs are going to contend this year (assuming we get to a postseason).
Candidly, he is not off to a good start, as he got lit up (and even that is putting it mildly) by the Cincinnati Reds last evening. The Cubs headed into the home half of the ninth with a fairly comfortable three-run lead. They turned the ball over to their closer, whose three-year, $43 million contract says it should have been an easy one-two-three inning.
It was anything but that. Kimbrel lasted just one-third of an inning, giving up two runs on four (yes FOUR) walks, before being lifted from the game. Fortunately, the Cubs snuck out of there with an 8-7 win, but it was way too close for comfort.
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For Chicago Cubs fans looking for him to rebound, it was certainly not what they wanted to see. And for Kimbrel, who really needs a fresh start, it was a missed opportunity to kick off the season with an easy confidence booster.
The Cubs gave him the baseball equivalent of a free-throw to boost his confidence — and he bricked it off the top of the backboard. We’ll see how he responds in his next appearance, but hopefully, his confidence is not shaken too badly, as the Cubs desperately need him to be the guy they thought he was.
Illinois school district 225 governing Northbrook’s Glenbrook North and Glenview’s Glenbrook South high schools on Monday night announced that beginning on Aug. 19,
Students will follow a structured schedule with required synchronous learning experiences as part of every class as new content is introduced by teachers. Additional tiers of academic services will be available as needed to support student success and well-being.
“synchronous learning”? Let’s cut through the educationese, designed to obscured what really is happening. “Beginning on Aug. 19, students will be forced to repeat the totally failed online, at-home learning debacle. Parents and students who don’t like it can go pound.”
As for the damage that not being actually in school does to the students, here’s how District 225 will handle it:
The district states it will implement a social-emotional learning curriculum, integrated into PE and Health courses, that will address essential topics, such as creating a collective community; building resilience; coping with anxiety, fears, and stress; and accessing resources and supports.
More gobbledygook designed to obscure board’s anti-science program. It ignores the Centers for Disease Control’s finding that significant damage is being done to children by keeping them out of school. Instead of “following the science,” the school is following a political agenda that’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be described here.
So, if politics are to reign in District 225, remember that board members are elected. You’ll get your chance beginning in 2021.
My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812 To subscribe to the Barbershop, type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
OK. I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted. But I’ve been in the process of moving and have finally settled. Of course, the new abode is .6 miles from our mayor’s house, which brings all sorts of interesting new problems. But I digress. So, on to the topic at hand: This week’s Consumer Guide Car Stuff Podcast.
We had a great episode with a very salient topic: Buying a car in the Covid Era. Our guest, Bill Haggerty, chairman of the Chicago Auto Show, talks about what it’s like in dealerships right now and why it’s a good time to take your vehicle in for any necessary recall repairs.
We also discussed Honda’s cars that don’t make it to the next round: the Fit, Civic Coupe and MT Accord. <insert crying emoji on that last one> The world is steadfastly moving into the SUV era and Honda expects HR-V sales to ramp up to cover the first two. There is no replacement for the Accord Sport with the manual. Sigh.
Finally we also spent time discussing this week’s #cardujour, the 2020 VW Golf with a manual transmission (!!) and why it’s the last (literally) of a dying breed. Golf in its base form won’t be making it to the U.S. as a 2021 model.
While I will continue to post the podcast to my blog each week, you can subscribe to the Consumer Guide Car Stuff Podcast on any podcast subscription service or visit the Buzzsprout link. New episodes are usually posted on Friday, and then the show itself airs on WCPT 820 AM on Sundays from 1 to 2 p.m.
The three episodes I missed posting while moving can be found via these links:
The COVID-19 quarantine has taught many parents the importance of being proficient in technology in all aspects of everyday life, from family entertainment to working from home, even educating our kids remotely while school is out. It seems inevitable that our kids’ future is going to involve some aspect of working with tech, so why not allow them to learn STEAM as soon as possible?
According to stats, 91% of millennial parents want their child to learn computer science and 93% want schools to teach it. I believe learning to code is a critical life skill that young children need to learn either at home or school. Through playing at-home STEAM games like Osmo, kids get a headstart on learning to code and they develop creativity and problem-solving skills along the way, which they will use the rest of their lives. My 6-year-old daughter Ella, who started playing with Osmo at age 2, now has her own website that gifts dolls to girls in need all over the world; she envisions teaching these girls how to make dolls, so they can earn money. In fact, many early childhood education teachers agree coding helps kids develop creativity and problem-solving skills. Ella, who also likes online games, would greatly benefit by learning the back end of game development.
I allowed my other kids to experiment with technology at an early age for other reasons. My eldest daughter Taylor, 20, is autistic and deaf, and I felt she should learn to type on a desktop computer at age 7 to help enhance her communication abilities. Taylor is tech-proficient and currently uses 2 iPads–one for communication and another for watching YouTube videos; and she uses Zoom to communicate with her teacher. Her sister Brooklyn, almost 4, has a speech delay issue, and she uses technology for speech improvement, phonetics, and ABCs, via a tablet. I am still waiting to introduce my youngest, Winnie, 2, to technology.
As a family, we particularly like the Osmo Coding Starter Kit, which introduces basic to more advanced coding concepts to kids 5-10. Basic concepts include problem solving, computational thinking, and coding fundamentals, while more complex concepts involve sequencing of ideas, looping, logic thinking, and pair programming. Osmo also has specific games that help with math, spelling, reading, writing, and phonetics. Their games involve tangibles, physical objects designed to embody mathematical concepts, which have been proven as crucial to development and approachable for kids.
Given the kids will be staying at home for longer than expected, I think they’ll be playing a lot more Osmo now.
Eraina Davis is a writer and entrepreneur. She has written for “Healthy Living” magazine as well as several academic publications. She opened one of the first pop-up shops in downtown New Haven, Connecticut called The Good Life, where she gave advice to entrepreneurs. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, an M.Ed in Education and an MAR in Religion from Yale.
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