‘Let us continue’

In a year of loss, we found that dance is everywhere.

By IRENE HSIAO

The view is divided by screens and mirrors in Jane Jerardi’s delicate hold. Fragmentation by the frame creates incomplete views of arms and torsos, close and deliberate. You hear the squeak of the pencil, the rustle of paper—a voiceover, separated from the person dancing in the grass, says, “How can I expand my box?”

A circle of wooden flats on the northwest side of the parking lot behind the Harold Washington Cultural Center in Bronzeville, where a flurry of flying feet makes intricate music in coordinated turns. After the tap jam, Bril Barrett takes you upstairs where even the walls of M.A.D.D. Rhythms’ home speak of resistance and joy in a visual history of tap dance.

A splash of water hits the window in The Sky Was Different, blurring the world outside, but the man inside does not flinch or get wet.

The nearness, the pulse, the sense of living breath in a magnified perspective on Ayako Kato’s articulate feet at Links Hall, the gaze floor-level, the view infinite. Just Being Kato again, teaching a Muppet-esque puppet how to say “excuse me” in Japanese, Spence Warren speaking poetry on the street, a remarkably present duet with Nora Sharp