Deeply Rooted presents Up Close & Personal.
Experience the company in a new way and be a part of their artistic process unfolding. Featuring our Emerging Artist Ensemble and Company Apprentices, we will be revisiting beloved classics and premiering new works.
Join us at the brand new Logan Center for the Arts on the University of Chicago Campus, Dec. 7th at 7:30PM.
Tickets $25.00
915 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Click here the link below to purchase tickets.
Online Sales end December 6th!
It’s been an amazing year at Deeply Rooted and we are not the only ones who have noticed. Deeply Rooted Dance Theater was honored to receive the Outstanding Achievement in Dance-Overall Performance Award at the Black Excellence Awards. The 12th Annual Black Excellence Awards Ceremony & Gala was held on Monday, October 29th at the DuSable Museum of African American History.
DRDT’s ensemble members Joshua Ishmon & Adriene Barber accepting the award on behalf of the company.
Additionally, we are grateful and extremely proud to have been considered for the following honors this year by the Black Theater Alliance:
The Ruth E. Carter Award
Best Costume Design
Michael Alan Stein – Chicago Women of Song – Deeply Rooted Productions
The Katherine Dunham Award
Best Choreography in a Production (Resident)
Brian Brooks – Chicago Women of Song – Deeply Rooted Productions
Join Deeply Rooted at the Great Lakes Bioneers Chicago’s Positive Solutions Guided by Nature Weekend Event!
The Great Lake Bioneers of Chicago is committed to promoting sustainable communities that fosters life-giving relationships, nurtures connections, and celebrates solutions for restoring and healing Earth’s communities. This event will explore solutions to some of the Chicago’s environmental and socio-economic challenges through interactive workshops, panels, skill shares, and performing arts.
Deeply Rooted is honored to be a part of this event and will performing of the repertory classic, Flack. The performance will be followed by Q & A.
Click here for more information about the weekend of events.
University of Illinois in Chicago
Student Center East Conference Center
750 S. Halsted
Dance Performance
Saturday, November 3
3:15 pm to 4:00 pm
Deeply Rooted celebrated the end of Summer on a high note. On September 8th, High
Concept Laboratories in partnership with Chicago Loop Alliance produced
Color Jam Chromatic. This program celebrated Chicago’s diverse dance community
with nine different companies, including Deeply Rooted Dance Theater.
Amidst the backdrop of Jessica Stockholder’s vibrant installation, Color Jam, (located at the
intersection of State and Adams), Deeply Rooted performed excerpts of an audience
favorite, “Heaven”. It was truly bringing art to the people!
Deeply Rooted Dance Theater comes to life on screen on September 19th with the premier of MOVE! at the 7th Annual Harlem International Film Festival in New York. MOVE! is a documentary film shot in November 2004 during the company’s 10th anniversary year. This rare and candid view behind the curtain speaks to Deeply Rooted’s mission and shows the spiritual, emotional, and human force that informs the company’s process and work.
Join filmmaker, Theodore Collatos, and the company’s Artistic Director, Kevin Iega Jeff, for a talk-back following the film’s premier and the incomparable Leonara Stapleton, to perform a Deeply Rooted classic directly following the talk-back.
Join us on Opening Night at the historic Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture!
Harlem International Film Festival – Click here purchase tickets.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
7:00pm in EDT
515 Malcolm X Blvd.
New York, New York 10037
Ever wonder what it’s like to get a peak inside a dancer’s rehearsal space? Take a behind-the-scenes look at Deeply Rooted Dance Theater 2 as they prepare for their upcoming show. Click on the video link below and don’t miss out, get your tickets now!
“I hope people leave entertained, inspired and to some extent transformed,” says Deeply Rooted Dance Theater Artistic Director Kevin Iega Jeff about the company’s 15th anniversary season finale, “Chicago Women of Song,” on December 9, 2011, at the Harris Theater at Millennium Park. “We have become ambassadors to modern, classical and African-American traditions in dance, as well as to other world-class art forms in Chicago.”
Deeply Rooted considers “Chicago Women of Song” a tribute to the community and diverse musical heritage that inspire the company’s soul stirring, technically dazzling, internationally acclaimed fusion of dance, movement and voice. The program features world premieres of Chicago Women of Song and Bach’d, along with audience favorites Church of Nations and I Am Deeply Rooted.
The evening particularly highlights seven vocalists born in or associated with the Windy City. The title work evokes moments in the lives of Chaka Khan, Anita O’Day, Minnie Riperton, Mavis Staples and Dinah Washington, concluding with a Jennifer Hudson rendition. Mahalia Jackson’s voice opens I Am Deeply Rooted.
“They show such a rich history,” explains Jeff. “Their voices flow through the legacy of the African America experience, helping us connect to and express our shared values and emotions — almost the soundtrack of our common lives.” Other voices of note will belong to multi-talented Honorary Chair Jasmine Guy, who will welcome the audience and those attending the post-performance reception, and to guest narrator LeeAnn Trotter, representing the event’s media sponsor NBC 5.
Jeff, a co-founder of Deeply Rooted along with Associate Artistic Director Gary Abbott, views “Chicago Women of Song” as a triumph on several levels. “These are challenging economic times. Still, we made it. We have maintained our high level of excellence. I will be so happy to see our dancers on stage for this celebration of what we and our supporters have achieved.”
For tickets to the event, call 312-334-7777 or visit www.HarrisTheaterChicago.org. Further information can be found at www.deeplyrootedproductions.org.
Deeply Rooted celebrates the conclusion of its 15th anniversary season December 9 during a year when it was also featured on the cover of Culture Connects All: Rethinking Audiences in Times of Demographic Change. The Partners for Livable Communities-MetLife Foundation study describes benchmark practices of particularly relevant arts organizations.
In the form of veteran company member Carmel G. Louis, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater graced the cover of Culture Connects All, a recent report on arts organizations that excel at engaging their communities. (Click to see full-size)
“Unfortunately, too many organizations believe that ‘excellence’ and ‘equity’ are fundamentally at odds. They are not,” Culture Connects All concludes. “(C)ommunity building activities do not need to get in the way of aesthetic values; indeed, understanding the community with a willingness to delve into difficult issues helps to feed the quality and impact of the arts.”
In its section on Deeply Rooted, the study commends the leadership of Artistic Directors Kevin Iega Jeff and Gary Abbott: “Jeff and Abbott’s choreography stresses both technical virtuosity and the deep exploration of character and community.” The report singles out Deeply Rooted’s Mature H.O.T. (HealthConscious ~ Optimistic ~ Triumphant) Women training and performance ensemble as an example of responding to needs expressed by an increasingly significant audience segment.
Jeff explains Deeply Rooted strives to nurture all who come in contact with its programs and performances, whether they are professionals, amateur practitioners or audience members. “We seek to deal with the whole, both the individual and collective. We’re about self-realization, self-actualization, bringing out the genius in us all. Art is the missing link to dealing with challenges we face. When you’re inside that context, it can be healing on every level.”
Jeff calls the representation in Culture Connects All “fabulous, right where we want to be.” Indeed, Deeply Rooted refers to its upcoming “Chicago Women of Song” anniversary season finale at the Harris Theater at Millennium Park as a tribute to the diverse musical heritage and local community that inspire the company’s acclaimed fusion of dance, movement and voice.
Most people remember Jasmine Guy from her days on The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World. She made the iconic southern belle Whitley Gilbert, for which she won six consecutive NAACP Awards, must-see TV. There is so much more to Ms. Guy, however. In addition to acting, she is a dancer, singer, author and director.
It is her dancing that led her to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center where she met Kevin Iega Jeff, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater’s artistic director. Also, at the Ailey Dance Center, the two became friends.
Next month, the two dancers will see each other again, when she comes to Chicago for Deeply Rooted’s 15th Annual Season Finale performance at the Harris Theater on December 9, 2011. Ms. Guy, who is the event’s honorary chair, will welcome the audience and stay for the VIP reception following the performance.
“Jasmine values dance and the arts in general as a professional. From a grassroots perspective, she understands the power of community and how it informs the arts,” explains Jeff.
Guy, who makes her home in Atlanta, most recently starred onstage in the True Colors Theater Company productions of Fool For Love, Miss Evers’ Boys, Blues for an Alabama Sky and Broke-ology.
“I have been fortunate to perform in many ‘different worlds,’ excuse the pun,” says Guy. “I can’t wait to see Chicago Women of Song. Iega and I have come a long way since our days in New York.”
One of the last times Chicagoans saw Guy was when she performed in the musical Chicago, as Velma Kelly.
