Cultural Crossroads: Music and Dance in the Windy City (Music and Dance Study Group)

Chicago has an extensive dance past as both a key circuit of national and international networks and as the place of an intensely local and diverse dance scene – intertwined with a no less exciting music scene. Despite the abundance of activity, there is a lack of awareness of the city's dance/music roots, and furthermore, no existing means for widely disseminating this information. We are honored that Jenai Cutcher, Executive and Artistic director of the Chicago Dance History Project (CDHP), an independent research organization, will give a presentation of her diverse initiatives to keep Chicago's dance history alive (for a first overview see https://www.chicagodancehistory.org/). Her talk will describe the CDHP's efforts, which address diversity by investigating, preserving, and presenting oral and corporeal histories of dance in Chicago.