Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble (CDE) is proud to launch the company’s 2022 – 2023 season and the continuation of its two-year 20th Anniversary celebration with the live remount of its 2006 production “This is Not a Pipe,” choreographed and directed by Executive Artistic Director Ellyzabeth Adler, with the company.
Performances will be held Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., November 5 – 19, in the Auditorium at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1650 W. Foster Ave. The performance will be accompanied by an art exhibition inspired by Magritte and the theme.
Guests are invited to arrive early or stay after the performance to view the exhibition. Tickets are on sale now for $20 general admission (adult non-students), $13 student general admission (high school students over the age of 16 and college students) and free general admission (under the age of 16). Ticket sales online end two hours before the performance but will be available at the door for $25. Information and tickets are available at Danztheatre.org.
For the remainder of the company’s 20th-anniversary celebration, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble will present a staged reading of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (December 2022), “The Vagina Monologues (February 2023) and “Mirrors” based on the poetry of Rumi (May 2023). Exact dates and times will be announced at a later date.
About “This is Not a Pipe”
Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble’s “This is Not a Pipe,” first premiered in 2006 at Chicago Moving Company at Hamlin Park. The updated 2022 production of “This is Not a Pipe” features an all-female and nonbinary identifying cast. “This is Not a Pipe” will take the works of Sigmund Freud, Rene Magritte and the birth of modern psychology and will pull it all apart to question what is identity, sexuality, womanhood and dream interpretation while bringing some of Magritte’s images to life. The performance is timeless and timely going to great depth to explore and enlighten. “My desire to bring ‘This is Not a Pipe’ back to Chicago audiences is led by the importance of continuing to move the conversation forward.
Through a 2022 lens, the cast and the audience will revisit Sigmund Freud’s writings, highlighting identity and dream interpretation together. This will lead us to questions such as ‘what do these objects really mean to you?, What if Freud was a woman?, What if a necktie is simply a necktie or what if it is representative of our anxiety, rather than Freud’s phallic interpretations,” explained CDE Executive Artistic Director Ellyzabeth Adler. The performance features the original backdrop that was part of the Design Museum’s exhibit “Setting the Stage” and original cast member Wannapa P-Eubanks is back in her bowler hat working with the company.
The full cast of “This is Not a Pipe” includes Jenise Sheppard as Freud and company dancers: Angel Smigielsk, Courtney Reid Harris, Emma Parssi, Julie Peterson, Keila Hamed-Ramos, Kristen Secrist, Laura Sturm, Lila Rubin, Mary Iris Loncto, Mia Hilt, Morgan Van Dyne and Wannapa P-Eubanks.
About The Exhibition
Unlike the previous runs, this year’s performance of “This is Not a Pipe” will be accompanied by a unique art exhibition featuring local and regional artists. The art exhibition, curated by the CDE team, resonates with the performance’s theme and explores the deep human subconscious. Artists bring their own take on dream and reality, perception and definition, familiarity and irregularity. The exhibition fully embraces Chicago’s ever-changing and forwarding cultural climate by including diverse, dynamic artists and art styles.
About Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble
Founded in 2001, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble is Chicago’s only multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to social justice and socially conscious work that builds community through the arts “one voice, one story, one person at a time.” CDE’s mission is to engage, inspire, and challenge the community, both onstage and in the classroom, through innovative and collaborative multidisciplinary storytelling to illuminate aspects of social issues. We do this in the genre of Tanztheatre, “which unites all art media to achieve an all-embracing, radical change in humankind.” Through our school-based art and performance programs, CDE helps students in Chicago schools explore their own creativity, supporting their social and emotional learning. CDE provides a physical and emotional space for community conversation and cultural change.
Featured Image: Chicago Danztheater