Alumnus Dances in Chicago Performance of Mats Ek’s ‘Casi-Casa’

Hubbard Street, a Chicago-based contemporary dance company, is one of the only professional dance companies to perform year-round, continually touring nationwide and internationally. Now in its 34th year, the company is staging world-renowned Swedish choreographer Mats Ek’s Casi-Casa on Dec. 6-9 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago. Among the Hubbard Street dancers to bring the masterwork to life is alumnus Jonathan Fredrickson (Dance BFA 06).

The emotional and evocative work, which means “kind of home,” rarely receives a performance in the United States, and will be a company premiere.

More about Ek’s work from City Arts writer Susan Reiter from 2011:

[Ek] is skilled at alluding to dramatic situations through subtle encounters, and his duets can be eloquent in their yearning ambiguity. Casi-Casa suggests a framework of lazy domestic coziness, but its uninterrupted series of scenes unearths darker urges and somber consequences. A freestanding door and a stove are onstage. A tall, striking earth-mother appears next, propping a fedora on a raised foot. She later returns to lead a quintet of women who smoothly manipulate stylized vacuum cleaners to the sounds of wistful bagpipes.

Fredrickson was recently named Dance magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2011, along with fellow CalArtian dancer Luciana Achugar (Dance 95). That year, he joined Hubbard Street after performing with the LA-based Limon Dance Company from 2006 to 2010.

Fredrickson talks about dancing Ek’s piece in the video above (starting at about 4:50).

Mats Ek’s Casi-Casa
Hubbard Street Dance Company
Harris Theater
205 E. Randolph Dr., Chicago
Dec. 6 at 7:30 pm
Dec. 7-8 at 8 pm
Dec. 9 at 3 pm
Tickets: $25–$99
Save 20% on best-available seats using code “Swedish” 

 

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