The flood of 2008 caused devastation to businesses and homes up and down the Cedar and Iowa Rivers. Eight years later, many people have either moved on or are trying to pick up the pieces from that traumatic event.
For the University of Iowa arts campus, the flood claimed its music building, damaged its theater and arts buildings, and ruined its arts museum and its crown jewel performance venue, Hancher. As a result, 2008 meant the derailing of several campus arts programs, with performances being held in high school spaces, arts classes being held in a converted big box space that formerly housed a Menards, and the art museum’s prized items being put in storage or on loan.
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The Gazette - Tuesday, December 27, 2016
KCRG - Friday, December 23, 2016
$200,000, Hancher Auditorium is getting that money through a grant. It's dedicated to bringing Muslim art to Eastern Iowa. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters will give Hancher the grant. They'll work to deepen the relationships between diverse Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Artists will work on performances, classes, exhibits, discussions, and lectures. The projects will go until 2019.
Hancher’s project, Embracing Complexity, will take a multidisciplinary approach to building understanding of contemporary Islamic cultures and Muslim identity. Performing and visual artists will be in residence at various times over the course of two years and will work with partners both on and off campus on a broad range of activities including performances, classes, exhibits, discussions, and lectures. The project will also document and explore the experiences of Muslims in Eastern Iowa through sharing of local stories and oral histories.
Little Village - Monday, December 19, 2016
Iowa City’s newly reopened Hancher Auditorium announced today that it is one of four recipients of a Building Bridges: Arts, Culture and Identity Individual Grant. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) awarded five Building Bridges grants earlier this year: four to individual organizations and one to a consortium. The Building Bridges program, co-funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (DDFIA), aims to “deepen the relationships between diverse Muslim and non-Muslim communities,” according to an APAP press release.
The Hancher project, Embracing Complexity, will receive $204,000 in funding. All projects funded this round will span 2016-2019. Embracing Complexity will explore these topics in a multidisciplinary effort. Hancher will bring in several artists-in-residence, both visual and performing, over the course of the two years. The project will also, according to a press release from Hancher, “document and explore the experiences of Muslims in Eastern Iowa through sharing of local stories and oral histories.”
Chicago Sun Times - Thursday, December 15, 2016
In 1987, when choreographer Robert Joffrey created his version of “The Nutcracker” for the Joffrey Ballet, he broke ground by moving the story from its traditional European backdrop to the home of an upper-class Victorian American family in New York, circa 1860, and incorporating everything from a Virginia reel-style dance for the adults at the Christmas eve party, to replicas of toys of the period. It was an “American” production for the company he always described as quintessentially American.
The Huffington Post - Tuesday, December 13, 2016
A different type of excitement buzzed throughout the Auditorium Theatre lobby Saturday night. In years prior the hum has always been the lively anticipation of a ballet that was a familiar favorite-a tradition for many people in the Chicago area. But Saturday the crowd whirred with a sort of nervous tingle, awaiting the reveal of Christopher Wheeldon’s new Nutcracker, choreographed just for Joffrey. Would it be as engaging? Could the production live up to its predecessor? And for many-will this ballet continue to be worthy of inclusion in holiday tradition?
The Daily Iowan - Monday, December 12, 2016
Hours before Hancher’s curtain rose for its final preview of the Joffrey Ballet’s reimagined Nutcracker, Iowa City felt its first substantial downpour of snow.
Snowflakes coated the crowd of attendees. Children dressed in Wellies and their Sunday best walked beside parents in fur coats, kicking the bright white mounds and catching flakes on their tongues.
In the auditorium, a steady buzz betrayed the audience’s excitement for their glimpse at Christopher Wheeldon’s rejuvenated ballet, nearly ten years in the making, a mood accentuated by the stage’s projection: The Nutcracker, crimson and subtle, undulating against a black, foggy sky.
The Daily Iowan - Monday, December 12, 2016
I love The Nutcracker. As a dancer, as an audience member, as a pop-culture consumer — I willingly admit to a fervent devotion bordering on mild obsession. I know the score by heart; I’ve performed roles ranging from mouse to snowflake to the Sugar Plum Fairy. For me, The Nutcracker is a centerpiece of December’s jollity and magic.
So, naturally, when Hancher announced the Joffrey was in town with an entirely new Nutcracker, I was thrilled. The promise: a revisionist ballet, choreographed by iconic dance artist Christopher Wheeldon and adapted by acclaimed novelist Brian Selznick. A fresh take on a beloved, much-replicated tale. Wow, I thought, dreams do come true. Or, as I discovered, dreams produce thorny questions about the real cost of theater.
The New York Times - Sunday, December 11, 2016
The Joffrey Ballet long had a traditional “Nutcracker” by its founder-choreographer, Robert Joffrey, which it continued to perform after moving to Chicago from New York in 1995. Now, however, Christopher Wheeldon has made the company a new production that catches a historic moment in Chicago: the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair. And whereas traditional “Nutcrackers” begin among the gentry, he also makes the young heroine a working-class girl, the child and neighbor of immigrant workers.
NPR - Saturday, December 10, 2016
In the world of ballet, The Nutcracker is sort of a gateway drug. Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon danced his first Nutcracker when he was 11, with London's Royal Ballet. After he moved to the U.S., he danced the Balanchine production with the New York City Ballet.
Wheeldon is the choreographer behind a brand new Nutcracker created for the Joffrey Ballet. Expectations are high for this $4 million production, which premieres Saturday. It replaces the version that founder Robert Joffrey choreographed in 1987 — his last work before he died of AIDS.