Dance Festival makes its return
By Kevin Beese Staff Writer — March 9, 2024
Members of the Red Clay Dance Company perform in Chicago’s Grant Park. The Dance Company will hold its La Femme Dance Festival from Thursday, March 14 through Saturday, March 16. (Raymond Jerome Photography)
Vershawn Sanders-Ward sees herself as an artivist — someone combining art and activism.
Sanders-Ward, the founder and artistic director of Red Clay Dance Company in Chicago, said her productions all have an activism angle to them,
“I went to school to be an attorney, but dance kept calling me. I advocate to right the wrongs,” Sanders-Ward said. “All Red Clay programs have some sort of equity lens.”
Marking its 15th season, Red Clay Dance will hold its La Femme Dance Festival from Thursday, March 14 through Saturday, March 16, featuring an opening reception and a dance masterclass with three-time Emmy-nominated hip-hop and pop music choreographer Fatima Robinson, whose recent projects include choreography for the Warner Bros. musical The Color Purple, Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour, and the 2022 Super Bowl. Robinson was nominated for Emmy Awards for choreographing the Beyonce performance “Be Alive” at the 2022 Oscars, and for her role as a producer for both the 2021 and 2022 Grammy Awards.
It will be the first La Femme Dance Festival since 2019.
“It’s tough, but I’m excited we are back on schedule,” Sanders-Ward said as the festival returns after a COVID-19 hiatus.
She started dancing at a young age but got away from it in high school.
“I came back to it in college. It has always been a passion of mine,” Sanders-Ward said. “I didn’t know it could be a career. I didn’t see artists doing dance full time.”
Sanders-Ward wants the Dance Festival to be that conduit to get young girls to know that dance is an option for their future.
“There are young people who can make it in the field,” she said. “Work needs to be done in youth development. We need pre-professional programs to support dance, artists, choreographers. We have to do what is needed to support them as professional artists, stepping their family through that.
“We need a village around young artists, promoting their dreams, saying it’s possible. It’s going to be some work, but if they have the passion and put the work in, they can do it.”
Sanders-Ward said more funding for the arts is needed.
“You cannot solely rely on government and private investments. You have to know how to build relationships with private businesses,” she said. “Art and culture make a city a vibrant place, but you have to look through the funding lens. You have to approach it and look at funding in different ways.”
Sanders-Ward started Red Clay out of grad school.
“As a new artist, you have got to get your work out there, build a nonprofit. That’s not what I studied. That’s not why I entered the field,” Sanders-Ward said. “If I was to do it again, I would do it a little differently … . Knowing the challenges I went through, I am not sure I would recommend starting a dance company to young people.
“Any time you birth something new, something that did not exist before, you are months, sometimes years in the making until you are in a place where you are ready to share with individuals.”
The name of her dance company, Red Clay, is a tribute to her family’s Alabama roots.
“My parents are from Mobile (Alabama). We moved here. I grew up in the south suburbs, but I was born in Mobile,” Sanders-Ward said. “Red Clay is an homage to the red earth of Alabama.”
Sanders-Ward went to graduate school at New York University. She said dance is viewed differently in New York than it is in Chicago.
“It’s different than in New York but not in a bad way,” she said. “There is not as much support for the arts as you see in New York in some respects. We are still conservative here about the arts. In New York, they see the arts as part of everyday life. I am not sure every Chicagoan sees the arts that way.”
Two world premieres will take place during the festival — one by guest choreographer and New Orleans native Michelle Gibson, the other by Sanders-Ward.
The festival kicks off with a VIP Opening Reception at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at The Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario St., featuring a fireside chat with Fatima Robinson about her career.
At noon Friday, March 15, Robinson will lead a masterclass for professional dancers at Red Clay Dance Company’s Center for Excellence, 808 E. 63rd St.
The festival culminates with performances at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 16, at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St. Besides the two world premieres, performances will include the Chicago premiere of Portraits in Red, a solo piece by Paris-based choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu.
For information on Red Clay Dance Company and to purchase festival tickets, visit redclaydance.com/la-femme-dance-festival.
kbeese@chronicleillinois.com
