CRB Takes On the Seasons

Schaaf in rehearsal with dancer Lizzie MacKenzie.

“I feel like I’ve been painting with all the colors in my palette,” said Wade Schaaf, founder and artistic director of Chicago Repertory Ballet (CRB). “As I’ve been creating more and more, I feel like my movement vocabulary is pretty expansive, so I felt really free with this piece to use everything I know.” Schaaf presents the premiere of his one-act, 30-minute The Four Seasons this weekend alongside CRB favorites including his Peoplescape: Juxtaposition; Manuel Vignoulle’s duet In a Box; Jacqueline Stewart’s cheeky One Way; and a tender, personal trio, Of Alice, by Autumn Eckman. “The audience is really going to get a ride.”

For The Four Seasons, Schaaf found his inspiration in the music, using composer Max Richter‘s modern take on Vivaldi. “The Richter version is a little more contemporary and a little more streamlined, applicable to now,” said Schaaf on a quick break before teaching class at Joffrey Tower (#convenient). “I wanted to hone in on the humanity of the piece. To me, the whole thing is about people, which always intrigues me as a choreographer.” He also cites the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute as an abstract inspiration. “I feel like we’re watching these little vignettes. The music is set up with three sections per season. I treated each of those sections like the miniatures. It didn’t make sense to look at the picture as a whole, but to look at each individual part.”

CRB’s motto may be “Everyone has a story to tell”, but this new The Four Seasons let’s the audience fill in the blanks. “We’re just watching these scenes from life and together they make the four seasons or life, the four seasons of a person’s life, or even the seasons of a relationship,” Schaaf said. “There’s no set plot. I’m not translating a particular feeling, but you get little elements of a story. I wanted it to look like little moments in people’s lives.”

Chicago Repertory Ballet presents THE FOUR SEASONS: and contemporary works Friday-Sunday, May 9 – 11 at The Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets are $25 ($20 for Saturday matinee); visit: victorygardens.org or call 773.871.3000.

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