Winter 2023 – Clef Notes Chicagoland Journal for the Arts

There’s quite a bit to unpack, both literally and figuratively, when a family immigrates from a far flung country to the West and have to take on the challenges of adapting to local culture and idioms while maintain their own along the way. Imagine just how much more there is to deal with when that family spans several generations and the move is made amidst a swirl of global strife and social upheaval. Then you’ve got a conundrum of intense magnitude. How does the family navigate challenges unlike any it’s ever seen, economically, physically and culturally and stay a family? Such is the challenge depicted in Layalina, an extraordinary new play about how multi-generational families fall apart—and ultimately find each other again—amidst turbulent global and social change.

Dance Winter 2023

Coming Home: Alvin Ailey Returns to the Auditorum Theatre This Spring

February 11, 2023 Fred Cummings Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Auditorium Theatre, Robert Battle

If ever there was a “cultural ambassador” Chicago could call our own, it’s the beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The world renowned and resplendently talented company of diversely gifted dancers has performed for an estimated 25 million people in 71 countries on 6 continents—as well as millions more through television broadcasts, film screenings, and online platforms—promoting the uniqueness of the African American cultural experience and the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance tradition.

Pompei-the-Exhibition-at-Museum-of-Science-and-Industry

Museums Winter 2023

Frozen in Time: Pompei 2.0

February 7, 2023 Isaac Jacobs Museum of Science and Industry

There are many, many events in our history that would prove tempting should one be able to to travel back in time to view up close. There are few that we can glean for an absolute certainty, the facts thereof. One such event is catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., marking the sharp end of activity in the life of Pompeii. Now an archaeological site in Italy’s southern Campania region, Pompeii is a city frozen in time, preserved by meters of centuries-old ash and pumice to give us a picture of life during the moments it came to a cataclysmic end.