The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago has announced that the Red Clay Dance Company will perform 16 for three performances only, from April 17 to April 19, 2025.
The performances will feature Founding Artistic Director and CEO Vershawn Sanders-Ward’s new staging of Written on the Flesh, alongside a premiere by renowned choreographer Bebe Miller.
Miller’s new work has been specifically commissioned and set on Red Clay Dance Company dancers, including Columbia alumni Amaya Arroyo and Celeste Brace, both of whom graduated in 2023.
For those interested in ticket information and purchasing options, visit the Dance Center’s website at dance.colum.edu/events/2025/4/17/red-clay-dance-company.
Season 51 of the Dance Center welcomes back two extraordinary dance artists who have made a significant impact on the dance scene in Chicago and beyond — Bebe Miller and Vershawn Sanders-Ward.
Bebe Miller, based in New York and Ohio, was first recognized as a “MoMing Sensation” by the Chicago Tribune in 1986 when she performed at the MoMing Dance and Arts Center.
She made her Dance Center debut at the original Uptown location in 1990 as part of the Present Vision/Past Voice – The African American Tradition in Modern Dance series.
In 1999, she returned to the Dance Center for the Changing Channels Festival, where then-undergraduate Vershawn Sanders-Ward first experienced Miller’s work.
From 2005 through 2020, several notable Chicago institutions such as the Dance Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Links Hall presented Miller’s work.
Vershawn Sanders-Ward founded the Red Clay Dance Company in Chicago in 2009, quickly gaining recognition on local, national, and international stages.
She returned to her alma mater for a collaboration with Uganda-based Keiga Dance Company in 2018.
During the pandemic, the South Loop Spark Plug incubator residency at the Dance Center commissioned various Chicago-based choreographers, including Sanders-Ward, to premiere new works developed over six months.
Bebe Miller served as an artistic process mentor during this time.
The upcoming performances of 16 will provide Chicago audiences with another opportunity to experience the remarkable artistry of both Bebe Miller and Vershawn Sanders-Ward at the Dance Center.
“Vershawn Sanders-Ward and Bebe Miller are shining examples of never-ending dedication to the field, to process, to inquiry, to continuing to investigate,” remarked Dance Center Artistic Director Meredith Sutton.
Tickets for Red Clay Dance Company’s 16 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, located at 1306 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, are now available for $30 each.
Non-Columbia student tickets are available at a reduced price of $10.
The performances are scheduled for Thursday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m., including a post-performance Q&A session with Bebe Miller and Vershawn Sanders-Ward; Friday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m.
An archive celebrating Red Clay Dance Company’s 16 years in partnership with the Chicago Dance History Project will be showcased in the lobby for audiences to explore before the show and during intermission.
Additionally, advanced and professional dancers, as well as students, can partake in a masterclass with Bebe Miller at the Red Clay Dance Company’s facility located at 808 E. 63rd Street, Chicago, on Thursday, April 17.
Tickets for the masterclass are also available for $30.
Written on the Flesh first premiered in 2016 at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center and was inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ impactful 2014 essay in The Atlantic.
Coates wrote: “Elegant racism is invisible, supple, and enduring,” which sparked the initial development of this dance work.
Vershawn Sanders-Ward and the Red Clay Dance Company dancers were particularly moved by how memories of overt bigotry are often clearer than the subtle insidiousness of systemic racism.
Sanders-Ward noted, “Some of the underpinnings of the things that we just move through in our lives become a way of living; they are actually invisibilized.”
This restaging in 2025 aims to delve even deeper, drawing additional inspiration from Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, published in 2020.
Wilkerson illustrates how caste operates as a silent but powerful force guiding individuals towards their predetermined places in society.
Sanders-Ward sees this reimagining as a chance to confront systemic racial inequities while seeking themes of resilience, forgiveness, and love.
“Even when it’s bubbling up, there’s still this powerful dynamic to suppress and suppress and suppress, not let’s address it head on no matter how disruptive it’s going to be,” Sanders-Ward said.
She expressed a desire for audiences to be willing to engage with these difficult topics fully.
“The relationships that I have now in the field are because of the time that I was at the Dance Center and the generosity of the faculty in making connections for me,” Sanders-Ward reflected.
She feels fortunate to create an opportunity for her dancers to connect with Bebe Miller, whom she describes as a legendary artist still on her own creative journey.
Sanders-Ward emphasized that this event serves as a homecoming for her and the dancers, allowing them to be incubated in a nurturing space and return at this pivotal moment in their careers.
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