The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago announces 16 by Red Clay Dance Company for three performances only, April 17-19, 2025, featuring Founding Artistic Director and CEO Vershawn Sanders-Ward (‘02)’s new staging of Written on the Flesh and a premiere by Bebe Miller—commissioned and set on Red Clay Dance Company dancers including Columbia alumni Amaya Arroyo (‘23) and Celeste Brace (‘23).

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit dance.colum.edu/events/2025/4/17/red-clay-dance-company.

Season 51 welcomes the return to the Dance Center of two extraordinary dance artists who have significantly impacted the dance ecosystem in Chicago and beyond—Bebe Miller and Vershawn Sanders-Ward. New York- and Ohio-based Miller was dubbed a “MoMing Sensation” by the Chicago Tribune in 1986 when she first performed in Chicago at MoMing Dance and Arts Center. Miller made her Dance Center debut at the original Uptown location in 1990 as part of Present Vision/Past Voice – The African American Tradition in Modern Dance series and returned in 1999 for the Changing Channels Festival where then-undergraduate Vershawn Sanders-Ward first experienced her work. From 2005 through 2020, the Dance Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Links Hall all presented Miller in Chicago. Sanders-Ward founded Red Clay Dance Company in Chicago in 2009 and began making a local, national and international name for herself. Sanders-Ward returned to her alma mater for Red Clay Dance Company’s collaboration with Uganda-based Keiga Dance Company in 2018. During the pandemic, the South Loop Spark Plug incubator residency at the Dance Center commissioned four Chicago-based choreographers, including Sanders-Ward, to premiere new works in 2022 that were developed over a 6-month period with Miller serving as an artistic process mentor. 16 is the latest opportunity for Chicago to experience these two artists at the Dance Center.

“Vershawn Sanders-Ward and Bebe Miller are shining examples of continued, never-ending dedication to the field, to process, to inquiry, to continuing to investigate,” says Dance Center Artistic Director Meredith Sutton.

Tickets for Red Clay Dance Company’s 16 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago (1306 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago) are now available for $30, with non-Columbia student tickets available for $10. Performances are Thursday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. (includes post-performance Q&A with Bebe Miller and Vershawn Sanders-Ward); Friday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit dance.colum.edu/events/2025/4/17/red-clay-dance-company.

Displayed int he lobby will be an archive of Red Clay Dance Company’s16 years in partnership with the Chicago Dance History Project for audiences to view before the show and during intermission.

Alongside the performances, advanced/professional dancers and students can take a masterclass with Bebe Miller at Red Clay Dance Company (808 E. 63rd Street, Chicago) on Thursday, April 17. Tickets are available for $30 HERE. A workshop with Vershawn Sanders-Ward will also be held at the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago (1306 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago) on Friday, March 7 at 10:30 a.m.

When Written on the Flesh first premiered in 2016 at Chicago’s DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, it had been sparked by a Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 essay in The Atlantic where he wrote: “elegant racism is invisible, supple, and enduring.” In developing the dance work, Vershawn Sanders-Ward and the Red Clay Dance Company dancers were struck by how memories of direct, in-your-face bigotry were easy to call up and respond to, “But some of the underpinnings of the things that we just move through in our lives become a way of living,” says Sanders-Ward. “They are actually invisibilized. I was intrigued about how to make those things visible.”

This 2025 restaging takes the inquiry deeper, drawing additional inspiration from Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” Reimagining the work with the current dancers in the company, Sanders-Ward seeks to confront systemic racial inequities while searching for resilience, forgiveness, and love.

“There are systemic issues that we still don’t have the courage to really lay bare,” says Sanders-Ward. “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. We see pockets of it. But are we willing to let it all come out?”

“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,” says Sanders-Ward. “I feel very blessed to be in a position to put the dancers in the company in relationship with Bebe Miller, an artist who is just legendary to me, but is also still on her own creative journey.” says Sanders-Ward. “It’s a homecoming to be able to be incubated in a space and go away and to come back at this pivotal moment.”

About 16’s Choreographers

A native New Yorker, Bebe Miller first performed her choreography at NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop in 1978. She formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985 to pursue her interest in finding a physical language for the human condition. Committed to keeping dance available to a wide spectrum of people and to further the conversation about the role of arts and creativity in our culture, Miller is dedicated to providing access to the creative process and expression to diverse communities. She has created more than 50 dance works for the company and has been commissioned and presented by 651 ARTS, BAM Next Wave, DTW, Jacob’s Pillow, Joyce Theater, PICA, REDCAT, Walker Art Center, and Wexner Center for the Arts among others. Her choreography has been performed by Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M. (Abraham In Motion), Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, Boston Ballet, Philadanco, Salt Lake City’s Repertory Dance Theater, the UK’s Phoenix Dance Company, PACT Dance Company of Johannesburg, South Africa, and at a host of colleges and universities including the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. Named a Master of African AmericanChoreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Bebe has been a Movement Research honoree, has received four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards, the David R. White Award from New York Live Arts, United States Artists and Guggenheim Fellowships, honorary doctorates from Ursinus College and Franklin & Marshall College, and is one of the inaugural class of Doris Duke Artist Award recipients. Bebe is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance and lives in Columbus, OH. bebemillercompany.org

The Founding Artistic Director& CEO of Red Clay Dance Company, Vershawn Sanders-Ward blends elements of African diasporic dance forms with modern techniques and is committed to reshaping the landscape of contemporary dance while driving social change. Through Red Clay Dance Company, she provides a platform for artists of diverse backgrounds to explore issues of identity, race, and social justice through dance and ARTIVISM. Her work has been presented in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard, and internationally in Toronto, Dakar and Kampala and commissioned by Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern University, Knox College, AS220, and the National Theatre in Uganda. On the Board of Trustees for Dance/USA, Sanders-Ward is President of the Board of Directors for the Black Arts & Cultural Alliance of Chicago, was selected as a Community Impact Fellow for the Harvard Business School Club of Chicago and as a member of the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit for Emerging Global Leaders. She is the recipient of the inaugural Walder Foundation Platform Award, Dance/USA Artist Fellowship, Dance/USA Leadership Fellowship, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Award, and 3Arts Award. She was featured on the 2024 Chicago episode of the PBS series "The Expressway with Dulé Hill, "named a 2024 Chicagoan of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, and inducted into Newcity’s “Players 50: People Who Really Perform for Chicago” Hall of Fame in 2023. Sanders-Ward is a candidate for Dunham Certification and currently serves on faculty at Loyola University of Chicago. She holds an MFA in Dance from New York University and is the first recipient of a BFA in Dance from  Columbia College Chicago, where she was a Gates Millennium Scholar. redclaydance.com

About Red Clay Dance Company

Red Clay Dance Company, Chicago’s premier Afro-contemporary dance company, is the brainchild of Vershawn Sanders-Ward, the institutions’ Founding Artistic Director & CEO. The touring company is an award-winning ensemble of versatile and dynamic dance Artivists that tour and perform locally, nationally, and internationally. In its 16-year history the company has toured and performed in venues such as the Harris Theater for Music & Dance, Dance Center of Columbia College, the DuSable Museum Roundhouse, the Museum of Contemporary Art, ODC Theater, Dance Mission Theater, The Painted Bride, Joyce Soho, and the National Theater of Uganda. Committed to taking their signature Artivism in Motion from the stage into learning environments, its community engagement work is a vital part of the company’s creative process and village building work.

About The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

Within the School of Theatre and Dance, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago is home to the Dance program and the Dance Presenting Series. Valuing embodied human expression, nurturing an expansive understanding of dance from the established to the experimental, and centering pluralism, the Dance Center aims to be a nucleus for innovation and creativity—on stage, in the classroom, and beyond. By partnering with local, national, and international dance artists dedicated to transforming the field, the Dance Presenting Series offers live performances and other shared opportunities for students, faculty, artists, and audiences to connect, witness, research, experiment, practice, imagine, and grow. We cultivate an environment and culture that prioritizes respect for self and others, and advances an anti-racist, equitable, and just society.

Season 51 is supported in part by Alphawood Foundation, Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Illinois Arts Council, Kalapriya Center for Indian Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Red Clay Dance Company, and The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Additional support for She’s Auspicious is provided by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

About Columbia College Chicago

Located in the heart of downtown Chicago’s Cultural Mile, Columbia College Chicago is a private, nonprofit college offering a distinctive curriculum that blends creative and media arts, liberal arts, and business for nearly 6,700 students in more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Dedicated to academic excellence and long-term career success, Columbia College Chicago creates a dynamic, challenging, and collaborative space for students who see the world through a creative lens.