Watching Ayako Kato dance, it’s as though she’s suspended in time. Slow and deliberate, the Japanese-born Chicagoan is meticulous in Blue Fish, her world premiere about “balance,” “equilibrium,” and “humanity’s relationship to nature.” The piece dates as far back as 2013, when Kato began developing it in response to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster that in 2011 forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes. The surrounding region has been virtually uninhabited ever since....

On August 6, the same day a federal judge refused to dismiss professor Steven Salaita’s high-profile lawsuit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, chancellor Phyllis Wise abruptly resigned. Her departure was nearly as bizarre as the dismissal over tweets about Israel she’d handed Salaita a year earlier. Salaita’s case—which continues to inspire boycotts and protests—is working its way through the courts. His federal lawsuit cites violation of free speech rights, breach of contract, and destruction of evidence, and he’s suing in state court over FOIA violations....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, January 19, 2017. Former police chief McCarthy subpoenaed in Sandi Jackson-Jesse Jackson Jr. divorce Former Chicago Police superintendent Garry McCarthy and two other former police officers have been subpoenaed in the divorce between ex-congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and former alderman Sandi Jackson. Jackson Jr.’s legal team is asking the men for information regarding gifts given to Sandi Jackson. McCarthy and former cop James Love are also required to “provide information about any hotel stays, trips or vacations they have taken with the former alderman or members of her family,” according to the Sun-Times....

Strawdog Theater used to put on weird but unique noir-inspired thrillers in a Lakeview cabaret loft with a bar in it, but the landlords kicked them out in 2015 and tore down the building to make room for condos. The company has its new home in a squat North Center den on a sleepy and out-of-the-way street, though there are occasional disruptive volleys from the Metra and Brown Line on either side....

The Adult Swim cartoon-for-grownups Rick and Morty returns for a second season on Sunday to continue celebrating the bad behavior of an alcoholic mad scientist (Rick) and his teenage grandson (Morty)—and season two promises to be even more insane than the first. We’ve put together a primer for the uninitiated. What can viewers expect from season two?In an interview with the A.V. Club, Harmon, Roiland, and writer-performer Ryan Ridley threw out a few hints about the new season....

Q I’m what was once quaintly called a “woman of a certain age” who started reading your column to broaden my horizons. As a result, some curiosities peeped their heads over the boundaries of my once happily repressed existence. I summoned the courage to join an online BDSM dating site. I got a response almost immediately from a man who decided to fill me in on how things worked. He proceeded to tell me my name would henceforth be Sub, advised me that he was to be addressed as His Majesty King Something, and ordered me to phone him....

I have a handful of concert previews already written for the next two issues of the Reader, but now I’m sitting in a friend’s apartment, with almost everything I own in storage, on the eve of leaving the city I’ve called home for 34 years—this post will be the last thing I write for the paper for the foreseeable future, and it’s definitely my farewell as a staff member. I will miss Chicago greatly, though I fear that the municipal government’s coddling of corporate money will continue to allow well-connected power brokers to crowd out the things that have made the city not just livable but special....

No matter where you’re from, turning 60 feels significant, but in Japan they have a name for it. Kanreki signifies the start of a new cycle of life with your troubles and responsibilities forgotten. Celebrants often wear red—a color associated with youth—and traditionally they retire from adult household responsibility. Tatsu Aoki, who was born in Tokyo and moved to Chicago in 1977, put off his kanreki until he turned 61 this year, and he still shows no signs of slowing the pace of his busy lifestyle....

Having failed to drive the state into bankruptcy in one fell swoop, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner came up with a new strategy: bleed it to death with a thousand nicks. On May 31, the Democrats passed a school funding bill called SB1, which would distribute the state aid schools need to open this year. Rauner opposed the bill on the grounds that it’s a Chicago bailout, even though it’s not. In fact, it would send hundreds of millions of dollars to school districts from Cairo to Zion....

Riot Fest books more than enough reunited bands every year to earn its reputation as a nostalgia trip—and for better or worse, they’re often among the highlights of the weekend. The reunions on the 2015 lineup include beloved metal oddballs (System of a Down, Faith No More), aughties Warped Tour crowd pleasers (Alexisonfire, the Academy Is . . . ), cult favorites from the punk and emo scenes (88 Fingers Louie, Desaparecidos), and the following half dozen Reader staff picks....

Last November, Gossip Wolf hailed the talents behind improvised live game show Shame That Tune—including pianist and songwriter extraordinaire Abraham Levitan and novelist and Reader contributor Brian Costello—for reaching their 50th episode. Sadly, on Fri 8/21 this wolf’s favorite oddball entertainers will sign off with one last show, turning the tables with “shameful anecdotes from the performers themselves,” including Costello, Levitan, and cohost Jeanine O’Toole. The evening will begin with a reel of all the show’s fake commercials and end with a postshow dance party featuring DJ James Deia....

The New York Times published a story yesterday called “An Ode to Shopping Malls,” about a 40-year-old filmmaker named Dan Bell who’s documenting “the most depressed shopping malls in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond” in what he’s titled the “Dead Mall Series.” Bell’s YouTube videos, the Times‘s Steven Kurutz writes, “offer an unsettling visual document of the retail apocalypse that changing consumer habits, e-commerce and economic disparity have wrought.” “Fifteen,” which appeared in the August 1982 issue of Esquire, is quintessential Greene, the midwestern boy roving the country with a notebook in hand, willing to lend a sympathetic ear, interested in even the smallest of stories....

With the Christmas season upon us, Chicago Democrats will get in the spirit by dropping into the mud and doing a little wrestling, eye-gouging included. That’s twice as many as the 12,500 signatures a mayoral candidate needs to make the ballot. But the rule of thumb is a candidate needs at least three times the required number to survive a petition challenge. The new law neglected to stipulate a signature requirement....

Car Con Carne/Kickstarter James VanOsdol in car, with barbecue I can think of only one time that I’ve ever been on radio or TV (a small sample, admittedly) when there was really first-class food in the green room. That was at WGN Radio a few months back, and the other guest was Barry Sorkin of Smoque who arrived with the full catering setup full of brisket, so it’s not really a fair comparison....

In May the Ramblers topped Stanford 3 to 1 in their home gym to capture their first NCAA title—just the fifth won by a school outside of California. “It was kind of a storybook ending,” says coach Shane Davis. He seems to have a good thing going. Men’s volleyball has only been a varsity sport at Loyola for 16 years, and as he notes, “I’ve either played with or coached every player to come through the program....

Third Thursday of every month, 8 PM, 1349 N. Wells, 312-943-5397, facebook.com/upstairs.downstairs.54 The notorious Bijou, a gay porn house and sex club around since 1970, is now home to Upstairs/Downstairs, a delightfully eclectic, enlightening, raucous, bizarre, and sexually explicit variety showcase that’s been playing the Old Town institution since February. Each month cocurators and producers Ricky von Anhalt and Miriam Webster take a truly liberal approach to the format, programming stand-up, improv, dance, music, poetry, performance art, video, 16-mm films, site-specific installations—pretty much anything, so long as it has a left-of-center sensibility....

Chicago Mixtape, an interactive website designed to spread excellent Chicago music everywhere, celebrates its third birthday this weekend. The concept behind Chicago Mixtape, which is run by local musician Casey Meehan, is simple: you submit your e-mail address on the website, and at the beginning of each week you get a fresh playlist of diverse Chicago-based music sent directly to you. This week’s mix is their 158th, and focuses on the artists that are going to be playing their massive fund-raiser birthday party at Empty Bottle this Saturday, February 22....

Baritone saxophonist and Chicago native Jonah Parzen-Johnson uses his new album, I Try to Remember Where I Come From (Clean Feed), as a statement of thanks for his artistic roots. He grew up on the south side and became an adherent of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), studying under the great reedist Mwata Bowden, who imparted the organization’s communal sensibility to the young musician. The music Parzen-Johnston now creates in Brooklyn, where he moved in 2006, bears little resemblance to the output of AACM members, but its spirit of creativity and freedom certainly stems from his experiences here....

Improvised solo saxophone performance isn’t the kind of thing you’d expect a 26-year-old newcomer to the scene to jump into with both feet. But Gerrit Hatcher makes a convincing case that he’s ready on his new cassette, Good Weight (Amalgam), a succinct offering that keeps the focus on basic ideas. The album begins with a pair of dedications to two often overlooked heavies of the free-jazz era—fellow tenor saxophonists Frank Lowe and Frank Wright—on which Hatcher reveals a flair for motific improvisation, uncorking a richly marbled tone spiked with leaps into his instrument’s extreme upper register....

The extent of onstage action during minimalist noise shows too often consists of a composer switching between MIDI keyboard and a laptop—the sound is complex, but the execution is bland. The live shows of sound artist and composer Laetitia Sonami are the antithesis of this sort of insularity—rather than simply pushing buttons and keys, she’s a conduit who manipulates sound through movement. Sonami, who’s 61, merges performance art and experimental music through instruments of her own invention that she plays by making gestures with her body....