Dance is both a common form of bonding and a point of contention for black women. They are often the creators of new dance forms, but rarely see their labor reap anything other than derision. And in the traditional world of dance, most black women work against the mold. Consider New York-based choreographer Camille A. Brown. A recipient of multiple awards including a Bessie (the dance world’s Tony), she approaches dance as a method of provocative storytelling and confrontation....

For the most of the year I rant and rail about the really bad ideas and behavior of our elected officials—and, trust me, I’ll get to Mayor Rahm’s $800 million or so Lincoln Yard TIF handout, in a subsequent column real soon. So, good job, Illinois voters. And, J.B., if you come through on your promises regarding legalizing reefer, progressive taxes, an elected school board in Chicago and more money for education—you can buy as many horse farms in Florida as you want....

The Chef: Courtney Joseph (Takashi)The Challenger:Meg Galus (NoMi Kitchen)The Ingredient: Rose water The difference between what she made and the desserts with rose water she’d had before, Joseph said, was that she was able to control how much she put in (not a lot). “You get the smell, and you’re like, OK, this isn’t too bad. And then you get the taste, and it actually doesn’t taste that bad once you put it with other stuff....

Veronica Coney and her four children were walking toward the front door of their home in Chicago Lawn when they heard the gunfire. It was a May evening in 2010, and the family was returning from church. Coney rushed the children inside and called 911. Safe Start provides therapy for families with trauma-exposed children who are younger than six. It has four offices in Chicago, each with a skeleton staff, and one of the offices was at 67th and Western, just a couple blocks from the Coneys....

Was I imagining things, or did the WBEZ announcers sound cheerier than usual during the membership drive that ended last week? Maybe it was the fact this spring’s drive was reduced to just five days on the air—after days of hints to listeners to go online to make their pledges. Maybe it was the campaign’s success: the revenues it raised—$1 million—soared 33 percent above the 2016 spring total, and that drive was considered a good one....

After losing an hour this weekend, we have to fit even more into the precious few free moments available. We’re here with recommendations to make sure all your time is spent wisely: Tue 3/14: This iteration of the storytelling event the Moth StorySlam at the Promontory (5311 S. Lake Park West) is based on the theme “wonders.” 7 PM 3/16-3/17: Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Environmental Sustainability (1032 W. Sheridan) hosts its fourth annual Climate Change Conference, examining the ways in which climate change interferes with human rights....

They call Fillet of Solo a festival, but it’s more like an annual gathering of the tribes. Thirteen Chicago storytelling “collectives” are set to convene this month to celebrate the art and craft of performing personal histories. Produced by Lifeline Theatre, the fest’s 17th incarnation also features ten independent performers. The whole thing unfolds over three weekends at the Lifeline and Heartland Studio spaces, located about a block from each other in east Rogers Park....

The Awful Truth This week Chicago moviegoers have the opportunity to see not one but two films featuring the one and only Cary Grant: the famous George Cukor comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940) and the lesser-known Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), which screens as part of Chicago Filmmakers’ “Dyke Delicious” screening series. The film, in which Grant has a small role, is a pre-Code gem about the rigors of monogamy directed by Dorothy Arzner, a seminal if underappreciated filmmaker notable for being the only female Hollywood director of her era....

There won’t be anything “white” about Christmas in Chicago this year. Instead the unseasonable warmth gave way to rain and turbulent wind—something of an appropriate symbol for what 2015 has meant to black communities across the country. These leaders, organizers, and activists in the streets aren’t looking for a quick fix. Instead, they’re fighting for a gift that will keep on giving—for families who lost loved ones to police brutality, for scores of people whose lives could be spared with substantive reforms, and for city budgets rocked by hundreds of millions of dollars in police misconduct payouts....

You could say Students for a Democratic Society was all about inclusion. In 1969, with the Weather Underground in control and the Vietnam war in full swing, it supported an anti-capitalist revolution, carried out by colonized and oppressed people everywhere in alliance with what we’d now call woke Western white folks. (Violent woke Western white folks, as it happened: “Bring the war home” was an invitation to tear up “Pig City” [i....

As portrayed in the biopic Yona, poet Yona Wallach was a literary rock star—extroverted, openly bisexual, and prone to public feuds with her contemporaries. She was also mentally ill, and at certain points in her life she was institutionalized; during at least one stay she served as a guinea pig for psychological experiments involving LSD. Yona, which screens at this year’s Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema, dramatizes her life from the mid-60s to the mid-70s (she died of breast cancer in 1985, at age 41)....

The cover of Minutes of Sleep Back in November, I caught the Brooklyn DJ and musician Francis Harris opening for DJ Sprinkles at Smart Bar. I knew nothing of Harris’s music and found his inclusion on the bill odd. Most of what he played felt like clubby, monotonous tech-house with no relationship to Sprinkles’s deeply gorgeous, intricately textured house music. But maybe I just caught Harris on an off night—I’ve been playing his most recent album, Minutes of Sleep (Scissor & Thread), on most mornings and sometimes in the wee hours....

Jennifer Painter Emilie Weibel The Swiss singer Emilie Weibel moved to New York in 2006, lured by the city’s potent jazz scene to further her education. She first studied with the excellent trumpeter Ralph Alessi at his School for Improvisational Music before enrolling at the City College of New York. I don’t know what her sound and practice was like back then, but her aesthetic these days is impressively broad, and on her recent solo debut album, Omoo (Inner Circle Music), jazz informs rather than defines her work....

In the Reader‘s Fall Arts preview, I described bassist Matthew Lux as “the Kevin Bacon of Chicago music, connected to just about every important living player in the city.” Unfortunately, most people not directly involved in the scene don’t even know who he is, despite his staggering resumé. Since graduating from Lane Tech in 1991, Lux has worked as a regular sideman in a number of important groups, including Isotope 217 and several bands led by cornetist Rob Mazurek....

This is the fourth installment in our occasional series on segregation in Chicago’s schools. Parker is “deliberately composed of a diverse group of people so that we may learn how to honor the dignity and experience of every human being.” But socioeconomically diverse schools are the exception in CPS. Nearly a third of Chicago’s 658 public schools have enrollments that are at least 95 percent low-income. Reich’s essay continued: “By lowering the taxes of the donor and diminishing the tax revenues that would otherwise have been collected and partly distributed to rich and poor schools alike, federal and state governments are in effect subsidizing the charitable activity of parents who donate to their child’s school....

Ants on a log is a good walk spoiled.—Mark Twain Twain sits in an old auto body shop in Logan Square, along the stretch of mostly quality clubs, bars, and restaurants that have sprouted like mushrooms over the last few years in what is subsequently becoming a place to avoid on weekends, when it’s descended upon by people who don’t live in the city, much less the neighborhood. On a large menu to match the sizable 90-seat dining room, Graham indulges in all sorts of improbable-sounding dishes, more than a few of them so unexpectedly successful that you wonder what other secrets the churches and ladies’ clubs of central Missouri have been quietly disseminating among themselves....

Sometimes the lineup of one show seems to sum up the awesomeness of Chicago’s DIY punk scene, and just such a show arrives Saturday, June 17. Gossip Wolf is already in the tank for the tangled, bracing hardcore of the Bug, whose new Humbug seven-inch just dropped via the dependable Not Normal Tapes (run by the band’s singer, Ralph Rivera). Depending on whom you ask, C.H.E.W. stands for “Cold Hands Elicit Worry” or “Cocaine Heroin Ecstasy Weed,” but either way, the D-beat barrages on group’s recent split with Philly punks Penetrode (on California label Neck Chop) put this wolf in a floor-punching mood!...

The goal of the documentary Brewmaster, director Douglas Tirola says, “is to tell the story of the craft beer boom.” It encompasses more than craft beer, though: it also follows Drew Kostick, a New York lawyer trying to start his own brewery, and Brian Reed, a trade brewer for Tenth and Blake who’s studying to become a Master Cicerone. Tenth and Blake is the craft and import division of MillerCoors, and while it includes several craft beer brands—including Pilsner Urquell, which provided funding for the documentary—the company isn’t exactly a microbrewery....

Back in 2002 the Weinstein Company released the documentary Comedian, which recorded Jerry Seinfeld’s return to New York comedy clubs after the ninth and final season of his cherished NBC sitcom. Over the course of a year, director Christian Charles trailed Seinfeld as he tried out new material at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, the Gotham Comedy Club in Chelsea, and other venues, gradually working up a brand-new one-hour set he could take to the concert stage....

Carol Laure, Gerard Depardieu, and Patrick Dewaere in Get Out Your Handkerchiefs In an interview with Michael Phillips that appeared last week in the Chicago Tribune, John Turturro cited French novelist and filmmaker Bertrand Blier as a major influence on Fading Gigolo, the new movie he wrote, directed, and stars in. He also said he’s working on a loose remake of Blier’s breakthrough feature Going Places (1974). These statements provide useful insight into Fading Gigolo, which feels out of step with current U....