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Anderson Cooper reporting from the ground in Haiti today “words sort of fail.” He went on to report what he was seeing. Vital, unexploitive  reporting of a catastrophic event and that is all that is required under the circumstances- ethical, discerning journalism in this unimaginable human tragedy.

dancemetros

Frank Chaves, artistic director of River North Chicago Dance Company is marking the company’s 20^th anniversary by presenting several new dance works on the road and in their hometown Chicago.

Chavez iphoned just before the troupe’s New York for performance at Symphony Hall. They are then headed for Philly, after a five year absence, to the Annenberg Center’s Dance Celebration and Chaves was completely charged. “the last year was actually pretty good for us.”

Chaves Philadelphia program includes his piece Forbidden Boundaries about his own artistic journey that was sandbagged in 2005. “This one is very personal. A choreographer can’t help putting his own life in his work, it always seeps in somewhere, but this is the first time I consciously made the decision to do it.“

The choreographer is, in fact, still recovering from major back surgery. “I had a spinal surgery and found out I had a disease of the spinal chord. So since then there has been a series of phases of recovery, emotional and physical and beyond that. After I got through the physical part of rehab, I still had the thought ‘what is holding me back from being healthy as I can be.’

“Actually, it jumped started me into my whole next level of recovery. I have found it makes people uncomfortable and exhilarated because. It goes into some taboo subjects, so people react and are touched by it. It’s not a downer piece though. “ The River North dancers really related to it living the dancer life.”