Public programs offer live opportunities for the public to attend lectures, film showings, performances, and exhibits that reveal the work of these two artists. Venues have ranged from intimate settings such as the Winnetka Community House and the Arts Club of Chicago to occasional larger Chicago stages including the University of Chicago Logan Center and the Auditorium Theatre.
EVENTS vary as opportunities arise. Notable examples include “The Dances of Sybil Shearer on Film” at the Spertus Institute in 2006; “Sybil Shearer, the Legendary Life of an Elusive Dancer,” an original staged reading by four actors in celebration of the Sybil Shearer Centennial, at Roosevelt University in 2012; “A Conversation with John Neumeier,” director of the Hamburg Ballet and protégé of Sybil Shearer, at the Arts Club of Chicago in 2013; and “Preservation, Tradition, and Innovation from Sybil Shearer through the Present,” a panel discussion with films at the Newberry Library in 2019.
DANCE PERFORMANCES are important in the interest of keeping Sybil Shearer’s dance legacy alive, and the Foundation has allowed select contemporary dancers to re-stage or interpret some of Sybil’s solos and Company dances.
Notable examples include: Hedwig Dances re-creation of Shearer Company dances “The Reflection in the Puddle Is Mine” and “Time Longs for Eternity” as part of a Summer Soiree at the Winnetka Community House, 2012; Thodos Dance Chicago re-creation/adaptations of three Shearer dances at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre in 2014; Kristina Isabelle Dance Company re-creation of “Judgment Seeks Its Own Level” at Links Halll, Chicago, 2016; and Ella Rosewood re-creation of Sybil’s solo, “Eighth Dance,” at the 92d Street Y in New York City, 2018.
EXHIBITIONS are rare opportunities. Examples include “Photographing Freetowns: African-America Kentucky through the Lens of Helen Balfour Morrison 1935-1946” at the Newberry Library in 2017; and Sybil Shearer artifacts in “The Legacy of Chicago Dance” at the Newberry in 2019.
