Chicago Dance Gazette

A Round of Applause: Paul Christiano's Make-A-Wish Foundation Benefit

Dear Friends of Fine Arts,

As indispensable as the Performing Arts were to my life, I'd always
regarded Arts & Entertainment as a non-essential commodity (e.g., When
educational institutions fell on hard economic times, the Music Program was
usually the first to be sacrificed). Surely mankind required little more
than food, water, and shelter to survive. The Arts are a self-indulgent
luxury, I'd concluded, a means for the artist to expand his ego, to hear
himself talk via clay, paint, chords, or celluloid. As a professional
dancer, I'd frequently felt the need to shroud my head in the presence of
doctors, parents, schoolteachers, the myriad service professionals who
worked tirelessly to refine and provide humanity's essential commodities.
Who was I, essentially, but a circus freak who derived fulfillment from
being the center of attention? What was I giving back?

A couple years ago, I donated a piece of choreography to Faubourg Ballet
Theatre (Hanover Park, IL) for a dance concert fundraiser for the Make-A-
Wish Foundation. (For those not familiar with the charity, Make-A-Wish
grants the wishes of terminally ill children [those falling short of cancer
cures, of course] to help cultivate some semblance of a life beyond
radiation treatments and hospital food. There are, as you can imagine, far
more wishes submitted than are capable of being granted. Donations help to
rectify that imbalance.) For the first time in my professional career, I
didn't feel the need to apologize for being a dancer. I started researching
the charity on my own, and discovered to my astonishment an overwhelming
number of terminally ill children who longed to immerse themselves in the
Arts, if only for a day. If Arts & Entertainment can mean that much to a
dying child, I reasoned, perhaps I should re-evaluate the essentialness of
my profession. If a terminally ill child speaks for anything, it's for
Quality of Life.

Since my first exposure to Make-A-Wish three years ago,
I've rediscovered the art of dance as an opportunity to garnish the bare
necessities with the qualities that make life all the more precious: Humor,
Insight, and (when a choreographer hits his mark) Beauty.
Venetia Stifler, Director of the Ruth Page Foundation, Chicago's most
prestigious school of ballet, has graciously donated the Foundation's
in-house theatre to me for two evenings Memorial Day Weekend. Margaret Nelson,
Production Manager for Dance Chicago, the city's most widely-attended dance
festival, and a number of her colleagues, have generously volunteered their
technical expertise, and over thirty members of the Chicago dance community
are currently sweating it out free-of-charge to help me reconstruct four of
my signature works (formerly in the repertories of The Joffrey Ballet of
Chicago, River North Chicago Dance Company, Thodos Dance Chicago, and
Illinois Ballet Theatre) and launch one premiere to be presented Friday, May
26 and Saturday, May 27, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts.

100% OF PROCEEDS RAISED FROM
Art For Heart¹s Sake
WILL BE DONATED TO THE MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION

No person truly succeeds who does so only to improve the quality
of his own life. Please consider attending this concert, a small step toward achieving richer success.

Sincerely,
Paul Christiano

Art for Heart's Sake

Friday, May 26
8:00 PM
&
Saturday, May 27
8:00 PM
@
The Ruth Page Center
for the Arts
1016 N. Dearborn
Chicago, IL 60610

Ticket Prices:
$15.00 (Adults)
$10.00 (Students/Seniors)
Ticket Information:
(312) 337-6543

$1.50 service charge
for credit card purchases

 

05/20/06

Leni@ChicagoDanceSupply.com