Dancers Displace Architecture Students in a Mies Landmark

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago takes over S.R. Crown Hall this weekend (photograph by Lawrence Biemiller).

The Illinois Institute of Technology’s S.R. Crown Hall is normally home to architecture students, who fill its vast, open interior with partitions, drawing tables, stools, building models, floor plans, pens, Macbooks, clothing, shoes, and takeout containers — the usual clutter of architecture-studio life. But this coming weekend, the building, long considered one of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s masterpieces, becomes a performance space for the dancers of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Newcity Chicago previews an unusual collaboration between IIT and the well-known dance company. Performers and audience members will move around the building during the shows: For one piece, dancers will perform on a ramp in front of seated viewers, but for the next, the dancers and the audience change places. And for the third piece, the audience will surround the performers.

The Crown Hall performances were suggested by Dirk Denison, an assistant professor of architecture at IIT who also has his own practice, Dirk Denison Architects.