Dance in a Blink featuring House of ODV

This event: Has LGBTQ content, Is LGBTQ hosted, May be of interest to the LGBTQ community || In special, effervescent performances that are as fleeting as dance itself, the Isthmus Dance Collective presents unique pop up dance performances with Dance in a Blink. Chicago-based dance company, House of DOV takes the stage Sunday September 6th, for a free golden hour performance at Wirth Court Park as a stop on their regional tour. House of DOV, with live music from Family Junket, will be performing “Circle of Apathy.”
Circle of Apathy:
a firmament
a fantasia
“In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was everything.”
In Circle of Apathy, the new dance project from House of DOV with live music from Family Junket, the ensemble explores the cycles of growth and disintegration intrinsic to nature, and works together to build physical structures which increase in precarity as the group strives toward expansion. “Through creative process, we’ve sought to understand our own place within the greater ecology of our landscape, and to experience the human body as a metaphor and microcosm of the natural world,” says Drew Lewis, creative director of House of DOV.
Family Junket’s five musicians blare dense soul with moments of ambience: voices wail, altered by a vocal pedal; saxophone, flute and violin harmonize over precomposed loops; djembe, drum kit and percussion punctuate echoing acoustic piano. House of DOV’s seven dancers push against seemingly immovable forces, find new hand and footholds, and creep forward like a vine up a brick wall. A woman walks through an increasingly dense wood until the brush closes around her entirely. When all paths disappear from sight, a figure steps blindly forward, trusting that there will be a stepping stone beneath their foot.
House of DOV
House of DOV is a movement-based performance ensemble from Chicago, IL, led by Drew Lewis. Our namesake is Benjamin Dov Lebowitz, Drew’s ancestor who immigrated to America from Russia in the early 1900’s, escaping pogroms. The ensemble exists as a vehicle to explore Drew’s own creative work and heritage, and to provide talented yet under-represented Chicago dancers with opportunities for paid work in performance and practice. Our vision is of a dance field that celebrates diversity of genre, body-type, race and gender, and our mission is to be a changemaker in the local dance conversation while engaging with global discourse through touring. Since our inaugural performance at the Adler Planetarium (Finalist for the Chicago Reader’s Best of 2021) House of DOV has performed throughout Chicago including at Fulton Street Collective, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble, and Navy Pier (among many more venues). We’ve received commissions for original works from The Steppenwolf Theatre and The Arts Club of Chicago, and we’ve been in residence at Chicago Cultural Center, Ragdale, The Schoolhouse, and The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. For more, visit www.houseofdov.com.
Family Junket
Family Junket is the collective voice of Chicago-based musicians who are also social workers, teachers, farmers, dancers, writers, painters, photographers, and performance artists coming together to create healing spaces, community, and parties. As a band, they play lush, unpredictable compositions featuring horns, strings, percussion, vocal interplay, and an improvisational spirit. Their debut album, Did you tell the bees?, released May 2025 with features in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and City Cast Chicago (WBEZ).
The Isthmus Dance Collective along with the Morrison Shearer Foundation is piloting a regional network, an Arts Vitality Project, to support small to mid-size dance groups in regional tours that bring the excellence of Great Lakes area dance to a wider audience, building regional community and dialogue. To further strengthen regional connections and community through the arts, Dance in a BLINK is free and open to the public. || FREE