Deeply Rooted Dance Theater (DRDT), founded in 1995, has been transitioning for over a year. In September 2019, founding artistic director Kevin Iega Jeff passed the baton to longtime DRDT educational director Nicole Clarke-Springer, and a new artistic team, all with long ties to the company, stepped into formation. In his new role as creative director, Jeff absorbed himself with the task of finding and founding a new institutional home for the company on the south side of Chicago and developing an initiative for interdisciplinary works.
A year directing Chicago’s Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre reinforced the need to start from the community up. Jeff began the process of cofounding a new dance company when he stumbled across the old recital program. The name fit their purpose. “We thought it expressed what we wanted to do and the accountability we needed to have. As the company grows, we need to stay nice and plain and simple and humble and understand where we’re rooted and what makes all that other stuff possible. So we chose the name Deeply Rooted.”
That lesson in faith came at a crucial moment for DRDT 22 years ago, when Clarke-Springer, then a dancer in the company, gave Jeff a jar of mustard seeds he still keeps on his desk. “I was thinking I couldn’t continue to do this work. That’s where family comes in. Nobody does this alone. She gave me these mustard seeds, and it touched my heart so deeply. It ignited my accountability to my mentor, my teachers, my family, all the people who helped make me possible. I needed somebody to believe it was worth it and say it to me. She said it to me. Who knew she would be the one that would be the artistic director now?”
Sat 10/17, 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport (live audience limited to 50, $250-$1,000); also livestreamed through deeplyrooteddancetheater.org, $25-$150.
