The Northern Stars of Dance

The Northern Stars of Dance Concert highlights students, alumni, and faculty from the NIU School of Theater and Dance. Founded in 1980, the dance program at NIU has consistently produced stellar dance professionals and features equal training in ballet and modern dance in a conservatory setting. Northern Illinois dance faculty present choreography in a variety of styles, demonstrating the diverse technical skill of the artists involved.

The Northern Stars of Dance Concert program includes the masterwork Spent Days Out Yonder, as the centerpiece for the dance concert, set on NIU dancers by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member Catherine Cabeen. Spent Days Out Yonder is a pure musical exploration, rare in the Bill T. Jones canon, set to the second movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major. The movement is firmly rooted in Jones’s elegant, weighted movement vocabulary, challenging dancers to move with ease, efficiency and physical honesty through the sublime score.