Auditorium Theatre Brings Malkovich, Blanchard, Dance Riches in 2023-24 Season

Complexions Contemporary Ballet performs Star Dust (Photo: Sharen Bradford)

The Auditorium Theatre has announced its 2023-2024 season of programming, featuring dance, music, film, and theater presentations.

Two special events headline the season. On January 13, an evening spotlighting one of today’s preeminent composer sees a special presentation of Terence Blanchard film scores performed live by the Chicago Philharmonic. The has created signature scores for films like Do the Right Thing and BlacKkKlansman, and in 2021, Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones became the first opera by a Black composer presented by the Met Opera.

Other Season Announcements

John Malkovich in The Infernal Comedy (Photo courtesy FAS Arts Management)

In a two-show engagement in late January, John Malkovich takes center stage in the Chicago premiere of The Infernal Comedy, which features one actor, a chamber orchestra, and two sopranos. A co-presentation with Steppenwolf Theatre — for which Malkovich is a charter member — the musical theater piece was created by Michael Sturminger for Malkovich and focuses on a real-life Austrian serial killer, Jack Unterweger.

As is customary for the Auditorium, dance is a focal point, with a bevy of respected troupes visiting from around the world and from within the city. Preeminent New York group, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, will return in April 2024, while the Madrid-based Compañía Nacional de Danza will make its first-ever stop in Chicago in February. NYC-based Complexions Contemporary Ballet will also visit in February — the company’s first appearance in Chicago in more than 15 years. The striking MOMIX will appear in March. Dance companies keeping up the Chicago end are season openers Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in November, the Trinity Irish Dance Company in March, and the South Chicago Dance Theatre, which closes out the season in April.

Solomon Dumas, Khalia Campbell, and Samantha Figgins of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform in Alvin Ailey's Revelations (Photo: Paul Kolnik)

Other season offerings are to include the annual Dance for Life performance and benefit, a celebration of the centenary of Gerald Arpino, a choreographer who co-founded the Joffrey Ballet, and a reimagined staging of The Nutcracker set to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s jazz-infused arrangement of the classic Tchaikovsky ballet.

For ticketing and information, visit auditoriumtheatre.org.