The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance is Chicago’s primary residence for music and dance, connecting diverse audiences with outstanding artists from across the city, the nation, and the world. Opened in November 2003 in Millennium Park, the Theater was the first multi-use performance venue built in downtown Chicago since 1929, and fulfilled the city’s need for a shared home for mid-size performing arts organizations. Today, the Harris features the most diverse arts and culture offerings of any venue in the city, and is a distinctive model for artistic quality, collaboration, and making the performing arts relevant and accessible to the widest possible audience. For more, visit harristheaterchicago.org.

Artists of the hARRIS THEATER

Happy Returns

is a dance-theater film that reveals the anxieties and joy of returning to theater life and physical touch as we emerge from a global pandemic. Featuring a veteran Lucky Plush ensemble and their newest family members, Happy Returns is also a reflection on the passage of time, the tension between individual perspectives and shared histories, and most importantly, the importance of staying awake.

Lucky Plush Productions is a Chicago-based dance theater company led by founder and artistic director Julia Rhoads. Lucky Plush is committed to provoking and supporting an immediacy of presence – a palpable liveness – shared by performers in real-time with audiences. A unique hybrid of high-level dance and theater, Lucky Plush’s work is well-known for its carefully crafted dramatic and rhythmic arcs, pushing its artists to move beyond the predictable by earning the exciting slippage between – and surprising coherence of – technical choreography, casual dialogue, music and humor. Though rigorously composed, much of the company’s work feels like it is generated spontaneously.

Since 2000, Lucky Plush Productions has created 30+ original dance-theater works. In addition to regularly performing in the Chicago area, LPP has presented work in over 75 venues and more than 55 US cities, with international partners spanning from New Zealand to Cuba. Commissioning and development partners include the Harris Theater for Music and Dance (IL), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Krannert Center at University of Illinois, The Yard (MA), Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (MD), Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (VT), Door Kinetic Arts Festival (WI), Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre (IL), Columbia College Chicago, and Links Hall Chicago. Presenting partners include the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (MA), Joyce Theater (NYC), ODC (CA), TITAS (TX), Spoleto Festival/USA (SC), NC State LIVE (NC), Portland Ovations (ME), Skirball Center (NYC), and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (D.C.), among others.

In fall 2019, Lucky Plush ensemble members were memorably seen cavorting larger than life across the 2.5 acre river-façade of the former Merchandise Mart building in Limelight Parade, a collaboration between Julia Rhoads and theater maker John Musial as part of Art on theMART, the largest permanent digital art projection series in the world.

Lucky Plush Productions is the first and only dance company to receive the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, a recognition of the company’s exceptional creativity and impact. Other awards include creation, residency, and touring awards from National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, and National Performance Network; exchange awards from the MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund; a presentation award from MetLife Foundation; and an achievement award from the Lester and Hope Abelson Fund for the Performing Arts at The Chicago Community Trust.

Lucky Plush performances have been cited in many “Best of Year” performance round-ups including in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago, Chicago Public Radio and Boston Globe. New City hailed Lucky Plush “a brand of movement-based theater that can be comfortably called, without exaggeration, genius.”

Lucky Plush productions is supported by the Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development, Chauncey and Marion D. McCormick Family Foundation, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Illinois Arts Council Agency, MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Martha Struthers Farley and Donald C. Farley, Jr. Family Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts.

Lucky Plush Productions is a resident company at Harris Theater for Music and Dance, where its staff and sustainability initiatives are based. For more information, visit luckyplush.com or follow the company on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.