4dancers.org is a great, broad-based dance site that brings together a number of different perspectives on the world of Dance. Johnny Nevin has joined the site as a monthly columnist, writing about Music and Dance. His third article just posted there, about Finding Music, and you can check out these links for his first two articles: Choosing Music For Choreography, and Music and Dance: An Introduction. There are a number of regular features at 4dancers well worth keeping an eye on; one of them is the series "10 Questions With ...", where Editor Catherine L. Tully engages different people from the world of Dance; her interview with Johnny Nevin is at 10 Questions with John Nevin.

Renegade Dance Architects is a new Chicago dance company with an innovative emphasis on creating accessible new dances in what they describe as "a healthy environment for dancers and choreographers". The Company is presenting four performances of "What Is Home To You" October 6 and 7 and again October 13 and 14 at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater (3036 N. Hoyne Ave, Chicago).

What Is Home to You will feature new works by Molly Beck and Stephanie Unger, Amy Williams, and Artistic Director Ginger Jensen, as well as Jensen's audience favorite "Forgiveness, Not Permission". Peformances are at 7:30PM each night, and tickets are available from brownpapertickets.com

There's a well-known dance theater whose web site describes with pride -- and justifiably so --- how more than twenty new choreographic works have been commissioned by the space over fifteen or so years. An impressive accomplishment, considering the complexity and challenge of sponsoring and staging even a single new work. It puts into vivid perspective, though, the incredible achievement of the Thodos New Dances series, which in its eleventh year is approaching its one hundredth new work, many of which have gone on to achieve impressive success beyond the New Dances program.

The process that transmutes an idea from experimental to iconic is long and improbable, and a careful look through the program for the ever-more-impressive 2011 edition of New Dances gives some idea of what that process involves. It requires a substantial community of shared enthusiasm, working hard to make everything work successfully.

In a great article called Together With A Gift at 4dancers.org, Kimberly Peterson talks about the latin roots of the word "communiity", which comes from the latin words for "together" and "gift". New Dances 2011 is a community of more than forty dancers, ten choreographers, a distinguished advisor panel, the Thodos Dance Chicago staff and technical organizations, and several independent lighting, sound and costume designers. Over its eleven year history, New Dances has probably been the shared creation of four or five hundred artists, and now regularly performing to packed houses, in its various editions it has played to an audience several thousand people too large to fit in any dance theater. It's an astonishing achievement, of course in the multi-faceted success of nine different choreographic visions, but even more significantly, in the multidimensional gifts shared by the unique community that makes it happen.

Each year, the United States announces the selection of 141 outstanding high school seniors as U.S. Presidential Scholars -- a tremendous accomplishment for each of the young people recognized. Twenty of those honored are Presidential Scholars in the Arts, and in 2011 Max Perkins, a brilliant young performer and member of aotpr.com-favorite Extensions Dance, was named by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as one of only two dancers selected from among several thousand candidates around the country. Each U.S. Presidential Scholar is invited to nominate his or her most inspiring and challenging teacher to travel to Washington, D.C., to receive a Teacher Recognition Award from the U.S. Department of Education and to participate in the award ceremonies, which take place at the White House and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Joining Max in D.C. and receiving a 2011 U.S. Presidential Scholar Program Teacher Recognition Award is Extensions Dance Company Artistic Director, Lizzie MacKenzie.

To be selected for such an award from such a vast number of talented candidates is of course extraordinary, but in a remarkable way, maybe not all that surprising to aotpr.com. We know Max Perkins' work from his performances with Extensions Dance, and the quality of his contribution to everything we've seen him be a part of has always been extraordinary. "Passion" and "Intensity" are words that are often used to describe an exceptional dedication to artistic expression, and although they could be used to describe Perkins' work, neither word does so adequately. Both "passion" and "intensity" imply a commitment to artistic effort, but in ways that are often either intermittent or short-term. A more complete description of Perkins' work has to include that unusual quality that some artists achieve when an exceptional level of commitment is maintained continuously, in rehearsal as in performance, in struggle as in success. It's a quality that transcends the drama of passion and the transience of intensity, but achieves the mesmerizing artistic effect of both, and Max Perkins brings that quality to everything we've seen him do.

Extensions Dance will perform May 22 and May 28 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts in their Extensions 2011 Showcase.