FRANK CHAVES

If Only… (2020)
Production: Going Solo

Habaneras, The Music of Cuba (2019)
At Last (2018)
Production: Momentum:

Guest choreographer Frank Chaves credits his early experience as a musician combined with his Cuban heritage for the musicality and passion of his work.  Collaborating with dancers and utilizing a unique creative process, he produces highly musical, emotionally gripping dances that are his passion and hallmark.

As a performer, Chaves has danced with Ballet Concerto of Miami, New York’s Ballet Hispanico and Giordano Dance Chicago. He also spent six years with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago where he worked with choreographers such as Twyla Tharp, Margo Sappington, Daniel Ezralow, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, David Parsons and Lou Conte.  In 2000, he received a Ruth Page Dance Achievement Award for Mission. He was also recognized with a 2008 Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography from the Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation for his work, Tuscan Rift. Chaves was also named “Chicagoan of Year in Dance” by The Chicago Tribune in 2014.

After 23 years as Artistic Director of River North Dance Chicago, Chaves officially retired in December 2015, after having produced more than 20 original works for the company.  Although Chaves has dealt with a degenerative spinal cord disease which has no known cause and no known cure, he says “it has been quite the journey — of all things, a dancer and choreographer losing his physicality, However, the one thing this disease cannot take away is my imagination.”

Chaves continues to choreograph by creating new works and finding new homes for his existing body of work.