BEBE MILLER AND COMPANY Miller works in what some now call the post-postmodern tradition–movement is tied, sometimes in obscure ways, to emotion but not to narrative. Other young choreographers also cited as practitioners of this art include Stephanie Skura and Stephen Petronio (both white) and Ralph Lemon (black). But Miller asks of her dancers a higher degree of precision than is common among these choreographers, so that the way a foot flicks or kneads the floor is not lost on us....

What strikes you first about Bill Tomes is the look of the man. He is 55 and overweight. He wears glasses with clear plastic frames. His sandy hair is graying, and it’s thinning at the temples and the crown. This spring he was sporting a Band Aid on his brow, covering the spot where a skin cancer had been removed. “Too much sunshine, too little moonshine,” Tomes told anyone who asked....

Friday 2 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Cook County Democratic Party endorsed State’s Attorney Cecil Partee in his bid for reelection. The do-gooders, from IVI-IPO endorsed unknown challenger Ray Smith. Progressive 31st Ward alderman Raymond Figueroa, who’s sick of being on the losing side in elections, skipped over former school board president Raul Villalobos to back Alderman Patrick O’Connor, one of the former Vrdolyak 29....

CHICAGO DANCE MEDIUM Doolas responds most fully to Brel’s song “La valse a mille temps” (“Carousel”) and its image of life as a giddy ride. Doolas’s vision is large–life as carousel, as cyclical meaninglessness–but her response to her vision is disappointingly small. Though she tries to express peaks of feeling, she fails to carefully build up the detail that could have communicated those feelings. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

MO’ BETTER BLUES First the good news: strictly as an exercise de style, Spike Lee’s fourth joint is in certain respects the liveliest and jazziest piece of filmmaking he’s turned out yet. From the arty close-ups behind the opening credits of–and liquid pans past, and dissolves between–trumpet, lips, and lovers’ grasping hands in blue, yellow, amber, and green to the matching semicircular crane shots that frame the story, this is a movie cooking with ideas about filmmaking....

Ravinia’s inaugural “Jazz in June” series has received kudos for booking Oscar Peterson (who plays Saturday night) but hardly a nod for also booking the only pianist who might be able to outplay him. Then again, that’s the story of Dorothy Donegan’s career. A combination of factors keep her underrecognized: When she broke into jazz in the early 40s (bringing with her a double fistful of classical technique from Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music), women instrumentalists were an even rarer breed than they are today....

To the editors. What was left out? What would give this character study some meaning? What would enable the reader to understand Timothy’s experiences on Chicago’s north side? 5–exposing the fear of many gay and lesbian organizations to allow participation by gay and lesbian youth in their activities and social services. (Because of society’s stereotype of gay and lesbian citizens as child molesters.) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » These are the elements that are missing from “Child in the Streets....

Marty Horan looked out his kitchen window last summer and saw construction workers ripping up the abandoned railroad tracks that ran behind his home in suburban Lincolnwood. People on Kenneth Avenue wondered what would take the place of the Chicago & North Western trains that once cut through the tall grass and weeds on the utility right-of-way. Except for a slight hum from electric power lines, this stretch of land had been relatively quiet....

IT’S CALLED THE SUGAR PLUM Big Time Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The action takes place in the apartment of Wallace Zuckerman, a poor schlep who hauls meat to pay for his education at Northwestern. When we meet him, he’s listening to radio reports and tearing out newspaper clippings about the man he killed with his car. He is fascinated with the deceased, as if this horrible event has somehow given his life meaning....

It’s not just guitarists who speak Jim Hall’s name in hushed tones. It’s any pianist who’s dreamed of simpatico partnering after hearing Hall’s duets with the late Bill Evans; any horn player who’s thrilled to the harmonic possibilities Hall offered to Sonny Rollins or Art Farmer on their much praised recordings; and the many unschooled listeners for whom Hall’s feats of technique remain the secret foundation of his lovely and/or swinging improvisations....

For a decade or so, the section of Austin that Marceline Rideaux calls home has been deteriorating. When the dope dealers took over the main intersections, Rideaux and her neighbors decided they’d had enough. This year, after battling the Department of Streets and Sanitation, the group obtained permission to hang signs at key intersections declaring their neighborhood a “drug-free zone.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Austin seemed like the logical choice with its clean, tree-lined streets, affordable bungalows, and healthy business strips along Chicago, North, and Division....

MOTHER WOVE THE MORNING Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Then, like a channeler, Pearson gives voice to 15 other women. Some are historical figures: Rachel from the Old Testament, Emma Smith, the wife of Mormon leader Joseph Smith, and 19th-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Others are fictional: Genevieve, a 15th-century witch, Running Cloud, a Native American woman, and Marie, a contemporary therapist who is helping a male patient overcome the aloof, unaffectionate behavior he learned from his father....

The radio interview was supposed to be live for a half hour and now, as the candidate and his press secretary arrived, they were told it would be taped for an hour. It was too late to do anything about it. The panel of reporters was gathered, and the host of the program, Dick Ellsworth, was sitting behind the horseshoe desk just about ready to go. The extra time would put Tom Hynes behind at his next stop, the Polish National Alliance, but he showed no irritation....

The New Music Consort is one of a handful of persuasive advocates of contemporary chamber music. Since the early 70s this New York-based collective has introduced (and rediscovered) a string of significant works from myriad currents and countries. A key to its success, I think, lies in the players’ delightful performances of what can often be dull intellectual exercises. In its Chicago debut the consort will present a pair of concerts highlighting postwar American music....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To improve understanding of human degenerative neural disorders, such as Huntington’s disease, scientists at Columbia University have been conducting research on the roundworm’s sense of touch. Researchers tickle the .01-inch-long worms with human eyebrow hairs to see if they twitch. Scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, have been taste testing perspiration to use for human hydration on long space flights....

Nobody who works at Great America ever says much. Bugs Bunny isn’t allowed to talk. And neither is Yosemite Sam or Foghorn Leghorn. The people who work the gyros spit can’t talk. There’s only one spokesman for the entire place, and even she’s not allowed to speak when Whitney Houston sings the national anthem just before the park opens. “He said he was supposed to be here at ten o’clock,” the man bellowed....

NUNSENSE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Instead, we get Sister Mary Leo, who dreams of becoming a world-famous ballerina/nun, and Sister Robert Anne, who must endure the humiliation of playing second fiddle as the understudy for the convent talent show when, God knows, she has always wanted to be a star. But of course Dan Goggin didn’t write Nunsense to make a statement about Catholicism or human nature or the way we live now....

When performing-arts student Shannon Branham told her friend Thomas Quinn that she was going to write a play, Quinn suggested she write about turn-of-the-century Irish patriot Maud Gonne. Quinn figured Gonne’s life had all the makings of a good story–illegitimate children, supernatural dealings, and a 35-year relationship with poet William Butler Yeats. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Maura, Branham’s play, is filled with stories like this....

PORTRAIT OF A SHIKSA Portrait of a Shiksa begins with sexy teenage Adelle accompanying her lumpy, loving mama on a “Footsteps of Jesus” tour of Israel. For Adelle, the trip is just a nice free vacation, a relief from her daily grind of styling human-hair wigs in her family’s garage in little ol’ Calhoun, Tennessee. For Mama, a card-carrying member of the BBB Club (that’s Bring Back the Bakkers), the journey is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to walk where her savior walked and bathe where he bathed....

GRANT PARK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA It’s always a great treat when George Cleve comes to town. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra hasn’t brought back this extraordinary conductor since he made a stellar one- concert debut with the CSO at Ravinia three years ago (proving beyond all doubt that arts administration in Chicago is primarily a matter of politics–Cleve’s capabilities rival those of any of the conductors who stand before the CSO and exceed the majority of them)....