When the Joel Hall Dancers needed someone to succeed the company’s namesake and longtime artistic director, its board turned to a trusted insider: William Gill, who’d been a dancer and artistic leader with the company since the 1990s.
Gill made clear that he had no plans for a big makeover. “Because I matriculated through the system and know a lot about Joel Hall and his style,” said Gill, 57, “my intention is to continue his legacy but to continue it in my voice.”
Even in a city known for Black dance, the 51-year-old Joel Hall Dancers have created a unique style all their own. Hall himself, recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Jazz Dance World Congress, developed an approach known as “urban jazz” — essentially jazz dance tinged with classical, modern and street-dance idioms. Works are often set to house music.
The Gill-led Joel Hall Dancers will be one of 10 Chicago-area companies showcased Saturday in a presentation of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park.
The project, co-directed by Mashaune Hardy and Kevin Iega Jeff, was established in 2019 under the auspices of the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts. It’s designed to promote and foster Black dance in the city by bringing together companies for idea exchanges, leadership training and joint performances.
“A lot of people still don’t know about the different Black dance companies there are here in Chicago,” Gill said. “This cohort gives them the opportunity to see 10 different companies at one time.”
Also featured in Saturday’s showcase will be the Chicago Multicultural Dance Company, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Era Footwork Collective, Forward Momentum Chicago, M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Move Me Soul, Muntu Dance Theatre, NAJWA Dance Corps and Praize Productions Inc.
For the Joel Hall Dancers’ contribution, Gill called on former student Maiya Redding, who serves on the dance and drama faculty at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
Some of the company’s past works have drawn on Chicago’s rich house-music tradition. Gill asked Redding to build on that legacy. The result is “Chicago Luvin’,” a seven-minute piece for 10 dancers that Redding calls a love letter to the city.
“I’m so proud of her and so blessed that we could bring her back to create work on us,” Gill said.
The company has a deep tradition of artists coming back home. Gill’s first association with Joel Hall came in 1992, when the Chatham native took dance classes on scholarship as a 23-year-old, quickly working his way up to its professional part-time company.
He decided to make dance his full-time career in 1998, leaving to perform for nine seasons with the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. Returning to Chicago in 2008, Gill became associate artistic director of Joel Hall Dancers and ultimately heir apparent to Hall, formally taking the creative helm in December 2023.
“Joel Hall Dancers is home for me,” Gill said. “That’s where I started my training. That’s where I got my lifelong friends. Joel Hall really attracted me to having dance as a career.”
His partnerships have yielded strong, ongoing collaborations all over the nation. In 2013, Gill danced in a Philadelphia performance overseen by the artist Nick Cave, best known for his “soundsuits”: exuberant, often brilliantly colored wearable sculptures. The famed Chicago artist adorns the suits with everything from buttons, doilies and hair to vintage toys, ceramic birds and other found objects, mounted on soaring armatures.
Cave was looking for a choreographer at the time, and asked Gill if he could fill the role. The dancer jumped at the chance. Gill has since worked with Cave on projects stretching around the world, from Texas to Australia, including a much-publicized presentation in New York’s Grand Central Station featuring 30 dancers in life-size horse costumes designed by the artist.
“[Cave] was instrumental in taking my career to another level,” Gill said. “He’s been not just an employer, but he is, at this point, a friend and mentor.”
Gill still has a ready ear too in Hall, now artistic director emeritus but remaining involved with the company, where he teaches two to three classes a week.
Yet despite his intention not to stray from Hall’s legacy, Gill is following his own direction too, alongside a new executive director, Joseph Pindelski. “We are trying to forge ahead but with our new voices.”