STOMPING GROUNDS is BACK!
Starting in 2015, CHRP presented STOMPING GROUNDS, a two- to three-month, City-wide performance and education festival in communities throughout Chicago showcasing many of the city’s most accomplished percussive dance companies and independent artists. Throughout the festival’s five years, unique combinations of artists and ensembles performed and taught in schools, community cultural centers and major venues throughout Chicago.
This year, STOMPING GROUNDS is BACK in community cultural centers throughout Chicago. Check out our participating companies, venues, and event dates BELOW!
2025 Performing Companies
Najwa Dance Corps.
One of Chicago's most celebrated companies devoted to the performance, production and preservation of dance styles and techniques reflective of the African American dance heritage and experience.
Stone Soup Rhythms
A collective of emerging and established tap dance artists and jazz musicians who bend time and space to explore the limits of human expression through music, rhythm and mvoement.
Collaborative Institute for Cultural Arts
A spectacular, multi-generational company dedicated to the authentic presentation of Mexican and Indigenous dance and musical traditions.
Surabhi Ensemble
A cultural polyglot that explores and creates connections between Indian, Spanish and African cultures that reveals a positive message of togetherness through new works.
Trinity Irish Dancers
Uniquely Irish-American company that was the birthplace of progressive Irish dance, an innovative movement genre which “ushered in a new era for Irish step dance”.
Mike Austin
The scion of a family with a professional musical tradition that spans at least four generations to his band-leading great-grandfather, a personal friend of John Phillip Sousa. Mike is an internationally recognized master of the Irish Bodhran.
2025 Performance Venues
Irish American Heritage Center - May 4
Celebrates Irish and Irish American culture through events, music, theater, literature, and language.
National Museum of Mexican Art - May 25
Preserving Mexican culture through exhibitions, arts education and events.
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts - June 1
Offers free and subsidized arts events, programs, and partnerships throughout the year, while providing support for the artistic practice of faculty, students, staff, community partners, and visiting artists and scholars.
PERFORMANCE INFO:
Festival History
STOMPING GROUNDS evolved from an earlier, annual CHRP performance series - GLOBAL RHYTHMS - that began in 2005 with the presentation of STRIPES from Japan and Vata Tap from Brazil. Global Rhythms featured extraordinary percussive arts companies from around the globe like Israel's Sheketak, Canada's ScrapArtsMusic and another company from Japan - the taiko drumming sensation - TAO. Joined in 2010 by Chicago-based companies like Sones de Mexico and Be The Groove, Global Rhythms provided a nexus of cultural exchange, rhythm culture and diversity.
STOMPING GROUNDS was built to showcase every possible dialect of rhythm in every neighborhood of Chicago and to celebrate them all . . . TOGETHER!
Past Performance Gallery
Funding
STOMPING GROUNDS is made possible with major support from the Chicago Free For All Fund at The Chicago Community Trust and Engaging Dance Audiences (a program managed by Dance USA and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) with additional funding from The Saints and National Endowment for the Arts. Chicago Human Rhythm Project is supported by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, BMO Harris, The Arlen and Elaine Cohen Rubin Charitable Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City, The Jeanette & Jerome Cohen Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City, Phil and Marsha Dowd, National Endowment for the Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Broadway in Chicago, Illinois Arts Council Agency, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, L&L Hardwood Flooring, Peoples Gas, The Service Club of Chicago, and generous individual donors.
Past Performing Companies and Independent Artists
Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater
The premier Spanish Dance Company and Center in the United States in-residence at Northeastern Illinois University’s Department of Music and Dance.
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Mexican Dance Ensemble
Founded in November 2001.
Natya Dance Theatre
One of the most critically acclaimed and culturally treasured Indian dance companies in the United States.
Kalapriya Center for Indian Performing Arts
Presents India’s artistic diversity through performing arts that preserve traditional South Asian art forms, and that build bridges between the performing arts and our contemporary lives.
The Mexican Folkloric
Dance Company
Has had the honor of performing alongside Juan Gabriel, Lila Downs, Pepe Aguilar, Beatriz Adriana, El Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán & other celebrities
Itotia Mexica Xi
Mexican Indigenous Dance, Heritage & Education
Ishti Collective
Creates a synergistic environment through dance, music, and storytelling where artists engage with the community to generate meaningful dialogue and push the boundaries of their art.
Muntu Dance Theatre
"The essence of humanity" is what the Company seeks to express in its work and to touch in its audiences.
Nico Rubio
Tap Dancer, Teacher, Student & Achiever.
Tristan Bruns
Chicago tap dancer who has received training under Donna Johnson, Ted Louis Levy, Sam Weber and Martin “Tre” Dumas III.
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Chicago Cultural Center
A Chicago Landmark building
operated by Chicago's
Department of Cultural Affairs
and Special Events.
Carruthers Center
Demonstrates Northeastern Illinois University's urban tradition of education, research, and service.
Past Performance Venues
Harris Theater
Proud to be Chicago's home for music and dance.
Beverly Arts Center
Building community through the arts on Chicago’s South side since 1967.
Garfield Park Conservatory
One of the largest and most stunning botanical conservatories in the nation.
Links Hall
A home for performing artists of all kinds to fearlessly explore and invent, creating new works of explosive imagination.
DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center
The Nation’s Oldest Independent African American Museum Celebrating 62 Years.
Auditorium Theater
Has a past that follows the path of Chicago’s history, from the Great Chicago Fire and World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 to the great rock and roll era of the 1960s and 1970s to the present.
Pearl Paint, Sip and Hip
A new spin on the classic paint and sip concept.
Studebaker Theater
First emerged as a music and opera hall in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hosting a variety of acts and performers.