In dance, Chicago-born choreographer Rena Butler honors the breadth of Black womanhood

Choreographer Rena Butler’s connection to Chicago runs deep.

She has garnered meaningful experiences in the city, from the halls of her alma mater, the Chicago Academy of the Arts, to the stage of the Lyric Opera House, where she has presented her work.

But some of her most formative moments took place at the kitchen table in her grandmother’s South Side home.

“I've been reprimanded there,” Butler said. “I've been celebrated there. I've been questioned there about a night out, when I should have had my butt inside at 10 p.m. There have just been so many milestones.”

Butler will honor that sacred space in her new work, “Her Table,” which will premiere on March 28 during La Femme Dance Festival at Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Presented by Red Clay Dance Company, the biennial event showcases diverse works by Black women, who are often underrepresented on large stages.

This year’s lineup includes Kia Smith’s South Chicago Dance Theatre and the Los Angeles-based tap troupe Chloé Arnold’s Syncopated Ladies. Red Clay Dance Company will also perform choreography by founder Vershawn Sanders-Ward, as well as Butler’s contemporary piece, which embodies the spirit of the festival.

Beyond reflecting her personal experience, Butler said she hopes her dance shows the multifaceted nature of Black women.

The work is inspired by “The Kitchen Table Series,” a seminal 1990 photo project by artist Carrie Mae Weems, who is Black. The set of black-and-white images depict Weems in different scenes around her kitchen table — embracing a lover, getting her hair brushed by her mother, applying makeup with her young daughter, conversing with friends, even sitting in solitude.

Butler first encountered the series more than 10 years ago at a retrospective exhibition for Weems at the Guggenheim. (Weems is among the artists commissioned to make work for the Obama Presidential Center.)

“I was seeing myself in a museum for the first time,” said Butler, 36, who now lives in Harlem. “I was looking back at myself and my grandmother and my mother and my auntie and my sisters. And it just encapsulated so much lineage and a breadth of differing women within the Black community.”

“Her Table” brings Weems’ work to life as four dancers perform alongside, atop and beneath a table. The artists demonstrate not only technical skill and athleticism, but emotional depth as they recreate moments of joy, contention and care. Their soundtrack includes everything from jazzy, rhythmic tunes to the sound of dialogue over the clattering of dishes.

Butler said she and the dancers tapped into their childlike creativity as they experimented in rehearsal.

"We exhausted all of our dreams and aspirations with the table in our play space, and now I feel like the table itself is an animated character within the work," she said.

Vershawn Sanders-Ward said she commissioned Butler because she was impressed by her "fresh and exciting" choreography.

“I love the physicality of her work," Sanders-Ward said. "I love the fluidity. I love the storytelling.”

As a dancer, Butler has performed with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. As an award-winning choreographer, she has created works for Het Nationale Ballet in the Netherlands, the San Francisco Opera, the Cincinnati Ballet, Ailey II and film projects. When she isn't making dances, she attends the Ayurveda Institute, an alternative medical school based in the United Kingdom.

Among her many experiences, Butler said working with the Black woman-centered Red Clay Dance Company was especially fulfilling. She found safety in the space, which Sanders-Ward said she intentionally created to be affirming, equitable and collaborative.

"I could wear my scarf to work and still feel validated, still feel like I would be listened to, because my identity is normalized," Butler said. "What I was saying was taken at face value and it was taken with love. I didn't have to rearrange my words for anyone else's comfortability."

Butler said she hopes audience members get that same welcoming feeling from "Her Table."

"It's such a universal symbol, especially for women and within the Black community," she said of the kitchen table. “When you go to see the work, you're going to feel at home.”