Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble — whose artistic director is Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago alum Sara Maslanka (BA ’13), a graduate of the Dance Center’s Dance BA program — concludes its 15th season of “performance with a purpose” with A Piece of My Heart, by Shirley Lauro. Through storytelling, movement, and live music, the 1992 play chronicles the powerful accounts of six women before, during and after the Vietnam War, exploring contemporary parallels from each experience.

Here’s a video previewing the production:

Founded in 2001, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble employs innovative, multidisciplinary storytelling hoping to achieve an “all-embracing, radical change in humankind,” collaboratively creating thought-provoking arts performances and educational outreach programs that incorporate text, dance, music, and visual art. Inspired by the German Expressionist movement tanztheater, CDE uses the written word as the structure and body movement as the primary tool to create original and compelling narratives that transpose new awareness to diverse audiences. Performances fuse elements of world literature and traditional Western theatre with physical theatre, contemporary dance, multimedia, and visual art to fulfill CDE’s mission of “performance with a purpose.”