Kimberly Atwood, owner of Elephant Room, opens her eyes for:
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind I first saw Too Much Light back in high school. As a rebellious teenager, taking the Orange Line to the Red or Brown Line for punk-rock concerts and thrift stores was a regular weekend excursion. When a friend told us about this quirky theater where they run 30 plays in an hour, we were immediately intrigued.
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It was a freezing Chicago winter night. We arrived around 10:30 PM and got in line behind 30 or so people standing outside hopping up and down in the freezing cold, getting more and more excited waiting for the doors to open.
The place I like to bust them out the most is twice weekly at Dance Dance Party Party, a women-only freestyle-dance session. “No judgment of yourself or others” is one of only three rules at DDPP (the other two being no boys and no booze). You’re free to dance however you want, in any way you want, in or out of projected lava screen lights. Every session a different person deejays, so the music is different each time, and it can be anything from dope electronic beats to Bollywood film scores. My favorite thing about the whole experience is that by the end of the session, I’ve pretty much regressed into my childhood self dancing around the house with my friends in religious pop ecstasy the minute my parents leave. It’s a serious workout. And oh yeah, it’s all life-affirmingy. Five bucks pays for the studio time.
