let's do fun things
start of summer latin dance fest
SOS Latin Dance Fest Two-Day Latin Dance Festival
Night One — Wednesday, May 27 @ Epiphany Center for the Arts
Night Two — Thursday, May 28 @ Castaways
21+
a school night has never felt like this. we're kicking off summer with a two-day latin dance festival across the two best venues in Chicago.
night one, we take over Epiphany Center for the Arts, the best indoor dance venue in the city. a historic West Loop church with vaulted ceilings, stained glass, and cathedral acoustics, transformed into the city's largest latin dance floor.
night two, we're back at Castaways. first day back at the beach. dancing on the lakefront as summer officially begins.
both nights: doors at 6:30pm beginner-friendly latin dance lesson at 7pm (no partner needed) open floor with bachata, salsa, and latin beats until late DJ sets, guest instructors, performances, and local vendors
no experience needed. whether you've been dancing all winter or this is your very first time, the first hour is for you.
two-day passes and single night tickets available.
school's out. summer starts here.
21+ to attend
this event has ended
here's what's coming up that you might like.
salsa before sunset
Castaways Beach Club
1603 N Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60611, USA
salsa, the beach, and the best skyline view in the city. 21+ we're taking over castaways on north avenue beach for a night of salsa dancing right as the sun dips behind the city. the night opens with a beginner-friendly lesson, so whether you're a seasoned dancer or you've never moved to a beat in your life, you'll be on the floor in no time. then the dj takes over with the best of salsa, bachata, and latin hits while the sky lights up over lake michigan. come solo, bring your crew, or show up ready to meet someone new. no partner needed. no experience necessary. just bring an open mind and shoes you can spin in.
last call lectures: the epic journey of the odyssey: from the iliad to the aeneid to imax theaters
The Scout Waterhouse + Kitchen
1419 N Wells St, Chicago, IL 60610, USA
christopher nolan just spent a quarter-billion dollars reminding everyone that one of the hottest stories of 2026 is also roughly 2,800 years old. but before odysseus was matt damon, before the trojan war was an imax spectacle, and long before western civilization decided that reading dead greeks made you sophisticated, there was homer: a probably-not-one-guy poet telling enormous stories about war, monsters, gods, bad decisions, wounded egos, and one man taking an absolutely unreasonable amount of time to get home. in this lecture, historian dr. john j murphy takes us back to the ancient world to unpack the iliad, the odyssey, and their wildly influential roman successor, virgil’s aeneid. we’ll meet heroes who are brave, petty, horny, traumatized, occasionally brilliant, and spectacularly bad at conflict resolution—and ask how their stories became some of the foundational texts of western literature. then we’re heading to the movies. what does christopher nolan keep from homer? what does he throw overboard? why make the gods quieter, the war darker, and odysseus more recognizably human? and when you adapt a story that has already survived nearly three millennia of retellings, is changing it actually a betrayal, or the most homeric thing you could possibly do? come for the cyclops. stay for the fall of troy, roman propaganda, ancient masculinity, unreliable narrators, extremely vindictive gods, and the realization that basically every road movie, war story, homecoming narrative, and “one last job before i can go home” plot owes homer his flowers. we’ve spent 2,800 years telling the same stories; christopher nolan just put them back in imax.
last call lectures: lie better, laugh more: the linguistics of humor and deceit
The Scout Waterhouse + Kitchen
1419 N Wells St, Chicago, IL 60610, USA
last call lectures presents lie better, laugh more: the linguistics of humor and deceit all of us have laughed, and whether we want to admit it or not, all of us have lied. what we didn't know is that deceit and humor have more in common than we thought. this lecture we're digging into why jokes and lies both hinge on a listener expecting one thing and getting another, what your word choice gives away when you're bending the truth, and why the best comedians are, linguistically speaking, doing the same trick as the best liars. leading the night is dr. jason riggle, a professor at the university of chicago. dr. riggle brings 20+ years of experience working in the linguistics field and is currently working on their book, the linguistics of humor and deceit. here is how the night runs: dr. riggle opens with a 45 minute lecture, followed by 15 minutes of live q&a. then we break into small groups for 45 minutes of guided discussion, closing with a 15 minute debrief to bring it all back together. stick around after for mingling, this crowd always has more to say.