CHICAGO, IL, 3/15/2021 – With an investment from the Walder Foundation, Chicago Dancemakers Forum is launching a City-Wide Production Residency Pilot Project which matches dance making artists with performance venues (mostly closed to audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic), while promoting new collaborations, paid artistic development, employment for designers and technicians, and innovative ways of sharing dance with audiences and other supporters. The artists in residence were selected by the host venues in collaboration with Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

The 2021 pilot residencies are:

• BraveSoul Movement at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago
• Ivelisse Diaz at Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center
• La Vuelta Ensemble at UrbanTheater Company
• Rigo Saura at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts
• South Side venue (to be announced)

In partnership with Performance Response Journal, a writer—who is also a practicing artist, curator, cultural producer, and/or all of the above—will be embedded into each residency and paired with each dancemaker/collective while they are in this process of making a new work. Together they share space, process, dialogue, reflection, and creation.Embedded Writers for the 2021 residencies include Ana Daniela, Benji Hart, and Khalid Long.

Ginger Farley, Executive Director, shares, “Chicago Dancemakers Forum is incredibly fortunate to engage these artists in dynamic interactive artistic process with one another and to build new and strong relationships with presenting partners across Chicago in support of dance and dancemaking. We are grateful to the Walder Foundation for their timely entry as a new and generous artist-centric funder in the performing arts.” 

Two of the venue partners, Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center and Ruth Page Center for the Arts, are celebrating their 50^th anniversary this year. In April, all residency artists and collaborators will be invited to join a Learning Lab co-produced by Chicago Dancemakers Forum and The Harris Theater for Music and Dance (an invitation-only event).

For more information on the City-Wide Production Residencies Pilot Project, contact Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director at shawn@chicagodancemakers.org or 312-550-9172.

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Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2021 Production Residencies

BraveSoul Movement with Chicago Fringe Opera | The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

BraveSoul Movement was born organically in 2016 as the newest iteration of a 15-year synergy between two of Chicago’s veteran street dance artists, Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood and Kelsa “K-Soul” Robinson. Rooted in the movement languages and cultures of Hip-Hop and Chicago House, as well as a range of other movement traditions, BSM combines dancemaking with transformed pedagogy, antiracist activism and community-building practices.   

“The Rosina Project”, developed through collaboration between BraveSoul Movement and Chicago Fringe Opera is a contemporary adaptation of Rossini’s 18^th Century opera The Barber of Seville, remixed by Chicago-based Hip-Hop and opera artists who perform an original female-driven story of empowerment as an immersive, 21^st Century house party.

Chicago Fringe Opera is dedicated to presenting innovative vocal works with an emphasis on new and contemporary styles, engaging with the Chicago community through intimate and immersive performance experiences, and fostering and empowering local artists.

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago’s mission is to provide a comprehensive education for the dancer-artist, offering academic training leading to either a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance. The Dance Center also serves the community as Chicago’s leading presenter of contemporary dance.

Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazón” Diaz | Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center

Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazón” Diaz was born and raised in Humboldt Park. With 27+ years of learning and continued studies, Ivelisse has become a well-known Afro-Puerto Rican dance creator, vocalist, and leader within the Bomba community. Bomba Is Puerto Rico’s oldest musical expression developed during the 18th century by the island’s African descendants. Ivelisse is a co-founding member of Bomba con Buya and has traveled with the group and as a soloist to Ghana, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, California, and New York. She is Director/Founder of La Escuelita Bombera de Corazón Bomba school (established in 2009). In 2019 Ivelisse was a Musical Consultant and lead vocalist for Nickelodeon’s cartoon series Santiago of the Seas, and she received the 3Arts Award. 

One of the least documented elements of Bomba in the Diaspora is the Bomba dancing vocabulary, both staged or improvisational, informed by diverse environmental and mostly urban intersectionalities also rooted in African traditions. Seen through the lens of local Bomba dancers but also drummers, Ivelisse’s extensive vocabulary in Bomba includes some traits of Chicago footwork and dance movements that influenced the urban dance scene. It is, in a nutshell, the conversation of resistance that Ivelisse proposes encompassing not only movement but voice and the rhythms of the Diaspora. Her dance language is as deliberate, as it is intentional, holistic and communal. Documenting her journey through this residency also includes documenting four centuries of history of  our community, its anti-colonial efforts, and its efforts towards self-determination and resistance. 

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center (SRBCC) is the longest-standing Latino cultural center in Chicago. Established in 1971, it was named in honor of Segundo Ruiz Belvis, a Puerto Rican patriot and member of a secret abolitionist society that freed slave children under Spanish rule. In that spirit, SRBCC realizes its mission to preserve and promote appreciation of the culture and arts of Puerto Rico and Latin America, with a unique emphasis on its African heritage. As a Cultural Center, Segundo Ruiz Belvis commits to celebrate, align and make visible Puerto Rico’s African ancestry with artists such as Ivelisse, a Chicago-grown Puerto Rican whose development began at the center over 25 years ago. 

La Vuelta Ensemble | UrbanTheater Company

La Vuelta Ensemble is a POC-led company born in 2013 to Puerto Rican artists Jean Carlos Claudio and Raquel Torre. After two years of education in multiple disciplines in Buenos Aires, Argentina, they returned to their homeland with the name of Circo La Vuelta, where they established themselves in the circus and performance circuit of the island, creating 3 full shows and a catalogue of short pieces. Settling in Chicago in 2016, the company underwent a rebranding and restructuring to better accommodate their work in the city, their work transitioning from circus and street-performance to ensemble-based devised theatre exploring high physicality and delightful absurdity. Settling in the Puerto Rican and Hispanic hotspot, Humboldt Park, they connected with UrbanTheater Company and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center for work and guidance, further influencing them to define themselves as a community-rooted collective. 

La Vuelta Ensemble explores the connection between personal and collective themes in a multidisciplinary performance involving circus, music, visual art, dance, and physical theatre.

UrbanTheater Company is committed to centralizing the power and talents that are innate in every person to tell their communities stories. They serve as a pipeline for a diverse and culturally specific collective of Chicago actors, designers, and producers who embrace the responsibility to create an environment full of honesty, integrity, representation, and acceptance. They create innovative and accessible theater that challenges Eurocentric styles and training.

Rigo Saura | The Ruth Page Center for the Arts

Rigo Saura graduated from the National School of Modern and Contemporary Dance in Havana, Cuba. He is a former soloist dancer of Danza Contemporánea of Cuba and the classic cast of the National Ballet of Ecuador. Rigo served as Resident Choreographer in Ecuador’s Urban Ballet and Composition Master in the Metropolitan School of Art, Ecuador. Since moving to Chicago, he’s been part of Ruth Page Center of the Arts and guest artist/instructor for the Professional Program at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Currently, Rigo is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer with Hedwig Dances, Concert Dance Inc., Ruth Page Civic Ballet, and guest artist/instructor with Visceral Dance Chicago and Visceral Dance Center. 

if we can’t walk we will crawl across another world, another world, there must be another world where …… Inspired by this fragment, Ruth Page’s Ballet Cívico explores together (with Rigo Saura’s guidance) the need to create another world or at least improve the one we have.

Celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year, The Ruth Page Center for the Arts, an incubator of artistic energy and at the center of Chicago’s dance history, carries forward the mission of its founder, international dance icon Ruth Page, to be a platform for developing great artists and connecting them with audiences and community. The Ruth Page Civic Ballet was established in 1998 to identify, nurture and mentor emerging dance artists from around the world through enhanced performance opportunities within an elite training company. Serving as a bridge between training and professional performance, company members refine their ballet and contemporary techniques in an international environment of performers and educators before moving on to professional careers in dance. The Civic’s dancers are joined in performances by notable guest artists and choreographers, such as Rigo Saura, expanding their sphere of professional work.

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Featured Image: Jean Claudio and Gardy Gilbert of La Vuelta Ensemble at UrbanTheater