Inspiring Growth and Change for Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Board of Directors
CHICAGO, IL 11/15/2022 – DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE
This fall, Adia Sykes (she/her) begins her term with Chicago Dancemakers Forum as chair of the Board of Directors. Adia is a Chicago-based arts administrator and curator.
Adia has been a Chicago Dancemakers Forum board member for two years, serving on the program evaluation committee and the organization’s anti-racism team. Moving into her new role as chair, Adia hopes to explore collaboration across the board. In particular, she is looking forward to serving as a thought partner for Joanna Furnans, the recently appointed Executive Director. With experience in racial equity, ethics of care, and improvisational theory and intuition, Adia hopes to integrate these interests into her work with the organization. Outside of the office, Adia enjoys dancing Argentine tango, cooking for friends, and tending to her houseplants while finding rest and softness as often as possible. Kim D. Ricardo, Board Vice Chair and Lead of the Board Development Committee, shares, “Adia Sykes is expert in creating and maintaining holistically caring, equitable, and sustainable spaces for artists to thrive. I am confident that the dancemakers who CDF serves will benefit from her leadership and insights as a fellow creative and I am so excited to work with her!”
Adia began her work with Chicago Dancemakers Forum as a programs and administrative intern in 2017. At the same time, she was a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for Arts Administration and Policy. The internship served as a space to put classroom lessons into practice by working on administrative tasks to support dancemakers in the city. Adia reflects on her time as intern with Chicago Dancemakers Forum, “The focus on supporting process as opposed to production was something that stuck with me and still very much informs the way I think as an administrator and curator.”
The Chicago Dancemakers Forum staff and board extends their thanks and gratitude to Angel Ysaguirre for his service as board chair. Angel was critical in leading the search for the organization’s new executive director and will continue to serve as a vital member of the board. In the Chicago arts community, he continues his role as Executive Director of the Tony Award Winning Court Theatre at the University of Chicago.
Also this fall, Chicago Dancemakers Forum welcomes three new board members Thomas DeFrantz, Darrell Jones, and Dahlia Nayar. Ricardo adds, “Over the last year, Chicago Dancemakers has been actively recruiting dance practitioners to enrich the perspective of its Board and we are overjoyed to be welcoming three brilliant artists to share in the governance responsibilities for Chicago’s major cash-grant organization for dancemakers. Along with new Board Chair, Adia Sykes, the addition of Thomas, Darrell, and Dahlia makes the Board more capable of supporting the concerns of the dance artists that it serves.”
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Adia Sykes is an arts organizer and curator based in Chicago. Her practice seeks to center philosophies of improvisation, intuition, and care, engaging them as tools through which meaningful relationships between artists and viewers can be cultivated, while leaving space for the vernacular to mingle with constructs of history and theory.
As an administrator advocating for racial equity and sustainable ecosystems for creative practitioners, she has held roles with organizations like the Chicago Artists Coalition, where she started their SPARK Grant— a joint effort with the Joyce Foundation providing unrestricted grants to artists of color, not formally trained artists, and artists with disabilities. At present, Adia is Co-Director of Programs at Threewalls which is an arts organization that fosters contemporary art practices that respond to lived experiences, encouraging connections beyond art. She is also a Lead Organizer of the Chicago Art Census, a city-wide research project that collects, maps, and visualizes data that illuminates the lived experiences and working conditions of art workers in Chicago.
Her curatorial projects include Locating Memory (Chicago Mayor’s Office, 2018), Project Radio London (Centro Arte Opificio Siri in Terni, Italy, 2018), and The Petty Biennial.2 (Chicago, 2019-2020). She has also realized projects with the Art Institute of Chicago, Sullivan Galleries, Woman Made Gallery, ACRE, Material Exhibitions, Roman Susan Gallery, and Comfort Station. Additionally, Adia currently serves on the Curatorial Advisory Board for Art on the Mart.
Adia earned a Masters in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.
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Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Northwestern University, affiliated with the Segal Design Institute and the Dance and the department of African and African American Studies. DeFrantz specializes in African diaspora aesthetics, dance historiography, and the intersections of dance and technology. DeFrantz acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture, contributing concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the museum in 2016. Creative Projects include “Queer Theory! An Academic Travesty” commissioned by the Theater Offensive of Boston and the Flynn Center for the Arts; “fastDANCEpast,” created for the Detroit Institute for the Arts; “reVERSE-gesture-reVIEW” commissioned by the Nasher Museum in response to the work of Kara Walker. DeFrantz has directed many productions across a long career, including GeVa Theater, Karamu House, and a residency at the New York Public Theater. He currently directs the research group SLIPPAGE, a group that works to create innovative interfaces for the telling of alternative histories. He is co-editor of the Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance, Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion, Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings, and editor of Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance. He has published extensively, with his monograph Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture. DeFrantz has chaired the Women’s Studies program at MIT, and the African and African American Studies Department at Duke. DeFrantz has received the Distinguished Research Award from the Dance Studies Association in 2017, and had work nominated for a “Bessie” Award in 2020.
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Darrell Jones has performed with a variety of choreographers and companies such as Bebe Miller, Urban Bush Women, Min Tanaka and Ralph Lemon. Along with performing, Darrell has collaborated with other choreographers including Kirstie Simson, Angie Hauser, Lisa Gonzales, Paige Cunningham; musicians Jessie Manno, Brian Schuler, and DJ Franco De Leon; and designer, Mawish Syed, in dance films, documentations and interactive multimedia installations. He has received choreographic fellowships from MANCC (Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography), CDF (Chicago Dancemakers Forum) MAP Fund and Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Darrell is presently an Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago. His classes are informed by his studies in a variety of contemporary dance techniques and improvisational processes.
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Dahlia Nayar’s multimedia work investigates the performance of the quiet and seeks unlikely sources of virtuosity. Her work has been supported by a Vermont Performance Lab residency, a Bates Dance Festival New England Emerging Choreographer Residency, a National Dance Project Special Grant and a National Dance Project Touring Award for 2016-17. Selected by Downeast Magazine as “Best of Stage and Screen”, Stanley Street has been adapted for galleries, grange halls, a Buddhist church and other alternative spaces throughout the United States. Previously, Dahlia’s work has been selected and performed at venues including the Venice Biennale/Danza Venezia Showcase for Emerging Choreographers, Dance Place in Washington DC, the Next Stage Dance Residency at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY. In addition, her site specific projects have been performed at the National Botanical Gardens, the Kennedy Center and the Complejo Cultural, in Puebla, Mexico. Dahlia has been a guest artist at several universities including: Salem State College, College of the Holy Cross, Long Island University in Brooklyn, Marymount Manhattan College, Duke University, Smith College, Lawrence University, Keene State College, Boston University, The Ohio State University and others. Dahlia is a recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship and the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Choreography. She holds an MFA in Dance/Choreography from Hollins University and is currently pursuing her PhD in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.
