FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 1, 2023, 8:00AM

MEDIA CONTACT: Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director

 

Help us celebrate the following ten Chicago-based dancemakers who have been selected as finalists for the Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2024 Lab Artists Program.

cat mahari
Brandon K. Calhoun aka Chief Manny
Courtney Mackedanz
Helen Lee
Julianna Rubio Slager
Nora Sharp
Phree
Shalaka Kulkarni
Tara Aisha Willis
Anonymous

More about these artists is below.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Lab Artists Program is the most substantial source of support for individual dancemakers and choreographers working in the Chicagoland area with an open call process. In 2024, four local dancemakers will each receive a grant of $25,000 along with a year of tailored support.

The Lab Artists Program is designed for dancemakers at an important juncture in their career and/or artistic trajectory, actively taking risks and experimenting, and poised to invest in their artistic practice with greater depth or scale. Rather than having a fixed approach, the Lab Year is an experiment in itself, responsive to each artist’s individual goals, timeline, and changing needs.

Past Lab Artists are diverse in age, gender, race, local geography, and dance discipline, working in Tap, Bharatanatyam, Chicago Footwork, dance for the camera, Voguing, contemporary, modern dance, and more. Many of these artists have built national audiences and international recognition since receiving support from Chicago Dancemakers Forum and, collectively, represent the distinct power of dance made in Chicago.

There were 69 applicants to the 2024 program; from that group, a panel has selected 10 Finalists who each receive $500, the option of public recognition, and professional development resources. The four 2024 Lab Artists will be randomly selected from the pool of Finalists later this month. 

This 21st year of the program was open to all eligible dancemakers but prioritized artists that we recognize have historically been underrepresented in the program – Indigenous, Immigrant, Trans and Non-Binary, Parent/Caregiver, and/or Disabled Artists. 80% of the open call applicants and 80% of the Finalists self-identify with one or more of the prioritization categories. More data on applications to the program can be found here.

Selection Panelists included Jamal “Litebulb” Oliver (2015 Lab Artist), Kinnari Vora (2022 Lab Artist), Lu Yim, and Michelle Yard.

Jamal “Litebulb” Oliver: Jamal “Litebulb” Oliver (2015 Lab Artist) is a renowned artist and culture bearer of the dance style known as Chicago Footwork. As a dancer, choreographer, curator, educator, public speaker, producer, and community leader, Bulb continues to push the genre’s edges, expanding and amplifying the artistic forms within footwork culture and empowering Chicago Footworkers to be producers and organizers of the form.

Kinnari Vora: Kinnari Vora shares stories of universal human conditions and emotions through movement, meditation, and theatrical practices. With collaboration at its core, her works are guided by ancestral wisdom and interconnectedness. Kinnari is co-founder of Ishti Collective and a dancer collaborator with Surabhi Ensemble. Kinnari is a 2022 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and is genuinely humbled and inspired to be a panelist for the same program.

Lu Yim: Lu Yim is a dancer, writer and choreographer currently based in Queens, NY. They have received support through Pageant (NY), Center for Performance Research (NY), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and were a 2023 fellow through Queer | Art’s mentorship program.

Michelle Yard: Dance has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, it started as a young girl dancing in my living room and has taken me all over the world. Professionally, I have danced with the Mark Morris Dance Group and continue to dance with Reggie Wilson / Fist and Heel Performance Group. In between these two phenomenal jobs, I earned an M.A. in Arts Administration from CUNY/Baruch College. Since then, I’ve had a number of administrative opportunities in music, puppetry, performance art, and dance. Currently, I am celebrating my one year anniversary as a program manager at The National Center for Choreography-Akron (NCCAkron).

 

Meet the Finalists

cat mahari

(she/her/blk)

cat mahari‘s practice is built from a richly layered embodied history, stemming from an archive of research and physical training with the intent to manifest an intellectual, material, and informal legacy of Black liberation through documentation. By examining personal marks and socio-genealogical maps, she explores inner and outer architectural environments. She is a 2023 MAP Fund micrograntee recipient, and a 2022 Foundation for the Arts Emergency grant for blk ark: the impossible manifestation. Her upcoming works include the film, Sugar in the Raw, is a surrealist-inspired exploration of Black intimacy, trust, and touch via Chicago house and stepping. In 2021 she was named the City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Awardee in Dance and received a 3Arts Award in dance. mahari is a culture bearer of Hip-hop and House having participated, judged and held community initiatives and events. As well as a former member of the Krump family Gool, cat holds a BFA in dance from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an MA in performance, practice, and research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist, pc maria j hackett

 

Brandon K. Calhoun aka Chief Manny

(he/him)

Brandon K. Calhoun aka Chief Manny (director, writer, editor, animator) is a Chicago footwork dancer, dance educator and filmmaker. As a filmmaker, Brandon’s direction and hand-drawn animations accentuate footwork’s rhythms and phrases, revealing dance as a visual language. His animations drive the recent projection, Footnotes, a video made for large scale display on the facade of the Merchandise Mart (theMart) in Chicago. As a dance filmmaker, his dance films and videos have screened at the Chicago Cultural Center, University of Chicago, Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank and other respected venues. A cultural organizer and multidisciplinary artist, Brandon also performs poetry and footwork in an award-winning new multimedia footwork performance by The Era, In the Wurkz, touring to Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the Walker Art Center Minneapolis in 2021.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist, pc Trey Legit

 

Courtney Mackedanz

(they/she)

Courtney Mackedanz is a transdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago. Their movement-based performances explore themes of embodied resistance and demonstrations of care within the context of received and embedded choreographic conditions such as algorithmic surveillance or nervous system states. Mackedanz’s practice incorporates critical research, creative writing, collaborative dancemaking, and image/sculptural experimentations to explore how expanded notions of the choreographic might structure, steer, catalyze, and constrain potentials in movement. Mackedanz earned their BFA in Performance and Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 and has since presented her work at The Arts Club of Chicago, Rudimento Gallery, Links Hall, and ACRE Projects amongst others. Mackedanz has attended residencies in support of her work including ImPact at Impulstanz, Landing 3.0 at the Gibney Dance Center, Nave Proyecto, and Lijiang Studio Residency amongst others. Mackedanz is currently developing her ongoing project, CHAFE THE SWALLOW BACK, as an artist in residency with the Monira Foundation, Chicago in 2024.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist, pc Elaine Suzanne Miller

 

Helen Lee

(they/she)

Helen Lee is a Queer Asian Chicago-born interdisciplinary artist raised by immigrant parents from South Korea. They received an MFA with a focus in Performance and Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Dance with a minor in Theatre from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. They have been teaching yoga, meditation and mindfulness since 2007. That same year, they formed Momentum Sensorium, a project-based company that has created and choreographed for See Chicago Dance, Out of Site, APIDA Arts Festival, and sometimes in unconventional locations such as lighthouses, train stations, and hallways. Much of their work focuses on the senses, death, and the entanglement of light/shadow, summer/winter, joy/grief. They have presented works in the US, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Canada. Helen was selected for 2022 Newcity Breakout Artist and awarded Chicago Artist Coalition’s SPARK Grant. They have been an Artist in Residence at Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago Cultural Center, and Links Hal with a current residency at High Concept Labs. They are continually working on Black and Asian allyship, collective healing, and reflecting on the meaning of the celebration of Asian stories, bodies, and voices.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist, pc Kristie Kahns

 

Julianna Rubio Slager

(she/her)

Ballet 5:8 Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer Julianna Rubio Slager began her dance training at a local studio in Spring Arbor, Michigan. She went on to study under notable teachers from the New York City Ballet, the Vaganova Academy, and Puerto Rican National Ballet. Rubio Slager co-founded Ballet 5:8 in 2012 and is known for her unique ability to engage audiences in discussions of life and faith through choreography. She has created over 50 works for the Company and School during her tenure at Ballet 5:8 and has the privilege of working daily at the School of Ballet 5:8. She has guest taught at over 100 schools across the United States. In 2023 Rubio Slager was awarded the coveted position of National Visiting Fellow at the School of American Ballet. Ballet 5:8 tours nationally, bringing Rubio Slager’s critically acclaimed ballets such as Reckless, Butterfly, The Space in Between and BareFace to audiences across the nation. Slager has won several grants from the Illinois Arts Council and was selected for the DCASE Individual Artist Grant in 2015. Rubio Slager is a groundbreaking figure within the field, as one of the few Mexican American Artistic Directors and Resident Choreographers of professional ballet companies in the world. She hopes that her leadership and creative work at Ballet 5:8 will pave the way for other women and minorities in professional ballet.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist, pc Jeremy Cowart

 

Nora Sharp

(they/them)

Nora Sharp is a gender-deviant millennial working across performance, film, and community facilitation. Their work often addresses the perpetual unraveling of queer+trans identity formation and the reverberance of key moments in familial, romantic, and casual relationships. A 2023 Queer|Art Mentorship Fellow in Performance, Nora has had work presented by On the Boards, Movement Research at the Judson Church, New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix 37, Open TV, Chicago Dancemakers Forum – Elevate, Steppenwolf Theatre’s LookOut Series, Midwest RAD Fest, the Fly Honey Show, Physical Theater Festival, the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and elsewhere, and supported by residencies at the The Croft, Hambidge, Links Hall, and High Concept Labs. Outside making their own work, they have facilitated regular work-in-progress performance spaces, performed/dramaturged for many independent artists, shared Amtrak coupons for creative research, and co-organized artist collective response efforts, in addition to working a day job in social change organizing.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist, pc Anjali Pinto

 

Phree

(he/him)

My name is Phill, also known as Phree. I am a visual and movement artist born and raised in Indianapolis, currently residing in Chicago. I have worked with The Lyric Opera, Lollapalooza, Chicago Dance Crash, and many other local artist organizations and professionals. My dance work is primarily shown using the dance styles of Breaking, Hip Hop, and House dance, but I also have trained and performed with other styles of movement such as Modern, Tricking, and Contemporary dance throughout my career. I work not also as a dancer, but also as an educator, director, choreographer, and video editor. I produce art that is multifaceted and present it live, through digital media, or during artistic sharing events. As a primarily self-trained artist, I hope to share my passion for creativity and artistic freedom with my audience to inspire and collaborate with others.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist, pc A. Deran Photography

 

Shalaka Kulkarni

(she/her)

Shalaka Kulkarni is an interdisciplinary dance artist. Trained in Indian Classical dance, she creates experiences that bridge the ancient and contemporary, uplifting marginalized voices. A prolific actor, filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer, she has toured original work and participated in collaborations in India, the United States, and Europe. In Chicago, she has presented her work at various venues, events, and festivals, including the Athenaeum Theatre, Chicago Cultural Center, Chopin Theater, MCA, Ruth Page, Women in Dance, Links Hall, Newport Theater and Dance Chicago Festivals. She has created work for numerous independent performers and artists. She is a recognized educator and has taught for dance companies, private studios, and after-school and undergraduate programs. Kulkarni began training in Bharatnatyam as a child in India. After immigrating to US, she had her Bharatnatyam graduation ceremony under Pranita Jain and started her Kathak training under international artist Sandhya Desai. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts & Media, working closely with the noted dancer/choreographer Nana Shineflug. As a 2023 Fellow-in-Residence with High Concept Labs and a summer resident with Chicago Performance Lab at UChicago, she is pursuing a multiyear project exploring myths and mythological female-identified figures that have devised and upheld unreasonable expectations for women.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist

 

Tara Aisha Willis

(she/her)

Tara Aisha Willis is a dance artist, scholar, and curator. Her choreography combines sound and persona to produce indeterminate meaning and feeling within moving bodies, blurring recognizable sonic structures and cultural tropes. Through her programming and scholarship, she works to fill gaps in archives, conversation, and resource around Black dancing and creative experimentation. Willis danced in a collaboration between Will Rawls and Claudia Rankine and in the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award-winning performance by The Skeleton Architecture. Currently a Lecturer at the University of Chicago, she holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University. Her monograph, Indescribable Moves: Improvised Experiments in Dancing Blackness, is being developed through the Dance Studies Association and University of Michigan Press’s 2023 Studies in Dance History First-Time Author Mentorship Program. She was Curator of Performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago from 2017–23, and previously a programmer and founding administrator of the Artists of Color Council at NYC experimental dance hub, Movement Research. She was co-editor of a special issue on dance of The Black Scholar and the performance writing book project, Marking the Occasion. Her writing appears in Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures, in the forthcoming Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories, and in a collaborative artist book in process, In the horizontal plane: taisha paggett performance works.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist, pc zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal

 

Anonymous