FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 30, 2023, 8:00AM

MEDIA CONTACT: Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director

Celebrating its 20^th Anniversary, Chicago Dancemakers Forum announces the four 2024 Lab Artists:

Aaliyah Christina
Helen Lee
Nora Sharp
Phree

More about these artists is below. 

These local dancemakers will each receive a grant of $25,000 along with a year of tailored support (January – December 2024). They were selected as Finalists of the program for the distinctness of their dancemaking and artistic vision, their body of work, and the timing of their work in the world and the program in their artistic trajectory.

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. The program is designed to provide financial support that is significant enough to fund the creative process and to minimize some of life’s day-to-day stressors so that artists have the time and capacity to invest in their artistic practice with greater depth or scale. The $25K grant can be spent fully at the discretion of each Lab Artist, with funds covering living expenses, research activities, travel, fair pay for dancers and collaborators, and other expenses that support the artist while continuing their creative practice or making new dance work. The grant amount was recently increased to help cover support services throughout the Lab Year, such as childcare, therapy, ASL interpretation, and specialized equipment. Lab Artists may also choose to invest, save, and/or donate a portion of their grant funds.

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. 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 Lab Artists Program, which was open to all eligible dancemakers and prioritized artists that we recognize have historically been underrepresented in the program – Indigenous, Immigrant, Trans and Non-Binary, Parent/Caregiver, and/or Disabled Artists. From the applicants, 10 Finalists including cat mahari, Brandon K. Calhoun aka Chief Manny, Courtney Mackedanz, Julianna Rubio Slager, Shalaka Kulkarni, and Tara Aisha Willis were selected by a panel comprised of two national and two local dance professionals: Jamal “Litebulb” Oliver (2015 Lab Artist), Kinnari Vora (2022 Lab Artist), Lu Yim, and Michelle Yard. The 10 Finalists each received $500, the option of public recognition, and professional development resources. The four 2024 Lab Artists were randomly selected from this pool of Finalists. Once the group of Finalists is selected through this competitive process, randomization helps reduce the impact of curatorial gatekeeping that can happen with short lists and eliminates the time and labor of a second round of application.

For two decades, Chicago Dancemakers Forum has been providing resources, fostering community, and advocating for local dancemaking artists as individuals, no matter the business structure of their work. Chicago is known for its incredible dance companies yet there are hundreds of professional, independent dancemakers here choosing to work outside of the 501(c)(3) company structure, creating impactful art that blends genres, amplifies cultures, and dissects powerful and unique ideas. For local dancemakers who do direct their own companies, Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s programs offer important opportunities to invest in themselves and their own creative practice. Since its inception in 2003, Chicago Dancemakers Forum has granted over $1.28 million to Chicago’s dancemakers, impacting a total of 297 artists through various grants, events, and special programs.

Meet the 2024 Lab Artists

Aaliyah Christina

(she/her)

Born in Ruston, Louisiana and raised across Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas, Aaliyah Christina makes dances and writes about dynamics in power/love, mental health, and Blackness. She is based in South side Chicago, IL and works as the Artist Programs Manager at Links Hall, co-organizes with Performance Response Journal (PRJ), and collaborates with community organizations and fellow artists across the city of Chicago. In 2021, Aaliyah received the 3Arts Make-A-Wave grant and as of 2023 she received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2023 Artist Fellowship Finalist Award. She created PRAISE MOTHER, a dance theater project highlighting relationships between Black matriarchs and their kin through their mental health journeys.

Current Practice/Project: Aaliyah Christina is currently interested in African American movement vernaculars, especially as they pertain to jubilation and spiritual veneration within communal spaces. Her movement practice includes Liturgical/praise dance, Black majorette styles, and improvisation that negotiates moments of irreverent play and personal questioning. She explores interpersonal relationships between Black femmes, their mothers, and their sociopolitical position in the African diaspora.

Call to Action: Aaliyah would like donations to be made to Free Root Operation, an organization that runs a wellness program known as BLOOM in order to support Black women and single mothers living in Chicago communities impacted by poverty-induced gun violence.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist, pc Ricardo E. Adame

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.

Current Practice/Project: Each of us carries a history within us. This history within us this connection to our ancestors, our memories, our histories are ones we can choose to embrace or erase. Does this make us healers or killers? Everyday we live, we move closer to death. If we can sit with ourselves and sit in that darkness, there may be some answers that will be uncovered and possible healing along the way.

Call to Action: Helen encourages you to donate to American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. They share that, “In 2020, our family lost Julie, who was a dancer and lover of books.” If you or someone you know are in crisis, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting 741-741.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist, pc Kristie Kahns

Nora Sharp

(they/them)

Working across performance, film, and community facilitation, Nora Sharp hosts audiences in worlds where language and embodiment merge in surprising, funny, and illuminating ways. 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, Steppenwolf Theatre’s LookOut Series, Midwest RAD Fest, the Fly Honey Show, the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and at DIY artist-led performance nights across Chicago; 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 or 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.

Current Practice/Project: Nora is currently working on Origin Story, a one-them-show born from the outer space of trans dis-certainty that takes audiences down a choreographic and comedic rabbit hole of intertwined sci-fi futurism and personal history. Additional ongoing and upcoming projects and practices include The Real Dance, a micro reality TV show about dancemaking; Swine Ball, a dance-theater work about familial lineages of complicity and resistance; Sharp Tank, a semi-regular community work-in-progress series; and Nor Art, a newsletter about side pockets of queer culture and the trying-to-be-an-artist industrial complex.

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.

Current Practice/Project: My Dancemaking is meant for personal expression, community bonding, and social change. My current process involves heavily intertwining my interests in videography, editing, story writing, and directing into my dance. Through my dance, main focuses currently are training, research, and professional development.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist, pc A. Deran Photography