MEDIA CONTACT: Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director

Join Chicago Dancemakers Forum in celebrating the four 2025 Lab Artists:

cat mahari

Courtney Mackedanz

Jarius “ManOfGod” King

Keyierra Collins

More about these artists is below. High Resolution images and caption sheet are available here.

These local dancemakers—of Washington Park, Pilsen, North Lawndale, and Pullman, respectively—will each receive a grant of $25,000 along with a year of tailored support from January to December 2025. They were selected as Finalists of Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Lab Artists Program for the distinctness of their dancemaking and artistic vision, their overall body of work, and the timing of their participation in this grant program in consideration of their artistic career trajectory.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Lab Artists Program has been the most substantial source of support for individual dancemakers and choreographers working in the Chicagoland area with an open call process. The program, which launched in 2003, 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 increased in 2022 to help cover support services throughout the Lab Year, such as childcare, therapy, access services, specialized equipment, grant proposal writing, and mentorship/coaching. Lab Artists may also choose to invest, save, and/or donate a portion of their grant funds.

For over two decades in the Chicago region, the Lab Artists Program has provided time and funds in support of risk taking, creative research, and community building. Rather than an award, the Lab Artists Program is a laboratory for local artists making dance in a multitude of contexts; it is an incubator for their experimentation. 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 74 applicants to the 2025 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. Data on the 74 applicants was previously shared via social media. Over a two-round selection process, 10 Finalists were selected by a panel comprised of six dance artists, scholars, and leaders: LaTasha Barnes, Dr Melissa Blanco Borelli, SK Kerastas, Christopher Knowlton, Ph.D., Petra Kuppers, and Rulan Tangen. This year, every finalist received $1,000.

We congratulate the following six Finalists for the 2025 Lab Artists Program:

Anniela Huidobro

Jamila Kekulah

Jemal “Ptop“ Delacruz

Luke Greeff

Paula Sousa

Silvita Diaz Brown

For over two decades, Chicago Dancemakers Forum has been providing resources, fostering community, and advocating for local dancemaking artists as individual human beings, no matter the business structure of their work. Expanding definitions and program eligibility have resulted in a greater number of dancemakers recognizing their fit for the program and changes were made to the review and selection process for the 2025 program that are described here. The four 2024 Lab Artists were randomly selected from the pool of 10 Finalists. Once the group of Finalists is selected through a 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. 

Shawn Lent, Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Programs and Communications Director, shares, “The Lab Artists Program fosters a sense of solidarity among our many local dance communities. It forges connections, collaborations, and friendships that extend far beyond each Lab year. Let us embrace the spirit of experimentation and exploration that lies at the heart of the Lab Artists Program, knowing that it is through daring that we continue to resist and expand the boundaries of dance and society.”

Meet the 2025 Lab Artists

cat mahari

(she/her/blk)

cat mahari’s practice is built from a richly layered body history, stemming from an archive of research, physical training, and questioning with an intent to manifest an intellectual, material, and informal legacy of undisciplined Blk liberation. She is a 2025 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and 2023 Dance/USA Fellow. In 2021, she was named a City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Awardee and received a 3Arts Award. Additionally, cat is a recipient of a 2024 MCA-Chicago New Works Initiative Commission, 2023 MAP Fund microgrant, and 2022 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Emergency funding for the triptych work blk ark: the impossible manifestation. Her work interdisciplinary installations, performances, sound art, and films engages national and international communities, including: the mixtape series violent/break: volumes I and II, sugar in the raw, and migration pressures and strategies. mahari aka culture free aka abstrakt blk aka mississippi is an active culture bearer of hip hop and house, student of diasporic and contemporary performances practices, and caregiver. She holds a BFA from UMKC-Conservatory and a MA in Performance, Practice, and Research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London.

Current Practice/Project: All Roads Lead to Rome is a 3-act sound score for sculpture and movement intrigued by the socio-infrastructural gravitation of empire, the mundane spectacle and immediacy of attention, thought, and action that lead people to where they are/are going now. 32 subwoofer sculptures are created made of southern yellow pine. Each sculpture corresponds to the original number of West African founders of Africatown, who are the survivors of the illegal enslavement vessel The Clotilda and US chattel enslavement. Piezo contact mics will be embedded into the sculptures, resonating with the vibrations that emanate from the sculptures, and the vibrations made by others that walk, run, and move around them. The sounds emitted by the contact mics are processed further via tape and synthesizer creating a modulated cyclic-interactive sound field.

“We”, as intentional and unintentional audience-participants of empire experience fragmentation, coalescing, and care without any particular ordering. I wonder… what happens when empire collapses, but the roads are still used? How is stake or claim fed into personal purpose and identity? How do our contemporary philosophies and humors of life reflect empirical past? What ways is the specter of empire suborned to the spectacle of the personal, the mundane, the everyday – the multi-polar?

Photo credits: Courtesy of the Artist. Headshot by Maria Hackman. Action photo by Ricardo E. Adame.

Courtney Mackedanz

(they/she)

Courtney Mackedanz lives and works in Chicago. They were a 2024 DanceWEB Scholar with mentor Isabel Lewis (Vienna), a finalist for the 2024 Artadia Award (Chicago), and a finalist for the 2024 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artists Program (Chicago). Recent solo exhibitions of their work include Skylab Gallery (Columbus) and Roman Susan Gallery (Chicago). Recent group exhibitions of their work include Rudimento Gallery (Quito) and ACRE Projects (Chicago). They have performed at The Arts Club, Links Hall, and High Concept Labs (Chicago) amongst others. They have attended residencies in pursuit of their research including Praxis R24 Held Experiments in Touch (Oslo), Monira Foundation Artist Residency (Chicago), and Landing 3.0 with mentor Miguel Gutierez (New York) amongst others. Mackedanz has performed in the work of Alexandra Pirici (Chicago Architecture Biennial), Otobong Nkanga (MCA Chicago), and Tino Seghal (MCA Chicago) amongst others. Mackedanz earned their BFA in Performance and Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute (Chicago) and when not in the studio, they love to be with other people, plants, near the water, and with their dog (Easy), and cat (Eclipse).

Current Practice/Project: Courtney Mackedanz is an experimental dancemaker working in embodied research, expanded choreography, and multimedia performance installation. Meandering gradually through cumulative iterations, Mackedanz’s current research has been gravitating toward an exploration of the pasture as a landscape, touch as a reciprocal condition, and complexity as a context of embodiment. Mackedanz’s recent projects have explored haptic methods of experiencing the body, states of nervous system attunement, and more than human or decentralized sensing strategies to examine how negotiations of power, proximity, intimacy, and interrelation might structure, steer, constrain, or catalyze potentials in movement.

Photo credits: Courtesy of the Artist. Artist Portrait by Elaine Suzanne Miller Movement Image by Courtney Mackedanz

Jarius “ManOfGod” King

(he/him)

Jarius “ManOfGod” King is a performing artist and Black Arts instructor primarily based out of his hometown of Chicago, but also Hong Kong. He began dancing in 2000 via the art of Breaking shortly after undergoing surgery for scoliosis. Since then, he has become versed in multiple disciplines of movement under the Street Dance umbrella.

His career highlights include: 

– 60+ competitive accomplishments (Breaking, House, Hip-Hop, Open Styles)

– Judging committee member and co-author for HKDSF’s coaching curriculum

– Co-director of “Breakin’ The Law” festival (2003-2014)

– University of Wisconsin-Madison “Forward Under 40” Award

– 2023 Dark Matter Resident Artist at Elastic Arts

– Judging committee member and co-author of HKDSF’s coaching curriculum for Breaking in the Olympics

– Awarded Ragdale Residency 2024

Current Practice/Project: I am a performing artist and Black Arts educator whose artistry is defined by living life in 3D; as a dad, DJ, and dancer. Through my multifaceted project, For The Record, I embark on an exploration of Afro-Sino relations, identities, and the pervasive influence of global anti-Blackness. This project is an amalgamation of art, documentation, and my personal encounters as a Black man navigating global anti-Blackness. 

Photos: Courtesy of Artist, Headshot by ColectivoMultipolar. Movement image by Ki Chan Yui, A.K.A. “BigKi.”

Keyierra Collins

(she/her)

Keyierra Collins is an Afro-interdisciplinary dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist based in Chicago but recognized internationally. In 2020 she was awarded the 3Arts/ Walder Foundation Awardee grant. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2016 with a BA in Dance. She studied and apprenticed under the tutelage of educators and international performers, Onye Ozuzu (choreographer) & Dr. Raquel Monroe (writer). As a dance artist Collins has worked with artists like Chicago-based dancemaker and improvisationalist Aaliyah Christina as well as France-based Rwandan performance artist and vocalist Dorothee Munyaneza. She also has had the pleasure of working with many Chicago-based artists like Anna Martine Whitehead, Erin Kilmurray, and Jovan Landry, Sonita Surratt to name a few. Collins’ work lies at the intersection of exploring dance as healing and unpacking the collective and individual trauma experienced by people of the African Diaspora. Her process is kinesthetically driven and often inspired by conversations between peers and abstract reflections related to socio-political issues. Having toured and worked with artists in Haiti, Nigeria, and France, Collins is compelled to continue traveling to work with artists around the world and building spaces for her community. Alongside Brianna Alexis Heath, she co-founded Take Some Leave Some (TSLS): a multidisciplinary performance collective using sound, choreography, film, and installations to create experiences reflecting and celebrating Black women’s stories. TSLS creates experiences inside homes and neighborhood spaces on the Southside of Chicago to reference “home” as a kind of a communal safe space maintained by Black women’s resilient and unapologetic experiential knowledge.

Current Practice/Project: My dancemaking practice involves creating distinct worlds where dance and performance can thrive. Rooted in Afro-diasporic social and traditional dance practices, my movement is shaped by these cultural influences. Additionally, my experience and lineage as a Black woman deeply inform both my movement practice and the context of my work.

Photo credits: Courtesy of Artist. Images by Jovan Landry.

Meet the 2025 Lab Artists Program Finalists

Photo credit: Michelle Reid

Anniela Huidobro

Anniela Huidobro (she/her) is a Mexican dancer, choreographer and dance educator. Graduated from the Mazatlan Professional Dance School (EPDM), she has received the PECDA Morelos Grant three times (2015, 2018 and 2024), and the IBERESCENA Grant in 2021. With more than 10 years of professional dance experience, Anniela has performed at various festivals and projects across Latin America, including the Dança à Deriva Festival in Brazil, Teatro del Oráculo in Chile, Rambla Festival in Guatemala, Prisma Festival in Panama, Movimiento Continuo Festival and Detonos Festival in Colombia, as well as La Carpa Festival and Cuerpo al Descubierto Festival in Mexico. In the United States, she has performed her work at the Newport Dance Festival in Rhode Island (2023), the Delve Dance Showcase (2023), and in “Meditation On Being”, organized by the Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble (2024). This year she was invited to be a guest choreographer for the Boston Dance Theater company and to perform in the One Hour Project in Chicago.

Currently residing in Chicago, Anniela teaches dance classes and workshops at various schools and cultural centers throughout the area. She has also taught workshops to the University of Chicago dance community and serves as a teaching artist with Urban Gateways. Committed to strengthening her ties with the local arts community, Anniela collaborates with different artistssuch as Ayako Kato, Timothy Rey, Phillip Wood, Dani Oblitas, among others. 

Current Project/Practice: My work speaks to the affective relationships between human beings and with the earth through the exploration of different styles of dance and improvisation. I am a dance artist interested in creating environmental awareness, as well as reconnecting with our roots and ancestors.

Photo credit: Michelle Reid; Courtesy of Artist, with Isabelle Taylor.

Jamila Kekulah

Jamila Kekulah (they/them) is ever evolving in this space time continuum. As a movement creator and artist, Jamila creates performances rooted in spirt, exploring the inner landscapes of self, others and nature. They have been selected as the inaugural artist fellow at House Of The Lorde, a Co-MISSION artist in residence at Links Hall and a New Works artist with Synapse Arts. Jamila is also the creator of The Moving Soul, a holistic somatic movement practice that bridges the gap between soma, psyche and soul.

Current Project/Practice: I affirm the spiritual, make space for ritual and hold the practice of creating an impermanent sanctuary. My practice examines narratives, personal history, poetry, images and imagination.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Artist.

Jemal “Ptop “ Delacruz

Jemal “Ptop” Delacruz (he/him/big) is a Chicago Footwork artist from The Era Footwork Collective and also leader of Goon Squad Footwork battle clique and Founder of THE RING Footwork Battle League.

Current Project/Practice: Chicago Footworker and Mentor and Event Coordinator

Photo credit: Peter Serocki

Lucas Greeff

Lucas Greeff (ze/he/they) is a choreographer, circus artist, educator and dancer whose work focuses on expanding the scope of queer & neurodivergent performance, engaging inherent somatic energies, and challenging physical extremity through movement experiment. Luke’s past choreographic works include [Z]im, Missile Kid, Bo(ix)y(e) Division, Carnal Inferno, Spectrum, and Trapping Butterflies. Former dancer for St. Petersburg Ballet Company, Fletcher Dance Project, and Joel Hall Dancers; Luke’s ongoing artistic affiliations include Yes Ma’am Circus, Reminiscent Circus, Lucid Banter Project, Synapse Arts, Incite Dance Center, Aloft Circus Arts, Khecari, and Thwack Dance. Recipient of the 2023 Twisted Windows LGBTQIA+ Artist Award presented by the Chicago Circus & Performing Arts Festival, 2024 Resident Artist with the Ragdale Foundation, and 2024 Synapse Studio Series Artist; Luke has advocated for queer & neurodivergent experiences in the arts on various platforms, including APAP Arts.Work.Life., Medicus, and Queer DanceCon. Luke is the co-founder & director of Such Creatures, serves on the board for Yes Ma’am Circus as DEAI chair, and leads both ground & aerial movement practices tailored for queer and neurodivergent movers across Chicago. Visit @missile.kid and @such_creatures on Instagram to learn more.

Current Project/Practice: My movement practice is focused on unmasking Queer and neurodivergent narratives, taping into inherent energies, and exploring the extremity of movement through experiment & performance at the intersection of contemporary dance and circus mediums. My current project, “h_art[work]” is a collective musing on disenfranchised grief through the lens of experimental circus, contemporary dance, poetry & performance art in collaboration with Such Creatures artists Kait Dessoffy, Shoshana Levy, Raven See, Stacie Bogle, and Valeria Rosero.

Photo credit: William Frederking

Paula Sousa

Paula Sousa (she/her) is a Brazilian dance artist based in Chicago, working as a choreographer, performer, and video maker. She holds a Major in Dance degree from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD) in Austria and a technical degree from the Bolshoi School in Brazil. Paula has collaborated extensively with artists across Europe, South America, and the USA. Formerly an artist with Balé do Teatro Guaíra (2017-2022), Projeto Mov_oLA|Alex Soares (2013-2017), Plataforma Shop Sui|Fernando Martins (2017), and Arsenalle della Danza|La Biennale di Venezia (2012), Paula has been a member of Hedwig Dances since January 2023, where she has collaborated with Natasha Adorlee, Mike Tyus, Jenna Pollack, Rigo Saura, Noelle Keyser, Anna Sapozhnikov, and Jan Bartoszek. She is also the assistant Rehearsal Director for Hedwig Dances. In Chicago, Paula has also collaborated with Jessi Stegall for the performance “Figments (A)” at the Arrive Festival 2023, with Chih-Jou Cheng for the project “Arriving at Dawn”, and with Jenna Pollack for the Chicago Cultural Center Residency 2024. As a choreographer, Paula has created pieces for both stage and video, including videoclips and independent works. Her latest creations are “Under My Thumbs” – Hedwig Dances which premiered in April 2024, “Nós” – Dance in the Parks 2024 and “ANA”- Ruth Page Ballet Training Company, October 2024. Additionally, she holds a degree in Public Policy and Administration and works in cultural production.

Current Project/Practice: My work is rooted in contemporary and improvisational techniques. My fascination lies in the intricacies of movement and its ability to connect individuals across various layers of experience. Both as a performer and a choreographer, I am drawn to collaborations that value individual artistic voices within the collective. I am constantly in pursuit of poetic beauty that transcends individual choices, resonates with the collective experience, and explores contemporary themes relevant to society and specific groups of people.

Photo credit: William Frederking

Silvita Diaz Brown

Silvita Diaz Brown (she/her) is a Mexican/American choreographer, dancer, yogi, teacher and artistic director of Sildance/AcroDanza. Based in Chicago since 2008, she holds a BFA in Dance from Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico and an MFA in Theatre/Movement from York University, Canada. For the last 17 years her interdisciplinary work has been presented at venues and festivals in Cuba, Spain, India, Mexico, Canada, and within the USA. Working with collaborators, she blends elements of contemporary dance, ballet, yoga, acroyoga, circus and physical theater with sound, text, costumes and video to excavate, embrace and reconcile her heritage, history and cultures. Currents of mysticism and magic realism run through all of her work to expose and alchemize conflicting truths.

Current Project/Practice: Ellas Y Yo Mexicanas is inspired by uncompromising painter Frida Kahlo and feminist writer/phylosofer Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz, two historic Mexican women who broke away from colonialist and marianismo expectations and power dynamics. In this work, they will joined by a contemporary Mexican/American woman, “Silvita.” Conceived as a triptych dance piece, Ellas Y Yo depicts Mexican women artists driven to create while working within, against, and through the restrictive pressures and expectations of women in the 17th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Through intertwined solos, duets, trios, quartets and quintets of Juanas, Fridas and Silvitas; the work seeks a link that connects them all.

Photo credit: William Frederking

The post Something to Celebrate: Announcing the 2025 Lab Artists and Program Finalists appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

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

The post Announcing the 2024 Lab Artists! appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

High Resolution images are available here by Janice Cho and here by Andrew Weeks.

Videos of the 2023 DanceChance events are available here.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum Now Offers a Low-Barrier Funding Opportunity for Local Dancemakers with an Investment of Over $80,000 in the Local Dance Ecology

After a successful six-month pilot in 2023 at venues across the city, Chicago Dancemakers Forum announces that the DanceChance program will continue in 2024 thanks to the support of a Chicago Arts Recovery Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events. Starting in January 2024, there will be six DanceChance events at six different accessible spaces throughout Chicago. In addition to video documentation and dialogue, 18 local artists will each receive $4,500 and 6 weeks to create up to 10 min of dance works-in-progress to share in a low-tech, informal setting.

This new funding opportunity and community gathering program comes at a crucial time in Chicago’s dance and performance ecosystem. The program offers lower-barrier access to creation resources, opportunities to perform with promotional visibility, and connection and dialogue with dance artists working in various genres. These priorities were named by dance community members in Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s general survey conducted in the spring of 2023 where respondents indicated the top five resource needs were: 

Money to support dance projects (75%), 

Money to support living expenses (71%), 

Opportunities to perform (57%), 

Visibility, Promotion, Recognition (51%), 

and Community Networking (45%). 

“We are thrilled to infuse Chicago’s dance ecosystem with this additional funding program while also encouraging investigation and dialogue about the creative process within our broad dance community. Dance artists need to be able to pay themselves and their collaborators for the work that they create and, frankly, the funding opportunities currently available for dance production in Chicago are nowhere near enough. This program is an exciting step in the right direction. And in keeping with our mission, DanceChance is not about a finished product, rather it’s about the experimentation and exploration of dancemaking, a process that needs and deserves support,” shares Joanna Furnans, Executive Director of Chicago Dancemakers Forum.  

Inspired by the concept of an open-mic night, each DanceChance event features three dancemakers chosen by chance, each of whom has up to a 10-minute time slot to share their work-in-progress (can be choreographed, improvised, or communal in nature) in a low-tech, informal setting. Attendees of the pilot program describe DanceChance as “Safe & Fun,” “Strong Artistic Explorations,” and “A Loving and Open Community.”

Every event includes a moderated conversation hosted by local dance scholars, practitioners, and leaders in the community with the participating dancemakers to discuss their work and process. At the end of each DanceChance, the next trio of participants is chosen by random draw from names submitted by dancemakers in attendance who choose to put their name in the hat.

In 2024, the DanceChance funds to artists will be distributed in two payments:
1. $3,500 to the lead artist for their work and Fair Pay of any dancers and collaborators, plus associated costs such as rehearsal space, childcare, ASL interpretation, taxes, etc.
2. $1,000 to the lead artist as seed money for the future of the work following the DanceChance sharing

A total of 18 local artists will receive this opportunity through random draw during the 2024 series. Dancemakers may be selected for DanceChance only once per calendar year.

This bi-monthly opportunity is open to all dancemakers who are…
– Living in the Chicagoland region
– Age 18 – 80+
– Committed to Fair Pay practices
– In attendance at the preceding DanceChance (Except for January 29, 2024 at the Chicago Cultural Center, which has a virtual hat)

To put their name in the virtual hat for the January 2024 DanceChance, local dancemakers should use this online form.

bit.ly/jan2024dancechance

The full list of 2024 DanceChance events and locations will be announced soon.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum credits and thanks DanceWorks Chicago for the design and description of this program, as well as Ruth Page Center for the Arts and Lou Conte Dance Studio who served as in-kind venue partners throughout the years. In 2023, Chicago Dancemakers Forum was selected by DanceWorks Chicago to carry on the 15-year legacy of DanceChance. Chicago Dancemakers Forum took the program model to a different venue partner for each event in 2023, including Red Clay Dance Company, the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Harold Washington Cultural Center / M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and bim bom studios.

DanceChance 2024 is supported, in whole, by federal assistance listing number, 21.027 awarded to Chicago Dancemakers Forum by the US Treasury through the American Rescue Plan Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds in the amount of $124,000, representing 100% of total project funding for DanceChance 2024. Another $76,000 was granted in support of other programs and organizational expenses.

For more information, please contact Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director at shawn@chicagodancemakers.org.

Photo credit: June 2023 DanceChance participants (image featuring Brittany Bradley, Benji Hart, Dion “iCrisis” Randle, Karina J. Rivera, and Warren Daniels) at the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities – Central West Center, Photo by Janice Cho 

The post Chicago Dancemakers Forum Announces a New Funding Program for Local Dancemakers in 2024 appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

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

The post Announcing the Finalists of the 2024 Lab Artists Program appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

2023 Production Residencies:

• Maggie Bridger at Links Hall 
• SJ Swilley at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago 

Maggie will begin work to develop a live version of her dance film, Radiate. Working with fellow disabled artists and Links Hall, she will continue to explore how a broad and flexible approach to access might transform the embodied experience of making, performing, and witnessing dance. Maggie shares that, “a really powerful thing about the disability community is that we don’t leave anybody behind; as disability justice activist Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, we move at the pace of our slowest member.” For this project in development, Maggie is thinking about how the ability to “attend to other people’s paces is really powerful.” Maggie is also questioning the role of pain in dance and dancemaking. “Instead of just accepting that it [pain] is a normal thing about dance… What does it mean to make pain a collaborator in the process? What does it mean to really attend to pain?” 

SJ shared Thomas F. DeFrantz’s quote “we create the spaces we want to inhabit” when referring to their transition to the Chicago area. SJ’s project is about playing with interdisciplinary entry points. During the residency, SJ will continue to explore the active modalities that are affiliated with being in a creative process. SJ is bridging together several elements of their performance in the sharing of how their art intersects with their mental health. For SJ, “the immediacy of performance does not allow me to anchor down in the past or project into the future. It is about staying present in the now.”

As an important element of the residency program, embedded writers deepen the artistic process, build connectivity and understanding, and increase awareness of dancemaking by engaging multiple perspectives. Chicago Dancemakers Forum partners with Performance Response Journal (PRJ) to provide embedded writers for each residency. 

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Maggie Bridger 

Maggie Bridger, MS (she/her/hers) is a sick and disabled dance artist, scholar, and access worker interested in reimagining pain through the dancemaking process. She is a 2022 City of Chicago Individual Artist Program grantee and a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Maggie is a co-founder of the Inclusive Dance Workshop Series, a community-run series of dance workshops designed for all bodies, minds, and experience levels. Maggie was part of the inaugural cohort of the Dancing Disability Lab at UCLA and was a Synapse Arts 2021 New Works Artist, through which she developed and premiered her dance film, Radiate. In 2022, she and her collaborator, Sydney Erlikh, served as co-artistic directors for Unfolding Disability Futures, a multi-organization, site-specific performance and installation organized by local disabled artists and held at The Plant, a former meatpacking facility in the Back of the Yards/New City Neighborhood. She is currently a Fellow Artist in Residence with High Concept Labs, where she recently premiered a new original work, Scale, as well as launching LabE, a program designed to connect, platform, and support Chicago’s disability dance community. Maggie serves on See Chicago Dance’s Dance Amplification Committee and the organizing committee for the Chicago Dance Studies Working Group. She is an administrative fellow with the Dance Studies Association. Her writing has been published in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.

SJ Swilley

Originally from Charlotte, NC, SJ Swilley (they|them|theirs) is a Black queer movement artist and educator. Centering their own notions of liberation, empowerment and mental health, they are a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Johnson C. Smith University where they received a BA in Dance and a BA in Communication Arts. Swilley holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University where they initially began adjunct teaching. Swilley is an alum of the American Dance Festival where they served as assistant rehearsal director to Michelle Gibson. Additionally, they are an alum of the Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute. Swilley has been honored to work and study under impeccable artists including Candace Jennings, PJ Pennewell, Shani Collins, and LaTanya Johnson. They have performed with Lela Aisha Jones|FlyGround, Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works, and Kariamu and Company. They have presented work at the Cherry Street Pier Show, The American College Dance Association, Loose Leaves Showcase, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) Prior to joining the touring company of Red Clay Dance, Swilley has served as faculty at Columbia College Chicago, Denison University, Temple University and Barber-Scotia College. Swilley is a 2020-2021 performance fellow with Queer Art, a 2020-2021 recipient of the Rose Vernick Artistic Transformation Award, and a 2023 City of Chicago (DCASE) Grant Awardee. Swilley is excited to begin their residency in Chicago with Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum

Chicago Dancemakers Forum catalyzes the growth and artistic fulfillment of Chicago’s dancemakers by providing time and resources for in-depth exploration and creation. It builds broad support for the field of dance in Chicago by facilitating robust interaction among dancemakers and with the public.

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

Home to the academic Dance Department and the Dance Presenting Series, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago values embodied human expression and nurtures an expansive understanding of dance from the established to the experimental.

Links Hall

Links Hall encourages artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development and presentation of new work in the performing arts.

Performance Response Journal

The performance response journal is a community and a platform.; We are performing artists, writers, cultural producers, and witnesses.; We are a community of instigators and responders: across genres, across town, across policies and priorities.; We are, and are allied with, folx who identify as antiracist, intersectional feminists, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled.; We are typically underserved and under-acknowledged.; We value each other’s perspectives. We value the creative ways our perspectives are communicated.;We are an archive of scenes. We are interviews and points of view.; We are a collection of responses to dance and performance in Chicago.

# # #

The post Announcing the 2023 Production Residencies! appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum is excited to have been selected by DanceWorks Chicago to carry on the 15-year legacy of DanceChance.

DanceChance is a monthly, one-hour event designed to offer opportunities for local dancemakers to share their work in a low-stakes environment and to engage in dialogue about the creative process with peers and dance enthusiasts.

“In March 2008, DanceWorks Chicago (DWC) launched DanceChance to encourage creativity and an embrace of adventure on the part of artists and audiences as well as to bring communities together to learn more about each other. After 15 years of ‘chance, DWC is honored and excited to support Chicago Dancemakers Forum as it offers a new home to DanceChance, supporting our organizations’ shared values around innovation and interaction.” Julie Nakagawa, Co-founder and Artistic Director, DanceWorks Chicago

Chicago Dancemakers Forum credits and thanks DanceWorks Chicago for the design and description of this program, as well as Ruth Page Center for the Arts and Lou Conte Dance Studio who served as in-kind venue partners throughout the years.

What Happens At DanceChance?
Inspired by the concept of open-mic night, DanceChance is held once a month and features 3 dancemakers chosen by chance, each of whom has up to a 10-minute time slot to share their work (can be choreographed, improvised, or communal in nature). To round out the hour, the last segment is a moderated conversation with the participating dancemakers to discuss their work/process.

How Are Dancemakers Selected?

At the end of each DanceChance, the next trio of participants is chosen by random draw from names submitted by dancemakers in attendance who choose to put their names in the hat (yes, a literal hat).

To be eligible, artists must be age 18-80+, local, and present at the previous DanceChance event. For example, to have an opportunity to participate in the July DanceChance, dancemakers would need to be in attendance at the June DanceChance.

The first DanceChance of the series (May 22 at Red Clay Dance Company) has a virtual hat, open until April 16.

What is the 2023 DanceChance Schedule?

2023 SERIES: MONDAYS 6:30-7:30PM
May 22 at Red Clay Dance Company (808 E 63rd St)
Jun 26 at Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities Central West Center (2102 W Ogden Ave)
Jul 24 at Ruth Page Center (1016 N Dearborn St)
Aug 21 at Harold Washington Cultural Center / The M.A.D.D. House (4701 S Martin Luther King Dr)
Sep 25 at MCA (220 E Chicago Ave)
Oct 23 at Bim Bom Studio (5226 W Belmont Ave)

More Information

The post Announcing DanceChance 2023! appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

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.”

–

Adia Sykes

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

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

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

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.

The post Inspiring Growth and Change for Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Board of Directors appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 3, 2022, 8:00AM

MEDIA CONTACT: Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director

High Resolution images are available here.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum announces the 2023 Lab Artists:

Benji Hart

Enneréssa LaNette

Zachary Nicol

Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye

These Chicago-based dancemakers will each receive a grant of $25,000 along with a year of tailored support during an extended period of creative research, development, and potential presentation of new dance work. During the Lab Year (January to December 2023), the grant can be spent fully at the discretion of each artist, with funds covering rent or other living expenses, mentorship, research, collaborator fees, and other expenses that support the artist while continuing their creative practice or making dance work. For the 2023 Lab Artists Program, the grant amount has been increased over previous years to make additional support services like healthcare, childcare, and other wellness needs more accessible for artists throughout their Lab Year.

The Lab Artists Program is tailored to each participant and aims to foster growth and artistic fulfillment while also building relationships among dancemakers, presenters, audiences, and supporters. Past Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artists work in a variety of dance forms and collectively, they represent the distinct character and power of dance made in Chicago. Many of these artists have built national audiences and international recognition since receiving support from the Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

This year, 10 Finalists were selected for the distinctness of their artistic vision, their body of work, and the timing of the program in their artistic trajectory. Supporting this year’s selection process by serving as review panelists were Victor Alexander (2012 Lab Artist), Jenn Freeman/Po’Chop (2018 Lab Artist), Kayla Hamilton, and Valerie Oliveiro. This 20th anniversary 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 or Non-Binary, Parent or Caregiver, and/or Disabled Artists, or those with a creative practice that directly benefits these communities. 80% of the open call applicants and 100% of the finalists self-identified with one or more of the prioritization categories.

Last week, the four 2023 Lab Artists were selected by random draw from the group of 10 finalists. Serving as accountability observers for the random draw were La Mar Brown, Bob Faust, Joanna Furnans, Rika Lin, Marcela Torres, Kim D. Ricardo, and Kinnari Vora. Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director, shares, “Similarly to our peer organizations who also offer artistic development programs with granting elements, we are constantly evaluating and editing our work towards greater equity. Once a group of finalists are selected through a competitive process, randomization helps reduce the impact of curatorial gatekeeping that can happen with short lists. Over recent years, we have been talking internally about random selection, lightening the application form(s), and identifying prioritization. It made sense to pilot this revised process for the 20^th anniversary of the program. We plan to evaluate these changes before committing to a similar selection process for the 2024 Lab Artists.”

Chicago Dancemakers Forum catalyzes the growth and artistic fulfillment of Chicago’s dancemakers by providing time and resources for in-depth exploration and creation in choreographed, improvised, and communal forms. Since its inception in 2003, Chicago Dancemakers Forum has granted over $1.25 million to local artists and is the most significant, sustained source of support for individual dancemakers working in Chicago that has an open call process.

The 2023 Lab Artists will be celebrated during the closing party of the Elevate Chicago Dance festival on Sunday, October 16, 2022 at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago. Tickets for the event are $15 including reception with open bar.

For more information, please contact Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director at shawn@chicagodancemakers.org.

* * * * *

Benji Hart

They/Them 

Photo credit: Kaleb Autman

Benji Hart is a Chicago-based author, artist, and educator whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation, and prison abolition. Their words have appeared in numerous anthologies, and been published at Time, Teen Vogue, The Advocate, and elsewhere. They have led popular education and arts-based workshops for organizations internationally, including the American Repertory Theater, Young Chicago Authors, and Project NIA. They have read at the Poetry Foundation, Women & Children First, the Guild Literary Complex, and their performances have been featured at La Goyco, Santurce; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Den Frie, Copenhagen. They have held fellowships with Yaddo, Trillium Arts, MacDowell, and are a 2023 Lab Artist with Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

In conjunction with their ongoing performance project, “World After This One,” Benji will spend the year engaged in movement research, building with mentor artists specifically in the areas of bomba, vogue, and praise dance, working towards a culminating performance in Chicago with workshops and programming in concert with the showing.

Call to Action: Donate to Chicago Torture Justice Center, which provides support for survivors of police violence.

Enneréssa LaNette

She/Her 

Photo credit: Kees

Enneréssa is a multi-hyphenated artist and CEO/Founder of Praize Productions, Inc. As an accomplished writer and choreographer, she has produced eight award-winning, theatrical productions and most recently directed her first motion picture. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education from Indiana University. She is a community activist whose work is committed to amplifying the voices of the Black community. Enneréssa received a CMS Merit Award, an America’s Big Sisters Award, and was named to the Young Women’s Professional League’s “40 Under 40” for her work in the arts. Enneréssa was chosen by Ingenuity to sit on its Public Affairs Collective Impact Panel to improve arts education for Chicago’s youth. In 2021, she was selected to co-chair the Economic Development Pillar for the citywide initiative, WeWill Chicago.

For her Lab year project, Enneréssa plans to create a dance work that tells a story of Blackness and womanhood and the ability to navigate and thrive in a society that does not protect those two things and wishes to dilute its “potency” and necessity. She will develop a book of poetry by gathering her writings and discovering how to convey written narrative through movement in a way that reaches the audiences’ multiple senses. The movement will convey a coming of age for Black women with “difficult” names. The movement will be set to jazz, Gospel, blues, and house music; fundamental genres that are both rooted in Black and Chicago culture.

Zachary Nicol

Any pronouns

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Artist

Zachary Nicol is an artist living and working in Chicago. Their interdisciplinary work uses research in dance, movement, site, and image to unfold problems of the performing body. Their work has been shown at Links Hall, Co-Prosperity, Trap Door Theatre, Lumpen Radio, Filmfront, OuterSpace, Compound Yellow (Chicago), National Museum of Romanian Literature (Bucharest), and S1 Gallery (Portland), has been supported by Chicago Dancemakers Forum and Chicago Artists Coalition, and through residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Annas Projects, ACRE, and Links Hall. Nicol works as a collaborative and performing artist and has contributed to recent projects by Anna Martine Whitehead, Joe Namy, Aram Atamian, Dulcinee DeGuere, and Mlondi Zondi. 

Zachary will spend the Lab Year developing a performance work that uses the myth of Narcissus to explore the concept of self: the primacy, problem, and myth of “self” in solo performance, ego and the psyche’s fixation on narrative, the presence and absence of a “black interior,” and the mutability and multiplicity of identity that the frame of performance can offer. The project builds on the artist’s questions of whether representations and images offer a potential other than capture for the performing body, and considers how the frame can be a site of mutability and transformation in our actions to transgress it, divert it, and exceed it. 

Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye

He/Him 

Photo credit: Ron Turney

Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye is a grass dancer, drummer, singer, educator and clothing designer from Chicago (Zhigaagoong) . He continues long lineages of dancers within the Cheyenne and Ojibwe communities. Since childhood, he has danced at cultural events, pow-wows and wacipis (Lakota word for dance and music celebration, literally “they all dance”). He plays the traditional drum (Northern Woodland style drumming and Lakota Sioux Drumming) and sings Lakota Sioux songs. A multimedia creator, he designs, sews and beads in the tradition of grass dancers, honoring the origins of his dance while exploring creative possibilities for its future. In 2020, Winfield danced at an event featuring leading Chicago hip hop artists, forging bonds across local Black and Indigenous communities. In 2021, Winfield began a collaboration with Chicago Footwork dancer Jemal de la Cruz (P-Top) and filmmaker Wills Glasspiegel for a permanent installation film at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport that unites grass dance and Chicago Footwork.

With support of the Lab Artists Program and a period of research, Winfield plans to develop and perform in a new pow-wow in Chicago in 2023 that includes a focus on the living history of the ground and city at our feet. He would like to include various elements of Chicago’s history and culture in the pow-wow, and to host the event in an industrial locale that is not traditionally associated with pow-wows. 

The post Announcing the 2023 Lab Artists! appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 20, 2022, 8:00AM

MEDIA CONTACT: Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director

Help us congratulate the following ten Chicago-based dancemakers who have been selected as finalists for the Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2023 Lab Artists Program.

Jalen Barnes aka DJ Jalen
Silvita Diaz Brown
Aaliyah Christina
Enneréssa Davis
Benji Hart
Shalaka Kulkarni
Helen Lee
Zachary Nicol
Rigo Saura
Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye

The Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artists Program is the most substantial source of support for individual dancemakers working in Chicago with an open call process. Later this month, four of the ten finalists will be selected through random draw to become the 2023 Lab Artists, each receiving a grant of $25K along with a year of tailored support to aid in their research, development, and potential presentation of dance work. 

This 20th anniversary 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/Non-Binary, Parent/Caregiver, and/or Disabled Artists, or those with a creative practice that directly benefits these communities. 80% of the open call applicants and 100% of the finalists self-identified with one or more of the prioritization categories.

There were 66 applicants to the 2023 Lab Artists Program. Selection Panelists included Victor Alexander (2012 Lab Artist), Jenn Freeman/Po’Chop (2018 Lab Artist), Kayla Hamilton, and Valerie Oliveiro.

The Celebration of the 2023 Lab Artists will take place during the closing party of the Elevate Chicago Dance 2022 festival on Sunday, October 16, 6pm at 21c Museum Hotel. 

Photo: Rahila Coats, Jenn Freeman, Zachary Nicol, and Anna Martine Whitehead – FORCE! Forceanopera at Pivot Arts Festival 2022, Edge Theater. Photo by William Frederking.

ID: Four Black femmes in denim and t-shirts roll over and across one another, their arms, legs, and puffs going in many directions. One person is lying atop a railing. Another person is blurred looking in from the foreground.

Meet the Finalists

Jalen Barnes aka DJ Jalen

Hailing from the South Side of Chicago, 3x King of Chicago Champ, Jalen Barnes Sr. has been dancing since the age of two, a proud family tradition he carries with him. To Jalen, footwork is a universal dance style like no other. Introduced by his older brother, he broke into the dance community during his middle school years. From there, Jalen formed a footwork group with his friends known as TakeOva Gang aka TOG. From dancing in his basement to hosting community events, Jalen has turned Chicago’s native dance into an evolving career. Due to his contributions to the craft, he has worked with the likes of Kumba Lynx, Red Bull, Boiler Room, Soundcloud, Curious City and more. With his talent, skills, and leadership, Jalen is ready to take his game even further. Today Chicago, tomorrow the world.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist

Silvita Diaz Brown

Silvita Diaz Brown is a Mexican/American choreographer whose work interlaces dance with acroyoga, sound, video, and spoken word in both English and Spanish. As director of Sildance/AcroDanza, her performance pieces investigate the self: its desires, fears and realizations and how they intersect with societal norms and expectations. Diaz Brown holds a BFA in Dance from Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Mexico and an MFA in Theatre/Movement from York University, Canada. In Chicago her work has been presented by several organizations across the city including The National Museum of Mexican Art and Malcolm X College. In 2019 she was awarded an Individual Artists Grant from the City of Chicago and a Links Hall CO-MISSION Fellowship. Her work toured to Mexico in 2020 and was part of  American Dance Abroad’s Pitchbook. Silvita was honored to be nominated for the 3Arts Award in Dance twice, and in 2021 she was awarded a Digital Dance Grant from Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

Photo by Brian Brown

Aaliyah Christina

Born in Ruston, Louisiana and raised across Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas, Aaliyah Christina creates and supports performance work as an administrator, curator, movement artist, and writer. She improvises dances and writes poetic-prose about relationship/power dynamics, mental health, and Blackness as a resident on the South side of Chicago. In 2021, Aaliyah received the 3Arts Make-A-Wave grant. Since 2015, she has collaborated with Chicago artists like Keyierra Collins, Ysayë Alma, Darling Shear, Wisdom Baty, Ayako Kato, and Dorian Sylvain to name a few. She volunteers for community orgs and campaigns including Assata’s Daughters and Defund CPD to move towards Black liberation.

Photo by Chris Martin

Enneréssa Davis

Enneréssa is a multi-hyphenated artist and CEO/Founder of Praize Productions, Inc. As an accomplished writer and choreographer, she has produced eight award-winning, theatrical productions and most recently directed her first motion picture. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education from Indiana University. She is a community activist whose work is committed to amplifying the voices of the Black community. Enneréssa received a CMS Merit Award, an America’s Big Sisters Award, and was named to the Young Women’s Professional League’s “40 Under 40” for her work in the arts. Enneréssa was chosen by Ingenuity to sit on its Public Affairs Collective Impact Panel to improve arts education for Chicago’s youth. In 2021, she was selected to co-chair the Economic Development Pillar for the citywide initiative, WeWill Chicago.

Photo by Kees

Benji Hart

Benji Hart is a Chicago-based author, educator, and artist whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation, and prison abolition. Their words have appeared in numerous anthologies, and been published at Time, Teen Vogue, The Advocate, and elsewhere. They have led workshops for organizations and at academic institutions internationally, and read at the Guild Literary Complex, Women & Children First, and the Hairpin Arts Center. Their performances have been featured at La Goyco, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2022); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA (2021); and Den Frie, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021).

Photo by Kaleb Autman

Shalaka Kulkarni

Shalaka Kulkarni is a native of India, and founder of the collective SurTaal (“inactive now”), her work revolves around questioning societal norms, empowering marginal voices and erased narratives, both in Western and Indian cultures empowering Female identity. She is trained in Bharatnatyam (originating from Southern India) and Kathak (originating from Northern India). As her family immigrated to the US, she began exploring intersections of Indian Classical dance forms with other movement influences, text & technology. She has performed in India, US & Europe. Most recently, she completed a SloMoCo (Movement and Computing) 2021 Residencies and was a guest choreographer for MOMENTA Dance Company. She is a current artist-in-residence with Mandala Arts with support from Illinois Arts Council, High Concept Labs in partnership with Monira Foundation, and See Chicago Dance’s Dance for Camera program. 

Photo: Courtesy of Artist

Helen Lee

Helen Lee (she/they) was born and raised in Chicago to immigrant parents from South Korea. She received her MFA in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BA in Dance from University of Hawaii at Manoa. She was a HATCH Artist Resident with Chicago Artists Coalition, Links Hall Co-MISSION Artist and named 2022 Newcity Breakout Artist. Helen’s work is rooted in honoring and celebrating life, death, identity and ancestral lineage. They create works that examine trauma, racism, grief, shame and healing. Their hope is to amplify the voices of Korean womxn, making their narratives more visible and building solidarity amongst the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist

Zachary Nicol

Zachary Nicol is an artist living and working in Chicago. Their interdisciplinary work uses research in dance, movement, site, and image to unfold problems of the performing body. Their work has been shown at Links Hall, Co-Prosperity, Trap Door Theatre, Lumpen Radio, Filmfront, OuterSpace, Compound Yellow (Chicago), National Museum of Romanian Literature (Bucharest), and S1 Gallery (Portland), has been supported by Chicago Dancemakers Forum and Chicago Artists Coalition, and through residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Annas Projects, ACRE, and Links Hall. Nicol works as a collaborative and performing artist and has contributed to to recent projects by Anna Martine Whitehead, Joe Namy, Aram Atamian, Dulcinee DeGuere, and Mlondi Zondi.

Photo: Courtesy of Artist

Rigo Saura

Graduated from the National School of Modern and Contemporary Dance in Havana, Cuba. Former soloist dancer of Danza Contemporánea of Cuba and soloist dancer of the classic cast in the National Ballet of Ecuador. Resident Choreographer in Ecuador’s Urban Ballet and Composition Master in the Metropolitan School of Art. 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, Chicago DanceWorks , Thodos Dances, Visceral Dance Chicago, Reva and David Logan Center of the Art, The Latin School Dance Program, Common Dance Conservatory, Chicago DanceCrash and Ruth Page Civic Ballet. Currently, he is a dancer, teacher, and resident choreographer at Hedwig Dances, and also, a recent winner of L.A. Contemporary Choreography Lab, Chicago DanceMakers Forum Production Residency, and guest choreographer at Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, Dance in the Parks, and Links Hall Co-Mission Artists.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist

Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye

Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye is a grass dancer, drummer, singer, educator and clothing designer from Chicago (Zhigaagoong) . He continues long lineages of dancers within the Cheyenne and Ojibwe communities. Since childhood, he has danced at cultural events, pow-wows and wacipis (Lakota word for dance and music celebration, literally “they all dance”). He plays the traditional drum (Northern Woodland style drumming and Lakota Sioux Drumming) and sings Lakota Sioux songs. A multimedia creator, he designs, sews and beads in the tradition of grass dancers, honoring the origins of his dance while exploring creative possibilities for its future. In 2020, Winfield danced at an event featuring leading Chicago hip hop artists, forging bonds across local Black and Indigenous communities. In 2021, Winfield began a collaboration with Chicago Footwork dancer Jemal de la Cruz (P-Top) and filmmaker Wills Glasspiegel for a permanent installation film at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport that unites grass dance and Chicago Footwork. 

Photo by Ron Turney

The post Finalists Announced for the 2023 Lab Artists Program appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 18, 2022

CHICAGO, IL 8/18/2022 – Chicago Dancemakers Forum partners with M.A.D.D. Rhythms, [Un]common Grounds, and We Are Collective for a day of improvisational dance practices in Tap, Contemporary dance, and Freestyle/Hip Hop. The Improvisers’ Dance Jam will take place outdoors at Big Marsh Park on the city’s southeast side on Saturday, September 24, 2022, 1:00-4:00pm as part of their 5th Annual Celebration of Birds, Bikes, and Beats! Free and open for the public to participate.

Bril Barrett (he/him) of M.A.D.D. Rhythms explains the importance of improvisational gatherings to their company and their work, “TAP JAMS are our way of paying homage to the ‘Hoofers’ of old and the traditions they set. Tapdancers form a cypher/circle and take turns ‘shedding’ to the music and/or the beat established by the other tapdancers. This is how tapdance was created! The ‘Hoofers’ or original tapdancers would dance all day and all nights in the streets of Harlem. From Master Juba to Chuck Green, Hoofers would create, practice, and perfect this artform….outside! Many dance schools didn’t allow African Americans, so the streets became our studios and the dance became our resistance and perseverance. TAP JAMS make us better. TAP JAMS give us new ideas. TAP JAMS help us communicate. TAP JAMS allow us to express ourselves. Improvisation is the key to everything.” 

Reign Drop Winker (they/them), Co-Founder of We Are Collective shares, “We Are Collective is so excited to be a part of this electrifying line-up of dance improvisers. Movers of all ages and experiences, join us for an ever flowing current of movement meditation. Our goal in this hour and always, the collective goal is to find steadfast freedom of expression in The River and with The Stone. Intrigued? Come explore! We will also be supported by the Somi-1 sound system, which composes music LIVE as movement occurs on bodies. We are so excited and grateful to make dance and music at Big Marsh, one of Chicago’s invigorating parks and community centers.“

[Un]Common Grounds will be sharing their practice which Kierah King (she/they) details as “a mixture of introductions, uncommon questions/conversation specific to Big Marsh and the event, a group and influence warm-up, and then a freestyle/improvisation section with prompts or guidelines to help folks feel comfortable with movement or one another.”

Big Marsh is a 297-acre natural area and bike park on Chicago’s Southeast Side operated by the Chicago Park District. Once seen as a forgotten post-industrial brownfield, the site was acquired and reimagined by the Park District in 2011 and opened to the public in 2016. Roughly 45 acres are developed for eco-recreation opportunities including bike trails, an asphalt pump track, and BMX jump lines. Other acreage is reserved for more passive recreation such as birding, nature observation and picnicking. All acreage is being restored to further enhance the native habitat of the park property including sensitivity to flora, fauna, and the extensive wetlands. Through much planning, investment, and local stakeholder input, Big Marsh is now a safe, open, and inviting park space for Chicago and the neighboring communities. Big Marsh Park also features the Ford Calumet Environmental Center (FCEC).

The Improvisers’ Dance Jam is presented as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series, supported by the Mayor’s Office and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Celebrating 10 years, the 2022 Night Out in the Parks program presents cultural events year-round in neighborhood parks throughout the city. The Chicago Park District in partnership with over 100 local artists and organizations, present engaging events and performances that enhance quality of life across Chicago and amplify the artistic and cultural vibrancy in every neighborhood. Through multiple disciplines, which include theater, music, movies, dance, site-specific work, nature programs, and community festivals, the series aims to support Chicago-based artists, facilitate community-based partnerships and programs, cultivate civic engagement, and ensure equity in access to the arts for all Chicagoans.

EVENT DETAILS:

Improvisers’ Dance Jam

Saturday, September 24, 2022, 1:00-4:00pm CT

Big Marsh Park, 11559 S Stony Island, Chicago 60633

Big Marsh is in Chicago, at 11559 S Stony Island, just off the eastern banks of Lake Calumet. The park is accessible from 103rd Street and Doty Road or 122nd Street and Torrence Ave. It is a natural environment with limited accessibility; paved trails and onsite environmental center with bathrooms are wheelchair accessible. Free and abundant parking lot.

URL: https://chicagodancemakers.org/show-item/dance-jam/

Free and open for the public to participate.

EVENT SCHEDULE:

1:00 We Are Collective (Contemporary, Open)

2:00 [UN]Common Grounds (Freestyle, Hip Hop)

3:00 M.A.D.D. Rhythms (Tap Jam)

Save-the-Date for Elevate Chicago Dance 2022! October 13-16 at multiple venues across Chicago, including Big Marsh Park. More information at ChicagoDancemakers.org.

For more information on these events please contact Shawn Lent, Programs and Communications Director at shawn@chicagodancemakers.org. 

*****

Chicago Dancemakers Forum

Chicago Dancemakers Forum catalyzes the growth and artistic fulfillment of Chicago’s dancemakers by providing time and resources for in-depth exploration and creation. It builds broad support for the field of dance in Chicago by facilitating robust interaction among dancemakers and with the public. chicagodancemakers.org  

M.A.D.D. Rhythms

M.A.D.D. Rhythms (Making a Difference Dancing Rhythms) is a phenomenal TAP dance collective whose “SOLE” purpose is to spread the Love and Joy of TAP worldwide. What started as Bril Barrett & Martin Dumas III’s formula for giving back, is now a full-fledged performing arts company, quickly gaining a reputation for representing the true essence of tap: RHYTHM! The company is composed of young, versatile tap dancers from all over Chicago. Their ages range from 15 to 44, and their backgrounds are equally diverse.  The one thing they all have in common is a love for “the dance”. M.A.D.D. Rhythms is the only organization in Chicago keeping this time-honored Tap Jam tradition alive. They have been producing tap jams for almost 20 years and they don’t plan on stopping. Dr. Buster Brown had Swing 46, Dr. Jimmy Slyde had La Cave and Dave Mann had Showman’s; they jam to honor those tapdancers, those tap jams and the spirit of unity and community. https://maddrhythms.com/ 

[Un]Common Grounds

Creative, Accessible & Communal space for artistic forms to intersect and find new practices on [UN]Common Grounds. https://www.instagram.com/un_commongrounds/ 

We Are Collective

We Are Dance Collective is a modern-based dance company investigating an amalgamation of differing dance niches and innovative technical elements. https://www.instagram.com/wearedancecollective/ 

*****

IMAGES AVAILABLE HERE

CAPTION/CREDIT SHEET

1 We Are Collective, Photo by Phylinese Brooks (top right in collage)

Featured: Nik LaMacck (he/him) and Reign Drop Winker (they/them), Co-Founders of We Are Dance Collective

Image Description: One white male dancer and one white non-binary dancer connect hand to head in an open field of green grass in the warm sunlight. He is wearing a brown, green, and yellow printed long sleeve button down, brown dance pants, and boots. They are wearing a white, blue and green vertically striped short sleeve button down shirt and printed blue dance pants, and black boots. 

2 We Are Collective, Photo by Phylinese Brooks

Featured: Toree Benson, 2021 September Resident Artist

Image Description: One white female dancer stands in Lake Michigan just before sunset, the clouds are just turning purple. She thrashes her wet hair behind her creating an arch of water and hair in the air. She is wearing a black crop top, red long sleeved button down, and jean shorts with a black leather belt. 

3 [Un]Common Grounds, Photo by Omar Cardenas (top left in collage)

Caption: Moments from two different events we entitled “prompted” and “storytelling” 

Image Description: A genuine moment of Artists being in space with one another and finding ways to make it work with the respective differences. Some are sitting, some are dancing, some are standing and engaging in different ways. They are outside on a concrete area of a park. There is a raised section with three stairs. 

4 [Un]Common Grounds, Photo by Omar Cardenas

Caption: Moments from two different events we entitled “prompted” and “storytelling” 

Image Description: A genuine moment of Artists being in space with one another and finding ways to make it work with the respective differences. Four are dancing in a seated position, some are standing and engaging in different, joyful ways. They are outside on a concrete area of a park. 

5 M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Photo by Nate Crossley

Image Description: Ten tapdancers in face masks and black t-shirts with white text listing names such as “Juba, BoJangles, Quicksand, LeGon,” sitting and standing facing the camera in a studio with historical Tap photographs on the wall. 

6 M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Courtesy of the Company (bottom right in collage)

Featured: (l-r front) Donnetta “LilBit” Jackson, Andrew Carr, (l-r back) William J. Wims, Izaiah Harris

Image Description: A group of six tapdancers in action outdoors in the evening.

7 Natural Encounters 2019, Photo by Enki Andrews (bottom left in collage)

Featured: Ayako Kato

Caption: Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Natural Encounters 2019, “Dances for This Land” by Ayako Kato, Nejla Yatkin, and collaborators responding in movement to the natural spaces of Indian Ridge Marsh and its inspiring story of land remediation. 

Image Description: A group of dances in action outdoors in a marsh parkland, surrounded by trees and tall grasses. 

8 cdf_Marsh Dances Poster

Event poster

9 cdf_Marsh Dances Postcards

Event postcards

Image Description: A collage of four dance images.

The post Chicago Dancemakers Forum Gathers Chicagoans for an Improvisers’ Dance Jam at Big Marsh Park appeared first on Chicago DanceMakers Forum.