Untitled 

Invested in the implications of the triangle—father/mother/child, performer/audience/space, trio collaborators — Untitled is an evening-length work made up of successful and failed attempts at preservation, transgenerational collaboration, and finding a way beyond family narratives. Through deep listening, gameplay, and set and improvised movement, three collaborators investigate the artifacts and timbres of their fathers’ lives scavenged from video, memory, and photos. Within this research, interiorities tenuously connect and diverge, creating imbalance through shared family fictions – interracial, intergenerational, improvisational, blurred. Untitled engages the play, re-memory, and masks of three B/black men, and their pull on the family structure.

*Venue: Watershed Art & Ecology, Project support: UCLA/Whistle Space and House of the Lorde.

Artists Bios

Zachary Nicol is an artist, choreographer, and performer based in Chicago. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented at venues including the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Roman Susan, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Watershed Art & Ecology, 6018|North, Blanc Gallery, Links Hall, Pivot Arts, Trap Door Theatre, Co-Prosperity, Lumpen Radio (Chicago), Krannert Center for Performing Arts (Urbana, IL), Museo Universitaro del Chopo, BACAL (Mexico City), among others. Nicol is a 2025 3Arts Make A Wave Awardee, a 2023 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Annas Projects, ACRE, and Links Hall.

Anna Martine Whitehead does performance from the homelands of the Council of the Three Fires. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; REDCAT; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Museum of Modern Art; San José Museum of Art; Chocolate Factory Theater, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Martine and her work have been recognized by Ruth Arts, United States Artists, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, Graham Foundation, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, MAP Fund, Dance/USA, 3Arts, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Tara Aisha Willis, Ph.D.’s research centers Black living and experimentation. Currently Curator of Dance & Theater at EMPAC, she belongs to the “Bessie” Award-winning Skeleton Architecture improvisation collective, and is co-editor of the forthcoming artist book, horizontal plane: taisha paggett performance works (Soberscove). She has been published by Wendy’s Subway, Getty Research Institute, CARA, Danspace Project, Center for Book Arts, liquid blackness, Black Scholar, Women & Performance, Performance Research, Brooklyn Rail, and MRPJ. She has performed for artists like Will Rawls, Yanira Castro, Anna Sperber, Kim Brandt, devynn emory, and Paulina Olowska, collaborated with Damon Locks and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste.