January 29, 2024

Chicago Cultural Center

12

December
Monday, January 29, 2024
6:30 – 8:00 pm 
Chicago Cultural Center (in person)
78 E Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602

 

Location: The Chicago Cultural Center – Dance Studio is downtown. Public Transportation and Parking information can be found here.

Accessibility: The building and studio are wheelchair accessible. ASL Interpretation will be provided during the event. Masks are encouraged.

Facilitator: Dahlia Nayar

To be eligible for participation in the March 2024 DanceChance at Asian Improv aRts Midwest, artists MUST BE PRESENT at the January 29th event to put their names in the hat for random draw. Participating artists each receive $4,500 in addition to dialogue and video documentation of their sharing.

This event is sponsored and hosted by The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE).

 

 

Participating Artists

Kaia Olsen is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary dancemaker/artist with a practice involving performance, sculpture, and moving image. Kaia’s work explores identity, communion, and the ephemerality of human experience, both through entanglements of performer and sculptural form, and through experiential dance processes involving improvisation and play. Kaia’s artistic collaborations have included residencies with Thodos Dance Chicago, Inaside Dance, Deeply Rooted, Gingarte Capoeira, and Big Muddy Dance (St Louis, MO), resulting in numerous film and dance works, and artistic exhibitions at Artemisia Gallery, ArtSquad Gallery (Philly), Chicago International Film Fest, Clinton Presidential Library, Gallery 400, Music Box Theatre, Ruth Page Center, Sidewalk Film Fest, and Thomas Masters Gallery. Kaia received their MFA from the University of Illinois (Chicago), is a past member of UIC’s Racial Justice Task Force, a current member of the College Art Association’s National Committee on Diversity Practices, and has taught at Columbia College, DePaul University and the University of Illinois (Chicago.)

Notes on Project/Practice: My dancemaking practice explores human connection and embodied narratives through improvisational and experimental collaborative processes involving dance, film, poetry and music. My favorite dancemaking processes build meaning through play within the beautifully fluid and enticingly queer spectrum that vibrates between abstraction and figurativity.

 

Anna Sapozhnikov is a teacher, choreographer, and performer with roots based in Chicagoland. As an educator, Anna is proud to have started the dance program at York High School in Elmhurst, Illinois, where she taught from 2008 to 2019. Her teaching credits also include the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Youth Performing Arts High School in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as the Louisville Ballet. Anna received her BFA and MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is currently the Assistant Head of Program Administration & Engagement as well as a Lecturer in the Department of Dance. She holds her K-12 teaching certification from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Anna is the founder and artistic director of MOYAMO DANCE as well as co-director of the duet collective she shares with Colorado based Erika Randall, Sweetie Pie Productions. Her choreography has been produced throughout New York, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, and West Virginia. Recently, Anna has been selected to set her work on Hedwig Dances Spring Concert at Ruth Page Center for the Arts in April 2024, as well as working with Chicago-based Simantikos during 2023. As a performer, Anna has been fortunate to continue her collaborations with Sara Hook Dances, David Parker & the Bang Group and Rebecca Nettl-Fiol. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and is a Chicago Dancemakers Forum DanceChance awardee.

Notes on Project/Practice: With an original score by Elliot Reza Emadian, Anna Sapozhnikov’s current project for DanceChance, “Good House Keep,” is inspired and driven by 12 distinct movement patterns pictured on the cover of a 1959 record, Good Housekeeping’s “Plan for Reducing the Sporting Way.”

 

Three dancers of varying height connect into abstract shapes before breaking apartHaley Tarling is a dancer, choreographer and teacher located in Chicago, IL. She was the Emerging Choreographer for Young Dancers Initiative’s 2021 partnership with Brighton Dance Festival, and has also presented work at festivals including Dance Chicago, Trifecta Dance Festival and Detroit Dance City Festival. She has choreographed work for companies such as Hot Crowd, Simantikos Dance Chicago and Young Dancers Initiative. She is a core company member with Hot Crowd, with whom she has performed in works by Jessica Miller Tomlinson, Joseph A. Hernandez, Emily Rayburn, Sam Crouch, Jessi Stegall, Devin Lloyd and Brittany Latta. While in Chicago, she has also worked on projects with Sydney Jones, Mark Gonzalez and Jackie Nowicki. She is a graduate of Point Park University with a BFA in dance and a BA in psychology, and holds a Master of Arts in counseling psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Her earlier training consisted of dancing as a member of Extensions Dance Company, under the direction of Lizzie MacKenzie. As an artist, she strives to embody expansion, authenticity and grit, while telling stories that reflect human experience through the metaphor of intellectual ideas. She is very excited to share work at Dance Chance!

Notes on Project/Practice: I like to think of my dance making process as similar to puzzle making. There are various pieces, concept ideas, movement phrases, stage movement, etc., that as a unit, form a dance. I also value the opportunity dance making provides to create a space for artists to express their voice in a way that has a sense of realness, and embodiment of every component that makes them who they are. It is my intention to value that above all else.

 

Documentation photography by Kristie Kahns.

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