closer(group)

Event Type
Performance
Event Description
closer lays bare the power of physicality and presence through a series of one-on-one dance performances, for one dancer and one audience, in public spaces and multiplies into an expansive performance experience and dance party. Together we play with how the meeting between performer and audience generates the possibility for something new.
Admission is free

"There’s breaking the fourth wall and then there’s disintegrating it into nothing...[closer] offers fascinating illuminations of human behavior and interaction." Sheila Regan, Star Tribune

Funding credits:
This activity is made possible with support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, American Composer Forum’s Live Music for Dance Minnesota, Doris Duke Creative Exploration Fund, American Dances Abroad, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project co-commission by Legion Arts in partnership with Dance Place, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Performance Network Forth Fund.

Excerpts of closer have been presented at the Soap Factory, Dance USA conference, Arts Midwest Conference, Shoebox Gallery, Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Bryant Lake Bowl, Future Interstates at the Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, and Festival Warvie, Warsaw, Poland. Residency support for closer came from the Soap Factory, Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota and Festival Warvie, Warsaw, Poland. 

Artists
Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad collaborate as the BodyCartography Project. Their mission is to engage with the vital materiality of the body. Together they create dance in urban, domestic, wild, and social landscapes. Their work is rooted in contemporary dance, somatic technique, socially engaged practice, and public art. They are deeply invested in the power of live performance to facilitate a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. 
As certified teachers of Body-Mind Centering®, somatic practice informs the ground of their dance-making and teaching practice. 
Over their eighteen-year collaboration projects have been presented across the world supported by institutions such as Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, American Realness, Performance Space 122, NYC. 

They are featured artists in the first books about site dance, published by Routledge and University of Florida Press.

They collaborate with many artists and scientists and their awards include 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Art fellowship and 2013 City Pages Dance Company of the Year.

Curatorial projects include the Walker Art Center’s Choreographers’ Evening, Future Interstates performance series at the Cowles Center, SEEDS Festival: somatic experiments in earth, dance + science for Earthdance, MA. 

Anna Marie Shogren is a dancer/artist recently returned to Minneapolis after years in Brooklyn. She has shown dance and installation at Danspace, Movement Research at Judson Church, DNA, and AUNTS. She loves the BodyCartography Project, and has also performed with Yanira Castro, Morgan Thorson, others, and with the interdisciplinary art collective Non Solo. She writes on performance with MNartists.org, and previously with NY Arts Magazine, InDigest, and Critical Correspondence. She graduated from University of Minnesota. 

Dolo McComb is an artist hailing from the Wild West where she studied dance at the Colorado College. Since moving to the Twin Cities in 2013, she has worked and toured with BodyCartography Project and choreographer Chris Schlichting. Within Minneapolis, Dolo's own dance work has been presented at Bryant-Lake Bowl, Zenon Dance Zone Showcase, and most recently as part of the Red Eye Theater's Works-in-Progress program. Currently she is developing a new evening-length work for the Red Eye Theater's New Works series working with dance artists Kimberly Lesik and Scott Stafford. Right now Dolo is incredibly grateful and excited to be able to share closer and to dance for you. 

Justin Jones is a dancer, choreographer and sound designer. He has danced with BodyCartography Project, Chris Schlichting, Dylan Skybrook, Chris Yon and was a member of Tere O'Connor Dance Co. from 2001-2004. His choreography has been presented in Minneapolis at Bryant Lake Bowl, Red Eye, and the Walker Art Center; in New York at The Thalia, Sarah Lawrence. He is the recipient of the 2007 McKnight Fellowship for Choreography. Justin creates sound design for his own choreography and for other dance makers including Ivy Baldwin, Chris Schlichting and Chris Yon. Justin currently serves as the Interim Artistic Director of Young Dance, a youth modern dance company and school in Minneapolis (www.youngdance.org), and is the producer/host of TALK DANCE, a podcast created for the Walker Art Center website (listen at: www.walkerart.org/channel/type/audio).

 

Dance Styles
Multi-disciplinary

Location

Links Hall

3111 N. Western Ave. at Constellation
Chicago, IL 60618
(773) 281-0824