Co-MISSION three-month resident artists share the works they have developed at Links Hall in a four-night, shared bill festival format.
Aaliyah Christina: Black women/girls deal with colorism. We hate it, we ignore, we perpetuate it. In “When Iva Met Eunice”, two people discover themselves through the unlikely friendship of their grandmothers. They battle the commonality of social expectations (social dances) and the physical negotiations they perform in their day-to-day through set improvisational scores and freestyled movement. *Aaliyah Christina performed in Darling Shear’s 2017 “Coeur Enchantée”, and produced “Lather. Rinse. Repeat. | Fall. Climb. Release.” at Links Hall in January 2018.
Erin Kilmurray: SEARCH PARTY is an multiphase dance work that explores the separate turf of studio practice, nightclubs and sports arenas through raising the stakes by combining them. This work follows a group of women who, in this particularity maddening time, test their limits by taking us on a gradual slide from the intensity of an intimate performance to the wild abandon of dance party to the extreme physicality of a sporting event. *Erin Kilmurray curated THAW 2012’s dance programming as part of The Open Space Project, was a 2015 Creative Time Sponsored Artist, was featured on Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s 2017 Elevate Festival program at Links, and began a quarterly Contemporary Forms class series at Links in June 2017.
Talia Koylass is creating a series of dance films that investigate how the prison system exploits and dehumanizes people causing generational trauma. Her research delving into the history and present state of the prison system in America and investigating how they can physicalize these concepts through film and choreography. Talia will be partnering with the non-profit First Defence Legal Aid and donating a portion of her ticket sales to the organization. *This is Talia’s Links Hall debut.
The Leopold Group presents a choreographic counterpart to Artistic Director Lizzie Leopold’'s dissertation research, focusing on making dances and making a living. This work explores the economic possibilities and the financial realities of choreographing and performing in twenty-first century Chicago. Working to make it work. *Lizzie Leopold most recently showed work at Links Hall as part of James Moreno’s “Marginalia” in 2017 and was part of the 2014 Peep Show Series.
