Program for October 24
Aaliyah Christina, Erin Kilmurray, Talia Koylass, Lizzie Leopold.

The October WIP Showing hosts all four Co-MISSION Residency artists who’s final projects will be featured in the Co-MISSION Festival of New Works December 6-9.

Through our Co-MISSION program Links Hall offers Intensives, Residencies, and Fellowships that support 14-16 artistic projects annually. These programs incorporate a flexible range of resources, designed to meet the needs of artistic experimentation at different points in an artist’s career, and different points in a project’s development. This works-in-progress series features artists from all three programs on shared bills.

All Co-MISSIONs are supported by Links Hall’s Commissioning Collective, a small group of dedicated individuals committed to supporting the creation of excellent, inspiring new works of performing arts in Chicago. Links Hall’s Commissioning Collective includes Anonymous, Lauri Alpern, William Bein, Nancy Fox and Kenneth Schmidt, Justine Jentes and Dan Kuruna, Maggie Kast, Susan Manning and Doug Doetsch, Julia Mayer, Dina Merrell and Tim Hartford, Anna Minkov, Bette Rosenstein and John Brix, Ronald Uchida and Laura Ahrens Uchida, Toshi Uchida and Doug Rainey, PK Vanderbeke, Foster Wattles, Jodi and Eliot Wickersheimer, and Jean and Steve Wilson.

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Aaliyah Christina writes fiction and performs & creates movement art in Chicago, IL. She graduated with a BA in dance from the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago in 2016. She founded and created Catalyst Movmnt (2017), a curating collective designed to highlight emerging movement artists of color.

“When Iva Met Eunice” explores our daily movement negotiations in our pedestrian lives. It translates those actions into our technical practices as movement artists. It tells the stories of black girlhood with the duality of growing up with colorism and the intersectional differences in the way we are raised. In loving memory of Iva (Homeny) & Eunice (Nina Simone).

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Erin Kilmurray is a choreographer, producer and teaching artist living and working in Chicago. Working within contemporary dance, multi-displinary theater and cabaret performance her work intentionally shifts between immersive and proscenium formats – resonating in concert dance spaces, lo-fi performance galleries, music venues, parties and film. Kilmurray’s choreography has been presented and supported by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Cambrians, Metro Chicago, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, The Chicago Reader, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Empty Bottle Presents, Thalia Hall, and Salonathon. Kilmurray is a company member of The Inconvenience, Founder/ Director/ Choreographer of The Fly Honey Show. Kilmurray was named “Best Choreographer “(Chicago Reader) and one of “Four Artists Heating Up This Fall” (Chicago Magazine). She received a 2017 3arts ‘Make A Wave’ award, a CCT Young Leader’s Fund award, a Sponsored Artist with High Concept Labs. www.erinkilmurray.com

“SEARCH PARTY” is a multi-phase dance project that follows a group of women as they test their limits. At this monumentally maddening moment in time, we examine the boundaries we face. Where do these limits lie? Who sets them? What stands in our way? When we are brimming with energy, hopefulness, pleasure, pain, exhaustion, rage – where do we put it? What is the tipping point?

Set somewhere between the dancefloor of a nightclub and a sports arena, this work relentlessly investigates these questions by comparing what we have vs. what we need vs. what is expected of us vs. what we are capable of and organizing to search for what has been lost, what has been missing, or what has been hiding.

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Talia Koylass just began her first season as a dancer with Winifred Haun & Dancers. She is a recent graduate from The Ailey School/Fordham University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and Visual Arts. Ms. Grace specializes in choreographing dance for the camera and has shown her work at various events throughout New York and Chicago. She began her journey into dance filmmaking with her first film “The Human Experience” and since was commissioned to co-create and premiere a new work at Whitney Young High School. As a dance film maker, she works to create powerful images that draw the audience in and hold on to them the entire time using images that create narratives, convey emotions, ask questions, inspire thinking, and challenge us in our everyday lives.

During this residency Grace will be exploring how the use of choreographic and filmmaking tools can inform, story tell and invoke action. With a focus on social activism, I will be using movement, raw emotion, and strong narratives to create a film that viewers can connect with on a genuine and visceral level. As a society it is often easy for us to write off other people’s problems when we feel like they don’t affect us directly. We often understand that there is a problem, but do not truly have a grasp on the effects that social injustices have on our society as a whole. By combining film and dance I will be using site specific choreography and collaborating with various videographers and editors to unearth ways to simultaneously educate while creating a relatable narrative through the use of the human body and the camera.

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Lizzie Leopold just completed her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Theater and Drama at Northwestern University this spring. Leopold also holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Performance Studies from New York University. Her dissertation, “Commodifying Choreography: The Sale, Licensing, and Appraisal of Concert Dance Repertory,” looks at dance valuation practices and intersections of dance- making and business structures. Leopold is the founder and Artistic Director for the Leopold Group, a Chicago based modern dance company celebrating a decade of dance in 2017. Leopold served on the Board of Governors for the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theater and Dance and on the board of the Congress on Research in Dance.

The Leopold Group will use their Co-MISSION Residency to begin developing a new work as a choreographic counterpart to Lizzie’s dissertation research, focusing on making dances and making a living. She will be exploring the economic possibilities and the financial realities of choreographing and performing in twenty-first century Chicago. Working to make it work.
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Links Hall’s institutional supporters include Alphawood Foundation, Allstate Insurance Companies, Arts Midwest Touring Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Boeing Company, Cliff Dwellers Arts Foundation, Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, a State Agency, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Martha Struthers Farley and Donald C. Farley, Jr. Family Foundation, McCormick Foundation, MidAtlantic Arts Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, Puppet Slam Network and The Weasel Fund. Links Hall is one of fourteen recipients of the 2016 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

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Tags: Aaliyah, Aaliyah Christina, Chicago, Co-MISSIONS WIP, Erin, Erin Kilmurray, Illinois, Links Hall, Lizzie, Lizzie Leopold, Talia, Talia Koylass, West Town