Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival Week 2
Friday and Saturday, April 26-27, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $30 Single Ticket
FREE for Columbia College Chicago Students
Award-winning Chicago artists showcase the vibrancy of Chicago’s dance ecosystem over a two-week festival that pushes concert dance in new ways. Dancemaker and poet J’Sun Howard (BFA Dance ‘19), kinetic philosopher Ayako Kato (USA Artist Fellow), pop-fringe creator Erin Kilmurray (BA Dance ‘08) with Kara Brody (Lucky Plush), and artist/activist SJ Swilley (Red Clay Dance Company) engage audiences on a journey through Grant Park and the Dance Center itself.
April 26-27 J’Sun Howard’s take carefully (or the world shatters when you don’t find your loved ones, Erin Kilmurray with Kara Brody’s KNOCKOUT, and SJ Swilley’s Who is SJ? activate the Dance Center’s three floors and theater along with sonic activations by beloved Dance Center accompanists, musicians Andrew Elbert and Joyce Lindsey!
Photos by William Frederking
Sharon Hoyer of New City Stage talks with Artistic Director Meredith Sutton about the Chicago Spotlight Festival:
The Dance Center in theory and practice is rooted in pluralism, it is rooted in connection, it is rooted in the celebration of who we are as movement artists, contributors and supporters of this living, breathing form. This fiftieth anniversary is a celebration of that. We feel really honored to continue accelerating what’s happened at the Dance Center and continue to push it forward. We’re excited to have Spotlight be a part of that. The weaving of humanity and process and being through these artists means a lot.
About the Artists
J’Sun Howard, photo by William Frederking.
J’Sun Howard is a Chicago-based dancemaker. He holds an MFA in Dance and a certificate in World Performance Studies from the University of Michigan. He is a 2020 3Arts Awardee, a recipient of the inaugural Esteemed Artist Award from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), and a 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow. He is also a Links Hall Co-MISSION Fellow, a Ragdale Foundation Sybil Shearer Fellow, 2017 3Arts Make A Wave artist, and 2014 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist. His works have been presented at Links Hall, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Defibrillator Performance Gallery, Patrick’s Cabaret (Minneapolis, MN), Danspace Project (NYC), Center for Performance Research (NYC), Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, MI), New Dance Festival (Daejeon, South Korea) where he won Best Dance Choreographer, and the World Dance Alliance’s International Young Choreographers’ Project (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), among others.
Ayako Kato, photo by William Frederking.
Ayako Kato is a kinetic philosopher/poet and contemporary choreographer/dancer originally from Yokohama, Japan. In 2023, she received a United States Artist Fellowship and enshrined in the Hall of Fame in Dance by Newcity Stage Magazine’s Players: Who Really Performs for Chicago (recognized in 2014, 2018, 2020). Called “moving everyday sculptures, artfully cast in naturalness” (Luzerner Zeitung, Switzerland), her project, Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape, started 1998, is in deep collaboration with live music and grounded on the principles of fūryū, Japanese for “wind flow”, cyclical transformation and human motion in nature.
She collaborated with more than seventy musician-composers, and has toured throughout the US, Japan, and Europe. In Fall 2022, she presented “LUCA/Res Communis ETHOS Episode III” as a part of her ongoing choreographic ETHOS project. She received a 2022 Esteemed Artist Award from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the High Concept Labs Fellowship 2021-2022, the 2021 Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography by the Illinois Arts Council, the Trillium Arts 2021 ACE Fellowship in Dance, and the Best of Dance in Chicago Tribune and SeeChicagoDance. She is also a recipient of a Links Hall Co-MISSION Fellowship, a residency at Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France in 2018, a 2016 3Arts Award in Dance, a 2016 Meier Achievement Award, and a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award.
Erin Kilmurray, photo by William Frederking.
Erin Kilmurray (she/they) is a Chicago-based dance artist creating genre-straddling, femme-forward performance work that demands aliveness and collectivity on stage, in studio, and with audiences. They facilitate a dance and community practice that relentlessly explores the celebrations and liberations of women, queer folks, the underground, and the underdog. Her work embraces mess, play, eroticism, and lessons in how arbitrary the line between artist and audience can be.
Erin is the creator / director of legendary queer punk dance and variety performance project The Fly Honey Show, where pleasure is king and politics favor the queens. Fly Honey was established in a DIY living space in 2010 and recently sold out rock venue Thalia Hall, was featured at Lollapalooza 2022, and named a “Chicago institution” (Chicago Reader). She is recognized as an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Awardee (2023), a Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist (2020), and one of 50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago (2023; Newcity). Kilmurray was one of three artists commissioned for the inaugural Chicago Performs program at the Museum of Contemporary Art (2022). Erin has made dances for countless independent makers, parties, music videos, festivals, concerts, and theatrical productions. She is on faculty at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
SJ Swilley, photo by William Frederking.
SJ Swilley is a black queer product-process based movement artist and educator. Centering notions of liberation, empowerment and mental health, they are a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Johnson C. Smith University where they received a BA in Dance and a BA in Communication Arts. Swilley holds an MFA from Temple University where they initially began adjunct teaching. Swilley is an alum of the American Dance Festival where they served as assistant rehearsal director to Michelle Gibson. Additionally, they are an alum of the Urban Bush Women's Summer Leadership Institute.
They have presented work at the Cherry Street Pier Show, American College Dance Association, Loose Leaves Showcase, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia College Chicago, Swilley has been an educator at Temple University, Barber-Scotia College, and Denison University. Swilley is a 2020-2021 performance fellow with Queer Art, and a 2020 recipient of the Rose Vernick Artistic Transformation Award.
Support
The presentation of the Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival is made possible in part by Alphawood Foundation, a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.
Ayako Kato’s ETHOS IV: Degrowth/Rebirth/Cycle is made possible in part by A. Montgomery Ward Foundation.
SJ Swilley is supported by the Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2023 Production Residency Program.
