Residency Reflections

Courtney Mackedanz

Artist Courtney Mackedanz shares her recent creative process and several true confessions. She shares:

I would rehearse forever if you let me. I’ve never really decided what it means to be an “artist” who wants to practice more than they want to present, but let me tell you something that perhaps you already know: rehearsal can be a space of ever-newness in the right circumstance. Of course, it’s delicious to linger.

With the world hastily moving to a virtual platform, artists and dancers like T. Ayo Alston have found themselves missing live audiences, but creating visions for the screen. Ayodele Drum and Dance’s Youth Company has not only survived through virtual classes and scarce rehearsals, but were in great demand:

As I prepare to take our tenacious teens to Senegal, West Africa in December 2021, we decided to do a video shoot with them and create a movie-like showing as a way to broadly showcase their hard work beyond the Chicago live platforms.

Alyssa Boone

I began researching asynchronistic duets, focusing on the duality of a partnership – what are traditional roles and expectations? Is it possible to make a duet completely equitable? Must it always maintain some aspect of polarity (this person is “good,” the other person is “bad”/ this person gets lifted, the other is the lifter)?
How could both partners be represented within a single body?

Kierah King

With this residency my goal was to involve, connect, and create with as many artists as possible through surveys, events, and different forms of digital connection.

Sara Zalek

I want to be someone else, other than who I am. Constantly and always. Forever transforming.
When I dance, I am no one. I am all energy and sensation. I am a body of cells responding to other bodies of cells, to space, to sound, to subtle forces of physics.