Join us as we celebrate our HCL Commissions artists on July 22!

Tune in for the closing night of Chicago Takes 10 — a new virtual series sponsored by the Walder Foundation featuring performing artists from across the city including musicians, dancemakers and performers. HCL was selected as one of 10 non-profit performing arts organizations to curate a collection of work for the series. Mark your calendar for 6PM and visit www.chicagotakes10.org for our debut with a live artist chat.

Featuring work by Aram Atamian, Barber, Courtney Mackedanz, Esther Baker-Tarpaga & Raquel Monroe, and Shi-An Costello, with collaborators. Click the artist’s name to view more about each project.

From Artistic Director and HCL Commissions Curator, Yolanda Cesta Cursach Montilla:

Chicago Takes 10 (CCT) came up in February 2021 like a sun rising. For thirteen months performance artists have wondered if they can continue. It is hard to stay motivated. It takes a lot of mind and body power to do that. Artists are doing a whole jumble of things to stay afloat, from teaching hourly and attending demonstrations, to helping out with mutual aid. Stepping away from performing is not an option; they are members of the social conscience as artists.

I can’t think of a more important time to launch HCL Commissions, a program vital to our vision that we are fortunate to accelerate and amplify with Walder Foundation support and the CTT recordings. Artists want to know they have a future. They want to create for that future. I am interested in artists who carry into the future a clear sense of our present. I turned to five deeply experimental artists whose main material is people and human relations, and who trouble to notice how the world looks now and won’t look forever. I’m excited how radically different the commissions are turning out; it’s a mini-festival that represents HCL's full performance spectrum, and reflects the generous, sometimes trickster, earnestness of artists today.