Yoshinojo Fujima aka Rika Lin
Yoshinojo Fujima (aka Rika Lin) is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and Grandmaster in Fujima style Japanese classical dance. She is a “shin-nisei”, part of the postwar Japanese American diaspora. She has performed original work and as part of many collaborations at Links Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), where she premiered her full length solo Asobi: Playing within Time in 2018. Her works embody her identity and tradition through performance as well as her teaching practice in Japanese classical dance. Yoshinojo is a 2021 recipient of the Digital Dance Grantand Production Residency by Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and a 2021-2022 Fellow in Residency by High Concept Labs, for her ongoing virtual reality project “Kurokami E{m}Urge, #ChooseYourReality”. She was a John D. and Susan P. Diekman Fellowship Djerassi Resident Artist (2019), awardee of Ragdale Foundation (2019) and High Concept Labs (2018) residencies, a Links Hall Artistic Associate Curatorial Resident, 3Arts Make a Wave artist, and Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist (2017.)
Yoshinojo is founder and curator of the series “Beyond the Box”, launched in 2017 at Links Hall and that centers on female performers and creatives. Her own dance investigations alter the traditional pedagogy of Japanese dance with humor and subtle transgressions by way of questioning ideas of role and identity. Her collaborative project with puppet artist Tom Lee, Suji: Lines of Tradition, was featured as part of the 2019 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Links Hall 40th Anniversary LinkSirkus, as well as “Beyond the Box”. She performed in March 2020in Kyoto, Japan at UrbanGuild as part of the MushiHime Festival, just before the pandemic came into full force. She is a recent Master Apprentice Ethnic Folk Arts Grant recipient, and adapting the pedagogy of traditional Japanese Classical dance with her mentor/teacher.
For more information please www.yoshinojo.org/
Juelle Daley
Juelle is French-trained, an independent curator, art administrator and art advisor with a passion for curating visual arts, cultural productions, and developing public programming. She’s gifted at connecting people, incubating possibilities and making art projects happen. She was recently Associate Director of Arts Engagement at University of Chicago’s Reva and David Logan Center of the Arts.
Douglas R. Ewart
Douglas R. Ewart is a Kingston, Jamaica native (b. 1946) and inimitable composer, improviser, inventor, visual artist, and educator. He is a 2020 New Music USA Project award recipient for “Douglas R. Ewart: Expressions,” his first comprehensive solo presentation in the US and which takes place as an installation and a series of virtual live concerts across multiple platforms.
As a seminal composer and musician, Ewart is internationally recognized as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), which he joined in 1967 and served as the organization’s president from 1979-1986. He has toured with AACM and as part of countless additional music projects throughout Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia. As a featured artist, he has performed original music compositions with his numerous ensembles at the Moers International Festival (Germany), the University of Puerto Rico San Juan, throughout Brazil, Italy, Japan, and the US, and for multiple engagements in Tokyo, Perth, Havana, Paris, Stockholm, London, Düsseldorf, and Berlin.
A prestigious 1987 U.S.-Japan Creative Arts Fellowship supported his study of both modern Japanese culture and the traditional Buddhist shakuhachi flute. He has received a Bush Artists Fellowship and is a multiple-recipient of Minnesota Composers Forum/McKnight Foundation fellowships and Jerome Foundation grants.
He has applied his continual learning in philosophy to a thirty year-tenure with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, until retiring in 2016. As aprolific inventor and visual artist he has been presented by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smart Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry. An immersive, evolving installation in 2020 at ESS’s Audible Gallery includes his personal collection of historical artifacts, film, sculptures, and memorabilia, and illuminates Ewart’s current multimedia work, and new works created with members from the international creative arts and music communities.
For more information please visit https://douglasewart.com
Brittany Harlin
Brittany Harlin is originally from Bolingbrook, Illinois, where she began dance in jazz at the age of six. Her original dance and music influences began in her close multigenerational family, and formational influences are the pioneers in Hip Hop and Modern dance. She studied dance at Loyola University Chicago. She is the founding artistic director of Chicago Urban Dance Collective, which is driven by Harlin’s purpose to represent the full spectrum of street dance to live music and dj’s on the concert stage.
Harlin is a former High Concept Labs Artist in Residence, in performance choreography and filmmaking. She is a 2017 recipient of the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award, and the 2018 recipient of the Sybil Shearer fellowship. In addition to work for her company, her dancing and choreography has been featured at Ragdale Foundation, Links Hall, Elastic Arts, Aragon Ballroom, DRAMA Duo Music Productions, Black Ensemble Theatre, and Hip Hop International.
Her first short film, “Delinea Renda”, inspired by the work of visual artist and writer Barbara Chase Riboud, features original poetry, vocals and choreography by Harlin, music by composer Josh Luis, and engineer-producing by Peter Angorola and Melvin Rosario. The film’s development was a coveted 3Arts Project Match selection in 2018, surpassing the goal and receiving its release in 2019.
Her first length work for her company, “Breathing Through Vernacular Movement”, was premiered by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2018. Her latest full length piece for her dancers, ”Don’t Forget Your Mother,” is a choreographic memoir set to music and dedicated to mothers on Earth and ancestors beyond, and received its world premiere as part of the 2019 Pivot Arts Festival.
Harlin regards the body of work to date as a living investigation of social movement origins in the music and dance forms of Hip Hop, Modern, Funk Styles, Waacking, and House, which she combines with her growing knowledge of somatics and kinesiology. Her teaching artist pedagogy and philosophy are weighted in respecting the integrity of the vernacular movement by sharing what she’s been taught from respected community members. As an educator, she aims to bring dance to a place of complete body awareness, spiritual expression, and connection.
For more information please visit http://brittanyharlin.com/
Meida Teresa McNeal
Meida Teresa McNeal is Director of Honey Pot Performance. She serves the Chicago Park District as Arts & Culture Manager, supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and an MFA in Choreography & Dance History from Ohio State University. She is the recipient of several awards including a Chicago Dancemakers Lab Award and a 3Arts Award in Dance. She has taught dance, community engaged arts, critical performance ethnography, and black diasporic cultural production at Northwestern University, Brown University, Governors State, and Columbia College Chicago. Positioned as an artist, scholar and administrator, she merges theory and practice into lived applications that cultivate dialogue, decolonize knowledge, and shift consciousness.
Stephan Moore
Stephan Moore is a sound artist, designer, composer, improviser, programmer, engineer, teacher, and curator based in Chicago. His creative work manifests as electronic studio compositions, improvisational outbursts, sound installations, scores for collaborative performances, algorithmic compositions, interactive art, and sound designs for unusual circumstances. Much of his work has been realized in collaborative projects, most notably with sound artist Scott Smallwood in their duo Evidence and with choreographer Yanira Castro in the collective a canary torsi. He is the curator of sound art for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, organizing annual exhibitions since 2014. He is also the president of Isobel Audio LLC, which builds and sells his Hemisphere loudspeakers. He was the music coordinator and touring sound engineer of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (2004-10), and has worked with Pauline Oliveros, Anthony McCall, and Animal Collective, among many others. In 2019, he co-founded the Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theater to promote and encourage the creation of multichannel audio works. He is a Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction in the Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University.
Zachary Whittenburg
Zachary Whittenburg has worked in Chicago’s cultural sector since 2002, in arts advocacy and journalism, marketing and communications, and as a consultant on a variety of programs for artist support and equitable funding.