About This PROGRAM
The LookOut Series is excited for the return of its curatorial residency program, offering an opportunity for a Chicago dance practitioner to curate a series of performances over a two-week span. Following on the success of last season’s series work around curated by Kara Brody and Amanda Maraist, this season Helen Lee curates a series entitled MERGE, colliding musicians and dancers in unexpected configurations for two programs of work.
MERGE is a portal into the works of various movement and sound artists from all walks of life. Each program moves like a concert with an opening gesture followed by a headlining performance. Together these pairings collide creating a world where the entanglements of the chaotic and harmonious facets of dance and music can offer us a place to ruminate, delight and sometimes heal.
Program One:
Hannah Marcus & Mitsu Salmon
Mitsu Salmon in a publicity image for Desert Turtle, part of MERGE. Photo by Tingyu Huange.
March 28, 29 & 30 at 8pm
This program begins with Hannah Marcus performing bones fragile,a movement and live sound looping piece that explores moments of infiniteness,tenderness, and memory. Afterwards artist Mitsu Salmon draws from her own family history, voice, and geology in her work Desert Turtle.
Program Two:
Freedom From and Freedom To & Kinnari Vora
Featuring: Cristal Sabbagh, Scott Rubin, Amanda Maraist, Sharon Udoh, Kara Brody & Krissy Bergmark.
A publicity image for Freedom From and Freedom To, part of MERGE. Photo by Ricardo Adame.
April 4, 5 & 6 AT 8PM
Freedom From and Freedom To, led by Cristal Sabbagh, invites a pair of movement and sound improvisors from across Chicago to gather in front of a live audience, where they are grouped by chance. Artist Kinnari Vora dives into ritual with her piece Kissing The Earth, an offering to the ancestors who lived and breathed and at the same time are alive within us.
About Helen Lee
Helen Lee (they/she) is a Queer Asian Chicago-born interdisciplinary artist raised by immigrant parents from South Korea. They received an MFA with a focus in Performance and Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Dance with a minor in Theatre from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. They are the Artistic Director of Momentum Sensorium and have presented works in the US, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Canada. Helen was selected for 2022 Newcity Breakout Artist and has been an Artist in Residence at Chicago Artists Coalition and Links Hall with a current residency at High Concept Labs and Chicago Cultural Center. Previously, they curated the Dance Program for APIDA Arts Festival at the MCA and OPEN/CLOSED: stories on moms and other precarious issues for SAIC's Open Studio Night. Much of their work focuses on the senses, death, and the entanglement of light/shadow, summer/winter, joy/grief.
Due to the high volume and wide breadth of work we present, we are often not able to proactively offer content advisories for individual performances. However, if you have specific concerns about stage effects (such as strobe lights or fog/haze) that might have a bearing on comfort or well-being, or if you would like to know more about the age appropriateness of the performance, please contact the box office at 312-335-1650.
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Content Advisory
Due to the high volume and wide breadth of work we present, we are often not able to proactively offer content advisories for individual performances. However, if you have specific concerns about stage effects (such as strobe lights or fog/haze) that might have a bearing on comfort or well-being, or if you would like to know more about the age appropriateness of the performance, please contact the box office at 312-335-1650.