december 2009 PERFORMANCE

December 3 & 5

Thr 7pm / Sat 8pm
Tickets $10-$100

Love Does Not Hurt...

written & directed by AquaMoon
choreographed by Ni'Ja Whitson
featuring
Krishauna Anderson, Rebecca Cotter, Shanara Fornett, Carmen Jones, Tierra Winston, R. Kova Hayse, Boaz McGee, Michael Johnson, Chris Jones, Mike Smith and Kenton Williams Chantal' Hill, Jessica Newman and Devon Thompson.

AquaMoon returns to Links Hall after exceptional audience attendance in a 2 night only encore performance of love does not hurt…

love does not hurt…is a synergetic and multimedia performance and art exhibit that unapologetically addresses violence against womyn, by speaking healing and love into existence. Both men and womyn are given voice on the inner most details in this pattern of abuse. There is no finger pointing, but the empowered evolution of five couples journeying through intimate partner violence.

AquaMoon is the writing, performance, and teaching artist team of camil.williams and veronica precious bohanan.  AquaMoon bridges the gap between the streets, hip-hop feminism, performance activism and academia.  The duo is a voice for disenfranchised womyn and youth, until they are empowered to assert themselves and use their own voice.  The pair generates and disseminates new discourse and dialogue on girls, womyn and gender issues through creative expression.  They write, direct and produce engaging stage productions and multimedia art shows. In addition, they work with education and community-based organizations to effect social change and justice that will result in greater equality, freedom, and fuller lives for girls, womyn and youth. This artistic pair has traveled the country and abroad doing their womyn-centered work at many different venues including: Discovery High School and Queens College of New York, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Chicago Office of Women’s Affairs, and the Illinois Youth Detention Center. In addition, the duo has worked with such organizations as: Chicago Women's AIDS Project, National Women's Studies Association, Ella's Daughters, ARC 109 and Ellen Stone Bellic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media.

December 11-13

Fri & Sat at 8pm / Sun at 7pm
Tickets $15

Trans Form

presented by
Rebecca Kling

Solo performance artists Rebecca Kling’s exploration of her life as a trans woman, from the mythic to the mundane.  Rooted in the work created during her participation in Links Hall’s 2008 Charged Bodies Mentorship Program, Trans Form is perfect for anybody who thinks they have gender all figured out, and for the rest of us who don’t.

fridaythang.com/trans-form

December 14

Mon at 7:30pm
Tickets $12 / $10 students

featuring
Julia Antonick/Jonathan Meyer and DRMWPN
curated by
Links Hall Artistic Associates, Rachel Damon & Dan Mohr

"While collision_theory set out to challenge prevailing paradigms of how dance and music relate, we curators certainly did not intend to present an easy fix to their troubled marriage--it's more like couples counseling; we watch musicians and dancers in a room making collective decisions about how the performance might proceed most successfully. Whether these decisions lead to magic or missteps, the true worth of collision_theory's performances is being able to observe and learn from how the performers' choices play out." - Dan Mohr

workshop
Contemporary Dance Partnering: How to Have a Gutsy Collaboration Without Biting Each Others' Heads Off

December 18-19

Fri & Sat at 8pm
Post show opening night reception following Friday performance
Tickets online $12.50 general / $8.00 students
Tickets at the door $15 general / $10 students

Links Hall in partnership with the National Performance Network presents

blood pudding

a staged reading
written & directed by Sharon Bridgforth
featuring K. Bradford, Jano Layne, Erica Mott, Ni’Ja Whitson, and Nyx, 

blood pudding is an inter-disciplinary theatre piece that celebrates the history of Black people in New Orleans. Set in times then and now, blood pudding explores a landscape of magic made of spirit and blood. Memory.  Prayer.  Dreams.  The piece is choreographed.  Text is sung. A sense of the living, dead and unborn co-existing is communicated through many narrators layering languages and polyrhythmic telling. This is ritual theatre.  The stage is a living altar, honoring Indigenous people, and revolutions made of Love.

The show we will see is a re-working of a text in-progress.  blood pudding was first performed in 1998, directed by Laurie Carlos at Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, Texas.  In the 1998 draft of the text, Bridgforth identified blood pudding as an Oya piece.  Oya is a Yoruba deity.  She is the hurricane. She rules the grave yards.  She is Wind.   With Bridgforth's excavation and deepening of the text, post Katrina,  Bridgforth intends blood pudding to Lift the Ancestors. To play wildly in it’s form, like jazz.  To ask: What do the Ancestors want to say.  What are the untold stories in the soil, water and air?    What does Oya demand of blood pudding today...Original art Work for blood pudding thanks, both in 1998 and today, to Daniel Alexander Jones.

December 20
 
Sun 7pm
Tickets online $5 / $8 at the door

Walk With Me

Links Hall presents new works by mentees from our "Walk with Me" mentorship program.

December 19-21

Sat, Sun, Mon from 6am to 7am
Advance tickets for this event available ONLY through Bookworks
3444 N. Clark St. 773.871.5318

Winter Solstice
Percussion Concert

Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake
19th Annual Winter Solstice Percussion Concert

This hour-long ritual performance utilizes a wide array of percussion instruments from North Africa, the Middle East, and East India, as well as Western orchestral instruments. Drake and Zerang are veterans of Chicago world music, new music, and jazz scenes, and have performed together nationally and internationally.

“They have an extraordinary understanding of one another-the sort of working friendship in which music is created a deeper kind of communication than conversation ever could.”- Chicago Reader