Zephyr to Present NOT DEAD YET At SITE/less

Zephyr, an experimental dance company that pushes the art form's boundaries, will present a shared concert, "Not Dead Yet," April 21-23 at 7:30 p.m. at its space, SITE/less, 1250 West Augusta Boulevard, Chicago. SITE/less aims to rethink the connection between movement and architecture and deepen the relationship between the viewer and the venue beyond the typical model.

Three choreographic artists are developing work that interacts with the existing scenic design at SITE/less, which Zephyr architect/designer David Sundry created for Zephyr's 2019 work On Notice.

Zephyr Director Michelle Kranicke noted, "Each of us has spent our whole artistic careers creating and presenting dance work for live audiences. As live performance begins its return after the long COVID-19 hiatus, the most joyful thing to do, and the one that seemed to make sense, was to present a live concert. It is a defiant act-one that demonstrates the power and strength of live art."

The choreographers and their companies include:

Tom Brady
Performance artist Tom Brady, a prolific composer, sculptor, photographer, choreographer and media arts innovator, performs Gone, a solo accompanied by his original synthesized soundscape to support the movement, the spoken word and the manipulation of light and shadow. Gone speaks to the ethereal nature of life and the fleeting nature of time. It is a love poem cherishing family memory. Gone exposes the powerful connections between us.

Brady also performs Touch, a piece rooted in isolation, as a solo for the April 21 performance. For the April 22 and 23 performances, longtime collaborator Monica Newsam joins Brady for this work, exploring together to make statements about absence and presence.

Same Planet Performance Project
Director Joanna Read, working with dancers Patrick Burns, Juli Farley, Chloe Michels and Enid Smith, presents Things Hidden and Left Unsaid, a repurposed version of her full-length work scheduled to premiere in fall 2022. Vin Reed will design costumes.

Zephyr Dance
Michelle Kranicke, working with longtime company member Molly Strom and guest artist Joanne Barrett, creates an as-yet-untitled trio that mines small gestures and movement from her work of the last 10 years, as well as short phrases developed during her year alone in the studio during the pandemic. This prolonged period without collaborators presented an opportunity to revisit small, elusive bits of choreography buried within longer works and to rethink, rework and represent them alongside the fragile bits of movement that emerged in 2020 and 2021.

Kranicke said, "I am drawn to artists who perennially survey and then deconstruct their ideas. In theory it seems like the easier route, but in reality it is incredibly challenging. These moments of repetition and survey provide an opportunity to deepen, strengthen and complicate previous motifs and relationships with former selves and moments in time. On a good day, you fall into a deep hole of discovery and begin to understand the essence of a movement or gesture."

"Not Dead Yet" takes place Thursday-Saturday, April 21-23 at 7:30 p.m.
at SITE/less, 1250 West Augusta Boulevard, Chicago.
Tickets are $22, available at zephyrdance.com.
All programming is subject to change.