SOAK 2024

In Soak, six dancers move through a series of choreographed scores derived from the physical gestures found in bathing spaces. Soak treats the sauna, hot springs, pools, and lakes as sites of research for social interation. These interactions are distilled into simple and pedestrian movements that evoke relaxation, spectatorship, kinship, competition, and play. The sound is live modular synth and vocal scoring.

Choreography and Concept: Amalia Raye Wiatr Lewis

Sound: Kari Watson
Performance: Lucian Noel, Maggie Vannucci, Courtney Mackedanz, Hannah Marcus, Isabelle Taylor
Costumes and Set: Paige Fetchen

Chicago Cultural Center
Chicago, IL
June 2024

PC: Patrick L. Pyszka/City of Chicago

3x3

2023 Ann Barzel Theater at Visceral Dance Center

New dances by three gifted choreographic voices—Damon D. Green, Deandra Alaba, and guest artist Tina Diaz. Each one is a personal, distinctive statement performed with nuance and rapture by TS ensemble.

“Common Senses”

Choreogrpahed: Deandra Alaba / Performers: Haley Marcin, Maggie Vannucci.

“Beneath My Mother Tree”

Choreographed: Tina Diaz / Performers: Damon D. Green, Gabriela Chavez, Charles Pierson, Haley Marcin, Maggie Vannucci

Chameleon Degradation”

Choreographed: Damon D. Green / Performers: Gabriela Chavez, Charles Pierson.

Lighting Design & Technical Direction: Julie Ballard

Superbloom 2023

Premiere at The Harris Theater

Superbloom is a multi-media performance work about radical beauty, wildness and wildflowers, and the fragility and the resilience of the natural world. Through dance, spectacular costuming and animation of painted landscapes, the work aims for splendor as a mirror of the sublime beauty of the natural world.

Choreography & Direction: Carrie Hanson

Performance & movement development by The Ensemble: Gabriela Chavez, Damon D. Green, Haley Marcin, Timothy Tsang, Maggie Vannucci

Music Composition & Performance: Finom (Sima Cunningham & Macie Stewart) with Emerson Hunton

Visual Design: Jackie Kazarian​

Projection Design: Liviu Pasare

Lighting Design & Technical Direction: Julie Ballard

Costumes: Damon D. Green

ToolBox @ 20

2022 Hyde Park Art Center

“Toolbox @ Twenty” featured four pairings of a Seldoms dance artist with a Chicago-based visual or sound artist. The pairs were painter Jackie Kazarian with ensemble members Deandra Alaba and Maggie Vannucci; sculptor/builder Edra Soto with Artistic Director Carrie Hanson; fiber artist Jacqueline Surdell with ensemble member Sarah Gonsiorowski; and sound artist Sadie Woods with ensemble member Damon Green.  Additional contributors included composer/conductor Renee Baker of the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project and musician Sima Cunningham of Finom. 

This year-long extensive collaboration yielded new choreographic tactics ("knot", "mask", "splice" and "bowerbird"), four new short dances, and new artworks by Kazarian, Surdell, and Woods. These were performed and installed in HPAC's Gallery 1, alongside videos, created by documentary filmmaker Steven Rosofsky, of the artist conversations, studio procedures, and new short dances. A video installation of "Bower Dance at Screenhouse", created by video artist Liviu Pasare and recorded at Soto’s “Screenhouse” installation in Millennium Park, was projected onto the facade of HPAC. 

Choreography & Direction: Carrie Hanson

Solo Performance & movement development by: Damon D. Green, Sarah Gonsiorowski, Maggie Vannucci

Group performance & movement development by: Damon D. Green, Haley Marcin, Timothy Tsang, Maggie Vannucci

Music Composition: Sima Cunningham (Maggie’s solo), Sadie Woods (Damon’s solo), Renee Baker

Visual Design: Jackie Kazarian​ (Maggie’s solo), Edra Soto (ensemble piece), Jacqueline Surdell (Sarah’s solo), Sadie Woods (Damon’s solo)

Grass

2021 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

GRASS is a multimedia piece about turf grass and cannabis, woven into a larger American story of environmental and social ills, and the persistent strain that underlies both—an impulse toward monoculture. Through text, dance, animation, and historical imagery, GRASS shows how the lawn and marijuana have each been used to measure morality, impose ideals of citizenship, and to stigmatize, criminalize, and exclude those who don’t conform. GRASS is a timely work, as both environmental and racial reckonings continue to accelerate across our land.

Choreography & Direction: Carrie Hanson

Performance & movement development: Damon D. Green, Deandra Elizabeth M. Alaba, Sarah Gonsiorowski, Maggie Vannucci

Text/Directio: Seth Bockley

Music Compositio: Mikhail Fiskel

Projection Design: Liviu Pasare

Lighting Design & Technical Direction: Julie Ballard

Costumes: Maria Pinto

FLOE

2022 Performance & Projection - Art On The Mart

2020 at Wisconsin Union Theater at UW-MadisoN

Floe is a multi-pronged project about climate instability: vanishing polar ice, rising sea levels, extreme weather, forced migration, the tension between denial and evidence, and adaptation and resilience. Both a performance work and a projection for ART on the MART, Floe embodies the fragmentation of our global conversation on climate change as it veers from anti-science conspiracy theories to the very real and urgent impacts of global warming

Choreography & Direction: Carrie Hanson

Performance & movement development: Deandra Alaba (AotM), Solomon Bowser (stage work), Philip Elson (stage work), Sarah Gonsiorowski, Damon Green, Maggie Vannucci

Text & Additional Direction: Seth Bockley

Sound Design & Composition: Mikhail Fiksel

Set / Visual Design: Bob Faust

Projection: Liviu Pasar

Lighting Design & Technical Direction: Julie Ballard

Costumes: Jeff Hancock (stage work) Maria Pinto (AotM)

Assistant Lighting Design & Stage Management: Nicholas Valdivia​

PC: Andrew Glatt

PC: Ashley Deran

Exit Disclaimer

Steppenwolf LookOut Series, Chicago - 2019

Science and Fiction Ahead is The Seldoms' 2012 take on the divisive national debate about climate change. It surveys the many divergent positions ranging from denial, skepticism, and indifference to urgency. Within this heated argument, who is talking, who is being listened to, and who is paying for it?

Direction: Carrie Hanson

Choreography: Carrie Hanson with the dancers

Installation: Anna Kunz

Composition and Sound Design: Mikhail Fiksel

Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Julie E. Ballard

Rehearsal Direction: Christina Gonzalez-Gillett

Steppenwolf Performance by Ensemble: Philip Elson, Damon Green, Maggie Vannucci, Sarah Gonsorowski, Solomon Bowser

Past performance credits: Amanda McAlister, Bruce Ortiz, Javier Marchan Ramos, Cara Sabin

PC: Ashley Deran

PC: Ashley Deran

PC: Andrew Glatt