Photo: William Frederking
Photo: Angela Estrella Meija
MARCH 13 & 15, 2025 COSMIC DOCKS
CREDITS
CHOREOGRAPHER, WRITER, & PERFORMER: Nora Sharp
LIGHTING DESIGN: Christine Shallenberg
PROJECTION DESIGN: Ruby Que
SET DESIGN & BUILD: Bluestem Building & Restoration - Erin Bliss, Gisselle Dorado, and Bryan Saner
ORIGINAL SOUND: Nora Sharp
ADDITIONAL MUSIC: Remi Wolf
PERFORMANCE DEVELOPMENT: Sophie Minouche Allen & Zachary Nicol, with earlier support from Charlotte Long & Will Davis
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jessi Barber
The development of Cosmic Docks has been supported over time by the Hambidge Center, Queer|Art, Chicago Dancemakers Forum (and their partner the Ruth Page Center), and most recently the Dance Center at Columbia College. Enormous thanks to the staff, mentors, and fellow artists at each of these spaces and times, without whom this work would not have reached this point.
Additionally, thank you to everyone who has touched any part of this piece - whether through a studio visit, a late night gut check, a chit chat over a beer, a really good problemsolving idea, or otherwise. To my friends, family, and peers who have scattered their presence, wisdom, and love throughout my life over the course of developing this workthank you. There is not space to name each of you, but please know my gratitude through how you see your influence and yourself reflected back.
Choreographer, writer, filmmaker, comedian, and performer Nora Sharp hosts audiences in worlds where language and embodiment merge in unexpected and illuminating ways. Their work often addresses the perpetual unraveling of queer+trans identity formation, the kinks in the fabric of artmaking economies, and the reverberance of key moments in familial, romantic, and casual relationships. A 2023 Queer|Art Mentorship Fellow in Performance, 2024 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and 2025 Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive Fellow, Nora has had work presented by On the Boards, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Steppenwolf Theatre’s LookOut Series, New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix 37, Open TV, FACETS Chicago, the Fly Honey Show, the Pivot Arts Festival, the ShawlAnderson Dance Center, Synapse Arts - New Works, Midwest RAD Fest, numerous film festivals, and at DIY artist-led performance nights across Chicago. Their work has been supported by residencies at the University of Chicago Performance Lab, The Croft, Hambidge, Links Hall Co-MISSIONS, and High Concept Labs. Nora’s writing on queer culture and creative economies has been published in Full Stop, Performance Response Journal, forthcoming in the anthology Dancing on the Third Coast (University of Illinois Press), and regularly on their email newsletter, Nor Art. Outside making their own work, Nora has facilitated regular work-in-progress performance spaces for fellow artists, performed or dramaturged for many independent artists, shared Amtrak coupons for creative research, hosted grassroots arts & organizing fundraisers, and co-organized artist collective response efforts, in addition to working full-time in social change organizing.
Ruby Que is an interdisciplinary artist focusing on site-specific intervention and expanded cinema performance. In their work they open portals and create hauntings. Many projects grapple with absence; with video, sculpture and installation, they attempt to give shape to what lies within and beyond the perceived void. Drawing from their lived experience as a queer, itinerant immigrant, they meditate on yearning and find home in transit. They believe in the power of collective mythmaking, often engaging collaborators and viewers as co-conspirators towards liberation. They have exhibited and performed at Co-Prosperity Sphere, Elastic Arts, Roman Susan, Comfort Station (Chicago, IL), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, NY), Stove Works (Chattanooga, TN), SOLOS (Karlsruhe, Germany) and elsewhere. Their practice has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, and City of Chicago’s Individual Artists Program. Que holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and an MFA in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they currently teach.
Christine Shallenberg is a teaching artist and mom. Her work ranges in mode from electronic textiles to light and sound installations to participatory choreographies for audiences. Her long-time collaboration with Jenn Cooper, JCSpaceRadio, engaged in a casually critical dialogue with frequencies through workshops, performances and interactive installations. Her work has been seen at Links Hall, High Concept Laboratories, Experimental Sound Studio, Hume Gallery, Tritriangle and No Nation in Chicago, as well as Movement Research, Galapagos Art Center, Williamsburg Arts Nexus, and Triskelion Arts in NYC. She also worked as the Lighting Designer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for whom she designed Second Hand, Antic Meet, Nearly 902 and more than 30 unique Event performances seen around the world. She continues to design for performance with Every house has a door.
Bluestem Building And Restoration is a worker owned co-op that is working on building and restoring a human relationship to architecture and culture. We are woodworkers and makers involved in remodeling, urban forestry, art installation, social engagement, cabinetry, and furniture making. www.bluestem.coop
Jessi Barber (she/her) is a queer production manager, technical director, lighting designer and stage manager with over a decade of professional arts experience in the Bay Area/Ohlone Land. She is a co-producer of the Queering Dance Festival (QDF), and in her freelance career has works with Sean Dorsey Dance/Fresh Meat Festival, Jess Curtis/Gravity, Detour Productions, and University of San Francisco Performing Arts & Social Justice Department among many others. Jessi currently serves on the board of Bridge Live Arts and is a proud member of CounterPulse Workers United. www.jessibarber.com
Zachary Nicol is an artist and performer based in Chicago. Their performance and video work uses research in dance, movement, site, and image to unfold problems of representation and the performing body. Their work has been presented in Chicago at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 6018|North, Blanc Gallery, Links Hall, Pivot Arts Festival, Trap Door Theatre, Co-Prosperity, Lumpen Radio, filmfront, OuterSpace, Compound Yellow, Krannert Center for Performing Arts (Urbana, IL), the National Museum of Romanian Literature (Bucharest), and S1 Gallery (Portland, OR). Nicol was a 2023 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, has been artist in residence with Ragdale Foundation, Annas Projects, ACRE, and Links Hall, and has received support from Villa Albertine and Chicago Artists Coalition. They have performed and contributed to dance, film, and performance projects by artists including Anna Martine Whitehead, Andy Nicholas Li, Courtney Mackedanz, Gabriel Chalfin-Piney, Adam Linder, Joe Namy, Mlondi Zondi, Alexandra Pirici, Kim Brandt, Ginger Krebs, Catherine Sullivan, and others.
Sophie Minouche Allen is a dance artist who performs, choreographs, teaches, and collaborates throughout Chicago and nationally. She imbues playfulness and nuance in all her endeavors and is her happiest when in relation to others. In addition to her independent projects, Sophie currently performs with The Seldoms under the direction of Carrie Hanson and Fever Dream Dance Collective under the direction of Anna Caffarelli/Crimson Moeller. Her choreography has been presented by FACT/SF, Thodos Dance Chicago/DanceWorks Chicago, Midwest RADFest, and COMMON conservatory among others. She teaches open classes at The Rooted Space, closed curriculum classes at The Grainger Academy of The Joffrey Ballet and co-facilitates the Chicago Countertechnique® Community Class Series. Sophie holds a BFA in Dance and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from the University of Michigan. She is also a certified Countertechnique® Teacher. www.sophieminouche.com
MARCH
14 & 15, 2025
THICK: a crumbling
freak show
THICK: a crumbling freak show has taken form through the generous support of the Illinois Arts Council, House of the Lorde, and, most recently, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.
This work is a direct reflection of the seen and unseen labor of those who sustain these organizations. Along with extending appreciation to them, we also wish to thank the countless individuals who have nurtured this work’s development—through conversations, joints, teas, Zooms, gestures, silences, and beyond. To all my family, both chosen and born, thank you for continuing to hold us and our work.
Your support and love sustain us, and we are especially grateful to Tiff Beatty for the many ways you practice love, patience, and deep listening.
CREDITS
CHOREOGRAPHER, WRITER & PERFORMER: Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop
MOVEMENT CONTRIBUTOR: Alyssa Gregory
INSTALLATION DESIGN & FABRICATION: Erica Gressman
STAGE DESIGN & FABRICATION: Frey Michael Austin
COSTUME CONTRIBUTORS: Erin LeAnn Mitchell & Veronica Scheaffer
LIGHTING DESIGN: Christine Shallenberg
PROJECTION DESIGN: Ruby Que
DRAMATURGY: Zachary Nicol
CASH LADIES: Shimmy La Roux & Hoochie Mane
Jenn Freeman, who also navigates this world as Po’Chop, is an interdisciplinary artist creating on the homeland of the Council of the Three Fires—the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations—as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Meskwaki, Kiikaapoi, Peoria, and the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) Nations. Freeman’s work weaves dance, storytelling, drag, and striptease into worlds that both illuminate and interrogate Black queer life.
They are the co-founder of House of the Lorde, a multi-functional space rooted in Black Feminist praxis, and co-producer of Notes on Masculinity, a beloved drag kingcentered cabaret. Their work has been presented at the Brooklyn Museum in Brown Girls Burlesque’s Bodyspeak, the Harris Theater for TEDxChicago, and headlined shows in New Orleans, Minneapolis, Denver, St. Louis, and New York. They have performed in Netflix’s Easy (Season 2), appeared in music videos for Jamila Woods and Mykele Deville, and created experimental dance films such as LITANY
Po’Chop is a board and cast member of Jeezy’s Juke Joint, an all-Black burlesque revue, and the creator of the blogzine The Brown Pages. Their work has been supported by United States Artists, Dance/USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Urban Bush Women, and Chicago Dancemakers Forum. They have been named one of the Top 50 Most Influential Burlesque Artists by 21st Century Burlesque Magazine
Alyssa (Uhh-lee-sa) Gregory is a Chicago-based performer, choreographer, teaching artist, and arts administrator who moves with intention—on stage, in the studio, and in the community. She’s had the honor of working with some of Chicago’s greatest dance artists, including Erin Kilmurray, Joanna Furnans, The Leopold Group, Jenn Freeman | Po’ Chop, The Grelley DuVall Show, and The Fly Honey Show.
Alyssa is the creator and host of The Process Podcast, which highlights the creative process of Chicago dancers, dance makers and all-around booty shakers. Off the mic and outside the studio, she serves as the Communications and Community Engagement Manager at Arts + Public Life. (She/ Her)
Erica Gressman is a Miami-born, mixed Latinx queer artist based in Chicago, working at the intersection of sound art, performance, and interactive installation. She holds a BA from New College of Florida and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2012). After graduating, she founded Rainbolt Productions, a design and fabrication studio specializing in architectural sculptures, which has deeply influenced her large-scale, interactive set designs for performance works. Her MFA thesis performance, Wall of Skin, has been featured in Performance Matters, Emergency Index Vol. 2, and the La Estación Gallery podcast, among others. Gressman has lectured at institutions such as Northwestern University and the Royal Danish Art Academy and was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in 2019. She continues to create innovative, mixed-media works that explore sound, space, and audience interaction.
Frey Michael Austin [they/she/free] is a queer interdisciplinary artist, musician, maker + performer obsessively flirting with the divine. Their visual artworks and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally and they have performed in such venues as The Park Avenue Armory (NYC), The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, Green Line Performing Arts Center, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Cultural Center, Arts Incubator and The Smart Museum of Art. They design and build unique altarpieces for both private and public spaces of worship – most recently completing a new central bimah for the historic KAM Isaiah Reform synagogue of Hyde Park-
Kenwood – as well as artful, custom home furniture pieces. They compose and produce music for film and for collaborative, multidisciplinary performance projects GABE, Growing Concerns Poetry Collective and Daisy Days.
Erin LeAnn Mitchell is a Harlem-based textile artist whose practice is deeply rooted in the Black quilting traditions of the American South. Her work has recently been exhibited at VOLTA Basel (Switzerland), Untitled Art Miami (Florida), and FNB Art Joburg (South Africa).
Veronica Scheaffer taught herself the art of dressmaking as a teenager living in a small farm town, a world away from the bright lights she craved. She honed her skills creating party looks for the wild NYC nights of her late-teens and twenties and has since built a reputation for beautifully crafted, attention-grabbing styles for party girls worldwide. Seen in countless magazines, on performers and celebs, and a short stint on Project Runway, her work is known for feminine details in unexpected silhouettes. Veronica is now based in Chicago, where she creates custom editorial and bridal looks for luxury clients.
Christine Shallenberg is a teaching artist and mom. Her work ranges in mode from electronic textiles to light and sound installations to participatory choreographies for audiences. Her long-time collaboration with Jenn Cooper, JCSpaceRadio, engaged in a casually critical dialogue with frequencies through workshops, performances and interactive installations. Her work has been seen at Links Hall, High Concept Laboratories, Experimental Sound Studio, Hume Gallery, Tritriangle and No Nation in Chicago, as well as Movement Research, Galapagos Art Center, Williamsburg Arts Nexus, and Triskelion Arts in NYC. She also worked as the Lighting Designer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for whom she designed Second Hand, Antic Meet, Nearly 902 and more than 30 unique Event performances seen around the world. She continues to design for performance with Every house has a door.
Ruby Que is an interdisciplinary artist focusing on site-specific intervention and expanded cinema performance. In their work they open portals and create hauntings. Many projects grapple with absence; with video, sculpture and installation, they attempt to give shape to what lies within and beyond the perceived void. Drawing from their lived experience as a queer, itinerant immigrant, they meditate on yearning and find home in transit. They believe in the power of collective myth-making, often engaging collaborators and viewers as co-conspirators towards liberation. They have exhibited and performed at Co-Prosperity Sphere, Elastic Arts, Roman Susan, Comfort Station (Chicago, IL), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, NY), Stove Works (Chattanooga, TN), SOLOS (Karlsruhe, Germany) and elsewhere. Their practice has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, EllisBeauregard Foundation, and City of Chicago’s Individual Artists Program. Que holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and an MFA in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they currently teach.
Jamila Woods is a musician, poet, and multidisciplinary artist from the South Side of Chicago. She has released a trio of acclaimed albums: Heaven, Legacy! Legacy! and Water Made Us. Her writing has been published in POETRY, Poets.org, and The Offing, and was featured in the 2023 anthology Black Love Letters. Jamila has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CBS This Morning, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Common, Brittany Howard, and many others. An award-winning poet, Jamila’s work often blurs boundaries between poem and song. As cultural critic Doreen St. Felix writes, “It makes you wish all singers were poets.”
Zachary Nicol is an artist and performer based in Chicago. Their performance and video work uses research in dance, movement, site, and image to unfold problems of representation and the performing body. Their work has been presented in Chicago at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 6018|North, Blanc Gallery, Links Hall, Pivot Arts Festival, Trap Door Theatre, Co-Prosperity, Lumpen Radio, filmfront, OuterSpace, Compound Yellow, Krannert Center for Performing Arts (Urbana, IL), the National Museum of Romanian Literature (Bucharest), and S1 Gallery (Portland, OR). Nicol was a 2023 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, has been artist in residence with Ragdale Foundation, Annas Projects, ACRE, and Links
Hall, and has received support from Villa Albertine and Chicago Artists Coalition. They have performed and contributed to dance, film, and performance projects by artists including Anna Martine Whitehead, Andy Nicholas Li, Courtney Mackedanz, Gabriel Chalfin-Piney, Adam Linder, Joe Namy, Mlondi Zondi, Alexandra Pirici, Kim Brandt, Ginger Krebs, Catherine Sullivan, and others.
A Chicago burlesque performer, event host, teacher, and model, Shimmy LaRoux is your bad girl with good home training. Bringing a combination of quirky charm and infectious energy, Shimmy can channel classic Hollywood, be playfully cheeky, or serve fierce diva realness. Shimmy LaRoux was crowned Miss Burlesque World 2022; in 2023 she was named the world’s #21 most influential burlesque performer. In 2023, she is a Featured Performer at the Panama Burlesque Festival, the Colorado Burlesque Festival, and the What the Funk Festival and headlined the 2023 Tulsa Burlesque Festival and 2023 Baby Grand Festival in Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to these accolades, Shimmy closed the 2022 Dutch Burlesque Festival and performed at the 2022 Stockholm Burlesque Festival. She is also honored to be a 2019 and 2023 Mover, Shaker, and Innovator at the Burlesque Hall of Fame, headliner at the 2019 Ohio Burlesque Festival, winner of Best Overall at the 2019 Dublin Burlesque Festival, producer of Shimmy’s House Party in Chicago, and an internationally traveling performer! Shimmy is also an International Playboy Playmate of the Year (Denmark 2023) and is a 2-time FHM Cover Model. Shimmy LaRoux is sassy, classy…but never ashy!
Hoochie Mane is a multidisciplinary troublemaker and drama queen. She began as a student at House of the Lorde in 2022 and has been blazing stages since, performing at Nudie Nubies Nationwide, SoHo House, and Teaser Festival in New Orleans. When she’s not performing, Hoochie Mane can be found writing poetry, sitting by Lake Michigan, or laughing at dad jokes.
PRODUCTION AND DESIGN TEAM
MEDIA/TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR: Jane Jerardi
STAGE MANAGER: Joyy Norris
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Giau Truong
ABOUT THE SCHOOL OF THEATRE AND DANCE
Columbia College Chicago’s School of Theatre and Dance, provides students with hands-on experience to ignite passion and develop professional skills to launch careers on and off stage. The School of Theatre and Dance produce approximately 40 productions a year, giving students multiple opportunities to perform, dance, design, produce, choreograph, direct, and stage manage.
Interim Director, School of Theatre and Dance
Jimmy Noriega
Associate Director of Dance
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan
Associate Director of Theatre
Wendi Weber
ABOUT THE DANCE CENTER
Home to the academic Dance Department and the Dance Presenting Series, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago values embodied human expression and nurtures an expansive understanding of dance from the established to the experimental.
Centering pluralism, the Dance Center aims to be a nucleus for innovation and creativity—on stage, in the classroom, and beyond.
By partnering with local, national, and international dance artists dedicated to transforming the field, the Dance Presenting Series offers live performances and other shared opportunities for students, faculty, artists, and audiences to connect, witness, research, experiment, practice, imagine, and grow.
We cultivate an environment and culture that prioritizes respect for self and others, and advances an anti-racist, equitable, and just society.
THE DANCE CENTER FACULTY
Founder
Shirley Mordine
Faculty
Bevara Anderson
Lisa Gonzales
Susan Imus
Darrell Jones
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan
Kelsa “K-Soul” RiegerHaywood
Dr. Ayo Walker
Jessica Young
Adjunct Faculty
T. Ayo Alston
Keesha Beckford
Malik Camara
Zineb Chraibi
Shaker Cohlmia
Allen Desterhaft
Emma Draves
Colleen Halloran
Carrie Hanson
Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood
Gina Hoch-Stall
Matthew Hollis
Jane Jerardi
Mary Klonowski
Hau Kum Leung Kneip
Michael McGinn
Pamela McNeil
Jimmy Payne
Emily Stein
Trae Turner
Meghann Wilkinson
Thomas Zwergel
THEATRE FACULTY
Faculty
Paul C. Amandes
Michael Anthony Brown
David Castellanos
Mikhail Fiksel
Nelli Fritjofson
Heather Gilbert
Julie Granata-Hunicutt
Sami Hussain Ismat
Anne M. Libera
Frances Maggio
Jimmy Noriega
Grace Overbeke
Susan Padveen
Jaqueline A. Penrod
Michael Pogue
Wilfredo Rivera
Brian Shaw
Stephanie L. Shaw
Kendra Thulin
Amy Toruno
Richard L. Walker
Wendi Weber
Albert N. “Bill” Williams
Dr. John Williams
David Wooley
Adjunct Faculty
Brittany Price Anderson
Carson G. Becker
Karen L. Berger-Nolte
Rachel L. Bunting
Jeremy Michael Cohn
Enneressa Davis
Ariane Dolan
David Fiorello
Lillian D. Francis
Marc William Frost
Susan Gosdick
John Charles Green
Jeffrey D. Griggs
Norman B. Holly
Nicole E. Jasper
Dawn R. Jones
Lori J. Klinka
Laura Sturm Lain
Timothy McCain
John T. McFarland
kClare McKellaston
Ashley Neal
Clare L. Nolan
Scott Olson
James Adolfo Payne
Janice P. Pytel
Aaron M. Reese-Boseman
Grant R. Sabin
James A Sherman
Catherine Slade
Elizabeth Swanson
THEATRE AND DANCE STAFF
Mary Butler Director Academic Operations
Michael Caskey
Music Director, Accompanist Coordinator
Dan DiLuciano Director of Facilities and Operations
Nelli Fritjofson
Lighting Supervisor
Raynner Garcia Box Office/Reception
Caity Gee
Administrative Assistant/ Communications
Ize Heinzen House Manager
Jane Jerardi Media/Technology Coordinator
Ambe’r Johnnson Box Office Associate
Angelika Lewis Box Office Associate
kClare McKellaston Costume Manager
Mia Nelson Box Office/Reception
Gabriel Oladipo
Academic Advisor
Gina Ordaz
Administrative Assistant
Disha Patel
Box Office/Reception
Kevin Rolfs
Scenic Supervisor, Props
Grant Sabin
Technical Director
Erica L. Sandvig Production Manager
Roell Schmidt
Dance Presenting Series Producing Director
Meredith Sutton
Dance Presenting Series Artistic Director
Josef Szaday Director of Technology, AV
FRIENDS OF THE DANCE CENTER
The Dance Center gratefully acknowledges its donors for their generous support.
$1,000 AND ABOVE
Taylor and Carrie Olivia Adams
Bonnie Brooks
David Colburn
Pamela Crutchfield
William Hunt
Marcia Lazar and Alan Amos
Elizabeth Liebman
Susan Manning and Douglas Doetsch
Kathleen Miles
D. Elizabeth Price
$500-999
Ellen Chenoweth
Melynda Lopin
Robert Mrtek and Marsha Mrtek
Susan J. Stall
Shawn Wax
$250-499
Nancy Church and Charles Jett
Amor Kohli
Jamey Lundblad and Bill Melamed
K. McGriff
Shunda McGriff
Susan F. Rossen
$100-249
Anonymous
Bernadette Casey
Dr. Kurt Christoffel
Margi Cole
Andrea Edwards
Peter N. and Susan F. Gray
Nancy Juda
Arnold and Carol Kanter
Maggie Kast
Philip Martini
Thomas and Shirley Neiman
Stephen Roy and Lloyd Kohler
Judith Sagan
Clyde Whitaker
$50-99
Charlotte and Alan Bath
Dr. Bob
Cornelio Casaclang
Nancy K. DeDakis
Paul E. Fisher
Lisa Gonzales
Colleen Halloran
Dawn Renee Jones
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan
Pamela Hoffman McNeil
Evemarie Moore
Bette Rosenstein
Dr. Elaine Sachnoff
Emily Stein
Mary Beth Van Dyke
This list includes gifts received through March 1st, 2025. If you have donated since then, thank you and look for your name in the next program!
To become a Friend of the Dance Center, please visit dance.colum.edu/donate
DANCE CENTER SPONSORS
The Dance Center is a member of Dance/USA, See Chicago Dance, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, and the American College Dance Association.
Athletico is the exclusive provider of physical therapy, occupational therapy, sports medicine, athletic training, work rehabilitation, and massage therapy for the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.
Turn Your Setbacks into Comebacks
