Pivot Arts Festival Returns To Edge Theater This June

Pivot Arts, a hub for adventurous, multidisciplinary performance, presents the 2022 Pivot Arts Festival, highlighting artists' resilience and ability to "pivot" during the pandemic to film/video works and creatively structured live events. Taking place June 10-18, 2022 at The Edge Theater complex, 5451 N. Broadway in Chicago, the festival features film/video, live performances, works-in-progress, and community gatherings. Tickets go on sale Tuesday, April 26 at pivotarts.org/festival.

Pivot Arts Director and Festival Curator Julieanne Ehre said, "Pivot Arts has been consistently innovative and forward-thinking throughout the pandemic by creating imaginative programming in digital and live spaces. For the 2022 festival we are amplifying artists who have similarly demonstrated creativity and resiliency in creating artistic work during these two challenging years."

The schedule to date follows. Pivot Arts may add more events in the coming weeks.

Friday, June 10 at 8 p.m.
grelley.
Co-presented by Pivot Arts and Full Spectrum Features
Produced by Diet Coke & Cake Productions
Conceived and created by Alex Grelle

This short film makes its live screening debut to kick off the festival and Gay Pride Month, enhanced by a live song and dance performance. Inhabiting the world of Alex Grelle's VHS collection, in what has been dubbed "a virtual homage for the obsessive age," grelley. is an expansion and reformulation of the larger-than-life The Grelley Duvall Show. Grelle and the cast, including Ike Holter, Nnämdi, Hot Kitchen Collective, Alyssa Gregory, Mary Williamson, Darling Shear, Erin Kilmurray, Glamhag, Tia Monet Greer, and more, act their way through a stream of film parodies connected through song and dance.

Alex Grelle is a queer, Chicago-based performer who creates heartfelt, comedic spectacles that showcase performances and artists that have impacted his life. Bringing together the worlds of music and dance through film, Grelle's past live performances have been cult hits, selling out runs at Steppenwolf, Chopin, and The Hideout.

Saturday, June 11 at 8 p.m.
In/Motion and Pivot Arts present short dance films by local Chicago artists who created digital works during the pandemic, including:

The Real Dance, Episode 2: Same Same But Different, co-created and co-directed by Nora Sharp and Grace McCants. The Real Dance: A Micro Reality TV Show, Episode 1, commissioned by and premiered in virtual space as part of the 2021 Pivot Arts Festival, is an intimate, humorous portrayal of the personalities and backstories of contemporary dancemakers and their collaborators. Episode 2 explores the dynamics of codependence and interdependence at the intersection of relationships and artmaking.

Motion/Pictures Dance Project presents A Tale of Two, jointly created by Princess Grace Award-winning choreographer Rena Butler and co-directed by Talia Koylass; photography by Ashley Battle. Bursting with emotional, intellectual, and artistic tension, this new work is at once Butler's love letter to her home city of Chicago and a riveting portrait of life as a young person in a city torn by violence. This dance film features the full company of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, plus collaborations with filmmaker Koylass, composer Darryl Hoffman, and vocalists Shawnee Dez and Alencia Norris.

Glass Pictures presents Lonely, a film by Wills Glasspiegel; music by Jana Rush and DJ Paypal; dance by Erin Kilmurray, Darling Shear, Steelo Lofton, and Diamond Hardiman; produced by Planet Mu. Lonely portrays dancers in slow motion at night along a deserted Lower Wacker Drive and the Chicago River. An artist and filmmaker, Glasspiegel recently created Footnotes, a video projection for Art on theMART featured in the New York Times and dubbed 2021's "public art of the year" by TimeOut.

A work by Hannah Santistevan, a multidisciplinary conceptual artist with an emphasis in dance performance, rounds out the program.

Sunday, June 12
Pivot Arts highlights Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artists and recipients of Digital Dance Grants with a showing of works-in-progress and screening of films made by local artists.
4 p.m.: Works-in-progress performances
6 p.m.: Networking opportunity for Chicago dance community
7 p.m.: Screenings of digital works by Chicago artists including:

• Sildance/AcroDanza's Visita a Nuestros Muertos (Visit to Our Dead), created and choreographed by Silvita Diaz Brown and directed by Alexandra Yasinovsky. This dance film features four dancers portraying four personal stories about a deceased loved one and honoring them with Day of the Dead traditions.
• Archangels presents Shaping Lens, written and directed by Annie Franklin, produced, filmed and edited by Kenny Washington. This four-episode docuseries focuses on an artist's process in creating a successful dance film.
• Moods of Nāyikā, created by drag performer Abhijeet and dancemaker Ashwaty Chennat. This work is a celebration of the nāyikā-the heroine-who is etched into ancient Indian literature. In eight dynamic episodes, the ashta nāyikā emerges with agency, and all at once uncertain, sexy and powerful. This work is an explosion of South Asian queer artistry and the rising scene of local digital performance.
• Afterimage created by Zach Nicol; cinematography by Julia Pello. An afterimage produces the illusion of visual form in darkness, the impression of a vivid sensation retained after stimulus has ceased, or the trace of a sudden conclusion, rendered in the full depth of black. Obscured, a gesture, full of constraint, aware, or unaware, in a saturated visual and sonic field, a movement. What figures linger in the dark, after light, within color, outside image?

Thursday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
FORCE! an opera in three acts
Created and directed by Anna Martine Whitehead with Ayanna Woods
Composed by Philip Armstrong, Angel Bat Dawid, Ayanna Woods
Performers, including dancers, musicians, and vocalists, include Jenn Po'Chop Freeman, Rahila Coats, Brooke Skye, Teiana Davis, Angel Bat Dawid, Tramaine Parker, Daniella Pruitt, and others.

FORCE!, a new opera in development, depicts a group of women and femmes of color who, while waiting to get into a prison, find a memory-erasing mold leaking from the waiting room toilet-and realize their futures may depend on entering the prison behind the waiting room wall. FORCE! will be in residence developing work throughout the festival, and a public presentation with the artists and creator Anna Martine Whitehead takes place on Thursday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m. Whitehead is working with Chicago artist Ayanna Woods, a Grammy-nominated performer, composer, and bandleader.

Friday, June 17 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 18 at 7 p.m.
Beaten Path
Movement and choreography by Ashwaty Chennat
Percussion and music composition by Alvin Cobb, Jr.
Beaten Path is a three-movement dance suite that merges Carnatic (associated with southern India) and Black American jazz influences, creating a passionate and innovative blend of contemporary music and dance styles. The performance reflects upon journeys of mental health in diverse families.

Friday, June 17 and Saturday, June 18 at 8 p.m.
Rosina: Remixed!
Presented by Chicago Fringe Opera and BraveSoul Movement
Music by K. F. Jacques and 'Kechi
Text by Mikey to the P
Lyrics by the artists
Directed by George Cederquist
Choreographic movement by Kelsa "K-Soul" Robinson and Daniel "Bravemonk" Haywood

The Rosina Project, the "hip-h'opera" inspired by Rossini's The Barber of Seville that sold out during the 2019 Pivot Arts Festival, returns as Rosina: Remixed!. The artists share hit tracks and dance numbers from the original production along with new material from their recent solo ventures in hip hop, beat boxing and more.

The 2022 Pivot Arts Festival takes place June 10-18
at The Edge Theater complex, 5451 N. Broadway, Chicago.
Tickets go on sale April 26 at pivotarts.org/festival.
Admission ranges from free to $35.
All programming is subject to change.

Pivot Arts amplifies adventurous artists by creating and presenting contemporary, forward-thinking works across performance genres. The organization brings diverse people together through uniquely presented arts experiences, often in unusual spaces, and develops and produces new works throughout the year, culminating in a contemporary performance festival. Pivot Arts has adapted its Live Talk series to a new platform, the Pivot Arts Podcast, which includes short performances, interviews with artists and experts, and a featured music artist.
Pivot Arts is funded in part by FLATS, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Illinois Arts Council, the Edgewater Chamber of Commerce SSA #26, and the MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

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