Production Residencies Support Two Chicago Dancemakers

With the support of Walder Foundation, Chicago Dancemakers Forum announces the continuation of its City-Wide Production Residency Project, which was piloted in 2020-2021 and matches local dance-making artists with performance venues for a period of experimentation and creative development in a technical theater space. The project promotes paid artistic development, experimentation with production elements, employment for designers and technicians, and new collaborations in the field. The 2023 artists-in-residence, Maggie Bridger and SJ Swilley, were selected by the host venues in collaboration with Chicago Dancemakers Forum. 

2023 Production Residencies:

• Maggie Bridger at Links Hall 

• SJ Swilley at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago 

Maggie will begin work to develop a live version of her dance film, Radiate. Working with fellow disabled artists and Links Hall, she will continue to explore how a broad and flexible approach to access might transform the embodied experience of making, performing, and witnessing dance. Maggie shares that, “a really powerful thing about the disability community is that we don't leave anybody behind; as disability justice activist Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, we move at the pace of our slowest member.” For this project in development, Maggie is thinking about how the ability to “attend to other people's paces is really powerful.” Maggie is also questioning the role of pain in dance and dancemaking. “Instead of just accepting that it [pain] is a normal thing about dance… What does it mean to make pain a collaborator in the process? What does it mean to really attend to pain?” 

SJ shared Thomas F. DeFrantz's quote “we create the spaces we want to inhabit” when referring to their transition to the Chicago area. SJ's project is about playing with interdisciplinary entry points. During the residency, SJ will continue to explore the active modalities that are affiliated with being in a creative process. SJ is bridging together several elements of their performance in the sharing of how their art intersects with their mental health. For SJ, “the immediacy of performance does not allow me to anchor down in the past or project into the future. It is about staying present in the now.”

As an important element of the residency program, embedded writers deepen the artistic process, build connectivity and understanding, and increase awareness of dancemaking by engaging multiple perspectives. Chicago Dancemakers Forum partners with Performance Response Journal (PRJ) to provide embedded writers for each residency. 

Maggie Bridger 

Maggie Bridger, MS (she/her/hers) is a sick and disabled dance artist, scholar, and access worker interested in reimagining pain through the dancemaking process. She is a 2022 City of Chicago Individual Artist Program grantee and a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Maggie is a co-founder of the Inclusive Dance Workshop Series, a community-run series of dance workshops designed for all bodies, minds, and experience levels. Maggie was part of the inaugural cohort of the Dancing Disability Lab at UCLA and was a Synapse Arts 2021 New Works Artist, through which she developed and premiered her dance film, Radiate. In 2022, she and her collaborator, Sydney Erlikh, served as co-artistic directors for Unfolding Disability Futures, a multi-organization, site-specific performance and installation organized by local disabled artists and held at The Plant, a former meatpacking facility in the Back of the Yards/New City Neighborhood. She is currently a Fellow Artist in Residence with High Concept Labs, where she recently premiered a new original work, Scale, as well as launching LabE, a program designed to connect, platform, and support Chicago's disability dance community. Maggie serves on See Chicago Dance's Dance Amplification Committee and the organizing committee for the Chicago Dance Studies Working Group. She is an administrative fellow with the Dance Studies Association. Her writing has been published in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.

SJ Swilley

Originally from Charlotte, NC, SJ Swilley (they|them|theirs) is a Black queer movement artist and educator. Centering their own notions of liberation, empowerment and mental health, they are a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Johnson C. Smith University where they received a BA in Dance and a BA in Communication Arts. Swilley holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University where they initially began adjunct teaching. Swilley is an alum of the American Dance Festival where they served as assistant rehearsal director to Michelle Gibson. Additionally, they are an alum of the Urban Bush Women's Summer Leadership Institute. Swilley has been honored to work and study under impeccable artists including Candace Jennings, PJ Pennewell, Shani Collins, and LaTanya Johnson. They have performed with Lela Aisha Jones|FlyGround, Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works, and Kariamu and Company. They have presented work at the Cherry Street Pier Show, The American College Dance Association, Loose Leaves Showcase, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) Prior to joining the touring company of Red Clay Dance, Swilley has served as faculty at Columbia College Chicago, Denison University, Temple University and Barber-Scotia College. Swilley is a 2020-2021 performance fellow with Queer Art, a 2020-2021 recipient of the Rose Vernick Artistic Transformation Award, and a 2023 City of Chicago (DCASE) Grant Awardee. Swilley is excited to begin their residency in Chicago with Chicago Dancemakers Forum.

Chicago Dancemakers Forum

Chicago Dancemakers Forum catalyzes the growth and artistic fulfillment of Chicago's dancemakers by providing time and resources for in-depth exploration and creation. It builds broad support for the field of dance in Chicago by facilitating robust interaction among dancemakers and with the public.

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

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.

Links Hall

Links Hall encourages artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development and presentation of new work in the performing arts.

Performance Response Journal

The performance response journal is a community and a platform.; We are performing artists, writers, cultural producers, and witnesses.; We are a community of instigators and responders: across genres, across town, across policies and priorities.; We are, and are allied with, folx who identify as antiracist, intersectional feminists, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled.; We are typically underserved and under-acknowledged.; We value each other's perspectives. We value the creative ways our perspectives are communicated.;We are an archive of scenes. We are interviews and points of view.; We are a collection of responses to dance and performance in Chicago.

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