MERGE

CURATED BY HELEN LEE
COLLIDING MUSICIANS AND DANCERS IN UNEXPECTED CONFIGURATIONS

PROGRAM ONE: HANNAH MARCUS & MITSU SALMON MARCH 28, 29 & 30 AT 8PM

This program begins with Hannah Marcus performing bones fragile, a movement and live sound looping piece that explores moments of infiniteness, tenderness, and memory featuring Milo Sachse-Hofheimer. Afterwards artist Mitsu Salmon accompanied by Kikù Hibino draws from her own family history, voice, and geology in her work Desert Turtle.
GET TICKETS >>

PROGRAM TWO: 
FREEDOM FROM AND FREEDOM TO & KINNARI VORA
APRIL 4, 5 & 6 AT 8PM

Featuring: Cristal Sabbagh, Scott Rubin, Amanda Maraist, Sharon Udoh, Kara Brody & Krissy Bergmark. 

Freedom From and Freedom To, led by Cristal Sabbagh, invites a pair of movement and sound improvisors from across Chicago to gather in front of a live audience, where they are grouped by chance. Artist Kinnari Vora dives into ritual with her piece Kissing The Earth, an offering to the ancestors who lived and breathed and at the same time are alive within us.

GET TICKETS >>

About The LookOut Series

The LookOut Series is excited for the return of its curatorial residency program, offering an opportunity for a Chicago dance practitioner to curate a series of performances over a two-week span. Following on the success of last season’s series work around curated by Kara Brody and Amanda Maraist, this season Helen Lee curates a series entitled MERGE, colliding musicians and dancers in unexpected configurations for two programs of work.

MERGE is a portal into the works of various movement and sound artists from all walks of life. Each program moves like a concert with an opening gesture followed by a headlining performance. Together these pairings collide creating a world where the entanglements of the chaotic and harmonious facets of dance and music can offer us a place to ruminate, delight and sometimes heal. 

ABOUT HELEN LEE

Helen Lee (they/she) is a Queer Asian Chicago-born interdisciplinary artist raised by immigrant parents from South Korea. They received an MFA with a focus in Performance and Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Dance with a minor in Theatre from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. They are the Artistic Director of Momentum Sensorium and have presented works in the US, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Canada. Helen was selected for 2022 Newcity Breakout Artist and has been an Artist in Residence at Chicago Artists Coalition and Links Hall with a current residency at High Concept Labs and Chicago Cultural Center. Previously, they curated the Dance Program for APIDA Arts Festival at the MCA and OPEN/CLOSED: stories on moms and other precarious issues for SAIC’s Open Studio Night. Much of their work focuses on the senses, death, and the entanglement of light/shadow, summer/winter, joy/grief. 

ABOUT HANNAH MARCUS 

 Hannah Marcus is a Chicago-based dance artist and maker interested in supporting and deconstructing the materiality of the body. Her research finds form in collaborative performance and video work, often exploring the nexus between movement and technology, sound, language, visual design, and site-specificity. 

ABOUT MILO SACHSE-HOFHEIMER

Milo Sachse-Hofheimer graduated with a BFA in dance from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities in 2023 where they received training from Erin Thompson, Ananya Chatterjea, Carl Flink, Hijack, Marciano Dos Santos and Laura Osterhaus. Throughout college, they performed repertoire from Gallim, Robert Moses, Annie Hanauer, BRKFST, Black Label Movement, Elayna Waxse, Leila Awadallah, and Brother(hood). In their final year of school, Milo performed with The Limon Dance Company and self-produced an evening-length show at the Red Eye Theater. Outside of school, they had the opportunity to perform work from Paulina Olowaska at the Walker, present work with Corpus Callosum Dance at the Southern Theater and Minneapolis/Indianapolis Fringe, participate in Sidra Bell’s Research Module, and attend the B12 Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival and Gallim Winter Intensive. Since graduating, they have begun working with Black Label Movement as well as House of DOV, Hannah Marcus,and Fever Dream Dance Collective. 

ABOUT MITSU SALMON

Mitsu Salmon creates visual and performing works that fuse multiple disciplines. Creating in differing media—translating one medium to another—is connected to the translation of differing cultures and languages. Her work draws from familial and personal narratives and then abstracts, expands and contradicts them. Her current projects investigate familial histories, nature, imperialism and archives.

Salmon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BFA from NYU. She has participated in artist residencies such as at Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan), Incheon Art Platform (Korea),  Guildhall (NY) and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. She has presented work at places such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Chicago Cultural Center. She has received the Midwest Nexus Touring Grant, Chicago Dancemaker’s Lab Grant, Utah Performing Arts Fellowship and grants from Salt Lake City. She is currently an assistant professor at Brandeis University.

ABOUT KIKÙ HIBINO

Japanese-born sound artist Kikù Hibino produces electronic music that focuses on unusual rhythmic structures and melodies inspired by nature, optical illusion and moiré patterns.

From chamber music for media productions to ambient noise for art installations, he has collaborated internationally with a wide variety of artists and scholars, including Whitney Johnson, Baudouin Saintyves, Yuge Zhou, Mitsu Salmon, Kawaguchi Takao (Dumb Type), Theaster Gates, Mike Weis (Zelienople) and Norma Field.

Kikù is on the Italian record label Superpang. His work has been shown in the Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bemis Center For Contemporary Arts, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago Cultural Center, Three Walls, Compound Yellow, Elastic Arts, Hairpin Arts Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art among others. He is a 2017 Individual Artist Grant recipient from Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, 2021 Outer Ear Artist in Residency at Experimental Sound Studio. Kikù lives and works in Chicago.

ABOUT KINNARI VORA

Kinnari Vora shares stories of universal human conditions and emotions through movement, meditation and theatrical practices. Her movements are rooted in Bharatanatyam (disciple of Sarmishtha Sarkar, India), various Indian folk dances and kalaripayattu martial arts. Her work is guided by ancestral energy, wisdom of nature and collaborative communion. Being a physical therapist and a yoga practitioner/instructor, she integrates healing practices in her dancemaking. Kinnari is co-founder and artistic co-chair of Ishti Collective and a dancer collaborator with Surabhi Ensemble. Her works have been presented at The Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Dance City Festival, Pivot Arts Festival, Ragdale Foundation, World Music Festival, among others and in India. 

ABOUT CRISTAL SABBAGH & SCOTT RUBIN

Cristal Sabbagh is a teaching interdisciplinary artist influenced by film, history, politics, Butoh and improvised sound. In her performances, her goal is to embody transformational memories, challenge power structures and awaken viewers’ senses. Cristal has found that working with live improvised music has inspired her best work, which has become vital to her practice.

Scott Rubin is a interdisciplinary musician and improvising violist whose work interrogates relationships between sound and movement through analog and digital means. His recent projects have involved interdisciplinary collaborations with musicians and dancers, often incorporating interactive acoustic/electronic improvisation, expanded performance practices, motion-sensors and live video. In these projects, he engages themes of intimacy, control and the sublime.

ABOUT AMANDA MARAIST & SHARON UDOH

Amanda Maraist is a movement based artist from the Texas Gulf Coast. In Chicago she co-directs bim bom studios, performs with Khecari, and works collaboratively with other performance, music and visual artists.

Sharon Udoh (they/she) is a gay, first-generation Nigerian-American composer, pianist, arranger, bandleader, and vocalist based in Chicago. Their work abandons genre and is expansive, and tells stories of human complexity, chaos and connection. She sometimes takes the stage under the name Counterfeit Madison; their performances are magnetic, dangerous, and kind, and her work has been commissioned by New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, Portland Lesbian Chorus, Atlanta Women’s Chorus and D-Composed Chicago. Find out more at counterfeitmadison.com.

ABOUT KARA BRODY & KRISSY BERGMARK

Kara Brody is a movement based artist focusing her work towards collaborative spaces. She teaches frequently throughout the Chicago area and currently in collaboration with Lucky Plush Productions, Erin Kilmurray, Khecari and Faye Driscoll. 

Krissy Bergmark is a tabla player, percussionist, composer and educator. Bergmark centers her creative work on bringing tabla to new genres and cross-genres through composition and performance with a grounded understanding of the traditions of the instrument.