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. Through its residency programs, artist-curated festivals, co-presentations with self-producing artists, cabarets, performance series, workshops, and low-cost studio rentals, Links provides a home for artists across all performance disciplines, at all stages of their careers. Founded in 1978 by choreographers Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow, and Charlie Vernon, Links Hall became a National Performance Network partner in 1998 and received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2016. In April 2013, Links and musician/presenter Mike Reed created a collaborative arts venue as the shared home of Constellation Arts and Links Hall. See Chicago Dance named Links Hall as the “Fearlessly Inspired” organization of 2020 noting the adaptive spirit and unfailing desire to support artists of all kinds. www.linkshall.org

Artists of Links Hall

Darling Shear

Beatitude

is choreopoem exploring the Beat Generation and related aesthetics of the movement. It employs movement, fashion, and poetry as a means of recreating the spirit of the literary movement while integrating a balance between contemporary and historical lenses. Additionally, the project will explore the Midwestern intersection of Beat Generation artists and Chicago’s imprint on the artists.

Darling Shear is a Chicago Native, but has roots in Atlanta where Darling started dance training in Ballet, Modern, Jazz, and African at North Springs Charter School of the performing arts. Darling began dancing professionally after graduating, working with Bubba Carr, choreographer/artistic director to Cher Rhonda Henriksen, soloist with Hubbard Street and Twyla Tharp; Tracy Vogt, former Philadanco dancer; Hinton Battle, the Original Scarecrow from the broadway production of “The Wiz”; and Lauri Stallings, Hubbard street soloist and founder/artistic director of gloATL. A freelance dancer/choreographer, Darling has worked with The Fly Honeys of the The Inconvenience, Body Cartography of Minneapolis, Links Hall, Victoria Bradford, Chicago AIDS Foundation, chances dances, no small plan productions, Slo’Mo, the Public hotel, Soho House Chicago, Growing Power inc., expo Chicago, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, the ArtInstitute, Depaul museum, University of Chicago, University of Illinois in Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Film Archive, Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, Salonathon, and Open TV beta. In 2018, Darling was chosen as the cover model and also quoted in Micah Salkind's Oxford published book 'Do you remember house? Chicago's queer of color underground’. In 2019, Darling received the Between Gestures scholarship to Austria to attend Impulstanz in Vienna in addition to the Chicago Dancemakers Forum fellowship and Links Hall CoMission Fellowship with a 3Arts nomination. Darling’s career has been one with a strong spiritual center and allowance of universal well-being.

A few graces in the second pandemic spring

performance about voice, connection, and presence in the time of empty theatres--drawing from interviews and conversations conducted from afar. What are the connections that have been made in the year of separation? What are the things we have discovered? What do our technologies give us and how have they changed?

Chloe Johnston is a writer, performer, and teacher in Chicago and an Associate Professor of Theater at Lake Forest College. She was a 2020 Co-MISSION Fellow at Links Hall. She is a co-author of 46 Plays for America’s First Ladies, which premiered in the fall of 2020 and was named a “Critic’s Pick” in the New York Times. She is a long-time ensemble member of The Neo-Futurists, most recently performing in “The Egg Wrench” in May 2021. She has worked with theatres throughout Chicago, including Steppenwolf, The Goodman, Lookingglass, About Face, Curious Theatre and CollaborAction and has performed with Second Story, Write Club, and Paper Machete. Her writing on performance and activism has appeared in Liminalities, Theatre Topics, Performance Research, Theatre Journal and TDR. With Coya Paz Brownrigg, she is the co-author of Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide to Devised Theater, published by Northwestern University Press. Chloe is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Lake Forest College.

A Femme Body

takes the oral histories of queer BIPOC femme-identified beauties and turns them into nature-based mythological folklore. Having never heard a queer folktale as they were growing up, the performer aims for this performance to be the beginning of an archive that helps establish queer BIPOC femme identities and the beauty of a spectrum of genders as sources of wisdom and connection to nature and the foundations of a strong, thriving existence on the earth.

Sojourner Zenobia is an embodied sacred space facilitator, multidisciplinary performance artist, abolitionist, and womanist earth wisdom- dream walker. Sojourner is completely moved by being on this planet we call earth and is specifically interested in inviting BIPOC queer folks into somatic spiritual space to explore, strengthen and practice collective wisdoms that we receive from the earth. For over a decade Sojourner has been facilitating Stillness, a ritual and meditation practice space for BIPOC femmes and non-binary folks. Through Stillness hundreds of participants  have deepened their connections with ancestors, nature and their personal gifts. As a performer they use meditation, ritual, storytelling and somatic healing practices as “now portals” to reach across time and connect with ancestors, listen to the earth and follow the wisdom of the body. Through deep presence and listening, Sojourner collects movement, song, characters and poetic narratives to create participatory, alternate worlds that can be experienced within our current reality as gateways to explore truths, express feelings, and play.