THE DANCE CENTER, MUSIC DEPARTMENT, AND HIP HOP STUDIES PROGRAM PRESENT
B-SERIES 10 TH ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL + SHOW & PROVE HIP HOP STUDIES CONFERENCE
B-LONG: HONORING AND EXAMINING LINEAGE, LEGACY, AND BELONGING IN HIP HOP & STREET DANCE CULTURE
February 29–March 3, 2024
B-LONG serves as a vibrant intersection of workshops, panels, screenings, battles, and jams, acting as a unifying platform for scholars, practitioners, and community innovators. This year’s festival places a special emphasis on Chicago’s profound influence on the evolution of Hip Hop and Street Dance culture, by expanding the reach of the Show & Prove series beyond California and hosting Red Bull’s Dance Your Style Chicago auditions.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 29
Popping Workshop
BIONIC
6:00 p.m.
B-LONG Verbal Cypher
Jaeya Bayani, BRAVEMONK & K-Soul
7:30 p.m.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1
House Workshop
LaTasha Barnes
6:00 p.m.
CAPSTONE Film Screening & Conversation
ChiBuck, Daniel Williams, with Dr. Imani Kai Johnson
7:30 p.m
SATURDAY, MARCH 2
Chicago Breaking: Lineage, Legacy, and Collective Consciousness
MIDUS & BRAVEMONK
10:00 a.m.
B-LONGing & Futurity: Undergraduate Scholars Panel
Jaeya Bayani, Vi McMahon, Myka Okot with Dr. Imani Kai Johnson
11:45 a.m.
7NMS|PROPHET Wkshp: PILLARS
Marjani Forté-Saunders & Everett Saunders
1:30 p.m.
B-LONG Battle & Jam
Judges: LaTasha Barnes, BIONIC, Mikey Disko, Lady Sol, Q.V.I.P
2:00-10:00 p.m.
**Full Schedule Below**
Why Should We Be Documenting Black Social Culture Now?
Honey Pot Performance, Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum
Panelists: CtrlZora, Skyla Hearn, Darrell “Artistic” Roberts, Mario Smith, Danta’ “StylesRaw” Williams
3:30p.m.
SUNDAY, MARCH 3
Hip Hop Freestyle Workshop
Mikey Disko
11:00 a.m.
Hip Hop in the Academy
Dr. Ayo Walker
12:30 p.m.
Red Bull Dance Your Style Chicago Auditions
1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Doors open at 12:00 p.m. Day of sign-ups close at 1:00 p.m.
Open Swim Presents Making Beats & Performance
Barron “Slot-A” Bollar
2:30 p.m.
2:00 p.m. – Doors Open
2:00 p.m. – Furious Styles: DJ Shon Dervis & Ernie Adams (Opening Cypher Set) ***3 dancers (including 1 CCC student) selected as “Cypher Winners” & given plaques + automatic entry into Red Bull Dance Your Style battle on 3/3/24***
4:00 p.m. – Student Emcee Cypher with Uriel Blunt, Alexis Delgado and Wanya Harris & Dance Cypher Awards
***Top 8 dancers (including one CCC student) from each of the following cypher sets are randomly placed into 8 different crews***
4:15 p.m. – Funk Cypher Prelim (DJ Moz Definite)
4:45 p.m. – House Cypher Prelim (DJ Moz Definite)
5:15 p.m. – Student Emcee Performance, Tap Exhibition w/ Jimmy Payne Jr. & Jumaane Taylor
5:30 p.m. – Footwork/Juke Cypher Prelim (DJ Roc)
6:00 p.m. – Hip-Hop Cypher Prelim (DJ Nero The Professor)
6:45 p.m. – Student Emcee Performance, Renegades Hip Hop Dance Team Performance
7:00 p.m. – Head-to-Head 4v4 crew Battles (DJs: Moz Definite & Nero The Professor)
8:00 p.m. – Footwork Through The Trauma - Kuumba Lynx Performance by Christopher “Mad Dog” Thomas
8:15 p.m. – Head-to-Head 4v4 Semi-Finals (DJs: Moz Definite & Nero The Professor)
8:45 p.m. – Judges Exhibition
9:00 p.m. – Head-to-Head 5v5 Finals (DJs: Moz Definite & Nero The Professor)
10:00 p.m. – Doors Close
Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood is a multitalented artist, educator, and cultural ambassador based in Chicago. He is a b-boy, host/emcee, and choreographer who has performed, judged, hosted and taught across the United States and internationally. He has appeared in events such as danceGathering in Lagos, Nigeria, and the International Cultural Festival of Contemporary Dance in Algiers. He has also been featured in various media, including the movie Dreams released by Lionsgate Films and the anthology Black Theater Is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater and Dance, 1970-2010.
BRAVEMONK is on faculty at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago since 2017, where he served as a Fellow on the Antiracism Transformation Team during its initial inception in 2021. He has taught and set work at many other prestigious institutions including Hubbard Street Dance, Beloit College, Kennesaw State University, Western Michigan University, is consistently brought in to teach at the University of Chicago, and in 2017 he was recipient of the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award.
As a Master of Ceremonies, BRAVEMONK has kept the energy hype while managing the flow and vibe of various large-scale events, including the Red Bull B.C. One Chicago Cypher (2014), Juste Debut U.S.A. National Qualifiers in Washington, D.C. (2018 & 2019), Chicago Dance Makers Forum (2021 Awards Celebration), Red Bull Dance Your Style Chicago Qualifiers (2021 & 2022), Embarc Chicago Variety Spectacular (2022 & 2023), Windy City Throwdown presented by Snipes (2023), and Red Bull Dance Your Style U.S.A. National Finals (2023). BRAVEMONK was also a founding contributor and co-host of Power Style Radio (2013- 2018). He is a member of Chicago’s legendary breaking crew, Phaze II Crosstown Crew, and co-founding Artistic Director of BraveSoul Movement.
Bravemonk’s movement vocabulary is rooted in Original Manifestational “Black” American urban vernacular dance forms, including Breaking, HipHop freestyle and social dances, and House. He also draws on his training
in martial arts and other embodied Afro-diasporic movement languages. Bravemonk’s artistic pursuits extend beyond dance, as he has played the character “Basilio” in The Rosina Project, a Hip-Hopera developed and produced by The Chicago Fringe Opera and BraveSoul Movement. He has also appeared as a character in an episode of Fox/Disney television series The Big Leap and as a Voice Over Actor for characters Hu Yi, Du Yi, and Lu Yi in the upcoming fanimated series titled Rise of the Last Dragon. Bravemonk was named on NewCity’s print magazines Players 50 (Top 50 leaders of Chicago’s theater, dance, opera, and comedy culture) 2018 and 2023 list of who really performs for Chicago right now.
Dr. Imani Kai Johnson is an interdisciplinary scholar, specializing in the African diaspora, global popular culture, and Hip Hop. She was born and raised in Northern California, but comes to UC Riverside from her adopted home in Brooklyn New York. She has attended UC Berkeley (BA), New York University (MA), and the University of Southern California (Ph.D.) where she received her doctorate in American Studies & Ethnicity.
Dr. Johnson’s book on the ritual circle in international Hip Hop dance communities is titled Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: the Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop (Oxford University Press, 2023). This work examines the political, cultural, and spiritual nature of Hip Hop dance through a close examination of the ritual practice of cyphering—collaborative and competitive dance circles. Using the metaphor of “dark matter” (a physics concept about non-luminous matter comprising the majority of the universe), the book addresses histories of exclusion, marginalization, and invisibilization that fundamentally shape the aesthetic sensibilities of breaking culture, and the ways that such aesthetics inform the current circulation of Hip Hop dance transnationally. She has published articles in Dance Research Journal, Alif, Women & Performance, and the Cambridge Companion to Hip Hop. She is also co-editor, alongside Mary Fogarty, of the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies, the first collection of peerreviewed research on Hip Hop streetdances, including work by practitioners,
practitioner-scholars, and scholars of dance, music, sociology, and the hard sciences.
As the founder, chair, and sole Artistic Director of the Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference Series, Dr. Johnson’s work on Hip Hop extends to cultivating sites for Hip Hop scholars to speak to one another and to a knowing Hip Hop community to foster the growth of Hip Hop Studies as a field that is responsible to communities beyond the academy.
Dr. Johnson is a former Ford Dissertation Fellow (2008-2009), and has held positions as a Postdoctoral Fellow in History at East Tennessee State University, Postdoctoral Fellow in Performance Studies and dramaturg in the Theater Department at NYU. Additionally, she has participated in several noteworthy institutes including the 2014 NEH Summer Institute on Black Aesthetics & African Centered Cultural Expressions, the Mellon Dance Studies Summer Institute, Decolonizing Knowledge & Power Summer School, the Summer School on Black Europe, Experimental Critical Theory, and the Advanced Oral History Summer Institute at UC Berkeley. She was also a 2016-2017 Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow.
Amina Norman-Hawkins is an adjunct faculty member in the Music Department at Columbia College Chicago. She teaches ‘Hip-Hop: A Sonic History’ and ‘African American Music Survey’. She is a founding faculty member of Columbia College’s Hip-Hop Studies minor and co-founder of ‘ManiFresh’, a mini hip-hop festival within Columbia’s annual Manifest Urban Arts Festival.
Amina is a respected emcee, poet, and hip-hop practitioner. She is cofounder of Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Month (officially recognized in July by a City Council resolution in 2003). She served as United States Cultural Envoy in 2010, touring 7 regions of the West African nation, Cote d’Ivoire. The experience was chronicled in her independently produced documentary Keep It Moving-Chicago to Cote d’Ivoire.
Amina has been on panels alongside activists, entertainers, and academics like Gloria Steinem, Dr. Carol Adams, Billy Wimsatt, MC Lyte, Fat Joe, DMC,
Bakari Kitwana, Rhymefest, Joan Morgan, and many others. She has taken part in the “My” Philosophy: The Rise of Hip Hop Studies in the Academy Symposium, Unchained Vibes Africa conference, Preserving the Beats Symposium, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, Taking It To The Streets, Slum Fest & Paint Louis, Campus Progress National Student Conference, Antioch College Hip-Hop Convergence, and Remixing The Art Of Social Change.
Amina has spent 30+ years actively involved in hip-hop culture and community. She has guest lectured at Depaul, Northwestern, SAIC, Loyola, and Governors State University and is considered an internationally recognized voice in hip-hop.
Kelsa “K-Soul” Rieger-Haywood is a dance artist, culturally responsive educator, community organizer and curator. Kelsa is Co-Founder/CoArtistic Director of BraveSoul Movement (since 2016), and a member of the internationally known street-dance crew, Venus Fly (since 2005). Kelsa’s movement training has been through a range of spaces and forms, including underground House and Hip Hop, capoeira, samba, salsa/batchata, modern techniques and gymnastics. Kelsa has performed and presented work at danceGATHERING (Lagos, Nigeria), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), B.Supreme (London, UK), B-girl Be (Minneapolis, MN), J.U.I.C.E. Hip-Hop Dance Festival (Hollywood, CA), Constellation/ Links Hall (Chicago, IL) and Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago, IL). A prominent focus of Robinson’s work is building reciprocal collaboration and meaningful exchange between Hip-Hop and the academy. Kelsa currently serves as Associate Professor of Instruction at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, a Fellow of Columbia’s Antiracist Transformation Team, Coordinator of Columbia’s Hip-Hop Studies Minor, and Curator of The B-SERIES, a biannual festival and co-curricular program celebrating Hip-Hop & street dance culture at the College since 2013. Kelsa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and a Master of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
2023 Bessie Outstanding Creator/Choreographer for The Jazz Continuum, 2021 Bessie Outstanding Performer award winner, and New York Times lauded Best Dance & Breakout Star LaTasha Barnes is an internationally awarded and critically-acclaimed dance artist, choreographer, educator, and tradition-bearer of Black American Social Dance from Richmond, VA. She is globally celebrated for her musicality, athleticism, and joyful presence throughout the cultural traditions she bears: House Dance, Hip-Hop, Waacking, Authentic Jazz, and Lindy Hop, among them. Barnes’ expansive artistic, competitive, and performative skills have made her a frequent collaborator to Dorrance Dance, Singapore-based Timbre Arts Group, Ephrat Asherie Dance, and many more.
Barnes’ leadership and business skills have placed her in positions of service as Chair of the Board of Trustees for Ladies of Hip-Hop Festival®, Vice President of Marketing & Outreach for the International Lindy Hop Championship®, Board Member of the Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, the Frankie Manning Foundation, and a contributing member to the NEFER Global Movement Collective.
Expanding the scope of impact for the communities she serves, Barnes completed her self-designed Masters in Ethnochoreology, Black Studies and Performance Studies thru New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study (2019). Her thesis and continued applied research are working to bridge the gap between communities of practice and academic cultural dance research, performance, preservation and pedagogy. In support of this dialogue, Barnes was honored to be a contributing author to the award winning text Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century - Univ. FL Press (2021). Ensuring future artists and dance scholars maintain authentic cultural context as they move through the world bearing forth Black dance traditions. To further support this effort Barnes joined the esteemed faculty of Arizona State University School of
Music, Dance & Theater as Asst. Prof of Dance in Fall 2021.
From the analysis of here research and in deeper concert with the mission to strengthen Black artists reverence for and expression with Jazz, Barnes is honored to be the visionary creator and Artistic Director of the multi-award winning intergenerational and intercommunal cultural arts project and stage experience The Jazz Continuum, commissioned and presented by Guggenheim Works & Process and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2021.
Additionally she is deeply honored to be a part of the Brain Trust that developed the ground-breaking stage production Swing Out, bringing the passion and power of Lindy Hop and its community to the concert stage. The New York Times said of her collaboration with Caleb Teicher in Swing Out, “Barnes is especially extraordinary for the way the past and the present can pass through her...”
Across all her efforts, Barnes’ eternal purpose is to inspire fellow artists and arts enthusiasts to champion artivism through cultivating an authentic sense of self and intention in their creative expressions and daily lives.
Jonathan “Bionic” Bayani is a globally-recognized and influential dancer, specializing in Popping, Animation, Waving, and Boogaloo. With bboy squad Rockforce Crew, he was part of the last US group to win the world championships Battle of the Year in 1998. Since then, he’s battled, judged, performed, and taught dance workshops & master classes nationally and globally, and has been featured in music videos, theatrical shows, commercials, etc. Bionic is a co-founder and member of machinegonefunkcrew, a member of the @ groovaloos crew; and has performed for artists and entities like @taylorswift, @ptxofficial, @cirquedusoleil and for the Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour. Bionic’s positive impact as a champion in his era of popping and as a Filipino-American creative representing the Bay Area, California, has been felt by and has inspired dancers across the diaspora and beyond. He is a master of his craft and role model for dancers everywhere.
MIKEY DISKO (MOP TOPS * Knuckle Neck Tribe* Soul Sector) has been contributing to Hip Hop culture and active in the international street dance scene for 30+ years and is recognized for his abilities in freestyle hip hop, mixing popping/ strutting, locking, and house dancing. Mikey started dancing in 1991 during the golden era of Hip Hop and the “renaissance” of the San Francisco Bay Area Hip Hop scene. He was inspired by the Bay Area’s unique approach to 90’s Hip Hop, collectives like KNUCKLE NECK TRIBE (aka West Coast Rock Steady), and by New York dancers such as the MOP TOP family. In the mid 90’s Mikey was the head of the San Francisco chapter of world renown Hip Hop organization, Universal Zulu Nation. In 1997-98, Mikey formed the Bay Area based, all style dance crew, SOUL SECTOR. Soul Sector was considered to be one of the last active true Hip Hop freestyle crews from the 90’s era in California. They were influential globally in freestyle Hip Hop in the 2nd half of the 1990’s and were partly responsible for bringing NYC House Dance Foundation to the west coast. Mikey Disko is now also part of MOP TOP, a family of Hip Hop & House dance pioneers who once inspired him. Mikey Disko spent the past 25 years studying foundation from various street dance pioneers of multiple styles and incorporated his own Bay Area flavor. Mikey Disko’s versatility has enabled him to judge contests, perform, and teach workshops across the USA in over 35 countries including France, Egypt, Brazil, Singapore, England, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, the Philippines, Denmark, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Poland, China, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, and Japan. Mikey has judged prestigious international contests including BBoy Summit - LA (2010), IBE- Holland (2012), Ocean Battle Session - Taiwan (2015), Battle Bad - Paris (2019), and Freestyle Session World Finals (2022). In 2000, Mikey was a regular on the iconic dance tv show, Soul Train. In 2007, Mikey was selected by Red Bull to participate in their Red Bull Beat Riders team. Along with Soul Sector, he won Dance Delight NY and was a finalist at Dance Delight Japan in 2009. Mikey also organized a national Popping & Locking contest called Homecoming. Homecoming was a pre-qualifier event for the UK Champs (2008) in London and R16 in Korea (2010). In 2011, Mikey was awarded an honor by the San Francisco Universal Zulu Nation for his years of work in
Hip Hop culture. Mikey has re-united with other San Francisco legends to rebuild the Hip Hop collective that originally inspired him in 1991, KNUCKLE NECK TRIBE. Along with the Knuckle Neck, Mikey has collaborated with other west coast Hip Hop artists such as The Pharcyde, Souls of Mischief and DJ Q-bert to represent the Bay Area’s music culture and movement. Mikey Disko consistently travels the globe sharing his experiences and history through lectures and workshops while spreading awareness of West Coast Hip Hop contributions. He stays involved with building younger generations and open to newer forms of Hip Hop like Turfing. He is working towards bridging the gap and connecting generations to the evolution of Bay Area styles from strutting, to 90’s Hip Hop, to Turfing. Mikey’s overall goal is to constantly grow as a teacher, a curator of art and music, organizer, artist, producer, and student.
Leyda “Lady Sol” Garcia is a first generation XICANA from Chicago, proud daughter of Maria Garcia, mother of Jasir Malik-Quetzal Bailey and wife of Kennedy Mukwacha.
She was born a dancer who spent her teens and twenties training in dance clubs throughout Chicago, NYC, & Los Angeles. Leyda was mentored and taught by numerous Black Dance masters including Kamikaze Dance Crew, Mama Efe McWorter of Joseph Holmes Dance Theater, Baba Idy Ciss of Muntu Dance, Hip-Hop legend, Leslie “Big Lez” Segar, the Body Love Empress Jessica Phoenix Fiyah, and Chad “Global Bob” Torrington from Kingston, Jamaica.
Lady Sol is a Co-Founding member of Kuumba Lynx, Chicago’s premiere Hip Hop arts organization founded in 1996 alongside Jaquanda Saulter and Jacinda Bullie. She is also the sole-Founder and former Manager/Director of the globally recognized Chicago FootworKINGz (2007-2015) under the creative leadership of Charles “King Charles” Parks, now Creation Global. FWK notoriety includes A.G.T, A.B.D.C.Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj, Justen Debout Paris, & Madonna’s “Sticky & Sweet” Tour.
Lady Sol’s work has featured in major media outlets including BET, MTV, NBC, and TBS. She has worked side by side with major House, Hip Hop and
Dancehall music giants Cajmere & Dajae, Ten City, Mr. Lee, Busta Rhymes, Da Brat, Crucial Conflict, Twista, Dancehall Queen Lady Patra, Miss Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean.
Leyda asserts herself as a Professor of Practice who has taught fusions of Afro-Caribbean-Hip Hop movement workshops at Harvard, Northwestern, Stanford, University of Chicago, and the Dance Center at Columbia College.
One of her proudest moments includes winning her first award in the teaching arts granted by 3Arts Chicago *(2018). She is a 2024 Hip Hop Ambassador with the Meridian Center for Cultural Diplomacy’s Next Level Cohort 10.0.
“I intend to continue preserving street culture through a Bob Marley “One Love” lens instilled in me since the early 90’s and I shall continue to teach, present, and promote it locally and globally.” says Lady Sol. Punto (Piri Thomas)
Quanzy Pugh, a.k.a. the Legendary QVIP, is a pioneering Chicago Footworker and entrepreneur hailing from the West Side of Chicago. QVIP has danced in prominent music videos including Twista’s Pimp Like Me and Dud N Nem’s Watch My Feet and his crew opened for Soulja Boy twice. QVIP was featured in the VICE mini-documentary Making Tracks: Chicago Footwork. He is the founder of Don’$ of Chicago Footwork Enterprises and was part of the first FOOTWORKINGZ.
7NMS (Marjani Forte-Saunders & Everett Saunders) - Operating in CA and NY, 7NMS| is the public emergence of Marjani Forté-Saunders and Everett Saunders’ work as a collaborative team, radically engaging art as a medium of elevation, healing, and futurity. With 7 awardwinning projects in 10 years, 7NMS tote a revolutionary commitment to the Black radical imagination. PROPHET is an awardee of the 2020 MAP Fund and 2020 New Music USA Award, and the National Dance Project Production and Touring grant 2021. Marjani is a 2019 FCA Fellowship awardee, a 3x Bessie award winner, and an inaugural recipient of the Jerome Hill, Dance USA and UBW Choreo. Center Fellowships. Everett is the composer and thought partner behind the award-winning and internationally touring production, Memoirs of a...Unicorn, and a 2x New Music USA Awardee. His recent work can be found as composer/sound designer on Jaamil Kosoko’s Chameleon, mayfield Brooks Whale Fall, and Urban Bush Women’s Hair & Other Stories (2018).
While incubating PROPHET through our Fall ‘20 and Winter ‘21 Satellite Residencies, in our newly erected home studios, we have worked in close collaboration with co-visionaries d. Sabela grimes (movement composer and sound archivist), Meena Murugesan (filmmaker & media designer), and Marc Winston (photographer), producing PROPHET’s latest filmic iteration, commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow.
Serouj “Midus” Aprahamian is Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has been active in Hip Hop dance since 1997, gaining notoriety under the name Midus for his unique, abstract style. In 2002, he helped produce a highly influential experimental dance video called Detours and, together with his group Style Elements Crew, has contributed to such cross-cutting concepts as Threading, Tracing, Freeze Framing, and Mannequinism. He has taught, performed, and judged at leading hip-hop events throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Eurasia, and given workshops and presentations at universities throughout North America.
On the scholarly front, Aprahamian’s research has uncovered numerous myths surrounding Hip Hop history and offered new information surrounding the beginnings of the culture. His first book project, The Birth of Breaking: Hip-Hop History from the Floor Up, is set to be published by Bloomsbury Press in the summer of 2023. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Black Studies, Dance Research Journal, Oxford African American Studies Center, and The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies. Aprahamian also serves on the Editorial Board of Dance Research Journal and as a member of PoP Moves, an international research group focusing on popular dance and performance. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Toronto Arts Council, Province of Ontario, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).
Most recently, Aprahamian edited and posthumously published a collection of sketches and writings by the famed aerosol art and hip-hop pioneer PHASE 2. He is also co-editing a special issue on dance and protest for IASPM Journal, the peer-reviewed journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). Aprahamian is regularly consulted for news reports on Breaking and Hip Hop history and continues to perform at community-based events throughout the world.
His current scholarly interests focus on the role of dance in hip-hop’s musical development, youth identity formation, cultural criminalization, and aesthetic institutionalization.
Michigan-rasied/Chicago-based music producer and DJ, Barron “Slot-A” Bollar, has been navigating Chicago’s nightlife and underground Hip Hop scene since 2004. Producing for the likes of Add-2, Philmore Greene, Neak, Valid, The Black Opera and more before executive producing Jamila Wood’s 2019 Legacy! In 2011, Slot-A made his introduction in night life via DJing and by joining the then longest running college radio show, The Hip Hop Project, alongside DJ Scend. Slot-A has interviewed the likes of Black Milk, Sada X and Chicago’s underground talent and spinning on air.
ChiBuck Movement aka “ChiBuck” is a collective of movement artists, creatives, and storytellers that has been representing the Krump dance form and culture in the Chicagoland area since 2017. They primarily focus on community building, empowerment, betterment, expression and cultivating respect for the Krump culture; music, dance, customs, etc. ChiBuck has performed in various venues and in collaboration with The Firehouse Community Center (Annual Firefest), B-Series, BraveSoul Movement, Dome Productions, Self Reclaimed, and World of Dance just to name a few. They have hosted sessions, ladies sessions, Friends of ChiBuck I and II, WECAMEFROMHERE, workshops and classes; all while traveling across the country to compete and build camaraderie in the national krump scene. ChiBuck Movement is a community; not a Krump crew or fam! “I Am ChiBuck, You Are ChiBuck, We Are ChiBuck.
Founded in 2021 by Darrell “Artistic” Roberts, Carrico “Kingdom Rock” Sanders and Brian Gorman, The Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum is an organic treasure trove of flyers, photos, clothing, tapes and other artifacts that adorn the inside of a Bronzville home on Chicago’s Southside. This pop-up exhibit features a sampling of artifacts and information about Chicago Hip Hop history and the Museum itself.
Meida McNeal & Honey Pot Performance – Chicago Black Social Cultural Map
Meida Teresa McNeal is part time faculty in Art & Art History. Courses taught include Performance Aesthetics, Community Engaged Arts & Social Practice, Gender, the Body, & Representation, and The Body. Areas of research and specialization include performance studies, dance, creative placemaking, and critical ethnography. She received her PhD in Performance Studies (Northwestern) and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History (Ohio State). Meida is Artistic/Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. Awards include the 3Arts Award in Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and the Links’ Hall Co-Missions Fellowship. She is also Arts & Culture Manager with the Chicago Park District supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives across the city’s parks and cultural centers.
The Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) archive is designed by Honey Pot Performance (HPP) to reach a wide demographic, from the casually curious to academic experts. The archive documents the lived experiences of Black Chicagoans from the Great Migration through the rise of House music, giving this chronically under-documented constituency an opportunity to see their stories and histories represented as written record and archive. The act of creating and sharing the CBSCM archive not only serves to insert this important segment of American history into the official canon, but also
engages those whom the archive represents, inviting them to actively help to build and shape this historical record, and increasing their agency from passive audience into participant and history-maker.
In addition to working directly with community members as primary sources for contributions to the archive, the CBSCM has partnered with local archives and organizations including the Blackivists, the Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation, the Center for Black Music Research, DuSable Museum, and Arts + Public Life at University of Chicago to research entry content for venues and sites. HPP purposefully approaches the process of archiving as a social, community driven practice, with the aim of fostering intersection and interaction between a wide range of institutions, grassroots efforts, and practitioners. In this way, we hope to additionally serve the archiving and historic preservation community by facilitating connections with communities they may not normally have direct access to.
Most public engagement around the archive takes place in community-based partner institutions and community centers on the South and West Sides of Chicago, both of which are home to majority Black and Brown communities.
The CBSCM archive encompasses the oral and material history of Chicago’s Black social culture across the 20th century from the Great Migration through the birth of house music. Since 2014, through open sessions, targeted interviews, and multi-faceted research, data has been compiled on over 350 venues in the Chicagoland area. Materials in the collection include digitally recorded oral histories, digitized audio from cassette tapes, twodimensional paper flyers, posters, small hand-held “pluggers,” and printed photographs, as well as sartorial expressions of house music culture.
Saad Mukhtar area of research interests include archival science, ethnography, and semiotics. He was a doctoral fellow in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University and holds a BA Film/Video Studies from Purdue and a BS in Business Administration from Drexel University. He has researched the transnational adaptation of Hip Hop dance and archiving audiovisual mediums, and has traveled to South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, and China to document breaking culture.
Organized by Breaking Project, Remind Rewind in Time, curated by Saad Mukhtar, features selected media from the Breaking Project collection. The exhibit features legacy media that prompts visitors to reflect on the evolution of technology and communication, especially in contrast to today’s digital media landscape. It underscores the transformative shift from analog to digital, highlighting how new media technologies have revolutionized sharing and consuming cultural content. This juxtaposition invites a deeper contemplation of the tangible and intangible aspects of cultural transmission in the digital age. http://breakingproject.org
Dr. Ayo Walker is a Performance Studies Practitioner, Choreographer, and Dance and African American Studies Educator. As an antiracist educator, her praxis is committed to substantiating the techniques, vernaculars, and genealogies and embodiment of historically marginalized and othered dance aesthetics. Her work is rooted in visibilizing the “blood memories,” “aesthetic of the cool,” and the “get down” qualities evident in Africanist and Black dance aesthetics. Employing social justice choreography representative of anti-essentialist movement that is at once exposing and undoing stereotypical assumptions historically signifying the Black body politic, her works challenge what performing Blackness is and isn’t.
Daniel Williams (Purus Motus) otherwise known in the Chicago street dance community as Daniel D.F.Y.H. is the co founder, and director of photography for Purus Motus Dance Film Company. He started his unofficial training of the street arts in Iowa city at the age of 19 under his older brother. Now in his 15th season of teaching Hip Hop in various north shore studios, Daniel has become a leading specialist in the field of self identifying improvisation. He is also well known in the underground dance circle as having started the battle series “Aux Cord Call Outs” presented by his late crew Mad For No Reason. Learning House, B-boying, Locking, Chicago Footwork, Popping, Hip Hop, and Krump from some of the most decorated crews in the city such as Electric Funkateers, Crooks crew, So Swift, ChiBuck, and many more, Daniel has become a Swiss army knife of movement. Winner of Boogie Therapy
Seven to Smoke in 2022, an event thrown by Chicago’s very own Stylin’ OUT crew, Daniel continues to climb the ladder amongst his peers. Making it multiple times in top 8 at WORLD of DANCE Chicago, and into the finals and final four at BATTLE of the EAGLE in Logan Square, Columbia College seven to smoke finalist, and a multitude of competitions, Daniel has made his way on to the judge panel for a handful of these events in the region. With influences from Nomi Dance Company and Cocodaco Dance Project, Daniel has learned to take street art and apply it to the concert realm becoming a cinematographer, and already a choreographer for Purus Motus alongside renown choreographer Katie Carey. Broadcasting a dynamic range of emotion and motion when it comes to Bounce, Groove, Jack, Hit, Rock, and Waving, the details in what Daniel is able to translate is reflected in the clarity in the movement amongst his students.
THE B-SERIES, established in 2013, is a semiannual festival celebrating hip-hop and street dance culture at the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago. The B-Series recognizes these Afro-diasporan vernacular dance traditions as cultural movements that build community through embodied history, philosophy, and expression. The B-Series draws seasoned professionals and amateurs from around the country to engage in freestyle battles, cyphers, performances, workshops, and community-building activities.
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Kevin Rechner
MEDIA/TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR: Jane Jerardi
SOUND OPERATOR: Dante Giramma
STAGEHAND: Paris Anderson
Paris Anderson – Although Paris is a dance major, she enjoys being backstage as well as being on stage. Paris has studied at Arizona school for the arts for technical theatre and arts management, graduated from Chicago High school for the arts and is currently an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago. She has experience in costume making, set design, props design, stage management and arts management.
Dante Giramma is a composer, multimedia artist, and sound engineer from Western Massachusetts. His work spans many mediums including fixed media, generative composition, composition for dance and film, CGI & interactive media, sound sculpture, and multimedia installation. He is incredibly invested in creating artistic experiences that are both playful and impactful, using installation work and collaboration with dancers as a catalyst to explore interactivity and physicality in art and sound.
Jane Jerardi serves as the Media/Technology Coordinator for the Dance Center, providing video documentation for both the Presenting Series and its academic programs. As a part of its faculty, she teaches video for dance and choreography courses. In her role, she has documented and edited over 250 performances, workshops, and events, providing essential documentation to artists and adding to the Dance Center’s leading, regional archive of materials dating from 1980 to the present. An artist working in the media of performance, choreography, and video installation, her work has been presented at galleries and theaters in Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC.
Kevin Rechner has been Production Manager and Technical Director for the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago since 1996. He has a bachelor’s degree in Theatre from Illinois State University and spent 3 years in Paris, France studying Movement Theatre with Jacques Lecoq and Daniel Stein. He has created four solo performance works including I AM HUGO and performed in Emily Johnson’s Thank You Bar at the Dance Center. Technically, he has worn many hats for The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Daniel Stein, Akira Kasai, Kota Yamazaki, Momenta!, Hedwig Dances, Urban Bush Women, HT Chen and Dancers, Natya Dance Theatre, Mordine and Company Dance Theatre, The Seldoms and many more. Kevin’s work with Lucky Plush Productions includes Cinderbox 18, The Sky Hangs Down Too Close, Punk Yankees, The Better Half, Cinderbox 2.0, Trip the Light Fantastic: The Making of Superstrip, and Rink Life Recent lighting designs include Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, and Junie B. Jones, The Musical for The Young People’s Theatre of 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.
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.
Founder
Shirley Mordine
Chair of Dance
Lisa Gonzales
Associate Chair
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan
Dean, School of Fine and Performing Arts
Dr. Rosita M. Sands
Faculty
Bevara Anderson
Lisa Gonzales
Susan Imus
Darrell Jones
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan
Kelsa “K-Soul” RiegerHaywood
Dr. Ayo Walker
Jessica Young
T. Ayo Alston
Keesha Beckford
Malik Camara
Zineb Chraibi
Shaker Cohlmia
Allen Desterhaft
Emma Draves
Colleen Halloran
Carrie Hansen
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 Staff
Michael Caskey Music Director, Accompanist Coordinator
Dan DiLuciano
Director of Facilities and Operations
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
Pamela McNeil
Academic Manager
Mia Nelson
Box Office/Reception
Disha Patel
Box Office/Reception
Kevin Rechner
Technical Director and Production Manager
Roell Schmidt
Dance Presenting Series Producing Director
Meredith Sutton
Dance Presenting Series Artistic Director
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 February 1st, 2024. 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
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.
A. Montgomery Ward Foundation