What's On

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance Choreographer Jody Sperling and her Time Lapse Dance ensemble present a visually stunning program exploring human entanglement with nature. Featured works highlight the acclaimed climate-engaged collaboration between Sperling and environmental composer Matthew Burtner. Arbor dwells on the intimacy of trees. In Wind Rose, dancers render changing atmospheric patterns palpable to sight, sound, and touch. The program also features Freedive, a work-in-progress to be developed during the company’s residency at The Yard, which delves into aquatic themes of submersion and inundation. All these works use the company's signature style harnessing transformative costuming that abstract the essence of human movement into elemental and organic forces.

Founded and directed by choreographer Jody Sperling, Time Lapse Dance (TLD) envisions dance as a powerful force that can help move us toward a more embodied, sustainable, and equitable future. The work, which merges artistic and scientific research, investigates the relationship of human movers to ecological systems. The company’s unique style expands upon the legacy of visionary artist Loïe Fuller (1862-1928)—a pioneer of modern dance and performance technology—into environmental performance practices. Since 2022, Sperling and company are the Eco-Artist-in-Residence at The New York Society for Ethical Culture. They have toured nationally and internationally, most recently on a 3-city tour of Egypt. Dates: Fri, July 18, 2025, Sat, July 19, 2025 Booking and More Information

Red Clay Dance / REST.RISE.MOVE.NOURISH.HEAL REST.RISE.MOVE.NOURISH.HEAL is a site-responsive dance ritual:a journey towards collective healing and reclamation of our spiritual and ancestral relationship to the land. It was developed in relation to the urban farm, ART ON THE FARM in Chicago’s GRANT PARK, a space stewarded and designed by Erika Allen and Urban Growers Collective. Sanders-Ward visioned this work as "a practice, a process, an uncovering of the beautiful labor of bringing us ALL home to land, reclaiming ancestral cultural traditions, technologies, and tools that can lead to individual and collective healing." More specifically, REST.RISE.MOVE.NOURISH.HEAL explores how people of color have been disproportionately affected by food apartheid and the racial disparities in black farming. It’s an artistic approach that addresses the known inequities and structural racism that exist in the food system and in communities of color by reclaiming and activating time-honored Black/African-Indigenous traditions and technologies that support spiritual fulfillment and physical well-being for people of color. This work supports a DECOLONIZED practice that centers these traditions, technologies, and tools as foundational and righteously healing. This will be the first time staging this work in a theater setting. Dates: Thu, July 24, 2025, Fri, July 25, 2025 Booking and More Information

Red Clay Dance / Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar is an interdisciplinary project designed to envision a utopia of freedom for Black women and girls. This immersive work will serve as a sanctuary for their stories, blending dance, song, digital media, and built environment to create a profound and resonant experience. The project will feature choreography/direction by Vershawn Sanders-Ward, music by Jamila Woods, costumes by Shaqui Reed, visual elements by Scheherazade Tillet. Dates: Fri, August 1, 2025 Booking and More Information