The truth about theaters is that they’re boring. This is not, however, to say that what happens within them is boring; merely that they’re rather blank, expectant, waiting. This waiting assumes added significance at the present moment, as no one can predict when lights will return to Steppenwolf, the Goodman, the Lyric. Like us, some will die. Less than two weeks after temporarily closing on March 14, the venerable Hubbard Street Dance Chicago announced the nearly half-century-old Lou Conte Dance Studio would remain shuttered indefinitely. And this is surely just a canary in the proverbial coal mine. If you’re worried about how—or even whether—the live arts will survive, your fear is well-founded. In the absence of some wealthy benefactor touching the city with a golden finger, many of our cultural institutions may already be gone. At least in their present form.
Far from being a mere museum phenomenon, site-specific performance has also “activated” the public art one can walk by every day without really seeing, such as Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy, a bronze sculpture at the site of Chicago Pile-1, the first artificial nuclear reactor. For the 75th anniversary of the event, the University of Chicago commissioned artist Cai Guo-Qiang to shoot his “Color Mushroom Cloud” into the sky above its metallic counterpart. While the skull-like Moore has a sense of foreboding, the bright Guo-Qiang feels celebratory, perhaps expressing a hope for peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Notably, a student-organized die-in protested the university’s cheery framing, corporeally highlighting the human costs of the Atomic Age.
What are we to make of this explosion of site-specific performance, particularly within Chicago? Long a “city of neighborhoods,” we might less optimistically point out that Chicago is one of the most segregated areas in the U.S. As someone who came of age in the placeless sprawl of the mountain west, moving to Chicago has attuned me to space and my relationship to it in an entirely new way. I tried to explain to my little sister when she moved to Chicago but couldn’t find the words. A petite, attractive woman, she’s gone on to develop a whole other sensitivity to its streets and trains that I, as a relatively gender-normative man, haven’t had to acquire. It’s at once tempting and irresponsible to draw a parallel to this kind of “urban awareness” and the deluge of site-specific performance we’ve witnessed recently in Chicago.
Another NKAME participant is Honey Pot Performance, an Afro-diasporic feminist collaborative cofounded in 2001 as ThickRoutes Performance Collage by Meida McNeal, who is also the arts and culture manager at the Chicago Park District, Felicia Holman, Aisha Jean-Baptiste, and Abra Johnson. The company also includes Jennifer Ligaya and sound curator Jo de Presser. Honey Pot’s If/Then incorporates online performances and a series of scores worked through with monthly guest artists, culminating with a New Works Festival featuring all of the artists in a weekend-long performance.
