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Performances / Affiliations
Freedom From and Freedom To (2025)
Photos by Ricardo E. Adame
December 6th, 2025 at Elastic Arts
Freedom From and Freedom To is a cross disciplinary event featuring improvising dancers and musicians. Audience members select the groupings by chance for 20-minute sets. Founded and curated by Cristal Sabbagh, the event brings together 30-40 performers with diverse artistic backgrounds and practices.
Dancers & musicians randomly grouped together for Set #2:
Hannah Marcus, Amanda Maraist, Caroline Jesalva, and Julian Otis
Graphic by Cristal Sabbagh & Scott Rubin
Grit (2025)
Photos by Ricardo E. Adame
Premiered March 6-8th, 2025 for Steppenwolf Theatre's LookOut Series
Created by Maggie Vannucci in collaboration with Rahila Coats, Laura Baumeister, Kate Laughlin, and Hannah Marcus
Dramaturgy by Courtney Mackedanz
Sound development by Michael Cunningham
Produced by Patrick Zakem and Lauren Steinberg
Technical support by Matthew Chapman
"Grit is an evening-length experimental dance work made in collaboration with four performers, crafted primarily through improvisational scores and instant composition structures. The project interrogates the underbelly of achievement by examining the isolating costs of competitive drive — particularly how rigor, ambition, and endurance can fracture collective care. By blurring the line between exhaustive pleasure and exhaustive pressure, the work asks what happens when intensity is no longer sustainable, and what new forms of connection can emerge from its unraveling."
Helen Lee/Momentum Sensorium (2023-Present)
Photos by Ricardo E. Adame
Curiosities of Wellness in Bodies of Grief and Joy directed by Helen Lee/Momentum Sensorium.
Chicago Performs at the Museum of Contemporary Art | September, 20th, 2025 | Assistant Director
The Retreat at Ragdale Residency | December 20th, 2024
The Dinner at bim bom studios | December 1st, 2024
Open House at Ragdale Residency | October 20th, 2024
Open Studio Series at the Chicago Cultural Center | April 7th, 2024 and June 11th, 2024
Open Lab at High Concept Labs | December 17th, 2023
Supported by residencies at the Chicago Cultural Center (2024), Ragdale (2024), High Concept Labs (2023), and Chicago DanceMakers Forum (2024).
Performed by Tuli Beri, Kate Laughlin, Hannah Marcus, Amanda Maraist, Chaz Pierson, Scott Rubin, Nick Turner, BelleAime Robinson, Kara Brody, Isabella Limosnero, Deandra Alba, Sharon Udoh, Isabelle Taylor, SJ Swilley, Dani Oblitas, Kiki King, Anjal Chande, Catherine Helper, Kiku Hibino, Anna Hu, Robin Kim, Dabin Han, Jill McDufee Wade, Wannape P-Eubanks, Cristal Sabbagh, AiRos medill, Ali Claiborne-Naranjo, Anniela Huidobro Castro, BelleAime Robinson, Christina Chammas, Ed Clemons, Hannah Dubner, Harlan Rosen, Kezia Waters, La Mar Brown, Madelyn Loehr, Madison Mae Parker, Najee-Zaid, Sara Zalek, Silvita Diaz-Brown, SK Kerastas, Sophie Minouche Allen, Surinder Martignetti, Xiaolu Wang, Haruhi Kobayashi
" 'Discovering more joy does not, I'm sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a new way that ennobles or elevates rather than embitters us. We have hardship without being hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.' "
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
House of DOV (2021-Present)
Photos by Ricardo E. Adame, Chloe Hamilton, Matthew Gregory Hollis, Andrew Weeks
Directed by Drew Lewis
Circle of Apathy (2024-Present)
Performed by Isabella Limosnero, A Else, Isabelle Taylor, Hannah Marcus, Chaz Pierson, Mya McClellan, Morgan Reed, Dareon Blowe, and Family Junket - Rahila Coats, Hasani Cannon, Max Lazarus, Jonah Lazarus, Scott Daniel
Supported by residencies/fellowships at the Chicago Cultural Center (April 2024), Ragdale (October 2024), the Arts Club of Chicago (2025), and The Schoolhouse (2025).
Preview shows:
FJ Album Release at Constellation | May 10th, 2025
The Menomonee Club | June 21st, 2025
The Schoolhouse Residency | July 5th, 2025
Tuesdays on the Terrace at the Museum of Contemporary Art | August 5th, 2025
Chicago Live! at Navy Pier | September 21st, 2025
Projected evening-length performances & a midwest tour in Summer 2026.
"Circle of Apathy is a humanist, ensemble-driven, two-act dance and music collaboration between House of DOV and Chicago band Family Junket. Built thematically on cycles of destruction and regrowth (or growth as destruction) the piece regards all human machinations (even war) as natural processes. Identifying a link between the evolving nature of Earth’s landscape, our own human social evolution, and the emergent nature of individual identity, the work attempts to depict this churning process on all three scales. 'You don’t live on Earth, you are the Earth; you don’t live on the landscape, you are the landscape.'"
The creation of Circle of Apathy was made possible by a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events with funding from the Walder Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts
Heavy Objects (2023)
Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre | February 11th & 12th, 2023
Presented through the LookOut Series as part of Work Around curated by Kara Brody & Amanda Maraist
Performed by Maddy Joss, Drew Lewis, Isabella Limosnero
Rehearsal Assistance & Understudying by Hannah Marcus
Costuming by Jeremy Miller
Produced by Patrick Zakem and Lauren Steinberg
Technical Support by Matthew Chapman
delirium (honesty) 2021
Adler Planetarium | July 23rd, 2021
Fulton Street Collective | October 3rd, 2021
Performed by Maddy Joss, Ingrid Ferdinand, Hannah Marcus, Ali Webb
Rehearsal Assistance by Hannah Marcus
Costuming by Jeremy Miller
Live dj set by DOV
unpredictable, yet insistent: an evening of mutually made music (2024)
Photography by Eugene I-Peng Tang; Graphic by Ray Madrigal
Part of Ray Madrigal's solo exhibition Fear of Losing, Love of Having at Comfort Station | October 20th, 2024
"Fear of Losing, Love of Having probes our daily attempts at safety-making, dysfunctional and humane alike. The show is a material hypothesis of noticing as resistance, of slowness and widened eyes as crucial tools in the creation of gentler futures. Rather than positing an answer, the works within hold up objects, moments, and efforts like flash cards, images connected to questions: How did this way of life come to be? Who decided so? And how might we nudge our collective reality towards more humane, more loving methods of safety-making?"
Improvised by Ray Madrigal, Hannah Marcus, Madeleine Aguilar, Natasha Tseng, and Zhuyan Ye
Soak (2024)
Photos by Patrick L. Pyszka/City of Chicago
Created by Amalia Raye Wiatr Lewis through the Chicago Cultural Center Dance Studio Residency | June 5th, 2024
"In Soak, six dancers move through a series of choreographed scores derived from the physical gestures found in bathing spaces. Soak treats the sauna, hot springs, pools, and lakes as sites of research for social interaction. These interactions are distilled into simple pedestrian movements that evoke relaxation, spectatorship, kinship, competition, and play. Set to a score of modular synth and vocals."
Sound design by Kari Watson
Performed by Amalia Raye Wiatr Lewis, Lucian Noel, Maggie Vannucci, Courtney Mackedanz, Hannah Marcus, Isabelle Taylor
Costumes and set design by Paige Fetchen
Equipment Uses (2024)
Photos by Philipp Groth
Created by Makayla Lindsay for IMPACT Performance Festival at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago | April 7th, 2024
Improvised by Gabriel Bruno Eng Gonzalez, Zhenyu, Hannah Marcus, Jarah, Sungeun Silver Kim
"Touch: the equipment of feeling."
A Performance in Nine Parts:
A Fundamental Form
These Walls: a Complex
HANDBILL
To K.Dot
Things on the Floor
Accumulations III
Accumulations II
Accumulations I
(Product) Function
Common Canvas (2022)
Photos by Peter Hinsdale & Kristian Brooks
An improvisational performance led by Noelle Kayser and facilitated by Common Conservatory at the Drucker Center | November 12th, 2022
Through the COMMON Canvas platform, artists connect, create, and perform in a single day.
Performed by Anouk Arden, Faith von Atzigen, Lieana Sherry, Vinny Haberman, Tina Diaz, Hannah Marcus, Chaz Pierson, Joey Martinez, Ash Williams
More:
Juliann Wang's Notes In The Wind at Elastic Arts (2023)
New Dances Summer Company (2023) presented by DanceWorks Chicago and Thodos Dance Chicago
CounterBalance (2022) presented by Access Living, Bodies of Work, MOMENTA Dance Company, and ReinventAbility
Hedwig Dances (2021-2022)
Matias Vilaplana's motion capture research project (2018)
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