NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY – CHICAGOLAND PROGRAMMING

SPRING 2025 EVENTS

Join SLIPPAGE for any and all of our exciting slate of co/sponsored events this spring.  Join our mailing list(serv) to keep updated.

Al is a faculty member at Oberlin College, an accomplished and subtle dancemaker, and was in residence at SLIPPAGE in spring 2024.  He will be working with Northwestern students in preparation for Danceworks 2025. Showing Saturday, January 18, at 3:30pm.

Danceworks 2025

Friday 3/14  at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday 3/15 at 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Sunday 3/16 at 2 p.m.

Josephine Louis Theater
20 Arts Circle Drive

Workshop with María del Rosario Acosta López (Hispanic Studies, University of California, Riverside), and members of Sankofa Danzafro dance company (Colombia), Winter 2025 Artist in Residence of the Dance Program in the Department of Theatre and Kaplan Humanities Institute.

Learn more here.

Co-presented by Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, Black Arts Consortium, Critical Dance Studies Cluster, and Kaplan Humanities Institute.

The fourth Mellon-supported symposium is a knowledge-generating gathering of scholars and artists dedicated to exploring the intersections of Black identity and social dance in the context of Chicago. We are thinking about social dance in Chicago as a life-organizing , community-building practice, which opens a way of theorizing black social dance as relational, discursive, and embodied. It allows us to frame social dance as a method of inquiry into Black life—how people gather, resist, and exist in moments that do not seek to be captured or valorized but instead stand as repertoires body knowledge.

All educators and students of dance and movement are invited to attend this conference co-sponsored by SLIPPAGE and featuring presentations by Northwestern faculty and students.

Learn more/register here.

Save the dates for this joint daytime symposium and evening performance event.  See previous related events: Abstract Black 2024 and Make Black Live Art Now! 2023.

This 3-part series will expose Northwestern University audiences to professional artists with technology-enhanced practices and provide participants with the skills and resources to pursue innovative humanities research. Each event pairs a performance and discussion with a hands-on workshop, focusing on technologies like motion capture, 3D digitization, artificial intelligence, and mechatronics. These workshops merge technological skill sets with critical conversations on artistry, humanity, and social possibilities – pushing the boundaries of traditional humanities research.

Series Convenors: Thomas DeFrantz (SLIPPAGE Lab/Performance Studies), Craig Stevens (Northwestern IT: Media & Technology Innovation/Anthropology), Ted Quiballo (Northwestern Libraries)

Performing Artists: Eto Otitigbe, Ben Baker, LaJuné McMillian

• April 16 – Ben Baker
• April 30 –  Eto Otitigbe
• May 14  – LaJuné McMillan

Workshop Leaders: Thomas DeFrantz, Ted Quiballo, Craig Stevens, Michael A. Peshkin, Nick Marchuk, Darren Gergle, 

SLIPPAGE director Thomas F. DeFrantz premieres this work that has been in development during 2024.

This convergence builds on the first iteration of Afrobeats symposium (in the Fall of 2023).

Learn more here.