Links Hall

Dear Links Hall Community, As of this week, this account will be dormant. The organization’s last day of public programming was June 30, 2025. By the end of July 2025, the organization will have wound down operations and there will be no remaining staff. The Board of Directors will continue to stay active through fall 2025 as they finish closing down the organization. If you need to get in contact with someone on the Links Hall Board of Directors, you can email: [email protected]. We have archiving plans in the mix. If you’d like to stay updated on those, please join the @chicagodancemakersforum ’s newsletter via their website. Much love. 🔗

It is only appropriate as Chicago Dance Month comes to a close that we celebrate and honor the legacy of Links Hall as their time in Chicago sunsets.  In 1978 Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow, and Charlie Vernon founded Links Hall after meeting through the performance collective MoMing. The trio simply hoped to have a space of their own to rehearse and rented it out to other artists to help cover the costs. Much to their surprise, artists flocked to use the rehearsal space because of its inexpensive cost and rapidly became a performing venue as well. For nearly 50 years now, Links Hall has helped to create opportunities for more artists to make work while creating a supportive and sustaining community. Throughout the day, we will be sharing archival footage from when we recorded each founder’s Oral History. Sharing stories is how we keep history alive after any physical space or entity is gone. We would love for you to share a story, memory, moment of impact, etc. in the comments below in celebration of almost 50 years of history. Photo: Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow, and Charlie Vernon atop Links Hall, photographed by Chuck Osgood  - #cdhp #chicagodancehistoryproject #chicago #chicagodancehistory #chidancehistory #dancehistory #dance #chidance #chicagodance #dancecommunity #chicagodancecommunity #dancers #chicagodancers #history #archives #dancearchives #interview #oralhistory #chicagodancemonth #linkshall

Sky Dance with us at @linkshall this Saturday for our Dance Party! Music by @wilhelm.brandl This video was from @highconceptlabs Benefit earlier this month. Shot by Isaac Yuquan Duan. Link in bio to learn the Sky Dance

This Friday and Saturday: Join Jacinda Bullie and Jaquanda Saulter-Villegas for "Fillinz, Put Some Respect on It!" Check out these photos from rehearsals and the artists' Works-in-Progress performance in May. The @kuumbalynx Co-Founders invite you to explore prose with them this weekend. Don't miss it! Get your ticket now at the link in our bio. 🙌

Coming up this Sunday 6/22 and Thursday 6/26: Dani Oblitas' "Un/Rerooted," a movement exploration of borders, community, and connection with our ancestral land. Take a peek at these photos from rehearsals and the project's Works-in-Progress performance in December 2024. Oblitas and their collaborators have a beautiful piece to share. Catch them in action this Sunday and next Thursday, June 26th. Get your ticket now at the link in our bio! 📷 Works-in-Progress photos by Micelle Reid @mreidphotog

With four out of twelve performances complete, we are well underway in Links Hall's fifth and final Co-MISSION Festival of New Works! The Co-MISSION Festival is partially supported by by a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Thank you, @chicagodcase ! Tickets are still available for performances this weekend: Tuli Bera's BANGALI MEYE on Friday and Saturday, and a split-bill of Dani Oblitas' UN/REROOTED and Selena's Lasley's TIMEShit on Sunday. Get your ticket now at the link in our bio! 🙌 Photo by Michelle Reid @mreidphotog of Amanda Maraist's FOLK Work-in-Progress presentation, December 2024.

This Friday and Saturday, witness the fourth and final iteration of Tuli Bera's "Bangali Meye" - but first, take a look at these beautiful photos and videos from Tuli and their team's time in Studio A this spring. We'll see you there. Get your ticket now at the link in our bio! 💐

Amanda Maraist's FOLK opens tomorrow and we're so excited! Check out these beautiful photos featuring Amanda and her collaborators in rehearsal. (And then, read this incredible ensemble's bios on the Links Hall website!) It's going to be a beautiful evening. Won't you join us? Get your ticket now at the link in our bio. 🌿

Introducing the final member of Links Hall's 2025 Co-MISSION cohort: Selena Lasley! Selena Lasley (she/they) is a Chicago-based artist. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Acting (2019). Selena also has studied Modern, West African, solo performance, vogue aesthetics, physical theatre, and improvisation. Selena continues performing and collaborating with multiple artists and has performed throughout Chicago. Being a research-based artist, Selena is constantly creating, exploring, breaking theories and ideologies with their ongoing research in Psychology of creativity, social and theoretical concepts. The constant shifts of cultural and social climates within the African diaspora, American Dream, Gender identity, and the ongoing questions of non conformity has always been an underlying theme within their research based works. This will be their first residency at Links Hall and is very excited to be sharing the space! Performing in a split bill with Dani Oblitas' "Un/Rerooted" on June 22nd and 26th, Lasley's "TIMEShit" is a metaphysical and social collaboration about what it means to be living in this world. This ongoing work is about questioning the existence of consciousness and the way we perceive ourselves. We as a collective should never have to conform or question ourselves, we can freely express our identity in anyway shape or fashion. And to remind ourselves as humans ever evolving in this world. We do not need to think that material things, class, and wealth is the only way to identify ourselves. So let’s turn up! And have fun! We can't wait! Get your ticket now at the link in our bio.

Up next: Get to know @kuumbalynx Co-Founders Jacinda Bullie and Jaquanda Saulter-Villegas! Jacinda Bullie (aka Jah da Amp Mouth) is an instigating art maker, creative activator, and practicing heart soother. This sage burning Muslim seeks to practice gratitude & presence. Jacinda likes to write, perform, paint, talk story, move and engage in radical love play. She is a Hip Hop Theater producer, host, arts facilitator & manager who finds freedom in remembering that she is simply a spiritual being having an earthly experience. Executive Director & Co-Lead Creative, Jaquanda Saulter-Villegas is a Fly Girl Chicagoan by way of South Carolina, Jaquanda is one of the three Founders, and a Co- Creative Lead of Kuumba Lynx. She has been engaging youth and their families in Hip Hop Arts Activism and Culturally Relevant programming for 25 years. Jaquanda gets FREE as an Arts Educator, Mentor, Yoga Instructor, Shamanic Reiki Healer, Performance Artist, Arts Administrator, International Peace Movement Honorary Ambassador, and Hip Hop Theater Director. As a healer Jaquanda is dedicated to holding space for community to address harm, break generational curses, and interrupting systematic sabotage by re-engaging in indigenous and African healing practices. Bullie and Saulter-Villegas activate prose and coloring pages in "FILLINZ, Put Some Respect on It!" on June 27th and 28th. Don't miss this performance! Get your ticket now at the link in our bio. 👏

We're so excited to welcome back Co-MISSION Fellow Tuli Bera's "Bangali Meye," which Bera first premiered at Links Hall in 2019! Tuli Bera is a Chicago-based performer, choreographer, producer, and dance educator. Their artistic voice is an emulsion of their technical prowess and honest expression of identity. Since moving to Chicago in 2016, they have committed to creating public experiences that foster authentic self-exploration. Bera is informed by various styles of dance, which have led them to feel most comfortable as an improviser. They lead with curiosity and lean into transforming as they navigate through, collaborate, and create within the Chicago arts landscape. Learn more about Bera via the link in our bio, or at www.tuli.space. The first "Bangali Meye," a solo premiered at Links Hall as part of its 2019 Co-MISSION Residency series, the second at the 2022 Pivot Arts Festival at the Edge Theater with Scott Rubin, and the third iteration at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater in 2023 with Tuli’s younger sibling, Anita. The overarching theme for this series is about acknowledging, exploring, and understanding the experience of inhabiting the body and mind of a [child of immigrants] / [first-generation, settler American], specifically one of [South-Asian] / [Indian] / [Bengali] descent. Each iteration is a sharing of how I connect to a part of my existence. A spectrum of relationships with this part of me, this "Bangali Meye," reveals itself in real time. You don't want to miss the fourth and final iteration of "Bangali Meye." Get your ticket now at the link in our bio! ✨

Get to know Kevin Michael Wesson and Theatre Nobody, in preparation for their SOLD-OUT run of "CAMPOUT, A Night in the Woods" starting this Sunday! Kevin Michael Wesson (he/they) is a proudly unrepresented puppeteer/deviser based in Chicago, originally from Tampa, FL; Recent credits include: "Leonardo!" & "Christmas Carol" (Manual Cinema), “'Where we go together'” or The Flashlight Play" (Theatre Nobody), "Dog or Cats; Augmented Body" (Steppenwolf LOOKOUT), "House of the Exquisite Corpse I-IV" (Rough House Theater), "Deepen the Heart" (Stop Motion Plant), and "Elements of Style" (The Neo-Futurists). His works have been featured in American Theatre Magazine, The Chicago Cultural Center, No Proscenium, NPR, The Puppetry Journal, nomination for the National Puppet Slam, and various curation for/residencies with Agitator Artist Collective, Links Hall, Chicago Puppet Lab, The National Puppetry Conference, Valdez Theatre Conference, & The Intuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. A firm believer in DIY ethos, they currently organize works-in-progress & community programming for the Chicago-based puppet theatre company, Rough House Puppet Arts, the devised theatre ensemble, Stop Motion Plant, Physical Theater Festival Chicago, and the experimental free theatre outfit, Theatre Nobody. Wesson's "CAMPOUT, A Night in the Woods" is an intimate & immersive work for a brave audience of two. Winner of No Proscenium's Best Shows and Experiences of 2019, originally performed in New York City in 2019, the show was originally performed for a total of only seven people; this is the Chicago debut and first time it has been remounted in nearly six years. Reservation is currently full for the run of the show. If you'd like to join the waitlist, please email Links Hall Programs Associate Dana Pepowski at [email protected]. ⛺