Najee-Zaid Searcy
Najee-Zaid Searcy’s Emersion
Part of Links Hall’s 2024 Co-MISSION Festival of New Works
Emersion releases that which must be shed. Allowing that which must become through movement, space, scent, and form. Emersion seeks to allow for personal and collective transformation by offering meditations and wellness services when possible. We are conduits reactivating the bodymind, and participating with the energies present.
Collaborators: Alejandro Salazar (Musician), Paige Brown (Musician), and Viktor Le-Givens (Movement and Installation)
Music/Sound: Composed by Najee-Zaid
Special Thanks: Given to my ancestors, family, friends, those who have supported me, and the Links Hall team.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Artist Bios
Collaborators
Alejandro Salazar emphasizes love, peace, and unity to audiences through unique performances, education, and the cultural study of Afro-Cuban and Black-American Music. Chicago’s own rising star, Alejandro Salazar, is deeply rooted in the tradition, yet he likes to explore new ways to help people groove and dance more to his infectious swing feel. Alejandro has had the pleasure of playing at clubs, venues, and festivals all over Chicago and the world like The Chicago Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Jazz a la Villette (Paris), Primavera Sound Barcelona, Munch Museum (Oslo), Bourse de Commerce (Paris), Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, The Jazz Showcase, Andy’s Jazz Club, DuSable Museum, The Green Mill, Constellation, and Dorian's to name a few.
A vocalist, pianist and composer, Paige Brown still sometimes lovingly refers to herself as "arts-adjacent" while establishing herself as an artist in her own right. As a Performing Arts Residency Coordinator and as a fan/friend of many in the robust Chicago arts ecosystem, she constantly finds herself in awe of the talent and adventurousness of the creatives she is privileged to witness and support. While she more frequently positions herself contently in the audiences of performances and exhibitions, she is currently navigating a journey of strengthening the inner mechanisms and communal connections to deepen and externalize her own practice more fully. She currently finds joy/peace by communing with plants and other beings, and catalyzing/witnessing the growth of artists and others. She currently finds challenge in her quest to improve at the art of taking things slow, and in reacquainting herself with the simple, playful practices that attracted her to Music, her first love.
Viktor Le-Givens is a found object installation performance artist whose practice centers around the gathering and arrangement of ancestral objects to activate spaces for site specific public rituals. By connecting the material culture of his ancestors with pre and post modern spiritual theologies, le. Givens hopes to extend and reimagine the folk customs of his family . His material archive is comprised of the forgotten and discarded household items found during excavations of East Texas, Louisiana, Havana Cuba and Mexico City. Through the accumulation of these rich cultural artifacts , le. Givens. seeks to create spaces that inspire the activation of cultural and spiritual memory.
This event is part of Links Hall’s 2024 Co-MISSION Festival of New Works, two groundbreaking weekends of new performance and public events. Representing some of the most talented makers in Chicago from dance, performance art, installation, and performance as social practice, six artists present works developed while in-residence at Links during the 2023-2024 season. Featured artists include: Links Hall Residents AiRos 頌恩 medill, Jamila Kekulah, and Eshan Rafi, and Fellows Najee-Zaid Searcy and Lani T. Montreal.
Additional Events in the 2024 Co-MISSION Festival of New Works
June 21 | Fall Residents: AiRos 頌恩 medill, Jamila Kekulah, and Eshan Rafi
June 22 | Spring Fellow: Lani T. Montreal
June 23 | Spring Fellow: Lani T. Montreal
June 28 | Spring Fellow: Najee-Zaid Searcy
June 30 | Fall Residents: AiRos 頌恩 medill, Jamila Kekulah, and Eshan Rafi