This year's EXPLORATION: An Evening of Dance, Discovery, Creativity, and Fun will focus on The Human Body and what the Human Experience means to all of us.

This year's EXPLORATION: An Evening of Dance, Discovery, Creativity, and Fun will focus on The Human Body and what the Human Experience means to all of us.

This year's EXPLORATION: An Evening of Dance, Discovery, Creativity, and Fun will focus on The Human Body and what the Human Experience means to all of us.

Come support High Concept Labs for an evening of fundraising with experimental, multi-disciplinary, and lovely genre-defying artistic projects, rounded out with delicious food and a silent auction.

Min Yoon aka “Citizen Truth” leads a series of workshops at Links Hall from May 27th to 31st, culminating in a student performance, bam bam boom_____, and a solo performance, dancing-being-in-time.

“Not for the attention-seeking economy”, Min’s butoh + experimental dance and vocal works process what feels more subconscious and unknown in being human such as around pain and violence, to grieve, reveal nuanced truths around the depths of emotions, experiences, and perspectives, and look for new expressions.

Veteran performers Po’Chop and Switch the Boi Wonder host this bimonthly drag king-centered cabaret, where performers showcase the diversity of burlesque and masculine drag with numbers that are equal parts entertaining, comedic, and provocative.

THESE SPACES OF POSSIBILITY is an interdisciplinary piece combining dance, film, visual arts and architecture. It draws Inspiration from poems by Mary Oliver, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, repetitive geometry and the juxtaposition of reality and imagination. THESE SPACES OF POSSIBILITY crafts an immersive environment for the viewer to investigate the narrative terrains that exist between each of us.

THESE SPACES OF POSSIBILITY is an interdisciplinary piece combining dance, film, visual arts and architecture. It draws Inspiration from poems by Mary Oliver, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, repetitive geometry and the juxtaposition of reality and imagination. THESE SPACES OF POSSIBILITY crafts an immersive environment for the viewer to investigate the narrative terrains that exist between each of us.

Freedom From and Freedom To is an exploration and celebration of artistic circumstance. Movement and sound improvisors from all around Chicago gather in front of a live audience, where they are grouped by chance. Each group performs an improvised set. Freedom From and Freedom To fuses diverse artistic backgrounds and practices to create unique and fleeting worlds.

Nasty, Brutish & Short is a late night cabaret is packed with contemporary short-form puppet and object based theater. Providing a low-risk environment for artists to perform new and experimental work, this puppet slam fosters an artistic exchange between puppet artists of different generations and mediums.

Links Hall’s 2024-2025 Co-MISSION Fellows and Resident share an exciting evening of their artistic works-in-progress. Be the first audience for their daring new pieces, developed at Links Hall since January.

Black Coffee + Raw Sugar is an evening of shorts from Black + Brown Chicago movement artists, performers, and dancemakers. This season's edition brings Burlesque, Drag, and poetry to the forefront as artists take on experimentation and vulnerability in their rawest forms.

One of Links Hall's longest running series, Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret is almost 15 and we’re throwing a special retrospective show and party to celebrate! 

Join us for a screening of Meida McNeal’s solo performance, Fifth City Revisited. Witness the story of a radical community movement from the 1960s-1990s on the Westside of Chicago. Part memoir, part history lesson, and part urban planning critique, Fifth City Revisited explores how we create healthy communities while also considering the scale at which we must do this work in order to grow and sustain it.

Julia Barbosa Landois and KIKI King share a split-bill evening that mixes movement, storytelling, video, and experimental sound to explore themes of reproductive health and freedom.

Julia Barbosa Landois and KIKI King share a split-bill evening that mixes movement, storytelling, video, and experimental sound to explore themes of reproductive health and freedom.

Julia Barbosa Landois and KIKI King share a split-bill evening that mixes movement, storytelling, video, and experimental sound to explore themes of reproductive health and freedom.

Sara Hook and David Parker join forces with the indomitable Roxane D’Orleans Juste to present a Time Will Tell, a program of vigorous, purposeful dancing leavened by their characteristic gimlet-eyed wit. Expect velcro suits, queer romance, the collision of Cecchetti ballet and ‘60s social dancing, kinetic quips, post-modernist remnants, dangerous rhythms and soulful revelations.

Sara Hook and David Parker join forces with the indomitable Roxane D’Orleans Juste to present a Time Will Tell, a program of vigorous, purposeful dancing leavened by their characteristic gimlet-eyed wit. Expect velcro suits, queer romance, the collision of Cecchetti ballet and ‘60s social dancing, kinetic quips, post-modernist remnants, dangerous rhythms and soulful revelations.

The purpose of First Draft is to give Chicago choreographers the opportunity to see and present their latest works in a professionally produced context. The public presentation of a nearly completed dance work is an essential step for dancemakers as they develop high quality, new dances.

The purpose of First Draft is to give Chicago choreographers the opportunity to see and present their latest works in a professionally produced context. The public presentation of a nearly completed dance work is an essential step for dancemakers as they develop high quality, new dances.

The purpose of First Draft is to give Chicago choreographers the opportunity to see and present their latest works in a professionally produced context. The public presentation of a nearly completed dance work is an essential step for dancemakers as they develop high quality, new dances.

Najee-Zaid Searcy comes together with Paige Brown & Aaliyah Christina to present the multi-talented trio in a fusion of visual, sonic, and tactile multimedia performance. They join forces to benefit Link Hall’s Lifeline for Links campaign in an effort to sustain an important incubator in Chicago’s performance community. The trio explore and manifest our collective dreams through magical realist imagery, vocalized text, and movement inspired by Japanese and Afro-diasporic motifs.

FUN LITTLE THING features a mix of artists and mediums for an evening that is fun, little, and a thing. Variety is the spice of life.

We invite Links Hall artists, staff, board, audiences, supporters, neighbors, and general community to join an evening of discussion and sharing. And food! We will break bread and share out the work from our Community Circle discussions over the past 4 months.

For when I land is a solo made by Sophie Minouche Allen with and for McCall McClellan as McCall navigates a temporarily nomadic life — traveling, living and dancing between Chicago, LA and Washington DC. We wonder what it means to be born into a life of perpetual motion and look to manta rays to examine what putting down “mobile roots” might feel like.

Don’t let the evening end! Come join the fun at this fan-favorite late show where eyebrows meet lowbrows. Out-of-towner puppeteers are invited to join local legends for friendly unwinding.

Don’t let the evening end! Come join the fun at this fan-favorite late show where eyebrows meet lowbrows. Out-of-towner puppeteers are invited to join local legends for friendly unwinding.

In the dangerous and magical land of Sunderbans great rivers combine and split before merging into the Bay of Bengal. Real-time sculpting meets traditional storytelling as shape shifting ‘maati’ shines in the Land of 18 Tides.