2023 Fall Resident Eshan Rafi. Photo by Michelle Reid.
Spring 2025
Co-MISSION Works-in-Progress
Our Spring 2025 Co-MISSION Fellows offer a split bill Works-In-Progress showing featuring Tuli Bera, Jacinda Bullie, and Jaquanda Villegas. Additionally, Fall 2024 Resident Selena Lasley will show her Work in Progress, previously delayed last fall.
Bera, Bullie, and Villegas present to audiences the projects they have been investigating and rehearsing while incubating in the white box studio since January. Lasley will present work from her time in residence September - December, 2024.
FEATURED ARTISTS
From L to R: Villegas, Bullie, Bera and Lasley.
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Spring 2025 Co-MISSION Fellow
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 (KL) (Arts/ Education Organization). She has been engaging youth and their families in Hip Hop Arts Activism and Culturally Relevant programming for 25 years. Jaquanda get’s 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.
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Spring 2025 Co-MISSION Fellow
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.
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Spring 2025 Co-MISSION Fellow
Tuli Bera is a Bengali American movement artist. They draw from various styles of dance: Indian folk and classical forms, classical and contemporary ballet, modern, aerial dance and improvisation. Bera has collaborated and performed with various companies and individual artists: Ayako Kato, Aerial Dance Chicago, Ishti Collective, Ashwaty Chennat, Cristal Sabbagh's Freedom From and Freedom To and Darling Squire. Beyond performance, they support independent artists as a producer for dance and teach ballet and aerial dance for all ages.
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Fall 2024 Co-MISSION Resident
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!
Art of Rehearsal Workshop Series Coaches
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Meida Teresa McNeal is Artistic and Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. She received her PhD in Performance Studies (Northwestern) and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History (Ohio State). Awards include an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in New Performance Forms, Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago, 3Arts Award in Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and the Links’ Hall Co-Missions Fellowship. An Independent Artist and Scholar at the intersection of performance studies, dance, and critical ethnography, Meida also teaches at University of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. Meida also works with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events' Executive Administration team as the Senior Manager of Arts & Community Impact Investments building and implementing artist recovery programs and creative placemaking grantmaking initiatives. Prior to this role, Meida worked with the Chicago Park District as Arts & Culture Manager supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives.
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La Mar Brown is thrilled to be a Co-Mission Artist Coach for the second year with Links Hall, and to co-lead the Art of Rehearsal process this year. He is an arts manager, producer, dancer, and singer. He currently serves as the Operations Manager for Chicago Dancemakers Forum, where he manages functions to support administrative, fundraising, and programming activities. After relocating to Chicago from Dallas, TX, he completed his Master of Arts Management at Columbia College Chicago in 2016. He also is a 2022 Leadership Institute cohort member of YNPN Chicago. La Mar’s other administrative credits include Project Coordinator, The Ruth Page Center for the Arts; Box Office Supervisor, Writers Theatre; Company Manager, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; and Associate Patron Services Manager, the AT&T Performing Arts Center (Dallas, TX). His performance credits include Dallas Black Dance Theatre, The Ruth Page Civic Ballet, Porchlight Music Theatre, Dallas Metropolitan Ballet, Uptown Players, Garland Summer Musicals, and The Dallas Opera.