SEARCH PARTY
Created + Choreographed by Erin Kilmurray
Movement developed collaboratively with performers
Alyssa Gregory, Camila Rivero Pooley, Deandra Alaba, Kaitlin Webster, Maria Blanco, Tia Monet Greer
Lighting Design + PSM by Bran Moorhead
Costume Design by Samantha Allen
Sound Design by Mikhail Fiksel + Erin Kilmurray
SEARCH PARTY premiered at Links Hall’s CoMission Festival of New Works in 2018.
Created and performed by a group of women and queer artists, SEARCH PARTY relentlessly pushes up against external pressures by investigating agency, defiance, freedom in space and in the body — asking what is expected of us and what are we capable of.
Staged like a sporting event, this work is wrought from defeat, endurance, compassion, competition, collaboration, and victory - as individuals, as a group, and together with our audiences.
SEARCH PARTY is a performance presented in the round in a social environment - it is intimate and alive with real-time chance making, engaging with our audience as spectators. Dancers use rolls of neon tape to create new parameters and challenge their own physical bounds -on the floors, the walls, and each others.
Presentations
Shitimachi Arts Festival; (dB) DanceBox, Kobe, Japan —— October 2019 —- [tour + residency]
Pivot Arts Festival, Chicago IL. —— June 2019
PREMIERE CoMission Festival of New Works: Links Hall —— December 2018
Chicago Dancemaker's Forum Elevate Chicago Dance; The Chicago Cultural Center —— October 2018
Excerpts + In-Progress :
(2017) Chicago Dancemaker's Forum Elevate Chicago Dance; Arts AID America Exhibition: The Alphawood Foundation + Gallery; Mana Contemporary Chicago : HCL Invited Studio Showing; High Concept Lab’s Open House: Hairpin Lofts; Salonathon/Beauty Bar; ACTIVATE Chicago; Dance In the Parks - Chicago Park Districts; House Show (initial workshop draft) at HOMEroom studio
Support
SEARCH PARTY was created through commission from Links Hall Co-Mission Residency (2018), Chicago Dancemaker’s Forum Greenhouse Grant (2018), and supported through 3arts 3AP program + ‘Make-A-Wave” award, a High Concept Labs' Sponsored Artist Program (2017).
SEARCH PARTY toured in cultural exchange to Japan with Dancebox (2020) and was recreated with 3 original + 3 local performers at Art-Theatre-Kobe.