INSTIGATION FESTIVAL 2017: Project Tool led by Onye Ozuzu

Within Project Tool, dancers explore, through the process of using hand held tools and legacy processes, the relationship between mind, body and tool. Through the research of building a wood, sprung dance floor, the dancers collaborate with tools as if they are partners in a dance with the body. The practical making of the space through sawing, hammering, sanding, and nailing has unearthed an improvisational landscape in which tasks, tools, and body inform and form the dance.

Join us for a showing of work and process.

Onye Ozuzu is a dance administrator, performing artist, choreographer, educator and researcher currently serving as Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago. She has been actively presenting work since 1997. Her work has been seen nationally and internationally at The Joyce Soho (Manhattan, NY), Kaay Fecc Festival Des Tous les Danses (Dakar, Senegal), La Festival del Caribe (Santiago, Cuba), Lisner Auditorium (Washington, DC), McKenna Museum of African American Art (New Orleans, LA), as well as many anonymous site-specific locations. She has performed locally in Chicago at Hamlin Park Summer Sampler, with Red Clay Dance in La Femme, and in the Afro-Latin@ Summer Dance Intensive at Columbia College Chicago. She has been Artist in Residence at EarthDance Workshop and Retreat Center, Bates Dance Festival, Chulitna Wilderness Lodge and Retreat, and Camp Merveilles. Her collaboration with jazz composer Greg Ward, Touch My Beloved’s Thought, premiered at the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Chicago, IL)—a live dance and music performance in honor of Charles Mingus and commissioned by Links Hall and Constellation. Recently, Ozuzu was selected as a 2016 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist.

Project Tool is a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist recipient as well as a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Links Hall in partnership with Dancing Grounds and NPN. Currently, Onye Ozuzu is a resident artist at the Rebuild Foundation.