CHICAGO — This post is part of a series of conversations with trans/genderqueer dancers to give you a broader idea of where we come from, what we’re up to, and how we navigate the dance community. With that said, meet Dee Alaba! Dee is a dancer, teacher and aspiring academic working in Chicago. Dee (she/her) identifies as transfemme, but only…

CHICAGO — A decade ago, Rachel Damon sat in a tree knitting a long red scarf. Her fledgling company performed many works like these — site-specific installations using multiple mediums — as we saw Synapse Arts Collective performing in parks, crosswalks and atop fabricated clouds. Since that time, Damon assumed leadership of the once-collective of multi-disciplinary artists, and the rebranded Synapse Arts refined its…

I’ve known Rachel Damon for about 10 years, and I feel like I know her work pretty well. A Damon dance is grounded, dark, and shrouded in abstraction. She blurs the lines between genders, genres, and disciplines in her work and creates through improvisation and visceral experiences.  Her costumes are grey, and red, and blue. Swath is from another place entirely.  The…