Dance mainstay presses on in 40th season
When experimental choreographers Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow and Charlie Vernon rented a studio space together in 1978, they surely didn’t predict it would be around 40 years later. They called it Links Hall, because it was written on the front of the Wrigleyville building they shared with the Chicago Women’s Health Center and a rotating cast of bars on the ground floor just steps from the ballpark.
But as Links Hall celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, many of the thousands of artists who have graced its white walls and sprung maple floor will be looking back at what Chicago’s dance community built together — at what has become one of our most-treasured dance institutions.
For Director Roell Schmidt, community is still what Links Hall is all about. A writer and producer whose experience in development, marketing and audience engagement included prior roles with Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Chicago Chamber Musicians and the Athenaeum Theatre, Schmidt became interested in live performance as a way to counterbalance the solitary act of writing. She loves collaboration.
As such, she will be the first to tell you she hasn’t managed Links alone, giving much credit and deference to her staff: Associate Director Anna Trier, Communications Director Felicia Holman and Production Director Brett Swinney.
In nine years at the helm, Schmidt has seen the scrappy organization through a lot of change. Perhaps most notably, she facilitated a move of locations in 2013 to Links’ current home in the former Viaduct Theatre, a Roscoe Village venue that Links shares with Constellation, a for-profit music presenter led by Mike Reed.
It was a confusing model at first; indeed, little of what Links Hall does is without a bit of chaos in the beginning. But the new location provided key opportunities for growth, with more physical space — Links and Constellation share two studios and a lobby bar — and an ever-expanding role as a producer, facilitating international partnerships and curatorial residencies, as well as supporting new works.
“There's this dynamic setting — particularly in this space,” said Holman, who joined the staff just months after the move. “Just sitting in the lobby, it's an ecosystem of conversations. Collaborations happen there.”
The mantra of the 2018-2019 season, “Pay the 40th forward,” is all about the present and future of the organization. Remarkably, Links gathered funding to completely subsidize its core program, Linkages, a no-frills rental program for artists to self-present work in the space.
Links staff members put out a call for artists and were overwhelmed by the diversity of responses. The season features artists who’ve never produced their own work before, like Adina Stuhlman and Marceia Scruggs; artists coming back from performance hiatuses like Margaret Morris, Margi Cole and Anjal Chande; and veterans like Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang, who have shown work at Links for four decades.
Racial diversity has also improved, as Links has made a broader and more conscious effort over the past couple of years to reflect a more accurate picture of Chicago.
“In calls in the past, we've struggled to grow the community and reach more artists of color. That has been a huge barrier,” said Trier. “It feels really good to dissolve that barrier of entry-level personal and financial risk,” she said.
“It's something we've been working at for a long time,” said Schmidt. “When you have a city that's majority people of color, then it's not OK to have a season that's majority white. That doesn’t feel right. … It doesn't reflect Chicago and it gives lie to what we've been trying to do for a long time: to be open, and embracing, and a home for everyone who wants to take a risk in the performing arts.”
Presenting a broader range of artists has catalyzed a change in audience, too, inviting a more diverse group of adventurous patrons seeking to feel something, or wishing to better understand the world through creative expression. “Aside from really making sure that audiences are entertained,” said Swinney, “it's making sure that the audience feels that it's a safe space to take risks, not really in terms of what they see, but how they feel about it, how they leave that space with those ideas, and how they act on that.”