Aerial Dance Chicago is a contemporary dance company guided by the original creative vision of Founder & Artistic Director Chloe Jensen and currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. Characterized by extraordinary physicality and originality, the company's work has been shared across the United States, touching people of all walks of life with the transformative power of dance. ADC operates Chicago’s premiere center for aerial dance, offering cutting-edge curriculum for all ages, beginner through professional. As ADC moves forward, creating, performing and teaching, the company transcends assumed limits of dance and inspires people to rise to their highest potential.

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre combines dance, music and visual art to immerse audiences in performative storytelling. Cerqua Rivera’s diverse collective of artists take personal narratives and create universal human experiences. They invite both performers and viewers to contemplate the beautiful differences in communities, and explore the intersections of heritage, culture, and identity. Each program performed is carefully curated and designed to facilitate dialogue, push boundaries and build community. Accompanied by a sophisticated Jazz Orchestra, the Dance Ensemble skillfully combines contemporary, jazz, and latin techniques that is unique to the Cerqua Rivera aesthetic. With an incomparable expressiveness, the company stimulates hope and joy that resonates long after the curtain has closed, moving audiences to imagine what is possible. 

Enchanted about dance as a sustainable physical practice, Francesca Baron, mfa delights to be in conversation with/in movement + dance-making alongside students, collaborators and communities. In the past decade she has produced original work that has been presented at academic institutions, festivals, self-produced shows, film festivals, art galleries, weddings and on dance companies, studios and competition stages across the Midwest and New England. She has lectured and set work at: Keene State College, Smith College, Amherst College, Kenyon College, Lindenwood University. Her current creative kindling is composited by attentional states, subtlety, soft-vigor, kinetics and somatics. Francesca works out of Western Massachusetts and Chicago.

GIORDANO II (GII) is dedicated to the nurturing and elevation of young professional dancers under the artistic leadership of Nan Giordano and directed by Zachary Heller. The dancers of GII are provided the unique opportunity to be mentored by Giordano Dance Chicago dancers with the goal of advancement to the main company. Through the company’s Giordano on Giordano program, GII premieres new works each season created by GDC’s artistic team and main company dancers. GII performs at venues throughout the Midwest, preparing dancers with on-stage experience necessary for a career in concert dance and allowing them to broaden their technical and artistic range.

Hattie Haggard Gobble, originally from Plano, TX is a freelance choreographer, teacher and performer. She studied dance at Academy of Dance Arts in Allen, TX then at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. After graduating, she danced with Thodos Dance Chicago, Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, and Sol Dans Company. She was represented by AJK Agency in London where she starred in the feature film, Elegada. Hattie has choreographed for TDC New Dances, METDance, MadCo, and her own dance films, Black Pajamas and Strangers in the Stall, alongside various commissions for pre-professional institutions. She is thankful for every opportunity.

Little Fire Artist Collective is a Chicago-based collaborative born out of the chaos and uncertainty of the global pandemic. Spearheaded by a group of dancers, Little Fire seeks to fill a void for early to mid-career artists by acting as an incubator for voices and ideas that would otherwise be unseen or unheard. Learn more at littlefirelittlefire.org

Described by The New York Times as "a magician, telling tales and creating worlds" and "a fierce and supple performer," and a Dance Magazine’s 25 To Watch, Chicago-based choreographer Nejla Yatkin creates around the globe inspiring empathic connection between people and their environments. She is the recipient of the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple grants and awards from the Princess Grace Foundation, the Jay Pritzker Fund, the Turkish Cultural Foundation, the National Performance Network, 3Arts Award recipient, the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Award, the 2023 National Dance Project Award and most recently the Illinois Arts Council’s Creative Catalyst Award among many others. For more visit www.ny2dance.com

THE SELDOMS CREATES MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE CHARGED BY BOLD, EXACTING PHYSICALITY, AND THE BELIEF THAT DANCE CAN INSPIRE THINKING ABOUT CRITICAL SOCIAL ISSUES. EACH PROJECT IS FUELED BY AN APPETITE FOR RESEARCH AND INCUBATED WITH PARTNERS FROM FIELDS SUCH AS HISTORY AND SCIENCE. UNDER THE DIRECTION OF CHOREOGRAPHER CARRIE HANSON, THE COMPANY DESIGNS EXPANSIVE PRODUCTIONS WITH PRACTITIONERS OF VISUAL ARTS, ARCHITECTURE, THEATER, SOUND, AND FASHION.