Happydog performance company was formed when three artists—Chicago-based designer Annie Novotny, Portland-based choreographer Muffie Connelly and New York dancer Leslie Cuyjet—embarked on a tri-coastal creative project. They founded Happydog Gallery in Wicker Park as incubator space and began a process of creative exchange from afar, crafting performance works that evolve over months of collaboration, unbounded by genre or medium. Their newest work, “LADY PARTS,” is part two in a trilogy about human reproduction from a feminine perspective. They share the bill with Khecari, which presents two works: Jonathan Meyer’s male duet “Esther & the Omphali” and “Orders from the Horse,” a new improvisatory duet-in-progress between Meyer and his collaborative partner Julia Rae Antonick. (Sharon Hoyer)
Extremely Gentle and Incredibly Close: Khecari Plays with Proximity and Scale in Vicinity Diptych Dance theater is all about people watching other people in motion. For Jonathan Meyer and Julia Rae Antonick, co-executive directors of Khecari, the stationary bodies are of equal importance to those under the lights. The Khecari founders are interested in not just the eyes and brains in those watching bodies, but what happens to all human organisms in the room…
