FAQ
Thanks for visiting. Please consider contributing!
Multimedia: Video and sound files are both supported here — the idea is to have a “book” of mostly text and images, but of course if you want to add other media we’d be happy to host it.
Video should be hosted at YouTube or Vimeo if you have an account with either of those — all you would need to do is send us a link and be sure to have allowances for embedding & remote hosting turned on (they’re usually on by default).
Audio is simple — just send a file as an attachment to an email to linkshall3030pages@gmail.com and we’ll take care of the rest (imbed it in a Flash player with a download link for people who want to listen later/on their iPods etc).
Supported File Types:
Text & images: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, doc, ppt, odt, pptx, docx
Audio: mp3, m4a, wav, ogg
Collaborations:
True to Links Hall, the idea is for this to be as collaborative as possible. Feel free to enlist the help of friends, colleagues, audience members and associates to make a Page that represents you as a group!
We’re very excited to see your Page! Let us know if you have any other questions or need our assistance.
Links Hall 30/30 Pages 
Not sure if the following, in whole or part, might be helpful for your blog, but i pulled it together for the CAR website (i think early last year? — its of its time). Let me know if I can help more — sorry to be missing the 30/30 event… CJ
http://www.chicagoartistsresource.org/dance/node/14534
C.J. Mitchell, Links Hall
What is Links Hall? What kinds of resources does it provide for dancers?
This is what you will hear on our Box Office voice mail, at 773 281 0824:
“Hello, this is Links Hall’s Box Office. Our next event is [name of company, title of show, dates and times of show, price of tickets]. If you would like to make a reservation, please leave your name, the date of the performance and number of tickets required, and please state your phone number twice. We accept cash and checks at the event; no credit cards. We are located at 3435 North Sheffield, at the corner of Sheffield, Clark and Newport.Information about other upcoming performances and workshops is on our web site: http://www.linkshall.org….Thank you.”
Here’s more background on our history:
Links Hall works from leased facilities at 3435 North Sheffield, Chicago, where we have developed innovative and supportive artistic programming over our 29-year history. We present a wide-ranging program of local, national, and international performance, and provide an important range of services to artists. Although dance is a core artistic discipline for the organization, our mission is to support new work in the performing arts, and multidisciplinary work infuses our programs. It is our intention for artists and audiences to develop enthusiasm, lively discussion, and context for performance as complex and meaningful cultural expression.
Links Hall is going through a period of significant strategic growth and change. After Links Hall co-founder Bob Eisen retired from the organization in 2000, we recognized the need to formalize Links Hall’s organizational and artistic program structures. This restructuring has produced impressive and effective change and public awareness; and appreciation of Links Hall’s programs is positive and expanding
This is strictly business-related. If you’re not into that, skip to the next part:
Our 5-year Strategic Plan was completed in January 2006. The Plan reaffirmed our mission and artistic programs, including a commitment to ongoing, sustainable organizational growth and a vision for facility relocation.
Since that time, progress has been made on many fronts. For example: our annual operating budget has grown from $148,000 in 2004 to $380,000 in 2008. Audience attendance at public performances has increased from 2,700 in 2004 to 5,400 in 2007.
This is how we define our interest in live performance:
Live, multidisciplinary dance and performance questions, examines, and stretches boundaries of form and content; deals with complexity in ways the cultural mainstream does not; and cannot be fostered without research and experimentation. Since its inception, Links Hall has presented literally thousands of local, national, and international artists. Thousands of artists have used our space to create, rehearse, teach, explore and grow. We provide artists with free or inexpensive space to rehearse, teach, and present new work.
Links Hall ensures that Chicago-based artists and audiences see innovative work that was created elsewhere — nationally and internationally. This can have an extraordinary ripple effect and positive impact on our own community, particularly as there are limited opportunities to engage with new, live performing arts in the city of Chicago. The city offers much in the areas of traditional theater and comedy, as well as the established forms of classical music, ballet and opera. While these are all vital to the cultural fabric of the city, there is also the vital need to nurture new work — not adaptations or realizations of pre-existing plans, scores, or scripts, but work which engages with new models of creative (and often collaborative) processes. This work can engage with the complexity of modern life, present new modes of expression, and in turn, affect the future mainstream.
We don’t have an Artistic Director. Our Programming Committee sets strategy and direction for the artistic development of Links Hall; selects guest curators and artists for commissions and residencies; and stresses the representation of multiple artistic viewpoints in our programs.
We have recently taken part in organizational partnerships which have enhanced our programming and increased public awareness of Links Hall; these have included the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Dance Center of Columbia College, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Hyde Park Art Center.
Here is more detail about our artistic programs:
1. Public Programming: includes month-long, guest-curated festivals focused on different art forms or themes; commissions and residencies partially supported through our membership of the National Performance Network; and 25 weekends of co-presentations each year, mostly by Chicago-based dance and performance artists.
2. Artist-Focused Programming: supports research and development in the creation of new performance, annually providing six artists with free studio time over a 6-month residency, presentations at Links Hall and the Chicago Cultural Center, and stipends; providing low-cost rental space for rehearsals, classes, and other artistic activities; and education programs, including our public workshop series, free Symposium events, and post-show discussions.
This is what we’ve been particularly excited about this year– three month-long festivals:
January 2008
Method to Madness: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Process
Curated by Kate Sheehy
The last three years of Links Hall’s puppetry festival programs have explored a diversity of approaches to puppetry. Kate Sheehy plans to highlight two new developments through her program: a strong interest in creative process and linking puppetry to a wider interdisciplinary context. Each weekend will offer a new program of short works, including puppetry, video, dance, and music, as well as workshops and discussion events. Kate Sheehy is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, and curator living in Chicago.
March 2008
Choreographing Coalitions: Dancing the Other in the Self
Curated by Peter Carpenter and co-presented by The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago
Choreographing Coalitions brings together body-based artists who share a curiosity for art making around themes of social justice, and who deploy their own experience as a means to reach across rigidly maintained identity constructions. Week One includes excerpts from Darrell Jones’ (Chicago), “3rd Swan From the End,” Gesel Mason’s (Washington D.C.), “No Less Black,” and David Roussève’s (Los Angeles) “Jumping the Broom.” In Week Two Victoria Marks (Los Angeles) will perform “Not About Iraq,” an evening-length work created as part of a National Performance Network Residency. Week Three includes new work by Lisa Gonzales (Chicago), Kristen Smiarowski (Los Angeles), and Jyl Fehrenkamp (Chicago). In Week Four Denise Uyehara (Los Angeles) will perform an evening-length work entitled “Big Head.” The festival will address the interaction of creativity and social engagement, and has been curated by Peter Carpenter, a choreographer and faculty member of the Dance Center of Columbia College, Chicago.
May 2008
Poets’ Theatre
Curated by John Beer
This festival follows the traditions of the Cabaret Voltaire and the Poets’ Theatres of San Francisco and Cambridge, MA, and will consist of a set of performances that retain a focus on language and structure while potentially abandoning traditional elements of narrative or staging. For each weekend of the month, a set of three to five writers, musicians, or dancers will present a group of new short works. Each group will also be asked to include a performance of a piece in the historical tradition of poets’ theatre, such as works by Gertrude Stein, John Wieners, or Jackson MacLow. The inherent awkwardness of asking artists with solidly developed skills in one domain to present work in another, as well as the insistence upon collaboration, is intended to encourage the kind of risk, surprise, and discovery that make art in performance engaging and valuable. John Beer is a writer, curator, teacher, and academic living in Brooklyn, New York.
Also, behind the scenes, the following dance/movement artists are in residence through our LinkUp program:
Christian Bambara, Meghan Strell, Caitlin Marz, Renata Sheppard, Angeline Gragasin, and Szewai Lee.
These artists receive free studio time over a 6-month residency, presentations at Links Hall and the Chicago Cultural Center, and stipends. We have an annual Call for Proposals for LinkUp residency artists each April.
This is the staff:
Executive Director – CJ Mitchell
Managing Director – Jennifer Thornton
Education and Community Programs Director – Erica Mott
Business Manager – David Emanuel
Technical Director – Rachel Damon
House Manager Interns – Ian Hatcher and Aurora Tabar
Marketing Intern – Anna Clark
This is the Board of Directors:
Michelle Carr, Yolanda Cesta Cursach, Ginger Farley, Sandy Gerding, Sarah H. Linn, Laura Samson, Blair Thomas, Charlie Vernon, and Michael Zerang.
This is the Advisory Board:
Bob Eisen, Marguerite Horberg, Peter Taub, and Chuck Thurow.
These were the three founders of Links Hall, back in 1978:
Carol Bobrow, Bob Eisen, and Charlie Vernon.
All of our print design is done by:
Sandbox Studio, Chicago
Links Hall is supported in part by:
A CityArts Program-2 Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, The Illinois Arts Council (a state agency), Alphawood Foundation, The Boeing Company, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Cliffdwellers Art Foundation, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Event Engineering, Illinois Humanities Council, The Japan Foundation, Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation, James S. Kemper Foundation, Prince Charitable Trusts, Sandbox Studio (Chicago), The Weasel Fund, and many generous individual contributors. Links Hall is a member of the National Performance Network sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
What didn’t fit anywhere else above, but that you should know:
Links Hall also engages in other forms of artist support and programming:
We are a consortium member (along with the MCA and The Dance Center of Columbia College) of the Chicago Dancemakers Forum, through which mid-career dance artists are supported in extended residencies;
We collaborate with Experimental Sound Studio on CROSSCUT, a program which provides awards for new collaborations between movement and sound artists;
In Spring 2007, we co-presented with Hyde Park Art Center an exhibition of performance-based video works projected on the façade of HPAC’s facility;
We presented a series of living room-based performances by X-Wing(Chicago) in Spring 2007; and our weekly e-newsletter has become a virtual community gathering place where artists find and exchange information.
If you want to support Links Hall:
Donate your hours and expertise: we rely on volunteers in the office and at events. Contact us for information: 773.281.0824/info@linkshall.org
Or…
Donate funds: support our programs by mailing a check to Links Hall or donating online at http://www.linkshall.org 773 281 0824
Thanks for reading this far.
CJ Mitchell is the Executive Director of Links Hall performance space. He is also an Associate/fundraising member of Goat Island Performance Group, and a board member of the dance company Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak. Previously, he was the Managing Director of Performing Arts Chicago; Administrative Director of Master of Arts in Arts Administration at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago; and General Manager of Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland.