After a prominent dance venue closed, a new effort aims to lift up independent Chicago dancemakers

A year after the storied Chicago dance venue Links Hall announced it would close its doors for good, prompting an outcry from the experimental dance community that staged works there, a new effort seeks to help fill the gap.

The nonprofit Chicago Dancemakers Forum announced Thursday the inaugural class of its Dance Project Grants Program, which will help power 10 live dance events in the next year from independent artists. Events range from a weeklong footwork series to a dance theater performance featuring puppets and projections.

“I'm not going to let the void just be the void,” said Joanna Furnans, the forum’s executive director. “I feel very firmly that we need to do something else.”

Each of the 10 recipients, selected from a pool of more than 100 applicants, will receive $10,000 in funding, which comes from foundations, the state arts council and individuals. On the list of grantees are dancemaker and poet J'Sun Howard and the Afro-feminist-focused group, Honey Pot Performance.

The program arrives amid a precarious moment for the arts. Last year, President Donald Trump clawed back grant dollars awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts and shifted the program’s focus, in part, to projects that celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. (The Dancemakers Forum was among the arts organizations that lost federal grant dollars.) Locally, funding for the arts has dipped at the city level and remained stagnant in the proposed state budget.

The shaky funding landscape has led some arts organizations to shy away from works that embrace diversity or subject matters that may attract scrutiny. Furnans hopes the forum’s grant program can be an antidote to that.

Chicago is home to a few major dance companies that tour internationally, plus a handful of midsize professional groups. But the scene has also produced countless independent dancemakers who need rehearsal and performance space to stage their works; that scene has been hit hardest by the Links’ closure. “I think historically, Chicago has a conservative dance mind, or dance aesthetic. By Chicago, I mean the major stages are showing work that feels kind of like safe and, you know, tried and true,” she said. “There are so many other kinds of work being made in the city that we are in a position to uplift.”

Furnans acknowledged that while “$10,000 is great,” it also is “not enough for any of these projects.” But, she’s hoping the investment will generate momentum and help rebuild a pathway for individual dance artists to establish careers in Chicago.

“We're starting to lose the kind of stepping stone opportunities for professional dancemakers to build their careers and have continuous opportunities to make a name for themselves in the city and beyond,” Furnans said.

For years, the dance nonprofit gave four larger grants to mid-career artists through its Lab Artists Program, but after surveying the local landscape, Furnans opted to pivot and put that initiative on pause in favor of smaller grants for dancemakers still establishing themselves.

“I was seeing that the scaffold has left, and so we need to come in with the resources that we have and actually do something different to help stimulate the ecosystem at this time,” Furnans said.

While each of the grantees’ projects will result in a live performance or event, the grant does not provide a set venue or rehearsal space. The hope is to infuse dance into new and unexpected spaces, Furnans said.

Taking art beyond the confines of theaters is something larger organizations are also experimenting with as they vie to attract new audiences, but dance artists like Amanda Ramirez say permanence also matters.

“Links Hall was very important to me as an artist and its loss is massive,” said Ramirez, who also pointed to Hamlin Park Theater and Chicago Moving Company’s closure in 2024. “I personally have felt a massive decrease in performances happening. There's definitely still performances, and people are resilient, but to me, there is a ginormous hole in the community.”

Ramirez, a 35-year-old dancemaker who lives in Chicago’s Logan Square, is among the grantees. Her project, “La Cookout,” is a site-specific immersive dance performance, inspired by family cookouts during her upbringing in El Paso, Texas.

“It brings together dance, music and food to create a sort of Latin-style cookout, or, how we call it, a carne asada, and it becomes a living and participatory performance experience,” said Ramirez, who first began the project through a residency at the Chicago Cultural Center. “This grant gives me the opportunity to finish the project so that it can be performed in a non-traditional environment.”

In addition to the grant program, which Furnans said will also be offered next year, the Dancemakers Forum has partnered with High Concept Labs to take the pulse of the city’s experimental performance sector. Following a survey last fall, they’ll co-host a community gathering on April 18 to take the temperature of the local scene and discuss what comes next.

2026 Dance Project Grants Recipients:

• “La Cookout” by Amanda Ramirez
• “TZINELAS” by Anniela Huidobro Castro
• “little fears” by Ashwaty Chennat
• “MATADORA” by Camila Rivero Pooley aka INSÉKTA
• “SWIS)HER” by J'Sun Howard
• “Untitled (Elephant)” by Lin Hixson and Every house has a door
• “Swine Ball” by Nora Sharp
• “Pleasure Power Portal” by Meida McNeal and Honey Pot Performance
• “Chicago Footworkology Week” by Mike D Chicago and Creative Netwerk
• “Untitled” by Zachary Nicol with Anna Martine Whitehead and Tara Aisha Willis

Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.