SIDEBAR: Robyn Mineko Williams, Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra
The Gray Center welcomes director, interdisciplinary artist, dancer, and producer, Robyn Mineko Williams to our SIDEBAR series along with current fellows Meredith Dincolo (professional dancer and dance instructor) and Tara Zahra (Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of History at UChicago) for a conversation about dance as history and how artists and historians might develop new forms of embodied historical and artistic practice. Their dialogue will consider Robyn Mineko Williams' work Hisako House about her family's experience of Japanese Americans' incarceration in concentration camps during WWII, as a focal point for thinking more broadly about alternatives to the conventions of recording and conveying history.
Free and open to the public
Food and drinks will be served (6:00-6:30)
About the participants:
Robyn Mineko Williams is a director, interdisciplinary artist, dancer and producer. She works and creates within the lanes and intersections of performance, design, culture, and place. In 2015, Robyn founded Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists (RMW&A) with the mission to collaborate with a roster of dynamic artists and create a body of theatrical dance works, prioritizing public, immersive and malleable forms of presentation. RMW&A strives to find newness by intertwining mediums, ideas, spaces and people. Collaborations include projects with Manual Cinema, Califone, Finom, Lululemon, Verger, Jt Williams, Kyle Vegter, the Second City, Mike Gibisser, Brian Case, Alex Grelle, Alicia Walter, and Aitis Band.
Robyn’s work has been presented at the Kennedy Center, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Thalia Hall, Jacob’s Pillow, the Joyce Theater, MCA Chicago and more. Commissions include Pacific Northwest Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Malpaso Dance Company among others. She has been in residence at Baryshnikov Arts Center and is a 2023 Artist-in Residence at the Chicago Cultural Center. Robyn is a 2023 Dysart Award winner and Princess Grace Foundation-USA Fellowship grant recipient and was named one of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine in 2014. In tandem with her creations for the stage, Robyn works as a creative director and movement consultant on an array of projects including immersive experiences, film, installation, pop-up performances and music videos. Robyn is currently on faculty at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and has taught and set work at Springboard Danse Montreal, Point Park University, UNCSA, USC, The Juilliard School, University of Iowa, University of Chicago, Western Michigan University and UCLA Long Beach.
Meredith Dincolo has been dancing and teaching professionally for the past 27 years, having begun her professional career as a freelance dancer in Chicago in 1993. Ms. Dincolo joined Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as a full company member in 1996. During her nearly 14 years with the company, Meredith performed and created works with choreographers and artists from around the world. Between 2000-2004, Meredith danced in Europe with Lyon Opera Ballet (direction, Yorgos Loukos) and Nationaltheater Mannheim (direction, Kevin O’Day) before returning to Hubbard Street in late 2004. Most recently, Meredith performed with Robyn Mineko Williams and Artists in the premiere of Echo Mine, a full evening collaboration with the band Califone.
Tara Zahra is Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of History. She is the author of four books related to the history of migration, family, nationalism, and globalization; her most recent book, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics in Interwar Europe will be published by Norton in January 2023. She was named a Macarthur Fellow in 2014 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2021-22, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tara Zahra is also the Roman Family Director at the University of Chicago's Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. She is also a lifelong amateur dancer and has worked as a dance writer and critic. She has been active in efforts to expand the dance curriculum/presence at the University of Chicago since arriving in 2007, most recently serving on the Provost’s Arts Steering Committee from 2017-20.