Photo: Zach Gross, 2007.

This evening, acclaimed performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes and Violeta Luna of the ensemble La Pocha Nostra cap off a weeklong residency at Columbia College with a free public performance of Corpo/Ilicito: The Post-Human Society #69. I talked yesterday with Gómez-Peña, the recipient of a 1991 MacArthur “genius grant” and a longtime explorer of cultural and psychological border territory, about the new work.

Time Out Chicago: You’ve described Corpo/Ilicito as responding to the challenge of the end of the Bush regime. How does Obama’s election alter the position of the oppositional artist?

Guillermo Gómez-Peña: We’re exploring philosophically the transition from a legacy of cultural fear, the demonization of the body of the Other: the Latino immigrant, the queer body, the female body. This legacy is still with us, parasitic, like a lingering fog in the streets and in the institutions. How is it affecting us? How are we self-censoring?

And then how does this fit with an institutionalized culture of hope? We’re trying to compare notes from our own project of hope. Are we in sync with them? Is Obama willing to listen to artists and intellectuals?

TOC: You’ve developed this iteration of the performance in part through workshops at Columbia College. How has that process worked?

GGP: It’s been fantastic. There was a very sophisticated curatorial process that drew artists from organizations and communities throughout the city. It’s a very diverse group—diverse in age, in art practice, in ethnicity. We’ve got a very interesting troupe, and we’re hoping there will be a residue, that some will be empowered to participate in the process when we return for the second part, in the spring.  At Columbia, we’ve found the ideal conditions for our own style of pedagogy. And that’s crucial, because these kinds of educational spaces are appearing less and less within our institutions and universities; they’ve become more careful, worrying more about what kind of art or conversation they can support.

TOC: Your work has often centered on the issue of the border, especially the U.S.-Mexico border. Did the border arise as an issue during this Chicago residency?

GGP: Yes. I think that national borders are being reproduced in our cities. Chicago is a city that suffers from endemic internal borders. Inevitably, in the work that we workshopped, a lot of these borders began to emerge.

There are borders between neighborhoods, borders between genders. You have, for instance, new generations of gay and lesbian Latino artists who have trouble with older activist organizations that may not be so open to their imagery.

And the issue of immigration remains problematic under Obama. Politicians don’t talk about immigration—this is another legacy of the Bush era. There’s been a formidable demonization of the Latino Other in our institutions, and this worries me very much as a border artist. With the frail, precarious position of undocumented immigrants, it’s as though we’re back in a pre–civil rights era. And this is not part of the national debate. They don’t have strong voices speaking for them, and they are still a crucial part of our financial and cultural well-being.

TOC: What can people expect if they attend Corpo/Ilicito?

GGP: It’s going to be a very wild performance. When audience members first come in, they’re going to find that the whole building is occupied with live art images. We’ve been developing a wide array of site-specific images for the performance. And then, when they reach the space, they will experience a high-energy interactive performance art piece. We’re using sound, video projection, multiple stages. A lot of the issues we’re discussing will emerge, but not in an explicit, thematic way: It follows an elliptical, poetic method.

La Pocha Nostra performs Friday 30 at 7pm at Columbia College (618 S Michigan Ave). Admission is free, but arrive early.

Gustavo Ramirez Sansano

I first met Sansano when I was hanging out at Lou Conte Dance Studio, teaching modern dance classes and sneaking in to company class in the mornings with the Hubbard Street dancers. One of the company dancers under Jim Vincent, Gustavo created a zone of easy grace and calm around himself, and it was always an inspiration to be in class with him and see the nonchalance with which he approached even the most technically difficult material.

Now Sansano, 31, is bringing his unmistakable hipness and grace back to Chicago, where he’s been named artistic director of Luna Negra Dance Theater, filling the capable shoes of founder Eduardo Vilaro, who went to lead Ballet Hispanico in NYC. Sansano had already made a couple of lovely works for Luna before leaving Hubbard and heading to his homeland in Spain to pursue his choreographic career; he’s definitely new-school, imaginatively unformulaic and exuberant.

In a city that tends to be conservative about leadership changes, Sansano’s appointment at Luna is one of the most fresh and exciting things that has happened in Chicago dance in a long time. It’s obvious that as an organization, Luna is just as vibrant in the boardroom as it is onstage. Bravo.

Photo: danmerlo.com

The Seldoms, the modern dance company headed by choreographer Carrie Hanson, is having a big year. Not only is it debuting in the prestigious MCA Performances series in March, the ensemble is traveling to Isadora, the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Krasnoyarsk, Russia in April to perform, teach and choreograph. The company web site has a great page with more info that allows you to donate to your favorite dancer. So far, the Seldoms have raised $3,500 of the $15,000 they need to make the jaunt, so dig deep dance lovers.

Photos by Cheryl Mann

The whole event, which starts at 6pm, also includes a post-performance discussion plus a chance to make your own painting. Tickets are $30, more info at theseldoms.org.

Mkrtich Malkhasyan, from the film Nora by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton.

Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire and filmmaker Danièle Wilmouth introduce the film NORA at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E Chicago Ave) TONIGHT (Tue 29) at 6pm. The screening and discussion take place in the MCA’s  ground-floor Kanter Meeting Center. The event is free with museum admission, which is $12, students or seniors  with ID $7.

NORA (by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, 2008, 35 minutes) blends documentary realism with poetic dance images. Wilmouth and Chipaumire introduce the film and discuss how art and history interact from personal experience, exploring Chipaumire’s early years in Zimbabwe after the Chimurenga Chechipiri (or second war of liberation), to her present life as an artist working in New York.

Kast at age 13, photo by Vern Blaisdell

With her tundra-white hair and friendly eyes, Maggie Kast is an easy-to-recognize and welcome presence in the audience at many modern-dance events. Active for more than 30 years in the city’s dance-scape as a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and teacher for many years, she turned her attention to writing about 14 years ago.

This Thursday 24 at 7:30pm, Kast looks back on her life in the arts as she reads from The Crack Between the Worlds, her just-published memoir of dance, family life and loss at Women & Children First bookshop, 5233 N Clark St. A reception follows.

We’re told: “In this first detailed history of Irish dance in the diaspora, Flanagan gives a fascinating account of the art form in one of its most important urban centers of practice: Chicago. Beginning with its appearance at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 to the emergence of world-renowned Chicago performers/choreographers such as Michael Flatley and Mark Howard, she describes the teachers, schools and performances that contributed to making the city an international center of Irish dance.”

Flanagan, an associate professor of theater and dance at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota, is a Chicagoland native and registered Irish dance teacher (T.C.R.G.) with the Irish Dancing Commission, Dublin. She’ll read from her book, discuss Irish dance in Chicago and sign copies of her book.

The Irish American Heritage Center is located near Wilson Avenue and the Edens Expressway at 4626 North Knox. For more information, call 773-282-7035, or visit irish-american.org.

For the last few years, perhaps, it could be said that Redmoon Theatre was dabbling in narrative. The company that built its reputation in the mid-to-late-’90s on community-based spectacles, notably its annual All Hallows’ Eve events in Logan Square and its movable Winter Pageants, took up residence a while back in a West Town industrial space dubbed Redmoon Central, where it applied its movement-based, puppet-infused, found-materials steampunk aesthetic to metatheatrical but story-centered works like The Cabinet, Hunchback and Boneyard Prayer, while its site-specific installations seemed to take a backseat.

Redmoon’s presence in unexpected places has been ramping back up over the last year, starting with a revamped Winter Pageant last year and continuing through multiple appearances of its “Momentary Opera” over the summer. But the company’s outdoor spectacle is back in a big way with Last of My Species: The Fearless Songs of Laarna Cortaan, which opened last night on Belmont Harbor and continues through next Sunday.

Cortaan is a Norwegian musician whom Redmoon encountered on a project in Holland last year; she’s heavily influenced by European folk traditions and doesn’t record her own music, though she encourages her fans to record live performances and expand upon them. The impression I got of her music in this production, which Redmoon bills as its first “concert,” is that it’s as if Björk had gone to the Old Town School.

The show itself, in fact, conceived and directed by Jim Lasko, Frank Maugeri and Vanessa Stalling, feels rather like a live-action version of a Michel Gondry-helmed Björk video. Shu Shubat serves as Cortaan’s stand-in, while Alex Balestrieri acts as conductor for an army of ostensible musicians playing fake instruments and brandishing oversized masks.

Not everything in Last of My Species works. Though I liked the way the interjections of Seth Bockley, who portrays a Norwegian manager-type, allowed Redmoon to poke fun at its own whimsical tendencies (he says through a bullhorn at one particularly sentimental moment, “I hope you’re not buying this”), I heard other audience members saying they found his interruptions annoying. But don’t leave early, as some did last night: The best set piece comes near the end, when Tony Hernandez and Rani Waterman perform an astounding pas de deux on the end of a hydraulic fireman’s ladder. I know these two performers’ skills well enough to trust their abilities with aerial stunts. But the gasps from audience members around me had me on the edge of my seat all over again. If Cortaan’s music isn’t your bag—and I’ll admit it didn’t do much for me—this extended sequence is worth the very reasonable price of admission.