Show 4 Artists
Show 4 - Saturday November 14th
8:00 pm
RE|DANCE GROUP
RE|dance group was established in 2009 by creative partners, Lucy Vurusic Riner and Michael Estanich. Focusing on dance theatre works that explore personal, intimate human relationships, the company has received critical praise from audiences and critics throughout the country. The company enjoys an open process where all ideas are shared, investigated, and then crafted into dances that embody a heightened physical experience rich with emotional content and dramatic imagery. Our work reflects a rigorous inquiry into the body's capability for expression through motion and movement—from the subtle to the immense. The creative process is an ever evolving dynamic between intention, honesty, intuition and play.
Though Chicago is home base for RE|dance group, the partnership is supported through long distance collaboration. Estanich lives in Stevens Point, WI, while Riner is a Chicago based independent artist. We became fascinated with the idea of creating work in a new way—generating movement material while we were together and developing characters or deepening our personal understanding of ideas while we were apart. Through conversation and dialogue we establish physical memories that enrich our dancing and the relationships created in the works.
RE|dance group is celebrating our 18 year anniversary this year with two new premieres at the Columbia College Dance Center in March of 2027! We continue to travel to cities in the United States to share our work and have been honored to travel internationally to both Canada and South Korea.
Photo Credit: Matthew Gregory Hollis
ELLIOT REZA EMADIAN
CDF 2026 COMMISSIONED ARTIST
Elliot Reza Emadian is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Their work occurs within dance and choreography, video art and editing, sound and music, and light and photography. Elliot holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from W&L University (2017), a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Elliot is a 2021 recipient of the Anne and Weston Hicks Choreographic Fellowship from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Through a lifetime of dancing, they have accrued influences from tap and jazz styles, contemporary releasing forms and modern dance, ballet, popular music video dance, and experimental performance art. Elliot has performed and toured with Sara Hook Dances and David Parker, and presented collaborative performance work across the US. Most recently, they devised an improvisational performance with composer Paul Leary “Is this who we are? Or, what we have become” which debuted at Vision of Sound 2025 in Ithaca, NY. Currently, Elliot is incubating an extensive audio project and devising a network of collaborative, anti-capitalist, embodied installations under the umbrella “HOOK.LINE.SINKER.”
Photo Credit: Black Valve
INPULSE DANCE CO.
Founded in 2020 by choreographer and educator Trezon Dancy, InPulse Dance Company continues to push boundaries in contemporary performance while fostering a community of artists dedicated to authenticity and creative risk.
InPulse Dance Co. upholds the mission of self expression through mind, body, and soul. Our vision is supporting the opportunity to self express through genuine and visceral movement, inspired by familiar life and human obstacles. The creation process starts with remembered experiences. Those memories serve as an archive to activate the creative thought. Though the work is abstract, the viewer is encouraged to create his own interpretation, and find personal life connections visually, physically and spiritually.
MACKENZIE VALLEY & MIKAELA BROWN
Mackenzie & Mikaela have been creating dance works together for the better part of 20 years. In 2012, they founded Elu Dance Company, through which they created and premiered works on local stages and internationally, performing pieces that could translate onto dusty grounds, train stations and street corners. In 2019, at PlayhouseSquare, they premiered “Barefaced” – an evening length depiction of the story of Cupid and Psyche– based on C.S. Lewis’s “Till We Have Faces”. Years of collaborations and exploration with local and international artists culminated in this multifaceted and gripping performance. Mackenzie & Mikaela have worked with diverse groups from Cleveland Rape Crises Center, Cornerstone of Hope, Juvenille Detention Center, Emerge Counselling, Ancient Path, and more. Through workshops, retreats, camps and flash mobs, they engage others in the creative process and enable them to become more embodied as individuals and as a collective. After taking a pause from the stage, they are now excited to re-emerge onto the dance scene, investigating what it means to continue to create art with aging bodies and full families. Awards include Cleveland Workforce Fellowship (2010 and 2012), PlayhouseSquare’s LAUNCH program, and Neighborhood Connection Grants.
DANCING WHEELS COMPANY
The Dancing Wheels Company is America’s first and foremost physically integrated company and is proudly hailed as the World Center for Integrated Dance & Arts Access. With a composition of professional stand up and sit down dancers, the company tours globally, presenting innovative works from nationally acclaimed choreographers. The School of Dancing Wheels embraces inclusive arts programming, reaching over 7,000 children and adults with disabilities and economic challenges each year. For more information, visit www.dancingwheels.org
MK FORD
MK Ford (they/them) is an anti-disciplinary dance artist whose work includes performance, choreography, film and visual arts. Presently, MK Ford holds the role of Clinical Assistant Professor of Dance and Multimedia at Arizona State University. They hold a MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland College Park and a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ford is currently performing with various dance artists in the New York, Washington D.C., L.A., and Phoenix areas while also working as a freelance multimedia collaborator. Ford's work has been shows across the U.S. in dance concerts, ScreenDance presentations, visual art installations, and more. Ford’s research includes themes from queer theory such as redaction, code shifting, and multi-mediated cyborg phenomenologies. The dance lineages that Ford moves within include contemporary postmodern, floorwork practices, improvisational strategies, and street styles.
ZIHAO YUAN
Zihao Yuan | 袁子豪 is a "Kuer 酷儿" (or queer) Chinese dance artist-scholar. He is also a second-year PhD Student | Graduate Fellow in Dance Studies at The Ohio State University, pursuing a minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from the Shanghai Theatre Academy (2016) and a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Washington (2024).
ANNA PERETZ ROGOVOY
Anna Peretz Rogovoy is a contemporary dance artist currently based between Madison, Wisconsin and Detroit, Michigan. She spent the first decade of her professional career as a freelance dancer and choreographer in New York City, where she produced her own work at venues including the 92nd St Y, The Flea Theater, HERE Arts Center, JACK, University Settlement, the Judson Memorial Church, and more. She has also shown her work throughout the Midwest in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio, including at the Cleveland Dance Festival in 2023 and 2024. Anna is a scholar and educator who has presented research at the Dance Studies Association and National Dance Education Organization conferences, and she is on faculty in the dance department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a BA in Dance and Literature from Bennington College.
