About Us
Chicago Dance History Project
Chicago Dance History Project investigates, documents, and presents the oral and corporeal histories of dance in Chicago by creating and maintaining an open-access digital archive of original and collected materials. Our archive represents a wide variety of dance artists and institutions, and tells the stories of Chicago’s dance history from multiple perspectives; the organization strives to preserve the most diverse, most representational stories possible.
Further, we seek to honestly represent any racial, ethnic, and other identity-based harms uncovered in our archival efforts that were systematically perpetrated by and within the city of Chicago – as manifest through the past and present socio-political contexts in which Chicago dance practices evolved – with particular cognizance of the city’s historical and continued policies of anti-Black racism and racial segregation. By unflinchingly giving voice to the realities and legacies of the many forms of discrimination reflected by and in dance history, we hope to ameliorate past harms, thus equitably elevating the creative practice of past and present dance artists and practitioners in Chicago.
Land + Dance Acknowledgement
As CDHP seeks to document and preserve the legacies of Chicago dance communities of the 20th and 21st centuries, we acknowledge that the creative practices we’re able to document have supplanted the cultural practices and creative movement of the peoples whose ancestral lands we inhabit. Aspiring to full inclusivity representing present-day Zhegagoynak (Potawatomi for Chicago), which hosts the third largest urban Native population in the United States of (North) America, CDHP is committed to seeking stories representing and uplifting the individual and/or collective dance practices of the region’s Native peoples.