SOLD OUT: Freedom From and Freedom To

This event is part of the UIC Social Justice Initiative's free summer event series In Tandem: Solidarity, Solidarité, Solidaridad, curated by Lola Ayisha Ogbara, which explores themes of solidarity, collective work, and the process of building toward common goals through film, art, performance, workshops, and more. Join us this summer in asking, “How do our struggles for justice work in tandem?”

Friday, June 27, 2025
6:00 - 8:00 PM
Chicago Justice Gallery
wheelchair accessible, CART available, free masks on-site. Please contact SJIChicago@uic.edu for additional accessibility questions.
1344 S Halsted

Join SJI on Friday, June 27 for a special performance of Freedom From and Freedom To in our Chicago Justice Gallery space, where musicians and dancers will perform surrounded by our current exhibition: Echoes of Ferguson.

Freedom From and Freedom To is an acclaimed performance series organized by Cristal Sabbagh that brings musicians and dancers together to create a fully improvised set.

Dancers and musicians for each set are selected at random. Their task is to make use of the chance encounter to fuse their diverse artistic backgrounds in relation to one another, working out their next move and their next musical note by studying each other in the moment and by drawing on their own training and stylistic traditions. The resulting performance invites the audience to consider the ways in which the performers' solidarity and collective world-building through movement and sound might relate to working together in other contexts.

Featuring:

Dancers

• Solomon Bowser - Solomon Bowser is a dancer and choreographer from the red clay hills of Stone Mountain, GA. He has been blessed to work with some beautiful folks and projects during his 14 years in Chicago. He is currently a thought partner and collaborator with J’Sun Howard. When he’s not dancing, Bowser serves his community through his work at See Chicago Dance.
• Ed Clemons - Chicago native Ed Clemons is a movement artist and DJ, inspired by the energy and freestyle movements of hip hop and house music dance culture.
• Kopano - Kopano is a Chicago-based cultural worker who communicates through sound and movement. Seeing theirself in the legacy of Pan-Africanism, Kopano strives to connect their South African and native-Chicagoan roots through musical production and collaboration.
• Mya - Mya McClellan (she/her) is a versatile artist based in Chicago and Ohio. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2021). Mya is an improviser, choreographer, and performer, currently touring with Ohio-based Abby Z and the New Utility.
• Sandy Perez - Sandy Perez is a dancer, choreographer, and freestyler located in the Chicagoland area with strong ties to chosen family in Nashville. Through play, she aims to embrace connection and world building as well as celebrate community and culture.
• Cristal Sabbagh - Cristal Sabbagh’s performance practice, rooted in improvisation and Butoh, walks a line between the everyday, the divine, the personal, and the political. In embodying in her art transformational memories while simultaneously celebrating pop culture and the experimental, she challenges power structures and awakens viewers’ senses. She is the creator and curator of Freedom From and Freedom To events that are improvisational performance environments which interrogate movement and sound.
• Sara Zalek - Sara Zalek is an interdisciplinary artist, avant-garde maker of situations and curious objects. Rooted in physical investigations of trauma, resilience, and transformation, their work is intimate, raw, poetic.

Musicians

• Paige Brown - Vocalist, pianist and composer Paige Brown (she/her) believes in the use of voice as a channel, and the use of the instrument/body as a voice.
• Caroline Jesalva - Caroline Jesalva is a Chicago-based improviser, curator, and violinist-vocalist traversing the worlds of performance art, contemporary classical, songwriting, and experimental/improvised music.
• Allen Moore - Allen Moore is a Black American experimental turntablist, painter, educator/mentor born and raised in the South Side Village of Robbins, Illinois.
• Julian Otis - Julian Otis is a vocalist dedicated to the advancement of Black music in America, spanning genres from creative music and jazz, to contemporary classical.
• Julián Pujols Quall - Julián Pujols Quall is a Chicagoan that uses jazz, classical, free improv, electronic, and Caribbean influences to push artistic boundaries. Recently Julián co-founded the Peabody Improvisers Collective, held a three year long residency at the Jazz Showcase, and formed Mamey, a musical project that seeks to deepen the understanding of the influence of West African arts on the Americas.
• Nick Turner - Nick Turner is a Chicago based musician and social worker that utilizes music and sound creation as a vehicle for emotional experiencing and expression.

This event has reached capacity, so we are no longer taking RSVPs. There will be a limited number of walk-in spaces based on availability on Friday, 6/27. We ask registered guests to arrive no later than 6:00 pm. At that time, we will welcome walk-ins on a first come, first served basis to fill any empty seats.