In the open
04/10/20
Darling Shear crafts performances that explore the nature of interpersonal connection, often creating immersive environments for, and interacting with, audiences. Since the stay-at-home order has taken effect, Darling has been creating improvised dances in empty public spaces that would normally be populated with people, in the middle of the street and in local parks, and sharing them through social media creating intimate and calming moments that reach through the isolation we are all experiencing.
All things need love, All things need love. All things need love.
Darling Shear, Trials
Improvised dance / Logan Boulevard, Chicago / March 24, 2020
Darling Shear, In/out
Improvised dance / Garfield Park, Chicago / April 7, 2020
Darling Shear, In the open
Improvised dance / Garfield Park, Chicago / April 7, 2020
Darling Shear is a Chicago native, but has roots in Atlanta where Darling started dance training. Darling attended North Springs Charter School of the performing arts where Darling was trained in ballet, modern dance, jazz, and African dance. Darling began dancing professionally right out of high school and in that time worked with many great choreographers. Some highlights of this career have been working with Bubba Carr, choreography/artistic director to Cher, for 12 years and counting, with Rhonda Henriksen, a soloist with Hubbard Street Dance and Twyla Tharp; with Tracy Vogt, former Philadanco dancer; with Hinton Battle, the original Scarecrow in the Broadway production of “The Wiz;” and with Lauri Stallings, a Hubbard Street Dance soloist and the founder and artistic director of gloATL. Darling moved back to Chicago the summer of 2011 to start Suna Dance, a collaborative artist group that had its first performance in November of 2011. As a freelance dancer/choreographer in the city, Darling has worked with The Fly Honeys of The Inconvenience, Body Cartography of Minneapolis, Links Hall, Victoria Bradford, Chicago AIDS Foundation, Chances Dances, No Small Plan Productions, Slo’Mo, the Public Hotel, SoHo House Chicago, Growing Power inc., EXPO Chicago, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul Museum, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Film Archive, the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, Salonathon, and Open TV Beta.
Darling Shear worked on this piece with Christy LeMaster, the Quarantine Times Friday editor. Each week, Christy selects a Chicago artist to share a commissioned creative response to the pandemic.
