04/02/2026
📢 Announcing the 2026 Dance Project Grant Recipients
Join us in celebrating the ten 2026 Dance Project Grant Recipients:
✨ La Cookout by Amanda Ramirez
✨ TZINELAS by Anniela Huidobro Castro
✨ little fears by Ashwaty Chennat
✨ MATADORA by Camila Rivero Pooley aka INSÉKTA
✨ SWIS)HER by J’Sun Howard
✨ Untitled (Elephant) by Lin Hixson and Every house has a door
✨ Swine Ball by Nora Sharp
✨ Pleasure Power Portal by Meida McNeal and Honey Pot Performance
✨ Chicago Footworkology Week by Mike D Chicago and Creative Netwerk
✨ Untitled by Zachary Nicol with Anna Martine Whitehead and Tara Aisha Willis
Chicago Dancemakers Forum (CDF) is excited to announce the recipients of the inaugural Dance Project Grants Program. Ten dancemakers have been awarded $10,000 USD to produce a dance performance or event between April 2026 and March 2027. A new program for CDF, the Dance Project Grants are specifically designed to stimulate Chicago’s dance ecosystem with ten live performance events, in varying venues and environments across the city. This program responds to the critical precarity of US arts infrastructures and funding, with immediate financial support for Chicago’s dancemakers.
With this program, Chicago Dancemakers Forum explicitly recognizes, values, and uplifts artists who are challenging the status quo and thinking beyond the bounds of singular forms, styles, practices, and presentations. As public funding for the arts continues to be broadly controlled and diminished, Chicago Dancemakers Forum maintains its steadfast support for professional dancemakers whose work takes risks and expands ideas about the political potential of bodies in motion, and affirms community through performance.
CONGRATULATIONS DANCEMAKERS!
