Rehearsal featuring The Era Footwork Crew

Chicago has long been a significant hub of African American arts and culture. Chicago’s Black community has played a defining role in dance history, from imbuing traditional forms with new vibrancy to establishing entirely new forms of urban dance. While Chicago’s Black dance companies are as diverse as the city itself—from dancers to dance styles—they are all united by the African American heritage on which their work is centered. The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, developed through a partnership between Logan Center Community Arts, the Office of Civic Engagement’s Community Programs Accelerator, and leaders from each dance company, is a multi-year project that celebrates the historic impact of Chicago-based Black choreographers in the national dance community, and aims to strengthen the impact and reach of Black dance for generations to come. Selected specifically for the history and impact of their work, Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project partners include legacy, next-generation, and arts education dance companies.

Established in 2013, WOJR is a five-person organization of designers that works holistically across projects and research to practice architecture as a form of cultural production. Our work extends across the globe and engages the realms of art, architecture, and urbanism. Geographically located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, WOJR maintains an integral relationship with the local and larger academic communities in various ways: William is an Associate Professor at MIT, where he has taught for a decade, and numerous WOJR team members are affiliated with Harvard GSD and other area universities as instructors and visiting critics. WOJR has lectured and led design workshops at various academic institutions around the country and world, including recently being included in the Porto Academy in Portugal. In recent years, WOJR has received growing recognition, which has resulted in commissioned projects that span the United States, from New York to California, and extend abroad to works such as a full-scale pavilion for the 17th International Biennale Architettura in Venice, Italy. Working globally, WOJR has become accustomed to the rewards involved in working with skilled and passionate collaborators from different parts of the world to create projects that are unique and responsive to their varied budgetary, cultural, and geographical contexts.