Keisha Janae & Ben LaMar Gay
Keisha Janae resides in Southshore, Chicago. Graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Dance program, she has experience in performance, teaching artistry, and dance making.
Ben LaMar Gay is a composer/cornetist who moves components of sound, color, and space through folkloric filters to produce brilliant electro-acoustic collages.
Watch the Performance
Keisha Janae
Keisha Janae resides in Southshore, Chicago. Graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Dance program, she has experience in performance, teaching artistry, and dance making. Her teaching platform integrates dance education with self development and collaborative learning. She currently teaches AfroHouse at Crown Academy. She also founded “Eternal Resolve” a teaching series that uses movement to heal and find self realization. This workshop co-instructed with Trellz Mind was presented at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago’s 2020 Fall season. Keisha was honored as 2020 recipient of the 3Arts Make a Wave Award. She has danced with Onye Ozuzu’s “Project Tool” and Jane Jerardi’s “delicate hold.” Currently, she dances with Red Clay Dance Company, the Instigation Festival, “Freedom from Freedom Too” events, and the Black Monument Ensemble. Her desire for her career is to create more opportunities for people of color to discover spiritual, physical, and mental healing and reawakening.
Above photo of Keisha Janae by Jovan Leslie Monique
Ben LaMar Gay
Ben LaMar Gay is a composer/cornetist who moves components of sound, color, and space through folkloric filters to produce brilliant electro-acoustic collages. The unification of various styles is always in service of the narrative and never solely a display of technique. The Chicago native’s true technique is giving life to an idea while exploring and expanding on the term “Americana.”
His musical influences derive from his collection of experiences in all of the Americas, along with the gathered data channeled by technology and its amplifying accessibility. The fact that the world is closer via technology and that everyone has access to the possibility of exploring different ideas makes his avant-garde version of “Americana” very global. Embracing international vision while remaining true to his roots, Gay’s creative output aligns with the honest notion that he only knows how to be a man from the South Side of Chicago.
Above photo of Ben LaMar Gay by Chelsea Ross
About the Performance
His duo’s performance will explore the rural ear inside of urban soundscapes and the urban ear inside of rural soundscapes, manifesting how the body listens and responses to its environment.
