Dreams on Dreams
A Lifeline for Links Benefit Performance
Najee-Zaid Searcy comes together with Paige Brown & Aaliyah Christina to present the multi-talented trio in a fusion of visual, sonic, and tactile multimedia performance. They join forces to benefit Link Hall’s Lifeline for Links campaign in an effort to sustain an important incubator in Chicago’s performance community. The trio explore and manifest our collective dreams through magical realist imagery, vocalized text, and movement inspired by Japanese and Afro-diasporic motifs.
Inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s film Dreams (1990), the trio trails into the folklore and exploration of dreaming and manifestation. Utilizing vignettes from the film as portals, audiences are exposed to themes of play, tenacity, and accountability. There is an uncertainty in dreams that is replicated by the improvisational approach of each artist. Melodies, movements, and lighting schemes are unplanned; metaphors divinely guided by intuition and the moment.
In an effort to increase support for the Lifeline for Links campaign, the artists have included several artisans as part of the performance. A portion of each sale will return to Links Hall. In addition, we have created a sliding scale ticketing system unique to this benefit performance that encourages giving, but is not designed to devalue or disregard any person or their contribution.
Seating arrangements are varied with floor and chair seating available. Doors open at sunset (5:30pm) for the performance at 6pm.
TICKETS
Sliding scale from $15 to $150.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Paige Brown | ペイジ・ブラウン
Vocalist, pianist and composer Paige Brown believes in the use of voice as a channel, and the use of the instrument/body as a voice.
Having inherited a version of the deep, resonant voices of her father and her late grandfather, she rejoices in the ability to play inside that resonance, bringing this sound to bear in songs that speak of joy, love, grief, and hope. She draws from a broad spectrum of influences that range from high school madrigal singers to college gospel choir, Debussy to Dr. Watts, Porgy and Bess to Patrice Rushen, skipping from soul to funk to folk and weaving through sounds somewhere in between. Although a lover of the forms she has trained in, she believes that her greatest artistic growth currently lies in experimentation with the Chicago interdisciplinary improvisational community, learning from and alongside those who confound categorization and genre. In 2023, she was accepted as a member of the 7th cohort of the M3 (Musical Mentorship for Musicians) Residency in New York.
Emerging from her compositional chrysalis, she strives to develop the inner mechanisms and connections to deepen and externalize her own practice more fully, reacquainting herself with the simple, playful practices that attracted her to Music, her first love.
Najee-Zaid | ナジー・ザイド
1 part honey, 2 parts molasses, distill in divinity, desire nothing more, be nothing less.
Aaliyah Christina | アリーヤ・クリスティーナ
Born in Ruston, Louisiana and raised across Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas, Aaliyah Christina creates and supports performance work as an administrator, curator, movement artist, and writer. She makes dances and writes poetic stories about relationship/power dynamics, mental health, and Blackness as a resident on the South side of Chicago. She works as the Artist Programs Manager & Associate Curator at Links Hall, co-organizes with Performance Response Journal (PRJ), and collaborates with community organizations and fellow artists across the city of Chicago.
Since 2015, she has collaborated with Chicago artists like Keyierra Collins, Ysayë Alma, Darling Squire, Wisdom Baty, Ayako Kato, and Dorian Sylvain to name a few. In 2021, Aaliyah received the 3Arts Make-A-Wave grant and as of 2023, she received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2023 Artist Fellowship Finalist Award. In 2024, she was selected as a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and a part of the Chicago Cultural Center Dance Studio Residency cohort. She created PRAISE MOTHER SQUAD to highlight the multifaceted possibilities of Black majorette dance and platform stories about mental health, reproductive rights, and queer/chosen family dynamics.