Michelle Kranicke
Michelle Kranicke is the artistic director of Zephyr, the experimental dance company she founded in 1990. In 2010 she began to shift her aesthetic perspective and creative process, reexamining how dance should be presented, who determines what movement is considered dance, and who lays claim to the role of performer. Working with partner David Sundry she has also has consciously included, and expanded, the role of architecture in order to give repose and resistance to the movement of both performer and viewer. She has received a number of awards and commissions for her choreography, her curatorial practice, and Zephyr performance projects including, artist residencies at Djerassi Artist Ranch, Woodside, CA and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, a commission by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, an artist residency at Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago, an artistic associate and curatorial resident award from Links Hall, Chicago, and a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award. She was named one of 2019’s “50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago” by New City. In 2017 she was named one of Chicago’s Top 5 Choreographers and her 2016 aMID Festival was named Best Dance Festival. Michelle’s work has been presented locally and nationally by, Defibrillator Gallery, The Dance Center of Columbia College, The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; 9×22 Dance Lab, Minneapolis, MN; Triskelion Arts, Brooklyn, NY; Mulberry Street Theatre and Cunningham Dance Studio, New York; The Art & Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL; North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND; Margaret H’Doubler Theatre, Madison, WI; and more. For 10 years she was adjunct faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University and has taught at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships.
David Sundry
David Sundry is a design/build architect who has been constructing single-family homes, condominiums, small offices, restaurants, and mixed-use spaces in Chicago since 1989. He is the founder and president of Triple O Construction, a small design/build construction company, and O Group, Inc., its partnering architecture studio in association with Lyle Haag Engineering. As co-director of SITE/less his architectural installations for the institution include, two projects for Zephyr: a series of green screen runways piled and stacked upon each other to create a sense of unexpected place for On Notice, and two interlocking circles built with stacks of common brick and bent plywood for Shadows Across Our Eyes; a hanging disk fabricated from shipping palettes for the in-progress showing of dropshift dance’s At Our Edges; environmental installations for several instructionist choreographies for the Propositional Worlds project in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the viewing platforms for the screendance festival Video Corpo. He created the architectural sculpture for Bloodlines, a collaboration with Christopher Preissing’s Non:Op Open Opera Works and Augustana Lutheran Church to remember the 1919 Chicago race riot and those who died in the uprising. Sundry’s other architectural/environmental designs for Zephyr include, Valise 13, The Balance in Between, Out and Back in Again: an immersive environment of movement, sound and image, Allowances and Occurrences, and Broken Time. His residential and commercial designs have been featured in Chicago Magazine, Chicago Social, and Better Homes and Gardens. He received a BFA in fine arts from the University of Notre Dame and an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute in New York.