CounterBalance: Emerging Artist Showcase

Ruby Bassford (they/them), b. Maryland, is an interdisciplinary performance artist currently residing and practicing in Chicago. Their artwork engages the chronically-sick mutable body and explores the consistent changing of appearances due to illness and medication. The artist often incorporates collected and discarded medical materials that they have a personal relationship to, including gelatin and latex, feeling an affinity to the disposability disabled folks face. Their work also investigates the complicated ethical relationship to the Medical Industrial Complex, including themes of consent, consumerism, and expands across queer, trans, disability, BDSM, and horror studies.

Reign Drop (they/he) is a dancer/director/choreographer based in Chicago, Illinois. While completing their degree in Dance from Columbia College Chicago, they were mentored in choreography and improvisation by Darrell Jones and Lisa Gonzales. In the community, they have led an Improvisers’ Dance Jam for Chicago Dancemakers Forum, performed for Erin Killmurray, created work for Synapse Arts and Danceworks Chicago, choreographed for the iconic Shea Coulee’s "Rewind" music video, and are the co-founder of We Are Collective. They are also a founding member of Queer Dance Freakout and a teaching artist through Synapse Arts. Throughout all of their artistic practices, they focus on researching contemporary movements that demonstrate autonomy, liberation, and connection, which aids them in their mission to share their story and to honor the stories of all magical trans people.

Rodney! (they/any) is a multi-faceted dancer and choreographer who is trying to figure it out — just like the rest of us. They are inspired by the world, the other-worldly, their ancestors, their chosen family, and really anything outside of the norm. As a Black and queer artist, Rodney! draws inspiration from their lived experiences and dreams to create performances based in movement. They love to focus on polyrhythmic, improvisational, hard-hitting styles that have been historically cultivated from the Black diaspora. As a big fan of conceptual artistry, fashion, and theatre, they use exaggerated characterization as a compass to explore complicated themes of love, community, identity and grief. Rodney! has performed in various works across the city, including Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Queer Dance Freakout’s STAR AF, We Are Collective’s Outlaw of the Arts, Twilight After Dark and Tethering in Wanderland at Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble.

Laine Dunn (they/them) is a choreographer and dance artist from the small city of Galesburg IL. They received training and taught at All That Dance in Galesburg and also had the opportunity to choreograph for Galesburg High School's theatre program as well as other local events. After earning their Associate of Arts degree from Carl Sandburg College in 2024, they moved to Chicago to pursue their Bachelor of Arts in Dance (2026) at Loyola University Chicago. While at Loyola, Laine was able to study and expand their understanding of various techniques and styles, as well as dance pedagogy and the intersection of dance and disability, both of which reignited a long-held love for teaching. They fervently believe in the power of dance as a method of self-expression, discovery, and human connection.

Sunshine (they/them) is an AfroIndigenous, gender fluid, disabled, multi-media creative, and herbalist rekindling their ancestral connection to the land. As a movement and mixed media artist, Sunshine is not interested in recreating the anti-black, colonial, ableist art they've been told is possible - they want to make new possibilities. A performer of over two decades, they have experience in a range of artistic and competitive spaces from musical theatre, dance (tap, jazz, ballet, color guard), competitive improvisation, trial advocacy, to burlesque. Their original work explores their most intense symptoms of chronic pain, mental illness, and chronic illness by giving voice to deep discomfort through art that enraptures the senses. For sunshine, movement is the chance to tell the whole truth of how the poison of oppression lives in their body. Understanding themself as an extension of the earth, sunshine’s dance practice combines the fluidity,  intention, precision, and balance reflected in the synchronicities of non-human and more than human life all around us. 

Lauren Sheely (she/her) is a chronically ill dancemaker, teaching artist, and dramaturg from Chicago, IL. Her works centers on exploring the bodily manifestations of invisible illness and finding joy in all manners of movement. Lauren is a co-facilitator for the weekly Inclusive Dance Workshop series and a regular collaborator with Unfolding Disability Futures. She holds a BA in Theatre and Performance Studies from Grinnell College and an MA in Performance Studies from the University of Chicago.