Artsy Antifreeze at The Plant

Moving around, stimming, making noise, etc are welcome and encouraged during all perfromances and events. Please feel free to bring any access tools that might help you feel as comfortable as possible during the day, including, but not limited to; ear defenders/plugs, fidget tools, headphones, etc. Some of the performances will include loud, sometimes overlapping noises. If at anytime these become overwhelming, volunteers are available to direct you to quiet zones.

Please note: The Plant has several live plants growing around the building. One of the performance spaces and the workshop space has Citronella growing in it. These will be clearly marked and guides will be available to direct you around these plants, if needed.

If you feel you might need some sort of access tool during this event, but do not have it or the ability to acquire it, please reach out to us at unfoldingdisabilityfutures@gmail.com.

William Crosley Bennett is a Chicago singer-songwriter blending hot-rodded honky tonk and Midwestern rock & roll. 

Maggie Bridger (she/her) is a sick and disabled dance and fiber artist, access worker, and scholar interested in reimagining pain through the creative process. Maggie is a 2022 & 2025 City of Chicago Individual Artist Program grantee and has held artist residencies through High Concept Labs, the Chicago Cultural Center's Learning Lab, Synapse Arts, and Chicago Dancemakers Forum. Her choreographic work has been shown at Elevate Chicago Dance 2022, The Art Institute of Chicago, Cottey College (MO), The Steppenwolf Theater Company's LookOut Series, and RedEye Theater (MN), among others. Maggie is a PhD Candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she is conducting archival and ethnographic research in service of her dissertation project, Dancing With/in Pain. She is Membership & Conference Manager with the Dance Studies Association, a member of Synapse Arts' Programming Committee, an Advisory Council member for the Chicago Dance History Project, and on the organizing committee for the Chicago Dance Studies Working Group. Learn more at www.maggiebridger.com.

Bradford Chin San Francisco native Bradford Chin (he/they/Bradford) is a Chicago- and San Francisco-based disabled dance artist & methodologist, accessibility cultural strategist, and rtistic audio describer. An Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they use choreographic process to explore disability as a generative lived experience that teaches us about our practices, aesthetics, and culture. Specializing in disability dance, Disability Justice-informed critically inclusive dance pedagogy, and creative process and aesthetics, Bradford has taught contemporary modern, ballet, and improvisation and/as composition techniques across the United States and internationally. Bradford earned a BFA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach and an MFA in Dance from the University of California, Irvine. His work has received support from entities including the California Arts Council, The Actors Fund, Arts Council for Long Beach, the UCI Division for Teaching Excellence and Innovation, and the UCI Center for Medical Humanities, among others. He was formerly a research consultant with Dance Data Project, two-year artist in residence with High Concept Labs (Chicago, IL), and company member with AXIS Dance Company (Berkeley, CA). Bradford is a collaborating member of Unfolding Disability Futures (Chicago, IL), serves on the Advisory Council for the National Dance Education Organization, and is an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Erin Compton is a student at College of DuPage, working on an Associates in General Studies with an emphasis on dance and advocacy, which have both played a huge role in her life. Dancing before she could walk, Erin has danced with the local park district, Expression Dance, Joffrey Ballet, Unfolding Disability Futures, and Cirque Experience, where she rides the German Wheel, and she has performed in the Netherlands, South Africa, Germany, and Finland. She also loves history and geneology. Erin began serving on the State Rehabilitation Council at age 16 and is currently serving as the chair

Sydney Erlikh is a dance artist, educator, and scholar. Sydney is the co-founder of the Inclusive Dance Workshops, which began at Access Living. In Chicago she has choreographed, curated and performed works at the Art Institute along with Unfolding Disability Futures. Internationally, she has taught, choreographed, and performed in Durban, South Africa, and Helsinki, Finland. 

meesh sara fradkin is a writer and artist working with sound, text, and media. She is a doctoral candidate in music in the interdisciplinary music technology track at McGill University.

Tsehaye Geralyn Hébert  is a citizen playwright (Sundance Theatre Festival; the Kendeda; Vermont Studio Center; 3ArtsBodies of Work) and a bona fide Louisiana gumbo girl!   Her works are steeped in place, migration, myth and history. That world was so disability rich, it took Hébert’s participation in organizations like Unfolding Disability Futures, Disability Lead and Cultural Access Collaborative to begin to comprehend its enormity. On the stage or on the page, Intimate moments, the hyperbole of Mardi Gras, an unrelenting urban scape, and rural America all ground and inform her work. Positioning the American Souths through shifting narratives mirrors Hébert’s life.  She triaged between her father’s rural Pointe Coupeé family seat, her Baton Rouge LA birthplace and her mother’s beloved New Orleans.  The second great grand-daughter of Creole storyteller, Dorlis Aguillard, Hébert honors her Afro-Creole culture and its traditions. 

Terri Lynne Hudson (she/her) is a Chicago based disabled, chronically ill queer actor and multidisciplinary artist and disability rights advocate. She has a BA from University of Chicago. She was a Fall 2024 3Arts/Bodies of Work Fellow and developed the multidisciplinary project “All My Pretty Fictions”. She also performed as part of the SHIFT video installation, led by Barak Ade Soleil, at MCA Chicago. She has appeared on numerous stages and can be heard reading creepy short stories on Audible and on the Random Acts Scary Stories Around the Fire and the Chilling Tales for Dark Nights podcasts.

Kris Lenzo  is a disabled dancer/choreographer and a 3ARTs award winner, Kris embraces the motto “Move to Live.” He has been a national champion in wheelchair basketball and wheelchair track several times. He first performed with MOMENTA in 2003 in Larry Ippel’s Sharing the Moment. Kris facilitates MOMENTA’s EveryBody Can Dance! workshops and is a 2015 3Arts awardee.

Grace Lester  (she) is a late-deafened educator and language preservation activist who works from a deaf-centric, abolitionist ethic to create frameworks for deaf liberation, particularly for those who have been subjugated by carceral and imperial violence. Grace is a multimedia artist and a cofounder of the Chicago-based artist collective, For the Most Beautiful One Arts. 

Stefanie Piatkiewicz (M.A. & GL-CMA Columbia College Chicago, M.Ed. Loyola University) choreography has been featured at Hamlin Park Theater, in Links Hall’s THAWALLS, and Dance Chicago’s New Moves. She has choreographed several musicals, including Schoolhouse Rock Live! for Dominican University, My Fair Lady, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Pippin, and Ragtime for Concordia University, and directed Disney’s Frozen KIDS, Aladdin KIDS, and The Lion King Jr for Dawes Elementary. Piatkiewicz is a yoga, dance and movement educator, and is a 2019 Certified DanceAbility International Teacher. She studies, teaches, and performs with Unfolding Disability Futures under the artistic direction of Maggie Bridger and Sydney Erlikh. She is also a Chicago Public Schools Dance Teacher.

AQ is  most known for rap, also began collecting vinyl, practicing turntablism, DJing, and making beats in the late 90's. He dove into noise via an interest in the vintage electronics that made early hip-hop and house music, often incorporating loops, scaratches, grooves, and occasional raps into performances. Hear more at aq-il on bandcamp or mraquil on youtube.

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.

Andy Slater is a Chicago-based media artist, sound designer, writer, performer, and teaching artist—and a 37th level blind person. His work is rooted in access authorship: making access a central creative force rather than an afterthought. Marked by humor, a sharp Crip attitude, and a refusal to surrender the narrative, his projects span extended reality, sound performance, and installation—often shaped by sci-fi world-building, retrofuturism, and blind futures. Slater’s practice interrogates who institutions are built for—and who is asked to translate themselves to enter—questioning the authority of the people who design culture, technology, and “access” from the outside. He has exhibited internationally and presented at Melbourne French festival, MIT, and the Whitney, and published everywhere from Leonardo to McSweeney’s Quarterly. He knows that his work will be read as political whether he likes it or not—and that’s really funny to him.