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Julia Antonick
lab artist, 2009

Some time ago I realized that I identify myself as a duet artist, or 'duetist,' if you will, as opposed to a soloist or ensemble artist. I love that duets involve an intensity and singularity of focus that is similar to solo work, but also contain the richness and complexity of two. I decided I wanted to dig deep into the concept of duet to explore its range of possibilities."

Julia Rae Antonick is an independent dancer, choreographer, videographer and yoga teacher. Her dancing and choreography reflect a digestion of modern/contemporary dance, contact improvisation, ballet, yoga, Klein/Mahler technique and Indonesian dance with an emphasis on kinetics and fillagree. Julia graduated from the Chicago Academy for the Arts with the Dance Department's Award of Excellence and received her BFA in dance from CalArts. She has studied at Jacobs Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, The Joffrey Ballet, DNA (Dance Space), The Kitchen, Earthdance (with Nancy Stark-Smith) and other nooks and crannies. Julia has received choreographic residencies at Links Hall (LinkUp) and the Chicago Cultural Center (DanceBridge) and has received grants from CSDP and CAAP. She was recently chosen for Shirley Mordine's Emerging Artist Mentoring Program culminating with her work on the company performed in May 2009. Julia is currently engaged in a long-term collaboration with Jonathan Meyer and is plugging away her interminable group project "Pend".

Antonick's proposed CDF project, Duologue, is an in-depth investigation of what it means to be a duet artist. Within Duologue, Antonick researched existing forms of duet, including Argentine Tango, Balinese LeGong, Contact Improvisation, and Ventriloquism, seeking to create new relationships between movers uncommon in contemporary dance vocabulary.

Commissura premiered
April 22 - 30, 2010

Fine Arts Building
Curtiss Hall
410 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60605

The premiere of Commissura, marked the culmination of Julia Rae Antonick's 2009 CDF Lab Artist Award, and her eighteen month exploration into Duologue, or what it means to be a duet artist.

Researched in several stages, the first work completed for the Duologue project was the acclaimed Tacit, co-created with Antonick's frequent collaborator and former CDF Lab Artist, Jonathan Meyer, which premiered in Chicago in 2010. Known for her integration of such disparate forms as contact improvisation, modern dance, and Indonesian dance, Antonick brings filigree to physics and yields a profoundly physical, subtly nuanced choreography. Antonick, who studied tango in Argentina as part of her Duologue research, commented about the project:

"Some time ago I realized that I identify myself as a duet artist, or 'duetist,' if you will, as opposed to a soloist or ensemble artist. I love that duets involve an intensity and singularity of focus that is similar to solo work, but also contain the richness and complexity of two. I decided I wanted to dig deep into the concept of duet to explore its range of possibilities."

Using a sampling of the vignettes and dance forms embedded in Tacit as departure points, Commissura expanded and deepened to confront the concept of duet, and its inherent tension between unity and individualism, from several different perspectives.

The performance featured live music by Dan Mohr and Joseph St. Charles.