Elastic Arts

12/15/2025

TONIGHT!

This evening’s Pleiades Series features pianist Laurie Lee Moses and clarinetist Sarah Craft, first brought together at our Improv Jam and now performing as a duo. They’re followed by Heavy Tiny (Lia Kohl and Nick Meryhew), a dense miniature world of field recordings, synths, walkie-talkies, and found objects that feels bigger inside than out.  
Following the performances we’ll have our classic Pleiades Jam open to all femme/trans/non-binary performers. Bring your instrument, body, voice! Sign up at mailto:[email protected] or when you arrive.

12/15/2025

We’re closing in on the last events of the year, with a few special nights this week and then the holiday tradition DKV Trio shows on 12/26 + 27! This week we’ll have a cozy Pleiades Series (tonight!), a heavy Improv Series Thursday, and we’ll introduce our new visual gallery exhibition Friday with a free reception. The heat is on and up - come stay warm with us!

MONDAY DECEMBER 15 | 8:00 PM
Pleiades Series: Heavy Tiny, Laurie Lee Moses + Sarah Craft

THURSDAY DECEMBER 18 | 8:30 PM
Improvised Music Series: Weasel Walter/Alex Cunningham/Caroline Jesalva/Damon Smith + Akjai (Brianna Tong/Johanna Brock/Ishmael Ali/Andrew Scott Young)

FRIDAY DECEMBER 19 | 7:00 PM
‘Girlhood 2’ Visual Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception

12/15/2025

DKV Trio is back for our annual holiday tradition December 26 + 27 w/ two sets each night. Grab your tickets now!

Join us for our annual holiday run with the legendary DKV Trio!

12/14/2025

TONIGHT! Join us for the debut of the SMACT Ensemble, featuring Cristal Sabbagh, Jayve Montgomery, Kim Alpert, Chris Corsano, and Nick Turner. These five are such integral parts of our vibrant Elastic community, and this particular quintet might blow the roof off our building with sound, movement, and video.

“Yes Yes N***y,” takes inspiration from the evocative Barbara Hammer work “No No N***y T.V.” (1987), an exploration of desire, technology and q***r expression in a political moment in which s*x was radical and pathologized. While considerably different from the HIV/AIDS era Hammer worked through, our current political moment restages similar conservative, repressive sycophants under the guise of “family values,” in an effort to bulldoze difference. This performance reclaims the perverse, the s*x positive, the immature and the inappropriate as a methodology to resist our most recent tyranny. Dirty words, lyrical play, flashes of naughty bits, and overs*xed/stimulated images ask the audience to partake in a process of building a licentious space for resistance.

We’ll open the evening with a first time trio of Paul Giallorenzo on keys/synth, Caroline Jesalva on violin, and Tyler Damon on drums. Music at 8pm!

12/11/2025

TONIGHT!

Join us at tonight’s Improvised Music Series featuring Heliogabulus w/ Tatsu Aoki and a duo from Carol Genetti + Riley Leitch!

Heliogabalus is Eric Leonardson, springboard; Lili Wosko, cello; Andy Cohn, piano; Christophe Preissing, flutes, voice, noise box; with special guest, Tatsu Aoki, shamisen. Heliogabalus, or Elagabalus in honor of the god his family worshiped, was a Roman emperor known for their extravagant and eccentric behavior. Sometimes celebrated as an example of an ancient transgender person, their brief reign acts as a prism into religion, gender and s*xuality, ethnicity and racism presaging modern themes. Like Heliogabalus, the group’s improvisations are unrestrained, elaborate, ornate, and excessive.

Carol Genetti and Riley Leitch will perform as a duo to open the evening. Genetti is a Chicago-based vocalist whose work encompasses sound and visual art media. Her vocal palette is primordial, existing in a space where “language” and “music” have yet to be formulated into familiar cultural patterns. Riley Leitch is a composer and performer of contemporary, creative, and freely improvised music. His practice is founded around trombone playing but extends across multiple disciplines. Music at 8:30pm!

8:30 Genetti/Leitch Duo
9:30 Heliogabalus wsg Tatsu Aoki

12/10/2025

Elastic Arts Holiday Party is tonight! Everyone is invited! Staff DJs, food, drinks, warmth. We’d love to see you and celebrate the work our community has created this year. Come on through, 7pm-late!

12/09/2025

We have a very special Elastro series this Saturday to close out 2025! Join us for the debut of the SMACT Ensemble, featuring Cristal Sabbagh, Jayve Montgomery, Kim Alpert, Chris Corsano, and Nick Turner. These five are such integral parts of our vibrant Elastic community, and this particular quintet might blow the roof off our building with sound, movement, and video.

“Yes Yes N***y,” takes inspiration from the evocative Barbara Hammer work “No No N***y T.V.” (1987), an exploration of desire, technology and q***r expression in a political moment in which s*x was radical and pathologized. While considerably different from the HIV/AIDS era Hammer worked through, our current political moment restages similar conservative, repressive sycophants under the guise of “family values,” in an effort to bulldoze difference. This performance reclaims the perverse, the s*x positive, the immature and the inappropriate as a methodology to resist our most recent tyranny. Dirty words, lyrical play, flashes of naughty bits, and overs*xed/stimulated images ask the audience to partake in a process of building a licentious space for resistance.

We’ll open the evening with a first time trio of Paul Giallorenzo on keys/synth, Caroline Jesalva on violin, and Tyler Damon on drums. Music at 8pm!

12/09/2025

The first Frequency Leak DRONE READ is here at Elastic Arts this Firday! This event is intended to create an environment for listening to live ambient drone music while reading (BYOBook) and to encourage people to talk about what they are reading with friends, maybe make some new friends, or spawn a book club. Come at the beginning to read, come at the end to dance.

The space will be set with cozy reading areas and individual book lights will be provided. The evening will start with static lights and installations. Visuals and fog will be brought in after the drone read for the DJ sets.


7pm - 8pm
DRONE READ SESSION 1: KOBE DUPREE [LIVE]
bring your book and read while listening
* please be quiet in the space for reading *

8pm - 8:20pm
INTERMISSION
take a break
* casual discussion encouraged *

8:20pm - 9:20pm
DRONE READ SESSION 2: FUNCTIONLESS [LIVE]
individual reading and group listening
* please be quiet in the space for reading *

9:20pm - 2am
DJ SETS: SUITOR > INQUILAB
drone slowly paces to dance with visuals
* casual discussion encouraged *

Frequency Leak is a project meant to create modes of discourse and community through live underground electronic music.

12/08/2025

Join us at this Thursday’s Improvised Music Series featuring Heliogabulus w/ Tatsu Aoki and a duo from Carol Genetti + Riley Leitch!

Heliogabalus is Eric Leonardson, springboard; Lili Wosko, cello; Andy Cohn, piano; Christophe Preissing, flutes, voice, noise box; with special guest, Tatsu Aoki, shamisen. Heliogabalus, or Elagabalus in honor of the god his family worshiped, was a Roman emperor known for their extravagant and eccentric behavior. Sometimes celebrated as an example of an ancient transgender person, their brief reign acts as a prism into religion, gender and s*xuality, ethnicity and racism presaging modern themes. Like Heliogabalus, the group’s improvisations are unrestrained, elaborate, ornate, and excessive.

Carol Genetti and Riley Leitch will perform as a duo to open the evening. Genetti is a Chicago-based vocalist whose work encompasses sound and visual art media. Her vocal palette is primordial, existing in a space where “language” and “music” have yet to be formulated into familiar cultural patterns. Riley Leitch is a composer and performer of contemporary, creative, and freely improvised music. His practice is founded around trombone playing but extends across multiple disciplines. Music at 8:30pm!

8:30 Genetti/Leitch Duo
9:30 Heliogabalus wsg Tatsu Aoki

12/05/2025

This upcoming Tuesday join us for ‘A Defiant Echo’, a multimedia play written and directed by Kyle Gregory Price. The premiere of this play will utilize Elastic Arts’ CLEAT sound system as well as multi-channel video. Britt Anderson, Richie Schiraldi, Kao, Surinder Martignetti, Gordon Fung and Justin Cavazos perform live with interspersed projections of Deirdre Harrison and Brian Shaw.

A young woman was cursed from on high by parents, by the gods, or perhaps an antiquated agenda. Eons of a forced inability to express herself leads to blurred judgement and a daily, quick-fix dosed out by a classic character we have all met. However, the realization of exploited love and the loss of a friend sparks a desire for change that most of us know is never easy. Our heroine’s journey begins pushing through detoxification of a mythic hex and upwards to an old home.

We’ll see you Tuesday 12/9 at 8pm!

12/04/2025

Join us this Saturday for our last Shake Shook Shaken of the year! SSS is a theater/movement workshop series produced by Julie Meckler. The series is designed for people to gently bring body awareness, allowing participants to open up, explore outside of their comfort zone, bond with each other, create and show. By playing with these concepts using our bodies, voices, words, and each other, we will explore our own awareness and sensitivity as artists and people. Each workshop is unique. This month we’ll have Margaret McCarthy and Julie leading on the topic of COLLAGES.
No prior dance or acting experience is necessary, just willingness to move and exhale. This workshop series is for anyone and everyone. 12pm Saturday!!