Thanks for coming out to Off Chances at Danny’s on 3/9!

Chances at the Hideout benefits the Critical Fierceness Grant (http://www.chancesdances.org/projects).

3.6.2010
5 gold medals ($5)
11:30 - 3:00a
DJ sets from John Twatters and Nina Ramone and an interactive performance from Anthony Romero.

If you are interested in performing a durational work during Chances at the Hideout, please contact us: chances.dances@gmail.com for more information!

yes, february might be here, but rest assured, we are bundling up and bringing the big gay party to you, snowmen be damned!

some sort of astrological craziness has brought our two baby spinoff parties closer together than ever before AND inserted a rad chances-sponsored peace party benefit for haiti right in the middle! CHECK IT OUT:

1. SATURDAY
   Chances Dances @ The Hideout Saturday February 6th 2010
   Come to what the Chicago Tribune says is the 6th hottest winter event in Chicago!!
   Lil Elote will be giving uh mazing and FREE makovers! Yes. NEW LOOKS
   Your girls Butch Cassidy and The Lady Speedstick on the ones and twos!
   $5 cover goes towards funding for the Critical Fierceness Grant
2. MONDAY
   Haiti Emergency Relief Fund will be the beneficiary for the February Peace Party at Danny’s Tavern. The Peace Party is held the second Monday of the month (February 8th) from 9pm-2am.
   A portion of the bar’s take will be donated to Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. Haiti Emergency Relief Fund was established by a group of folks who have been doing Haiti solidarity work since 1991, working closely with Haitians to build and support mass-based civic groups on the ground there– unions, peasant cooperatives, schools, women’s organizations and more. These groups desperately need resources… to survive, to rebuild, and to organize and give a voice to the people who have been devastated by this disaster.
   http://haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html
   This Month the Peace Peace party will be Co-sponsored by Chances Dances .
   Peace Party Dj’s Naomi Walker, Jocelyn Brown, and Jeff Parker will be joined by Chances DJ John Twatters.
   DJ Supreme Court of Danny’s long running “Soul Night” has compiled a mix of Haitian Music which will be available at the event.
3. TUESDAY
   Off-Chances at Danny’s
   Tuesday, February 9th // 10pm-2am
   DJs: The Lady Speedstick & Nina Ramone
   CHEAP DRINKS // GOOD TIMES //
   FREE STUFF // QUEER PEOPLE

About the Projects:

–see examples of work by both artists below–

About the Grant:

For future updates on The Critical Fierceness Grant, including deadlines and application materials, past and future recipients,
please visit http://chancesdances.org/projects.

Thank you so much to all our applicants, who all deserve to be funded, even if we are unable to.
Thanks to all the folks who have come to Chances over the years.
Your continued support is what makes this grant possible.

Peace and Love
Aay, Ethan, Latham, Mel and Rita AKA Team Chances

Edie Fake - Fists of Fury
Ballpoint pen, ink and acrylic on paper, 14″x17″
2010

Riva Lehrer - Zora: How I Understand
Mylar with mixed media, 36″ x 50″
2010

DJ’s Nina Ramone, Butch Cassidy and Owen DMC!

2011 W North Ave, Chicago IL
10pm-2am
*Bake sale!
*Raffle!
*Much much more!

This event is 21+
Free admission! (Donations for Write to Win and TJLP accepted inside).

———————

The Write to Win Collective is a Chicago-based penpal project for transgender, transsexual, gender self-determining, and gender-variant people who are living and surviving inside Illinois prisons. Members of the Write to Win Collective are radical trans, queer, and ally activists, youth workers, social workers, writers, lawyers, and community organizers working in solidarity with prisoners by providing consistent support, friendship, resources, literature, and dialogue to people living on the inside in our communities. We stand firmly behind the values of transformative justice, gender self-determination, and prison abolition, and see these values as fundamental to our project.

The Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois (TJLP) is a collective of radical lawyers, social workers, activists, and community organizers who are deeply committed to prison abolition, transformative justice, and gender self-determination. We provide free, zealous, life-affirming, and gender-affirming holistic criminal legal services to low-income and street based transgender and gender non-conforming people targeted by the criminal legal system. We create and distribute information, resources, and training curriculum for lawyers and social service providers who work with people targeted by the criminal legal system. We use our attorney access and attorney-client relationships on the inside to listen to the wisdom of and respond to the needs of those locked up. We help distribute resources and connect people to their peers, friends, family, allies, advocates, and the larger prison abolition movement.

Chances is a dance party which functions to bring together the varied LGBTIQ communities of Chicago. Third Mondays at The Subterranean. Always free. All gender expressions welcome.

www.writetowin.wordpress.com
www.tjlp.org

Since its founding in 2005, Chances Dances has sought to create a safe space for all gender expressions by bringing together the varied LGBTIQ communities of Chicago. The creation of the Critical Fierceness grant expands upon this goal by offering a unique opportunity for queer artistic expression. Individuals or groups who wish to utilize the Critical Fierceness Grant for artistic purposes and who identify themselves or their work as queer are encouraged to apply. Critical Fierceness supports queer artists with financial assistance of up to $500. Chances Dances is proud to provide the Critical Fierceness Grant as an opportunity for personal exploration, community development and radical change through art.

The application is available for download: here. Deadline December 31, 2009. Email chances.dances[at]gmail[dot]com for more information.

Critical Fierceness Grantees Actor Slash Model present their long-awaited labor of love next Wednesday November 11th as part of Chicago’s 28th Reeling Film Festival. CHECK THIS OUT!

World Premiere ~ November 11, 2009
@ Reeling Film Festival, Chicago, IL.
The Landmark Theater (Theater 7)

2828 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60657
Landmark  - 7pm. Purchase tickets HERE.

RIOT ACTS is a transfabulous rockumentary representing the whole lives of transgender and gender variant musicians, through a first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance. This feature-length documentary highlights issues crucial to interviewees such as songwriting, voice presentation, presenting a body/bodies on stage, audiences, venues, the idea of the spectacle, media representation, performing gender and notions about “drag,” and the personal as political. The film culminates with the notions that identities and bodies are undeniably political, and that the trans experience isn’t always one of tragedy, but one of creativity and joy.

AND there will be an afterparty at The Jackhammer (6406 N. Clark)!
You can get tickets through the reeling site for both the screening and after party.

Check out the trailer below:

Hi Everybody!

This Monday, Chances will celebrate its 4th birthday! We can’t tell you how crazy/good that feels. When we started this event back in ‘05, we didn’t know what to expect: would people come? would they like it? would anyone even care? Four years and a multitude of other queer parties later, Chances remains a staple of our Chicago communities. As many of you know, we have tried to expand the role that Chances can play as “an attempt to bring together the varied LGBTIQ communities of Chicago.” We have done this in small ways, like giving out mix CD’s at Off Chances, and larger ways as well, such as our critical participation in the ‘07 Chicago Gay Pride  Parade and our introduction of The Critical Fierceness Grant, a micro-grant for local queer artists, in 2008.

As always, Chances has been run in a non-profit style, though without an fancy 501(c)3 status. For anyone who’s ever worked in the non-profit sector, you also know that this means a fair amount of exhaustion, exasperation, etc comes with the territory. Our ability to maintain this event is largely due to both your support, and the fact that Chances is always evolving. It, at any point, can be whatever Chicago needs it to be.

This Monday, it would mean a lot to me if you all could come and celebrate with us. Mostly because Chances is not something that we organizers have made, but rather it is a complex negotiation between us and our community.  Chances would not be anything without your support, your attendance, your advice, your work for your community, your desire to live in a better and safer world, your encouragement, your performativity, your belief in yourself and others, your love of our awesome city and, of course, your beautiful sexy dancing self!

SOOOOO………..

LETS PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

**Chances functions as an attempt to bring together the factionalized LGBTIQ communities, cliques, or otherwise grouped-apart queers of Chicago. It happens on the third Monday of every month at Subterranean**

LETS MAKE THIS THE BEST ONE YET!!!

Peace and Love,

Team Chances (Aay, Ethan, Latham, Mel, and Rita

Congratulations to Actor Slash Model, Marian Runk, and RAWR! for being
the July 2009 winners of The Critical Fierceness Grant!

About the Projects:

Actor Slash Model // Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Defiance in Music Performance (Documentary Film)

The Actor Slash Model film Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Defiance in Music Performance is committed to representing the whole lives of transgender and gender variant musicians, though a first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance. http://actorslashmodel.com

Marian Runk // Best Friend (Mini-Comic)

A 24-panel story of the evolution and dissolution of a queer girl’s childhood best-friendship, referencing the lingering effect that early friendships, attachments, and losses can have on our adult selves. http://marianrunk.com

Jakob VanLammeren // RAWR! (Radical Awesome Writers Resisting!) (Creative Writing Group / Youth Workshop)

A youth-led creative writing program aimed at providing the tools, space, and support for LGBTQA youth and allies experiencing homelessness to feel empowered through writing, as it functions both as an art form and as an act of resistance against oppression. About the Broadway Youth Center, RAWR!’s home: http://www.howardbrown.org/hb_services.asp?id=50

“The Person on the Other Side” by Jasen Williams
excerpted from Together Beyond Body: An Anthology of Youth Writing,
edited by Jakob VanLammeren and Katy Howe

The Person on the Other Side

With my love,
my affection toward the feeling
that I first started with
never changed,
never seen,
never understood.
New doors,
new feeling,
new chances to change
the outlook on life.
Maybe a new person
can change me,
maybe I am fit for this person
that’s in front of me
staring into this reflection
in this place that has no entry
or exit, but only if I am the one
that can open or make doors.
Why I am weak to the spirit
and the soul, not the body?
The kindness of the spirit
that connects the body,
that attaches the soul
of the Almighty reflection
in the mirror that makes
the person that is not respected
by the healthiness of the spirit,
of this reflection.
Whom is this reflection
that you keep speaking of?
The one that is not respected
by the one he is talking about?
It’s me.

++Also check out this article on The Critical Fierceness Grant on the Think Pink Radio Blog

Thank you so much to all our applicants, who all deserve to be funded,
even if we are unable to at this time.
Thanks to all the folks who have come to Chances over the years.
Your continued support is what makes this grant possible.

Peace and Love
Aay, Ethan, Latham, Mel and Rita AKA Team Chances

]]> http://www.chancesdances.org/archives/222/feed http://www.chancesdances.org/archives/218 http://www.chancesdances.org/archives/218#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:35:36 +0000 latham http://www.chancesdances.org/?p=218

Check out this mix by The Lady Speedstick. All the pathos, horror, teen angst, and sexual subplots - both real and embellished - boiled down into one sick love potion for all you muggles and squibs. Hit it while its hot!

Download Harry Potter The Musical MP3

Subscribe to the Off Chances Podcast using iTunes

PS>If you haven’t already, check out the Off Chances podcast, become a subscriber, stream our mixes, download artwork, etc at our podcast page: http://offchances.podbean.com