Freedom From and Freedom To
2022 - present

Freedom From and Freedom To is an exploration and celebration of artistic circumstance. Movement and sound improvisors from all around Chicago gather in front of a live audience, where they are grouped by chance. Each group performs an improvised set. We fuse diverse artistic backgrounds and practices to create unique and fleeting worlds.

April 2026 / Elastic Arts, CHICAGO
January 2026 / Steppenwolf 1700, CHICAGO
December 2025 / Elastic Arts, CHICAGO
November 2025 / Museum of Contemporary Art, CHICAGO
April 2025 / Elastic Arts, CHICAGO
September 2024 / Compound Yellow, OAK PARK
September 2024 / Comfort Station, CHICAGO
August 2024 / Elastic Arts, CHICAGO
April 2024 / Elastic Arts, CHICAGO
October 2023 / Alma Art and Interiors, CHICAGO
August 2023 / Elastic Arts, CHICAGO
May 2023 / Museum of Contemporary Art, CHICAGO
September 2022 / Links Hall, as part of the Instigation Festival, CHICAGO

unnamed collaboration with Sharon Udoh on distance, longing
2024

Presented April 6, 2024 at Steppenwolf's 1700 Theater, as part of LOOKOUT's Curatorial Residency. Curated by Helen Lee.

piano performance and composition
Sharon Udoh

movement concept and performance
Amanda Maraist

lighting design
Matthew Chapman

Investigating the liminal space between prepared performance and spontaneous, improvised collaboration; this performance is woven together with one thought, distance. Drawing from Rebecca Solnit’s essay “The Blue of Distance”, Amanda and Sharon approach the unattainable blue from their own perspectives. Each entering the performance space with a sound score or movement score devised in private, but shared together simultaneously on the Steppenwolf 1700 stage.

Glacial Bust
2023

presented January 2023 at The Martin in Chicago, IL, as part of their gallery opening “Different Names (for the same thing)”

movement concept, direction, performance
Amanda Maraist

performance
Isabella Limosnero, Kara Brody, Ali Lorenz

Durational performance Glacial Bust puts on display what it feels like to wait for the end of the world. Intentionally set in a bustling, loud space - performers move at microscopically slow speed, from one position to the next, unintelligible to the naked eye. Just as the glaciers are constantly in states of degradation, so are we. Things continue to change, even when you’re not looking. And then what? Equal parts performance and social experiment, this work antagonizes gallery goers - acting as an obstinate reminder of the world outside your champagne glass.

How to Play the Piano
with Chris Reeves and Camille Casemier
2022

Presented October 2, 2022 at Comfort Station. How to Play the Piano uses archival documents and artifacts, alongside several mechanisms of display that function as art object and invitation for participation. As both a creative and educational production, this exhibition examines the history of piano play through its expectations (how to play workbooks, records, and media performances) as well as its disruptions (purposeful disruptions, destructions, and creative approaches to playing).

Topics under consideration include: the ramifications of musical proficiency (politics), the relationship between body and instrument (neurotypicality), the piano reconfigured or reconsidered as non-instrument (destruction and eco-politics), the value of the performed mistake (queering the calculus of success), and playing through doing (joy).

Further objects, gestures, and invitations on view/at hand: toy pianos, piano planters, floor piano mats, boxing pianos, piano neckties, cat keyboards, how to play piano books, how not to play piano images, a “Red Flag Piano”, piano music by: Harpo Marx, Cecil Taylor, Philip Corner, Rafael Ortiz, Annea Lockwood, Sonic Youth, Bugs Bunny, and a takeaway book and essay by the author in an edition of 50.

And lastly, but not leastly: a live opening night performance made through reimagining musical instructional manuals as movement scores by Camille Casemier and Amanda Maraist.

sounds from another room
2021-2022

presented June 5+6, 2021 at Roman Susan in Chicago, IL.

sound composition + performance
Michael Macdonald

movement devising + performance
Amanda Maraist

videography
Faayani Aboma Mijana

sounds from another room is an hour-long performance and corresponding installation, digging into instinctive somatic responses to sounds, semi-autobiographical soundscapes, and the nonsense of memory. A COVID-era presentation made possible and made better by containing the performers inside a storefront window, with the audience viewing the performance safely from the outside. Much like the glowing light of a window from the street at night, revealing intimate details of other’s lives - this performance is an invitation to share that intimacy.

sensational memory incorporates some wrong information.
this is our sensational mobility.
realizing you're just playing a game of telephone with the rest of the world
listening to weight

and listening, waiting.

Burrow, tousle
2018-2021

Burrow, Tousle is two improvised solos existing, meeting, and colliding in the same space; unearthing what it looks and feels like to be at home with another person. Existing first as a dance performance, the project eventually came to live on as a film by Chien An Yuan.

concept, co-direction, movement performance
amanda maraist
co-direction, movement performance
kara brody
sound composition + performance
chrissy martin
videography + editing
chien an yuan

performances + exhibitions >
December 8, 2021 | Monira Foundation Presents In Good Company at Mana Contemporary (Chicago)
August 22-September 2, 2020 | Roman Susan (Chicago)
April 25, 2019 | Smush Gallery (New Jersey)
March 2019 | Jam Handy (Detroit)
February 17, 2019 | an.open.space (Chicago)
February 6, 2019 | J E L L O at Links Hall (Chicago)
September 13, 2018 | IS/LAND: That We Walk + Burrow, Tousle at Links Hall (Chicago)
March 2018 | presented by HIJACK at Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis)

related press >
Chicago Tribune, Dance works ‘IS/LAND’ and ‘Burrow, Tousle’ present very different versions of home by Lauren Warnecke
Performance Response Journal, When the Body Exists: a response by Ayako Kato
Dance Enthusiast, We Are Particles: A Contemporary Dance Mixed Bill Review by Charly Santagado

Aabccekkmr (for modular synthesizer and two dancers)
2018

Presented April 28, 2018 at High Concept Labs.

Aabccekkmr deals in degradation. Approaching impermanence through two mediums; organic flesh and man-made modular synthesizer. The sound and movement go through a process of relentless change, laying bare overlooked moments of durational transformation. What may feel imperceptible at first, becomes new across time and attention.

Aabccekkmr was a collaboration with modular synth musician, Christopher Elmore. Elmore’s work at this time centered upon his personal struggle with mental health and suicide, and in the development phase much of our conversations revolved around the danger and satisfaction of looped thoughts, habits and relationships. The performance made in response embodies the perpetual tango between destruction and regeneration. The piece unfolds like a living, breathing organism, where each moment embodies a sonic and tactile landscape that ebbs and flows with a sense of inevitable decline.

sound composition + performance
Christopher Elmore

movement performance
Kara Brody, Amanda Maraist

sound recording

Tones of Belonging
2016

Presented at Ebenezer Lutheran Church by Chicago Danztheater. Tones of Belonging is a decomposition of YOLK by Sarah Gottlieb / BodyCompass Dance Project. A group dynamic distilled into and held by only two - questioning where we belong and what it sounds like.

concept
sarah gottlieb

movement performance + direction
sarah gottlieb, amanda maraist