The Driehaus Museum announces the Fall activation dates for Brendan Fernandes: In the Round. As the Museum’s first artist-in-residence, Fernandes transforms the Museum’s 1926 Murphy Auditorium into a dynamic site for dance, movement, sound, and sculptural installation. Organized by guest curator Stephanie Cristello, Brendan Fernandes: In the Round is part of the Museum’s A Tale of Today series that places contemporary art in dialogue with the art, architecture, and design of the Museum. Brendan Fernandes: In the Roundprograms are free and reservations are encouraged at driehausmuseum.org.

Following its launch in April 2026, this Fall’s In the Round programming brings back Fernandes’ critically acclaimed performance commission Score for the Murphy Auditorium and presents the work of three dance artists in Concerts of Dance, a series of open rehearsals, workshops, and performances spotlighting collaborators from Chicago’s independent dance community, Xenia Mansour, Hanna DiLorenzo, and Kara Hunsinger.

In the Round is inspired by the pioneering spirit of New York City’s Judson Dance Theater and their Concerts for Dance. The Judson Dance Theater was an influential collective of choreographers, composers, filmmakers, and artists in 1960s New York who revolutionized dance by rejecting classical technique in favor of everyday gesture and shared experimentation. Initially staged in the sanctuary of Judson Memorial Church between 1962 and 1966, the group’s early performances offered a radical blueprint for creative freedom. Decades later, Fernandes reimagines this legacy for the present, re-situating its spirit in the Driehaus Museum’s 1926 Murphy Auditorium.

Dancers interact with minimalist site-specific installations developed in collaboration with AIM Architecture (Antwerp, Shanghai, Chicago) and textile-based works byThe Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia), echoing the multidisciplinary ethos of Judson Dance Theater. The installation places modern minimalism in dialogue with the Museum’s Gilded Age ornamentation, creating an interactive stage setting for visitors to experience history, performance, and space from multiple perspectives.

Lead support for Brendan Fernandes: In the Round is provided by Cari and Michael J. Sacks.

Major support is provided by the Driehaus Trust Company, LLC., Anne L. Kaplan, and Gary Metzner and Scott Johnson.

Generous support is provided by the Kovler Family Foundation, Elizabeth Liebman, and Abby Pucker.

Additional support is provided by Friends of Brendan Fernandes.

The Fall 2026 schedule is as follows:

Brendan Fernandes: Score for the Murphy Auditorium

Wednesday, September 16, 4-6pm

Wednesday, October 14, 5-7pm

Saturday, November 14, 3-5 PM

In this critically acclaimed durational work choreographed by Brendan Fernandes, an ensemble of performers from across Chicago’s vibrant independent dance community gather to create a dynamic site for sculptural installation, movement, and sound inspired by the pioneering spirit of New York City’s Judson Dance Theater.

For the culminating presentation on Saturday, November 14, Fernandes is joined by composer and sound artist Alex Inglizian and a group of musical collaborators, who will perform a live score in the Murphy Auditorium as the dancers complete the final activation of the project. Featuring a prepared piano inspired by the experimental compositions of John Cage alongside synthesizers and electronic instruments, the performance creates a rich sonic environment that unfolds in dialogue with movement, sculpture, and architecture.

September:

Open Rehearsal: Xenia Mansour

Wednesday, September 16, 11am-3pm; Thursday, September 17, 2-4:45pm; Friday, September 18, 11am-3pm

Choreographer Xenia Mansour and collaborator Faith Balderrama stage an open rehearsal of was, still is. Observe the artists as they adapt the work for Murphy Auditorium ahead of its premiere on Saturday, September 19.

Movement Workshop: Xenia Mansour

Thursday, September 17, 12-2pm

Choreographer Xenia Mansour and collaborator Faith Balderrama host a workshop designed for dancers and movement artists. Participants will learn phrase material from was, still is and engage with Mansour's creative process through improvisation, journaling, and guided exploration. This workshop is intended for movement artists. Advance registration required.

Xenia Mansour: Open Dress Rehearsal + Artist Talkback

Friday, September 18, 3:15-4:30pm

Watch an open dress rehearsal of Xenia Mansour’s work was, still is before its Murphy Auditorium premiere. Following the run-through, Brendan Fernandes moderates a conversation with the artists on the work's themes, creative process, and adaptation.

Xenia Mansour: was, still is

Saturday, September 19, 1-2pm

Xenia Mansour and collaborator Faith Balderrama presents was, still is, a durational, site-specific performance that will be newly adapted for the Murphy Auditorium. Originally created as a ten-minute work for New Dances 2025 on a proscenium stage, audiences are invited to enter, exit, and move through the Murphy freely, encountering the work patiently from multiple vantage points. Rather than a fixed performer–audience relationship, the work creates a porous environment in which dancers, viewers, and the architecture are all in dialogue. Viewers are not bound to seats or a linear narrative, prompting questions: What does it mean to be ‘unfinished’? Is it infinite? What is not ‘there’ for us right now but should have been? And with that, what remains? Diving deeper into these questions and movement vocabulary, the work aligns deeply with the legacy of Judson Dance Theater, Fernandes’s inspiration for In the Round.

After hours | Brendan Fernandes House Dance Party

Saturday, September 19, 8pm

Brendan Fernandes invites audiences to connect during a dynamic evening that blurs performance, sound, and installation. This after-hours house dance party will immerse guests in the exhibition through music, movement, and collective experience. A live DJ set brings the Murphy Auditorium's historic space to life. Tickets and VIP opportunities to be announced soon.

October:

Open Rehearsal: Hanna DiLorenzo

Wednesday, October 14, 12-4pm; Thursday, October 15, 2-4pm

Hanna DiLorenzo hosts an open rehearsal of Behind Closed Doors (Part I) and Where Absence Grows (Part II), two works from her ongoing Phenomenology Series.

Movement Improvisation Workshop: Hanna DiLorenzo

Thursday, October 15, 12-1pm

A movement improvisation workshop with Hanna DiLorenzo offers dancers an opportunity to deepen both creative and technical skills through somatic practice, structured improvisation, and rigorous movement exploration. This workshop is intended for general audiences and movement practitioners. Advance registration required.

Live Filming: Hanna DiLorenzo

Friday, October 16, 12-4pm

Hanna DiLorenzo conducts a live filming of Where Absence Grows (Part II) from her ongoing Phenomenology Series.

Hanna DiLorenzo: Behind Closed Doors

Saturday, October 17, 1-2pm

Hanna DiLorenzo will present two works from her ongoing Phenomenology Series.Behind Closed Doors, which premiered in June 2025 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts as part of New Dances 2025, is a performance that examines how shared family trauma fractures into conflicting truths and seeks reconciliation through embodied empathy and collective understanding. Where Absence Grows, created for Little Fire Artist Collective, is a phenomenological study of the ways grief becomes a shifting landscape as dancers navigate the cyclical rhythms of loss, memory, and renewal. This performance will be part of the Driehaus Museum’s Open House Chicago week-end events.

November:

Open Rehearsal: Kara Hunsinger

Wednesday, November 11, 12-4pm; Thursday, November 12, 12-1pm

Kara Hunsinger hosts an open rehearsal of new work Return to Us, a live performance examining the psychic and social dissonance of contemporary life under constant digital mediation.

Movement for Anyone Workshop: Kara Hunsinger

Wednesday, November 11, 5:30-6:30pm

Movement for Anyone is a guided improvisational class designed for non-dancers led by Kara Hunsinger. Through simple movement prompts and sensory exploration, participants develop awareness, attention, and connection with themselves and others. Drawing from principles of movement meditation, the session supports physical mobility, nervous system regulation, and emotional well-being. Participants experience how movement, like conversation, can foster presence, release stress, and create meaningful human connection. This workshop is intended for non-dancers. This event requires pre-registration.

Kara Hunsinger: Return to Us

Friday, November 13, 1-2pm

Kara Hunsinger presents a solo variation of her new work entitled Return to Us, a live performance examining the psychic and social dissonance of contemporary life under constant digital mediation. We congratulate a friend on an achievement, then repost footage of state violence. We take in news of war, genocide, and climate collapse while presenting images of perfection, productivity, and belonging. Hunsinger’s work interrogates the normalization of such digital behavior and considers the cost of performing stability while everything feels fractured. Tracing an arc from disconnection to reconnection, Return to Us questions how easily we surrender agency to the rectangle in our hands.

Live Filming: Kara Hunsinger

Friday, November 13, 2-4pm

Kara Hunsinger conducts a live filming of Return to Us.

FEATURED FALL ARTISTS

Hanna DiLorenzo is a multidisciplinary freelance dance artist originally from Rochester, NY. She began her formal training at The Draper Center for Dance Education, formerly the school of the Rochester City Ballet. Later, she attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where she earned her BFA in Contemporary Dance and completed her academics early before moving to Chicago to join the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Professional Training Program (HS Pro). There, she completed her degree while performing alongside the main company and was honored with the 2019 HS Pro Emerging Choreographer Award. Now based in Chicago, DiLorenzo moves fluidly between roles as a performer, choreographer, rehearsal director, and collaborator. She is a company member with Boykin Dance Project, a founding member of Little Fire Artist Collective, and dancer, choreographer, and rehearsal director for Niko8 Performance. Her freelance work has led her to perform pieces by artists including Braeden Barnes, Brendan Fernandes, Abdiel Figueroa Reyes, FLOCKWORKS, Alicia Johnson, Brian Martinez, Jessi Stegall, and Justin Rapaport, and she was also a cover for Robyn Mineko Williams’ Echo Mine. DiLorenzo’s choreographic voice is grounded in a desire to challenge convention—crafting work that moves with cinematic clarity while using staging and lighting as expressive tools. Her choreography has been presented by Chicago Live, Highland Park High School, HS Pro, Little Fire Artist Collective, New Dances 2025, Niko8, See Chicago Dance, and various film festivals. Choreographic residencies on the horizon include the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Symbiosis Arts.

Kara Hunsinger is a Chicago-based dance artist whose movement lives at the intersection of athleticism, emotional depth, and storytelling. Her work is rooted in presence, curiosity, and the belief that the body holds both memory and meaning. She received her BFA in Dance from the University of Arizona School of Dance, where she deepened her understanding of the body as both instrument and narrator. Her training has taken her across the U.S. and internationally, including time with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Ate9 Dance Company, SALT Contemporary Dance, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Share Dance Intensive Berlin. Hunsinger is currently a company member with Boykin Dance Project and has previously performed with multiple Chicago based dance companies. Her performance repertoire spans contemporary and ballet-based works by Helene Simoneau, Noelle Kayser, Mike Tyus, Robert Battle, James Gregg, Nacho Duato, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, and Ohad Naharin. In addition to performing, Kara is an emerging choreographic voice. She served as Choreographic Assistant with Boykin Dance Project from 2022–2024, contributing to works such as Nonsense! and Smart Mouth. Her own choreography, including Can You Hear Me Now? and Let The River Answer, reflects her interest in physical storytelling, human connection, and the emotional undercurrents that shape modern life. This is her third collaboration with Brendan Fernandes, following his installation Skin in the Game(2024), and the immersive performance 72 Seasons (2021) at Lurie Garden.

Xenia Mansour is a movement-based performer, director, and coach. She holds a BFA in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and has performed with NYC-based choreographers and collectives, including HIVEWILD, HOLDTIGHT, Sikora + Dance, and Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener. Most recently, she has performed in Brendan Fernandes’ "In Two" at the Pulitzer Arts Museum and choreographed and performed in Grammy-nominated musician Nico Segal’s "Welcome Home" at Steppenwolf Theatre. Her work has been presented by Thodos Dance Chicago/DanceWorks Chicago for New Dances 2025 at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts, and has also been commissioned by Grammy-winner Kalia Vandever and MOMENTA Dance Company. Through her company, Philoxenia Movement LLC, Mansour also works as a movement director and coach, collaborating with Chicago-based musicians, photographers, models, and visual artists. Her movement direction spans live performance, music projects, and fashion and editorial contexts, including ongoing collaboration with Greek-American pop artist Tommy Bravos and leading model movement workshops with photographer Anna Blank. Her work is guided by curiosity, play, and intentionality, using movement as a tool for dialogue, presence, and honest exchange between performers, collaborators, and audiences.

Alex Inglizian is a dynamic force within Chicago’s creative landscape, seamlessly blending roles as an artist, composer, musician, engineer, and educator. His music transcends conventional boundaries, embracing the interplay of noise, harmony, silence, and space while championing the art of performance and improvisation. A graduate of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Inglizian currently serves as co-director and chief recording engineer at Experimental Sound Studio, a nonprofit dedicated to sound art. At Northwestern University, he shares his expertise as a professor of sound for film sound design, synthesis, music production, and audio technology. An integral figure in Chicago’s vibrant experimental music scene, Inglizian’s collaborations with filmmakers showcase his versatility and innovation. Rooted in the avant-garde traditions of experimental electronic music and improvisation, his artistry is a testament to both historical legacies and contemporary influences, shaping a narrative that evolves with each collaboration and creative endeavor.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based in Chicago, his practice addresses issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Constantly seeking to create new spaces and forms of agency, Fernandes’ work often takes on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2014), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020), an Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019), and most recently, the Platform Award (2024). In 2024, he was also honored with the Creative Voice Award by Arts Alliance Illinois. His work has been presented at prestigious venues such as the 2019 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), among many others. Fernandes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. He is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago and Susan Inglett Gallery in New York. Recent and upcoming projects include performances and solo presentations at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO), the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO), the Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA), and Prospect.6 (New Orleans, LA).

ABOUT THE GUEST CURATOR

Stephanie Cristello is a contemporary art critic, curator, and author based in Chicago, IL. She has worked internationally across a variety of platforms, including exhibitions, panels and symposia, editorial, and publishing. Cristello was previously the Senior Editor US for ArtSlant (2012–18) and the founding Editor-in-Chief of THE SEEN, Chicago’s International Journal of Contemporary & Modern Art (2013–20). Her writing has been published in ArtReview, BOMB Magazine, Elephant Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Mousse Magazine, and OSMOS, as well as Portable Graypublished by the University of Chicago Press, where she serves at Editor-at-Large since 2025. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 with a Liberal Arts Thesis in Visual Critical Studies. She served as the Artistic Director of EXPO CHICAGO (2013–2020) and is currently the Director / Curator at Chicago Manual Style. From 2020–21 she was as a Guest Curator at Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark) and the Malmö Art Museum (Sweden), as well as a Curatorial Advisor to the 2020 Busan Biennale (South Korea). She is the author of Theodora Allen: Saturnine (Motto / Kunsthal Aarhus, 2021), Sustainable Societies for the Future (Motto / Malmö Art Museum, 2021), Barbara Kasten: Architecture and Film 2015–2020 (Skira, 2022), and Uffe Isolotto: Milk Eye (Holstebro Kunstmuseum, 2025). In 2020, she was awarded a publication grant by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

ABOUT THE DRIEHAUS MUSEUM

The Driehaus Museum engages and inspires the global community through exploration and ongoing conversations in art, architecture, and design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its permanent collection and temporary exhibitions are presented in an immersive experience within the restored 1883 Nickerson Mansion, and the 1926 Murphy Auditorium. The Museum’s collection reflects and is inspired by the collecting interests, vision, and focus of its founder, the late Richard H. Driehaus. For more information, visit driehausmuseum.org and connect with the Museum on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

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