Credits

• Billing

  Lakshmi Ramgopal | Creative Lead, Director, Lyricist, Principal Choreographer, and Composer
  Asha Rowland | Co-choreographer
  Kitty Rauth | Production Manager

  Additional musical composition and arrangement by Lucy Little, Johanna Brock, Erica Miller, and Lia Kohl

  Musicians

  Lakshmi Ramgopal | Vocals, Sruti box, and Glockenspiel
  Asha Rowland | Vocals
  Lucy Little | Violin and Vocals
  Johanna Brock | Violin and Vocals
  Erica Miller | Cello and Vocals
  Ben Zucker | Vibraphone

  Dancers

  Lakshmi Ramgopal, Asha Rowland, Kinnari Vora, Tuli Bera, and Shalaka Kulkarni

• About the Artists

  Lykanthea is the project of multidisciplinary artist Lakshmi Ramgopal (she/her). Experimenting with traditional South Asian art forms, she creates long-form performances and installations at sites that range from galleries to botanical conservatories to the middle of a freshwater stream. Her work addresses the acquisition and transformation of knowledge through the natural environment, diasporic culture, the human life cycle, and the narrative form of history. In 2014 she released her debut EP Migration, which put her on the map among experimental and pop music fans for her alchemical use of synths, catchy melodies, vocal processing, and elements of Carnatic vocal techniques. Ramgopal has performed across the US and Europe, and her work has been commissioned by Krannert Art Museum, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Experimental Sound Studio, and Edgar Miller Legacy.

  Asha Rowland (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and dancer with a focus in Bharatanatyam, various African idioms of dance, Raq Sharqi (mentored by Sabah Saeed), hip-hop, and more. A disciple of Smt. Hema Rajagopalan and Smt. Krithika Rajagopalan of Natya Dance Theatre, she has been training in Bharatanatyam since the age of eight and completed her arangetram in 2014. Rowland’s work and movement has been a by-product of exploring her multiethnic heritage; driven by curiosity of cultural intersections, ancestry, and community connections. Rowland’s solo work is based in storytelling, world-creation, character development, puzzle-making, and mythology with a purpose of promoting social justice and illuminating imbalances in global power dynamics. Recently, Rowland was a part of the Choreographer’s Evening 2023 cohort at the Walker Art Center, where she showcased a section of her latest evening-length work, The Alchemist’s Soul, which will premiere in early 2025. She was a 2023–24 resident at the Cowles Center’s Generating Room program and a fellow of Black Ensemble Productions: the IFE Lab.

  Erica Miller (she/they) is a cellist, electronic musician, and artist who often performs using free improvisation. Their work is a wide-ranging exploration of sonic landscapes and interwoven textures and drones.

  Johanna Brock (she/they/he) is a Chicago-based composer, audio engineer, and multi-instrumentalist. A trained orchestral violist, Brock’s solo work takes inspiration from modern and canonical music for violin and viola. Using voice, synthesizers, viola, and audio samples, Brock’s music explores the boundaries between sound and linguistic meaning. Brock joined Lykanthea in 2018 and is also a member of the improvised string ensemble Akjai, the sound/art project Barbiefoot, and the music/movement project Lead Rocket with performer Sara Zalek. In June 2024 Brock was commissioned by the Chicago Film Archive to create an original film soundtrack alongside filmmaker Caitlin Ryan; their score for Kiss the Rest combines field recordings from Chicago with a neo-operatic duet for voice and viola. Brock’s eight-hour sound installation, created with visual artist Sofia Moreno, was featured in the gallery exhibition of Flores Nocturnas at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire in March 2024.

  Ben Zucker (he/they) uses music to speculate on the systems and shapes of change, which has led to a wide-ranging career as a composer, multi-instrumentalist improviser, producer, and cultural worker. Acclaimed as a “master of improvisation” (IMPOSE Magazine), their work includes “stirring compositions . . . built on a lifetime of musical curiosity” (Chicago Reader), as well as numerous solo albums. As a performer, he utilizes vibraphone, brass, keys, voice, and electronics across styles. Highlights include performances with Anthony Braxton, Gareth Davis, the Vocal Constructivists, Karen Borca, Rinde Eckert, and Beth Orton, as well as frequent local appearances as an ensemble contributor and bandleader of experimental jazz quartet Fifth Season and creative music collective Mad Myth Science, the latter called “the next generation of Chicago jazz” by the Quietus. Following PhD studies at Northwestern University, they continue to live in Chicago, working as a freelance musician, lecturer, President of New Music Chicago, and curator for Elastic Arts’ Improvised Music Series.

  Lucy Little (she/they) is a classically trained violinist and multidisciplinary musician, improvisor, composer, and audio producer. Their music and sound practice lives on the edge of many styles, inspired by a lifelong exploration of storytelling, community (present and ancestral), and queerness through the interplay of music, sound, and narrative. They often compose and perform for theatrical productions and podcasts, including original scores for Audible Originals, On Air Fest 2024, SFMOMA, and more. They are involved in multiple ongoing documentary film projects as a composer, sound recordist, and mixer, including The People’s Bubbie and Object At Rest. As a performer, they have a solo electroacoustic project, and as a deeply collaborative musician, they play with the Emmy Award–winning theater company Manual Cinema, the Chicago-based indie rock and folk project Half Gringa, and with musicians around the US and the world, including Aisha Burns, Lykanthea, Dani Larkin, MICHA Música, Afarin Nazarijou, and more, as well as opening for Iron & Wine. Little is a US Fulbright alum and a 2022 OneBeat Fellow.

  Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Her wide-ranging practice includes composition and performance, installation, improvisation, and collaboration. She tours nationally and internationally, working in theater, jazz, rock, and experimental contexts. Her work centers curiosity and patience, an exploration of the mundane and profound possibilities of sound.

  Tuli Bera (she/they) is a Bengali-American movement artist, choreographer, movement educator, administrator, and producer based in Chicago, Illinois. They graduated with a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2015. Since then, Bera has collaborated and performed with various companies and individual artists in Chicago: Aerial Dance Chicago, Ashwaty Chennat, Ayako Kato, Chris Knowlton, Cristal Sabbagh’s Freedom From and Freedom To, Darling Squire/Shear, Erin Killmuray, and Ishti Collective. Beyond performance, they have supported artists as a producer through the J e l l o Performance Series (for which they are now an advisor). They teach ballet and aerial dance for all ages through Aerial Dance Chicago and as an independent teaching artist at various studios and arts institutions. Their dance work has been presented at Links Hall, The Edge Theater, Steppenwolf1700 Theater, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the University of Michigan.

  Shalaka Kulkarni (she/her) is an interdisciplinary dance artist. Trained in Indian classical dances, she creates experiences that bridge the ancient and contemporary, uplifting marginalized voices. As an actor, filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer, she has toured original work and participated in collaborations in India, the US, and Europe. Kulkarni began training in the Bharatnatyam as a child in India, and in Kathak under the international artist Sandhya Desai. She holds an MFA in interdisciplinary arts and media from Columbia College Chicago, where she worked closely with the dance master Nana Shineflug, a noted American dancer/choreographer. She is interested in presenting a hybrid movement practice that fuses techniques of Bharatnatyam and Kathak with other movement influences, writing, and technology. Her most recent project was studying myths and mythological female-identified figures in various cultures with an investigative focus on Indian culture and the Devadasi (Temple Dancer) system. Her work revolves around the ideas of female identity, questioning societal norms, celebrating gender fluidity, and empowering marginal voices.

  Kinnari Vora (she/her), a Chicago-based dancer, choreographer, and educator, explores universal human conditions through movement, meditation, and theatrical practices. Her contemporary works are rooted in Bharatanatyam (disciple of Sarmishtha Sarkar, India), Indian folk dances, kalaripayattu martial arts, and recently, contemporary dance. Kinnari is the co-founder of Ishti Collective, a collaborator with Surabhi Ensemble, and a co-curator at Temple Gallery in Pilsen. Her works have been showcased at the Ragdale Foundation, Pivot Arts Festival, the Art Institute, and World Music Festival Chicago, and internationally in India, Europe, Mexico, and Vietnam. She is a 2022 Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist and a 2022–2023 High Concept Labs Fellow.

  Kitty Rauth (she/they) is a queer, multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago who works between sculpture, performance, community organizing, and curating. Within their practice, they engage in conversations that bridge class, queerness, and fat liberation, questioning the delicate boundaries of care and control with classed systems of etiquette. A former staff and artist member of Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia, Rauth supported the organization from 2014–2020, and has since established a 15-member collective studio space on Chicago’s Southwest Side. She is a recipient of Chicago’s DCASE Individual Artist Grant for her ongoing Round Table dinner series and was selected for Newcity‘s Art 50 2024. Rauth graduated with their BFA from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and their MFA in Studio Art from the Sculpture Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently serves as the Artistic Director of Comfort Station, a multidisciplinary art space in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago and as a lecturer in Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.