Columbia Faculty Collaborate Across Disciplines for Dance Center’s Chicago Premiere of "Floe"

Damon D. Green performing in “Floe.” Photo courtesy of University of Wisconsin-Madison. Damon D. Green performing in “Floe.” Photo courtesy of University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Faculty from Columbia College Chicago's School of Theatre and Dance contributed choreography, text direction, and sound design to The Seldoms’ climate-focused work.

Columbia College Chicago faculty are contributing across disciplines to the Chicago premiere of "Floe," a multimedia dance theatre work by local dance company The Seldoms, taking place March 12-13 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.  

Choreographed and directed by Carrie Hanson, adjunct professor of instruction in Columbia’s School of Theatre and Dance and founding artistic director of The Seldoms, the production also features text direction by fellow School of Theatre and Dance faculty member Brian Shaw and sound design and composition by assistant professor Mikhail Fiksel. The performance includes Damon D. Green, who attended Columbia College Chicago, and is supported in part by a Columbia professional development grant. 

Hanson, founding artistic director of The Seldoms, has taught at Columbia since 1999. In a recent conversation with Dance Center artistic director Meredith Sutton, she reflects on the work’s long journey to its Chicago premiere. 

“It’s always a pleasure to bring The Seldoms work to the Dance Center because it’s my home base,” Hanson says. “I think the theater is one of the best in the city.” 

Conceptualized in 2018 and postponed during the pandemic, "Floe" explores vanishing polar ice, rising sea levels, extreme weather, forced migration, and the tension between denial and evidence in conversations around climate change. The work blends choreography, spoken word, and immersive sound to embody what Hanson describes as “the physical reality of the environmental crisis.” 

“When we talk about climate change, it seems abstract at some level,” she says. “It’s not. We need to understand it more as a physical experience.” 

Interdisciplinary Collaboration Across Theatre and Dance 

The production reflects the interdisciplinary collaboration central to Columbia. Shaw, a longtime theatre faculty member, works with the dancers on spoken-word delivery and performance presence. 

“My dancers are fantastic movers and technicians—speaking is not their primary performance language,” Hanson says. “Brian has been coming into rehearsals and expanding their comfort levels and abilities.” 

Fiksel brings more than a decade of collaboration with The Seldoms to the project. A Tony Award-winning designer and composer, he creates an immersive soundscape using field recordings of glacial melt, ocean, wind, and seagulls. 

“His sound design for ‘Floe’ is quite extraordinary,” Hanson says. “It’s quite riveting.” 

Onstage, Green performs as part of a physically interconnected cast, drawing on choreographic motifs inspired by "Moby-Dick," including “monkey-roping,” a whaling technique in which sailors tether themselves together. The dancers’ constant connection underscores the work’s exploration of interdependence and shared responsibility. 

“Interconnectivity became one of the working ideas,” Hanson says. “Not only between all of us, but us inside of an ecosystem—too often we forget that.” 

For Hanson, the urgency of the work continues to intensify. “We set out to make ‘Floe’ because we believe that the fluent and articulate body is a powerful means to convey what is at stake in our warming world,” she says. “While we initially created ‘Floe’ in 2019, it remains relevant; indeed, climate change is more obvious and urgent seven years later.”

Showtimes and Tickets  

Thursday and Friday, March 12-13, 7:30 p.m. 

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.  

Tickets available at dance.colum.edu

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