Trillium Arts Announces Julia Rhoads as the 2023 ACE Fellowship Awardee
Photo of Lucky Plush Productions by Benjamin Wardell
Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Julia Rhoads, founding Artistic Director of Lucky Plush Productions, as the recipient of its fourth annual ACE (Asheville/Chicago Exchange) Fellowship in Dance. Julia will be joined by six members of the Lucky Plush ensemble and the group will be in residence at Trillium September 10-16.
THE ACE FELLOWSHIP provides established Chicago-area choreographers and their dancers with a full menu of resources and benefits including air transportation between Chicago and Asheville, a rental car, private lodging, rehearsal space, and an honorarium/per diem. If they so choose, ACE Fellows may opt to engage/interact with Trillium’s Western NC Artist Roster for onsite experimentation and collaboration with our growing cohort of regional and local artists. Each ACE Fellowship is seven to nine days in length, providing space and time to rejuvenate and deepen creative endeavors in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. ACE Fellowship awardees are selected by invitation.
“Julia Rhoads was selected as the 2023 ACE Fellow based on her tremendous artistic merit and the quality of the exciting project she will advance along with her company while here at Trillium,” states Phil Reynolds, Trillium Arts President. Trillium is delighted to support her exploratory work and can’t wait to see what grows out of this ACE Fellowship experience!
Photo of Lucky Plush Productions by Benjamin Wardell
MEET THE AWARDEE
Web: luckyplush.com/
Facebook: LuckyPlushProductions
Instagram:@luckyplush
Julia Rhoads is the founding Artistic Director of Lucky Plush Productions, a MacArthur Award-winning ensemble recognized for its unique blend of dance, theater, comedy, and socially relevant themes. Her work with Lucky Plush has toured to over 75 venues worldwide, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (DC), Joyce Theater (NYC), Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, ODC (CA), Wellesley Center (Auckland, NZ), and Teatro Las Carolinas (Havana, Cuba). Julia’s independent choreography credits include Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre and River North Dance Chicago, and she was commissioned to create a work in honor of the Year of Chicago Theater for Art on theMart, the world’s largest digital installation. She is the recipient of an Alpert Award in Dance, fellowships from Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and her work for Lucky Plush has received creation and touring awards from National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, National Theater Project, and National Performance Network. Julia began her professional dance career as a member of the San Francisco Ballet and was later an ensemble member of XSIGHT! Performance Group. She received her BA in History from Northwestern University, her MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute Chicago, and she is currently the Director of Dance and Senior Instructional Professor in Theater and Performance Studies at University of Chicago.
FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
Julia is thrilled to have the dedicated time and space at Trillium to explore new research ideas with longstanding collaborator Leslie Buxbaum and ensemble members of Lucky Plush Productions. Having created several original works that jump off from source material ranging from noir films to one-act plays, the artistic team is branching into new territory by exploring a more faithful adaptation of a classic text. Rhoads and her collaborators are excited by the challenge of reimagining a complex fiction without entirely ransacking plot, engaging new methodologies that draw from Lucky Plush’s distinct brand of dance-theater.
Special Thanks:
The 2023 ACE Choreographic Fellowship is sponsored by Ginger Farley and Bob Shapiro, and Thomas Edward Frank.