Interviews with Chicago Program Manager, Mike D Chicago, and Chicago Teaching Artists: Redd, Prince JRon, and DJ T-Rell

Teaching Artist: Redd
Can you start by sharing who you are and how you’re involved with Creative Netwerk?

So I go by Redd.I am a performing artist, choreographer, educator, mentor, and community activist with Creative Netwerk, I build community through dance. I'm one of their instructors. They have their boys and girls club locations throughout the city of Chicago and that is where I teach. This marks a year now with Creative Netwerk. I'm just excited to be in a position to grow more and more. 

Can you share what it is and what brought you there?

That was my first time going to something like LayeRhythm. From what was communicated to me, it was supposed to have been like an improv dance event. So how they do improv comedy - they were doing the same thing - but with dance. I’ve been to improv dance events before, but usually the musicians are the ones that set the tone for the dancers. But this time, the dancers were setting the tone and the musicians had to shift and keep up. So that was a really good opportunity to see that.

How did it feel to take your student to the show? 

 I invited a big chunk of my students, but only one of them ended up being able to come. But it felt great to be in that position, because I was also fulfilling two roles. I was fulfilling the role of a student and as a teacher in that space. My teacher and mentor was there dancing, so I was looking at my teacher on the stage and learning. And then I was using those same things that might be taught to me, and I put that to my student. 

This was my student's first time ever doing freestyle or performing in front of people by himself, and I was very encouraging towards him. He's shy but he can dance very, very well. So just to be in that space there was a full circle moment and multigenerational learning. 

What kinds of things did you hear from your student during and after the performance? What do you think they took from it?

Yeah, so that was his first time ever being a part of something like this and he was very excited. It definitely exposed him to things that are not common in the neighborhood he’s grown up in. So to be able to bring him to downtown Chicago and expose him to something like that, I feel like that changed his life forever. 

I'm always going to be the one to encourage people to get outside that comfort zone. So me doing that, it in turn, made him do the same thing to me. He was encouraging me to freestyle and participate in the event and I wanted to set a good example for him in being brave and jumping in. 

I ended up getting a gig for freestyling at Whitney Young high school. The director of the dance department saw me dancing and she stopped me before I left, and asked to work together. I turned to my student and said, “See - this is why just go out there. You never know who's watching.” I could tell that it really hit home for him.

What did you learn and take away from the experience?

I definitely learned to take your time and don't be so in your head. There's a lot of other creatives in this space who are also struggling with the same thing: of being seen and being vulnerable in front of other people. I definitely learned from watching Mike D’s set, from watching K Dot, from watching the other people who I know in the space just perform and just be. It reminded me that expressing yourself should be a safe thing. It shouldn't be a judgmental thing. So just get out of your head. I'm learning how to accept that more. 

The event really helped me think about taking time with dance, too. Mike D really took his time with that whole set, 20-25 minutes by himself. How do you do something like that? So to see him work the crowd and just do simple stuff, he really turned it into a whole party. Then to be able to turn that same switch on to show my student, okay, this is how I get down for him to see his mentor, his big sister, his teacher, doing the exact same thing was really powerful and just passing down generational knowledge. It was an amazing experience.

Teaching Artist: Prince JRon

Can you start by sharing who you are and how you’re involved with Creative Netwerk?

My name is Geron Boyd, but everyone knows me as Prince JRon. I am a Chicago footworker, and I played a big part in the dance culture in Chicago by spreading Chicago dance and Chicago footwork, around the world along side King Charles on the Sticky and Sweet Madonna tour. I have my own crew called HAVOC - having all victory over challenges. And Charles, he has his crew called Creation, of course. One of our goals was to reach as many people as we could to help inspire, encourage, motivate, and change people's lives for the better. 

And as Creative Netwerk was evolving in Chicago, King Charles asked me to come teach students here. When it comes to spreading this culture of Chicago footwork and dance in general - and connecting with amazing people like Mike D to touch a lot of youth and a lot of people from different places - it was a dream come true. So I'm always happy and very grateful of what's going on with Creative Netwerk.

Can you share what it is and what brought you there?

I had zero clue on who was going to be there and what it was going to be like. All I knew was that it was supposed to be a performance, and that it was going to have live music and people dancing. There was music being played by a DJ, DJ T-Rell, and as he was closing his set for the show to start, the band was warming up to the song that he was playing, so there was already this cool collaboration between the musicians and the DJ. 

The dancers were already showing how the body was connecting to the beats, becoming one with the music. Throughout the whole show, the performers were asking the audience to give ideas. They were freestyling on the spot based on a word, like “butterfly”. Everybody was responsible for this show - the dancers, the musicians, and the audience. And that was something I never saw before. Usually, the crowd gives you energy, they give you the cheers, they give you the claps, and you receive that type of energy and that fuels you to perform. However, they're not telling you what to do. So this event was the first time I got to see the audience telling the dancers what to do, and then the dancers is telling the musicians what to do. So everybody has to pay attention to each other. 

Eventually, I got invited up and was able to showcase some OG Chicago footwork, alongside others who have really evolved and made the style their own.

What did you learn and take away from the experience?

It was confirmation that when people come together, when people are communicating and working as one - it has this loving energy that creates the most amazing things. It doesn't matter if it's dance, if it's music, if it's artwork, if it's building structures, the most amazing things happen when people are just flowing in their essence, on one accord with each other. 

It was just a vibe. It was all positive energy, people smiling, people networking afterwards, talking, people coming up to each other and saying how amazing they were. I heard people say, “I just want to dance. I haven't danced in years, but this brought the kid out of me and I felt alive” and and that's how you want to feel every day.

Chicago Program Manager: Mike D Chicago

Can you share what it is and what brought you there?

LayeRhythm is an improv dance show that was for musicians and dancers and crowd participants. It was at the Harris theater rooftop in Chicago. I got connected to this amazing event through Charles, who did this particular dance showcase in 2017. Charles was invited back to do this event but was going to be out of the country, so he recommended me to step in.

Walk me through what the performance was like.

The lighting and stage space was really beautiful and felt like a real extension from when this type of event was done in a club space. The seating was brought really close to the stage so that it could be interactive. There were breaks in between the performances so that people in the audience who wanted to dance could get up and move.

DJ T-Rell did an amazing job of getting the audience involved and dancing during those breaks. They had like a soul train line, and they were able to interact with the DJ.

When I got up there, I am such a fan of interaction with people, I decided to create an energy where I brought a few people up from the audience to be a part of the show that I was presenting. I did three different tempo changes, but each tempo change I decided to bring somebody up and teach, because that's what I do. I didn't have a set time limit. They told me to be as free as possible and represent what I wanted to represent. 

That particular piece that they had me do was called rhythm conductor. So rhythm conductor basically is conducting everything, every sound that came out of the band had to come from me giving it to them. I had to move according to what I felt and the band reacted to it. This was definitely improv. Nothing was planned. I didn't rehearse. So it was really organic where I got to build the beat up, bring people up with me, and just orchestrate collaboration between everyone on and off stage. It was amazing.

What did you learn and take away from the experience?

Before this, I had never done a 25 minute set before. What I learned from that is that creativity is unlimited - there's no limitations to your creativity if you allow it to flourish and bloom. 

I had a huge connection with this event because I was a fan of watching what Charles did back in 2017. This was the first LayeRhythm event in Chicago so it was just amazing to be a part of that and adopt something I had never done before.

Teaching Artist and Producer: DJ T-Rell

Can you start by sharing who you are and how you’re involved with Creative Netwerk?

My name is DJ T-Rell. I'm involved with Creative Netwerk and the crew Creation Global by creating footwork tracks and dance tracks.

I’m so excited to talk to you about your experience with LayeRhythm. To start, can you share what it is and what brought you there?

I first learned about LayeRhythm in NYC, they asked me to be a part of the event there a few months back.

The LayeRhythm events are like a show of culture. I was hired to play during the intermission of the show in Chicago, but it felt more like a play than a normal dance show. It was interactive and not prescriptive.

Walk me through what the performance was like.

They would introduce each artist, and the artist would start with a performance that would go out and start freestyling to my tracks or to what the big band was playing, and they would start to interact with the audience and evolve their style and energy. It felt amazing to be able to produce tracks and see how they interpreted them and performed with them.

Did you change what you played based on the crowd at the event?

The only thing I really changed was the versions of the songs that I played. A lot of songs have clean versions that don't have profanity in it, and a lot of songs do, but the crowd was so mixed and had kids in the audience. So as a DJ, you know, you have to take that initiative, to read your crowd and understand what to play. So I definitely planned ahead and made some changes as I went along.

I also played a really big variety. Looking into that crowd and people of all ages, I wanted to give something to everyone. So I played old school hip hop, stuff from the 80s, 90s, and present. After 25 years of doing this, I’ve learned how to look at the crowd and try and give them a bit of what I think they’re going to connect to. 

What did you learn and take away from the experience?

The flow of the show was really organized, even though it was an improv event. Each performance was properly placed throughout the whole program. So it was really cool to see that even though the event was meant to me improvisational and open to change, it was still organized and well produced.