Hi, my name is Sophia Minouche Allen (but I’ve always gone by Sophie). I include my middle name to honor my late Oma and to make her and the connection between her, my Mom, and I more visible. My work is shaped by cycles of care between the three of us. I am drawn to embody and embolden this lineage, which grounds my artistry and life in different shades of love, womanhood, and vulnerability.
I am a gatherer. It’s hard for me to let things go and to say goodbye. I am 28 and have been told I have an old soul. I am playful but might look very serious when I’m concentrating. Sometimes slowing down makes my heart speed up, and that reminds me to check the pulse of my grief. Solitude helps me recharge my energy, but being with others fills my cup.
I believe dance is made and done for people to come together. And I want people to come together. I also believe in trial and error and starting before you’re ready. I invite you to nurture your intuitions while trying something new and to allow yourself to experience potential comfort and discomfort with less judgement. I wonder what doing this together will feel like and I look forward to meeting you.
I am a multidisciplinary artist—dancer, actor, teacher, storyteller, poet, and jewelry
maker—who has long supported other artists as an arts administrator and cultural
producer. Recently, I have begun to create and perform my own work and sell my jewelry.
In my performance work I am trying to integrate my diverse artistic practices. My art is
deeply rooted in my experiences as a biracial woman who has traveled extensively,
exploring themes of memory, place, home, belonging, third-culture, identity, and the ways
we code-switch to navigate different environments. I was born in Australia and grew up
between rural Australia (Lawrence, NSW) and Malaysia (Kampong Sungai Buloh).
I have had a yoga practice since I was about 16, I’m now 49, I also love digging in the dirt
and growing things, mostly vegetables, I also love making miniature objects, all things art
making and have recently started painting, I am terrible, but I believe you don’t have to be
good at something to love it.
For a long time, I had a strange relationship with rest, rest is essential, I have learned the
hard way…I wouldn’t rest until my body literally broke, I sent my self to the ER 5 times from
sickness and exhaustion because I didn’t take enough time to recover and literally worked
myself into the ground. I still sometimes feel guilty when I am resting; I should be working
harder, doing more…I am realizing the only way I can really show up for others and have a
healthy relationship with my body is by resting. For a while now I have been exploring my
different cultural identities and struggling with being home in one country or another and
the constant feeling of missing one when I am in the other. I used to think I was super
extroverted, but I have come to realize that my extroverted tendencies were an expectation
placed on me.
I ask myself; how do we (I) move through others’ expectations? How do we (I) find and be
our true selves? How can we (I) show up and care for others without forgetting to care for
ourselves? How do you (Can I) grieve the loss of someone when they are still alive? How do
we (I) find compassion for ourselves and others in hurtful situations?
I would like to hold space for you to answer your own questions and hold our time together
with support and compassion for wherever we are in our life’s journeys.
My name is Najee-Zaid (najee for short). Born in the lands of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwaa, Odawa, Potawotami) and other native lineages autochthonous to these soils. This land called Chicago. I am a 34 year old who enjoys meditation, joy, creativity, and adventure! I proudly love and am loved by my beloved partner and our little doggie.
I've been an active interdisciplinary artist in Chicago for about 10 years and have recently been exploring practices of rest, home, and resilience. Rest for me is personal and collective. It can be as brief as a moment of stillness and as vivid as a summer dream. I've also been dealing with grief lately. Grief to me, is a teacher. A teacher that visits whenever it is called on by the divine forces of existence. Grief is a healer and a breaker and when we incorporate the power of grief and rest into our natural transformations, I believe we begin to realize how beautiful the cycles and patterns of love and life are.
p.s. A book I feel called to share is Ayiti by Roxanne Gay.
