Core Team
|
Ellyzabeth Adler (Executive Director, Teaching Artist)
Ellyzabeth Adler is a multidisciplinary artist working in the genre of "Tanztheatre," weaving together theatre, dance, film, spoken word, and music. As founder of Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble (CDE) she has dedicated herself to forming partnerships with artists of all genres and generations to create unique, dynamic, engaging, and meaningful ensemble performances. She also teaches and mentors the next generation of performers who, in turn, serve as visiting artists and teachers in schools and community centers through CDE’s Books Alive and Poetry Alive to enhance literacy, numeracy, and arts awareness for thousands of underserved children in the Chicago area, as well as teaching traditional dance, theatre and visual art in the schools. Ellyzabeth studied dance at William Reilly Academy of Ballet and danced with the Springfield Ballet Company before earning a BFA in Performing Arts, with a minor in Broadcast Journalism at Roosevelt University. In 2000 she earned a Masters of Arts in Directing and Movement; as her thesis she developed CDE’s techniques for creating multidisciplined, kinesthetic, and socially engaging theatre. She has created and/or collaboratively adapted, directed and choreographed 10 full-length works including: T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland; Ever Your Own; Edgar; The Yellow Wallpaper; This Is Not A Pipe; Bindis and Bruises; and Touch and Mirrors - one-act plays based on the work of the Persian poet, Rumi. She has also created and choreographed over a dozen concert-length works focused on women’s issues, the female body, the human condition, and pathways to enlightenment. Among these works include HOPE based off the letters of incarcerated men, Unraveling Bill about her friend Theresa Blake who's brother Bill committed suicide after returning from Iraq. While these topic might appear heavy, there is alway a ray of hope and healing in every work that Ellyzabeth created. In 2017, she teamed up with long time colleague, Lucy Vurusic Rhiner of RE Dance to create Ethereal Abandonment based on the photography of Chicagoan Candace Casey about a group of friends who explore an abandoned theater and item they find tells a story of long ago. Ellyzabeth is also a published author with her short stories Full Moon Soulmate and Last Chapter. As a domestic abuse survivor, she has spoken at several conferences and activism events including for Between Friends, Light Up The Lakefront, Muslim Women's Association and Columbia College. Ellyzabeth has one very simple goal in life: to change in the world for the better, one person at a time. |
|
Davon Suttles (Assistant Artistic Director)(they/he), a multidisciplinary artist in Chicago, who grew up studying and performing American tap dance in Keane Sense of Rhythm’s Youth Tap Ensemble. Davon is also an actor and an alumnus of both Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and Columbia College Chicago’s Musical Theatre Performance program. In 2019 Davon received the Cultural Community Partnership Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board for their first self-produced work MELANIZED, a multimedia tap dance show about living as a person of color. This show addressed macro- and microaggressions towards people of color, as well as showcased the beauty of living as a POC.
In 2025 Davon received an artist residency with Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble in their newly reinstated Body Passages program; with whom they had been working with as a teaching artist since 2021. Come August of 2025 Davon will begin their transition into their new role as Assistant Artistic Director of Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble; whose mission is to “engage, inspire, and challenge audiences, both onstage and in the classroom, through innovative, multidisciplinary storytelling. We do this in the genre of Tanztheatre, "which unites all art media to achieve an all- embracing, radical change in humankind." Davon is also a company member of M.A.D.D. Rhythms, a non profit tap company based on the South Side of Chicago, whose mission is to preserve, promote and contribute to this art form called tap. |