Grit

Steppenwolf Theater LookOut Series

Premier March 6th - 8th 2025

Grit is an evolving, evening-length experimental dance work created in collaboration with four femme artists. The piece examines the underbelly of achievement by exploring the isolating costs of competitive natures. Rooted in collective authorship and group process, Grit asks- what does it cost to keep pushing? What becomes possible when we focus on collectivism?

The piece resists polish in favor of immediacy, presence, and lived decision-making. The dancers individually pass through tension-filled cycles of movement that transform into playful, amorphous structures. Repetition becomes a compositional force, slowly eroding individual dominance and revealing relational dependencies that arise in moments of exhaustion.

Material objects — tape, platforms, microphones, loop pedals, clothes, and towels — are introduced as malleable architectures that divide space and bodies, establishing systems that demand effort to maintain. These structures are repeatedly constructed and dismantled throughout the work, exposing their inherent instability.

Fluidity becomes both a physical and conceptual throughline. The performers’ relationships to fluids — their own spit, sweat, and large amounts of water squirted/dripped from bottles— texturize the arc of the piece, transitioning from charged, confrontational exchanges toward pliability. As exhaustion accumulates, the performers soften into each other’s seeping bodies, dampening their brash confrontations. Accenting the shifting, malleable nature of how the group manages competition between themselves- decaying hierarchical dominance structures for more fluid ones.

Grit is both a performance and a practice — a space where bodies test the limits of effort and discover what remains when force is no longer sustainable. It is a work that unfolds through friction and failure, inviting performers and audiences into a shared experience of negotiation, vulnerability, and becoming.

NEW CITY STAGE - DANCE PREVIEW: “Grit” at Steppenwolf 1700

Concept/Direction- Maggie Vannucci

Performance + Movement Creation Collaborators- Laura Baumeister, Rahila Coats, Kate Laughlin, Hannah Marcus

Dramaturgy + Thought Partner- Courtney Mackedanz

Sound Design + Mixing- Michael Cunningham

Presenters- Steppenwolf Lookout Series

Lookout Series Co-Producers- Lauren Steinberg + Patrick Zakem

Steppenwolf Lookout Production Supervisor- Matthew Chapman

Performance photos: Ricardo E Adame, Rehearsal Videos: Gabriela Chavez