About the artist
Hannah is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist with an emphasis in dance and movement direction.
Hannah Santistevan grew up in Colorado and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance from Columbia College Chicago. Presently, she is rooted in Chicago for her practice. Hannah collaborates with artists who help her marry music, film, and visual art/animation under one roof.
She recently served as choreographer and movement director for Love Letters, a dance short film presented at Art on theMart, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Since 2017, she has shared her work in both intimate and large-scale contexts, from Links Hall to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Pritzker Pavilion, as well as in international spaces.
As a solo artist, Hannah’s work often moves between introspection, shadow, and release. She is especially compelled by the growing presence of dance in film and commercial media, and sees this moment as an opportunity to shape how choreography can live beyond the stage. She is pursuing new ways to connect dance and film, with the aim of forging pathways that expand how audiences encounter and remember dance.
Hannah vows to never create a work that forces the viewer to believe in something other than their own beliefs, but rather, will find ways to evoke parts of the viewer’s identity which has been repressed or forgotten. Hannah’s work often emanates a desperate journey to self-discovery through the lens of psychoanalysis, contemporary dance, and complimentary mediums. In conjunction, she creates work that challenges the perspective on events common to the human experience by mindfully and gently showcasing the emotional processing behind the meaningful, heavy, uplifting, or memorable events in our lives. Hannah’s goal as a multidisciplinary artist is to empathize with a diverse audience to provide insight on the world at large and invoke meaning, motivation, and power from within.
Hannah’s technical dance training includes: Ballet, Modern/Contemporary, Contact Improvisation, Improvisation as Performance, West African, Tap, and Jazz. She has performed in works choreographed by: Carrie Hanson (The Seldoms), Onye Ozuzu, Erin Kilmurray, Erika Randall, Victor Alexander, Kristina Isabelle, Keesha Beckford, Margi Cole, Kyle Seguin, and more. Immediately following her graduation from Columbia College Chicago, Hannah was invited to dance with The Seldoms – a contemporary dance theater company in Chicago. She performed and toured with The Seldoms for two consecutive years, touring internationally. Hannah has performed in an ongoing work entitled, Black Saint and the Sinner Lady/Touch My Beloved’s Thought, conceived by Onye Ozuzu. This work has been performed at the Jay Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago and several times at Links Hall. Most recently, Hannah performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Mana Contemporary under the direction of Erin Kilmurray for her work, The Function. Hannah continues to participate in freelance performances and projects in her two home-base cities, Chicago and Denver.