About the artist
Hannah is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist with an emphasis in dance performance.
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 is currently in collaboration with video & installation artist, Yuge Zhou as a Movement Director & Choreographer for “Love Letters” - a commissioned dance film which premiered at Art on theMart in Chicago.
She is also in the early stages of creating an evening length work, The Brink. The Brink is a contemporary dance theater work containing reenactments of the highs and lows of modern civilization. Fixating on humanity’s deepest flaws and its inevitable demise, Santistevan's new work proposes a bold theory and possible solution to delay the extinction of homosapiens by testing the mental & emotional development and stamina in the brain through trial and error. The Brink is an attempt to instill empathy into apathetic minds by demonstrating animosity, sentiment, and vigor through movement. Santistevan asks, "Are empathy and apathy learned trades or genetic traits of a homosapien? How do we learn or unlearn to improve ourselves, our communities, and the world?"
Hannah makes dark, hype, & voyeuristic contemporary dances which reflect the life she has lived so far, blended with dreams of where she hopes to be in the future. Her work typically contains a single token of meaning, which ties together the work in the end. Whether it's a projection animation of a cocoon that erupts into a butterfly, or a veiled hanging mass from the venue ceiling - later revealed to be a giant dream catcher, she finds imagery which any viewer can latch onto and find meaning in itself. She 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 the deep force from within that was waiting to be freed and acknowledged. 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.