Brendan Fernandes’ “In the Round” residency at Chicago’s Driehaus blends dance, sculpture, and installation in a space where meaning won’t sit still.
A Chicago performance space is being treated less like a theater and more like a living artwork, thanks to Brendan Fernandes.
In the Murphy Auditorium at the Driehaus Museum. Fernandes is using the room’s unusual. church-adjacent architecture as raw material for an evolving residency called “In the Round.” The auditorium’s balconies. stained glass. and pipe organ setting have become a backdrop for work that refuses tidy labels. including an early question that has followed Fernandes across his career: is it dance. or is it art?
That question is central to what Misryoum reports as the residency unfolds.. Fernandes works across dance. visual art. design. and textiles. and the installation-like approach is built into how visitors experience the room. particularly around performances that emphasize movement as an environment rather than a separate event.
The residency’s core image is both geometric and tactile: dancers move around a dodecagon of 12 mirrored benches arranged across the auditorium’s main level.. Over multiple weeks. performers will follow a structure that allows room for improvisation and collaboration. while leaving visible traces behind. including handprints. footprints. and marks on reflective surfaces.. At a recent preview. textiles and original music also entered the scene. reinforcing the sense that the work is assembled from many mediums at once.
For Fernandes, the point is not to win a debate over categories, but to explore what happens when they collapse. This matters because audiences often arrive expecting a conventional “show,” while “In the Round” asks them to watch space and bodies interact as one continuous piece.
The residency draws on a longer personal arc that includes training in both dance and visual art. along with setbacks that pushed him to rethink how he could sustain more than one practice.. Later. cross-disciplinary study helped him question the idea that artists must choose between disciplines. turning what might have been a boundary into a method.. Misryoum notes that the result is work that treats choreography as instruction. design as language. and performance as a form of sculpture.
In this context. the residency is also tied to the idea of “queering” space. not as a slogan but as a framework for fluidity.. The audience is not guided through a traditional beginning. middle. and end. and the experience is designed to feel like walking into a moving. becoming object.. Even when performances end. the museum plans for visitors to see the space during active weeks. with opportunities to witness ongoing rehearsal and related projects.
That flexibility is the residency’s final argument: the work is intentionally never completely bounded. And as it changes with each rehearsal and each set of dancers, it turns the auditorium into a reminder that art can be something you move through, not just something you watch.