2 Shows: Thursday, Feb. 12 & Friday, Feb.13
Doors open at 7pm, showtime 7:30
The performance lasts 90 minutes, the price for you is free
CETACEAN (The Whale) is the 6th performance from The Unreliable Bestiary: a performance for each letter of the alphabet, each letter represented by an endangered animal or habitat. Truly interdisciplinary, 2023’s CETACEAN was an enormous collage of lo-fi effects, story, video, sound with a large helping of dance and a dash of national park ranger talk. A Fall/Winter 2025-26 tour brings a condensed translation of the original show to New England, the Gulf of Mexico, and the land-locked seas of the Great Lakes. CETACEAN (The Whale) is dark, thoughtful humor for the Anthropocene.
CETACEAN trailer: https://vimeo.com/1071975400
Overview and images: https://www.unreliablebestiary.org/projects/cetacean
Intro to The Unreliable Bestiary: https://vimeo.com/942521503
CETACEAN (The Whale) is part of The Unreliable Bestiary – a life-long project presenting a performance for every letter of the alphabet, each letter representing an endangered animal or habitat. To date Bestiary collaborators have completed performances about five animals: MONKEY, ELEPHANT, WOLF, BEAR, and TIGER. These performances are presented in unusual settings: the corn-cribs of barns, forests, living rooms, prairies, or the length of the Mississippi River. Haunting, humorous, dark, and hopeful – CETACEAN’s original 2023 show was set in the University of Illinois’ cavernous Stock Pavilion. Rooted in a year of student workshops about oceans, whales, and eco-anxiety, CETACEAN evolved into a collage of lo-fi effects, story, video, dance, sound design and a colossal installation – a sea of plastic pitched above a shore of beached tarp-whales.
Fall 2025 will find three award-winning performers touring a condensed translation of the show to New England, the Gulf of Mexico, and the land-locked seas of the Great Lakes. Around 95 minutes long, this slimmer CETACEAN (The Whale) mixes live performance with carefully crafted cinematic documentation of the original 2023 event. The 2025-26 version is written, performed, and produced by Deke Weaver; directed, choreographed, and performed by Jennifer Allen. CETACEAN’s award-winning collaborators include performers Latrelle Bright and Laura Chiaramonte, costume designer Susan Becker, video designers John Boesche, Weaver, and Allen, sound designer James Lo, set designers Blane Friest, Phil Orr, Melissa Pokorny, and Andy Warfel, and dramaturg Jayne Wenger (unreliablebestiary.org/bios).
Presenter Bios
Deke Weaver’s (writer/performer/co-video/producer) work has been presented by the Sundance Film Festival, PBS, Channel 4/U.K., the New York Video Festival (Lincoln Center), the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Berlin Video Festival, the Moth, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and many others including livestock pavilions, backyard sheds, forests, prairies, night clubs and living rooms. A Guggenheim Fellow and Creative Capital grantee, he is currently a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with appointments in the School of Art & Design, the Department of Theater, the Department of Dance, and faculty affiliation with the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies.
Jennifer Allen (director/choreographer/performer/producer) has been part of The Unreliable Bestiary’s collaborative team since its inception in 2009. After working with many influential dance artists in NYC: John Jasperse, Donna Uchizono, DD Dorvillier, and Jennifer Monson to name a few, her own choreographic work has been presented in New York by The Kitchen, the historic Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church and PS 122. Allen is also an acupuncturist who has been guiding people towards inner balance and wholeness since 2007 ( jenniferallentherapy.com)
Laura Chiaramonte (performer) is a choreographer, videographer, performer, and educator with over twenty-five years of professional experience in the dance field, both in the United States and internationally. Her movement research explores the intersections of dance somatics and interdisciplinary art forms, integrating sound, visual media, design, and technology into her performances. Currently, Laura serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor of Dance, Dance Media Coordinator, and Archivist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Dance. Additionally, she is the Director and Curator of the Flatlands Dance Film Festival and the Video Archive Director for the Bates Dance Festival.
SUPPORTED BY:
The 2025-26 tour of CETACEAN is supported by the University of Illinois’ Arts Community and Research Partnership Program, Shed Projects, the Art and Dance Departments at Oberlin College, Farm Arts Collective, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Catapult, the University of Michigan’s Dance Department and Interarts Performance Program, and Watershed Art & Ecology.