House of DOV presents the World Premiere of Circle of Apathy

House of DOV presents the World Premiere of Circle of Apathy on Saturday, June 20 at 6PM and Sunday, June 21 at 2:30PM at Ragdale, 1260 North Green Bay Road, Lake Forest, IL, 60045. Tickets for Ragdale start at $15 (children 12 and under are free) and can be purchased here.

In Circle of Apathy, the new dance project from House of DOV featuring live music from Family Junket, the ensemble explores the cycles of growth and disintegration intrinsic to nature and works together to build physical structures which increase in precarity as the group strives toward expansion.

“Through creative process, we’ve sought to understand our own place within the greater ecology of our landscape, and to experience the human body as a metaphor and microcosm of the natural world,” says Drew Lewis, creative director of House of DOV.

Family Junket’s five musicians blare dense soul with moments of ambience: voices wail, altered by a vocal pedal; saxophone, flute and violin harmonize over precomposed loops; djembe, drum kit and percussion punctuate echoing acoustic piano. House of DOV’s seven dancers push against seemingly immovable forces, find new hand and footholds, and creep forward like a vine up a brick wall. A woman walks through an increasingly dense wood until the brush closes around her entirely. When all paths disappear from sight, a figure steps blindly forward, trusting that there will be a stepping stone beneath their foot.

Drew Lewis, Creative Director, Choreographer

Rahila Coats, Assistant Director, Vocalist

Max Lazarus, Music Director, Keyboard, Saxophone, Flute, Guitar, Synth

Adeline Else, Lighting Design

Dancers: Adeline Else, Isabella Limosnero, Hannah Marcus, Mya McClellan,

Charles Pierson, Milo Sachse-Hofheimer, Isabelle Taylor

Family Junket: Hasani Cannon, Percussion; Scott Daniel, Violin; Jonah Lazarus, Percussion

Family Junket is the collective voice of Chicago-based musicians who are also social workers, teachers, farmers, dancers, writers, painters, photographers, and performance artists coming together to create healing spaces, community, and parties. As a band, they play lush, unpredictable compositions featuring horns, strings, percussion, vocal interplay, and an improvisational spirit. Their debut album, Did you tell the bees?, released May 2025 with features in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and City Cast Chicago (WBEZ).

House of DOV is a movement-based performance ensemble from Chicago, IL, led by Drew Lewis. Our namesake is Benjamin Dov Lebowitz, Drew’s ancestor who immigrated to America from Russia in the early 1900’s, escaping pogroms. The ensemble exists as a vehicle to explore Drew’s own creative work and heritage, and to provide talented yet under-represented Chicago dancers with opportunities for paid work in performance and practice. Our vision is of a dance field that celebrates diversity of genre, body-type, race and gender, and our mission is to be a changemaker in the local dance conversation while engaging with global discourse through touring.

Since its inaugural performance at the Adler Planetarium (Finalist for the Chicago Reader’s Best of 2021) House of DOV has performed throughout Chicago including at Fulton Street Collective, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble, and Navy Pier (among many more venues). We’ve received commissions for original works from The Steppenwolf Theatre and The Arts Club of Chicago, and we’ve been in residence at Chicago Cultural Center, Ragdale, The Schoolhouse, and The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. For more, visit www.houseofdov.com.

Ragdale is an artist residency program located in Lake Forest, Illinois, that provides time and space for writers, dancers, architects, musicians, composers, and visual artists to work, uninterrupted. Individuals apply through a competitive review process, and over 150 residencies are awarded annually, making Ragdale one of the largest residency programs in the United States. Each year artists are welcomed at various stages of their careers and spend up to 18 days living and working on campus alongside a supportive and diverse cohort of their peers. We also provide ways for people from broad backgrounds to engage with the organization through themed residencies, creative sabbaticals, arts education programs for teens and events that connect Ragdale with the public, including the Ragdale Ring Summer Performance Series.

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