Queering Chaos Conversations: Queering Music & Technology

What does it mean to see and reimagine the dance floor as a space for community AND education? What can we create and sustain when we work with the magic of the body and our stories? In this 4th Queering Chaos conversation we head to the dance floor and onto the tv screen to examine them as places of education, exploration, and community building.

Join us as Dr. Nicole Rawls talks with:

• A DJ and party promoter of a Queer inclusive dance party
• The first Chicago Public Library DJ Scholar in Residence
• & a Communication Professor who also is the co-founder of a media incubator for intersectional storytelling

Doors at 6pm and our conversation begins at 7pm. Dorothy remains open after the event until 11pm.

Tickets are sliding scale $10-20 in advance and $20 at the door.

Dorothy is 21+ and requires physical ID for all to enter. Dorothy is also ADA accessible with elevator access on Campbell Ave. If you are a guest who requires elevator access, please wait by the black door with our logo in the window and call our staff to assist: 773-770-3799

Please note: refund requests are only available until 24h before the event (1/19, 7pm). No other refund requests will be honored.

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ABOUT THE PANELISTS & HOSTS

Leo Meere (DJ Connie Kway-Lewd) is a Chicago-based vinyl DJ specializing in rare Disco. He has been throwing the monthly Queer dance party FunkStick (currently at Jackhammer & The Hole) since 2024. FunkStick seeks to be an event that is welcoming and inclusive event from the dancefloor to the darkroom and features new and established vinyl and digital DJs as well as Queer artists and makers. The party operates on a sliding scale and never turns anyone away for lack of funds.

Rae Chardonnay is an award-winning DJ, non-disciplinary artist + cultural producer from the West side of Chicago. She’s the Founder of Black Eutopia, a series of segmented programming intended to cultivate space for marginalized communities; and co-founder of the award-winning Party Noire where joy for Black queer, trans and gender non-conforming people is centered. This year, she was named Chicago Public Library’s first DJ Scholar in Residence. Rooted in sound as the primary creative tool of expression and reimagination, Rae’s work is grounded in sound as a tool for healing and being a conduit of stories. As a space maker, Rae is committed to engaging communities which exist and intersect in the margins to dream of and build the liberated worlds we want to live in.

Aymar Jèan Escoffery is the Margaret Walker Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Media and Data Equity (MADE) Lab at Northwestern University. He is the author of Open TV, cofounder of the Emmy- and Webby-nominated platform OTV | Open Television, co–executive producer of Jules Rosskam’s Sundance Award-winning Desire Lines, juror for the Peabody Awards, and Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Dr. Nicole Rawls is a Black Queer cultural strategist, anthropologist, and spiritual practitioner who guides individuals and organizations toward liberated futures by reconnecting them to the wisdom of their bodies, stories, and ancestral knowledge. With a PhD in Anthropology from Michigan State University, Dr. Rawls spent over 15 years in higher education as a professor and senior administrator, leading human-centered initiatives, founding institutes, securing over $7 million in grants, and designing nationally recognized programs. She has held roles at institutions including Michigan State University, the University of Bristol (UK), Beloit College, and Brown University before leaving academia in 2021 to fully step into her own creative and strategic vision.Now the founder of two entities—Embodied Futures Lab, her consulting and learning studio, and Dream Praxis Studio, her creative and storytelling space—Dr. Rawls has developed a signature methodology called Embodied Strategic Dreaming. This praxis-based framework blends critical analysis, somatic inquiry, spiritual insight, and liberatory strategy to help people and institutions reclaim their agency and craft bold, human-centered futures. Her current project is examining the ways Queer communities are navigating the current socio-political and economic moment, and what it means to lead with ones queerness in a time of chaos.