Synapse Arts creates original, live art through a laboratory approach. Our projects include collaborators in movement experimentation, theater, voice, photography, music, visual art, video, creative writing, and stage design.

Synapse works develop the artist through shared experience, and the resulting performances encourage viewers to evaluate their perceptions.

We are dedicated to keeping our events available to all by doing public/site-specific work, and keeping admission prices inexpensive or free.

Synapse Arts is a performance group that focuses on developing new works and new artists through a process involving improvisation, feedback, and multi-media collaboration. Founded in 2004 by a dancer, a theater-maker, and a photographer, interdisciplinary projects by our member artists have traveled internationally and from clouds to stages and sidewalks. Acclaimed projects include Stridulate, named one of New City’s “Top Ten Performances of 2009” and presented at the Roy Hart International Arts Centre, and The First Sound, an installation commissioned by Redmoon Theater. Gallery performance projects include Slit (Around the Coyote), Chrysalis (The Chicago Cultural Center) and hush (Weisman Foundation). 2011 will see the premiere of Factor Ricochet, a project supported by a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Grant, which recently returned from a presentation at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis. Synapse is home to the works of Artistic Director Rachel Damon, and the annual program Synapse Arts/New Works fosters artist development through presentation of emerging artists.