Biography: Kay LaSota
Administrative Staff: Managing Director
Kay LaSota has tripled CMC's budget; created a cash-reserve; co-managed tours to Berlin, New York, Brazil, and Mongolia; and developed many programs, including (with colleague Elizabeth Lentz) The Other Dance Festival. Previously Kay was Co-Manager of Links Hall--an award-winning Chicago studio-theater and presenter of experimental performing arts. Kay was also Business Manager, Director of Operations, Director of Development for MoMing Dance & Arts Center, a nationally-known Chicago performing arts center, where she helped produce the Chicago debuts of companies such as Mark Morris and Eiko & Koma. Kay worked in the National Endowment for the Arts Dance Program on a competitively awarded fellowship, holds a B.A. Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from Tulane University. She served on the Chicago Dance Coalition's Board for eight years-- holding eight vice-presidencies, and has served as a grants panelist for the City of Chicago's Community Arts Assistance Program, Dance grants; Evanston Arts Council Cultural Grants; and on Ruth Page Artistic Awards Committees for the Chicago Dance Alliance. Kay is recipient of the Chicago Dance Award for Outstanding Contribution.
Kay is also a dancer/choreographer who has created 23 original works (collaboratively
and individually) that have been presented throughout Chicago and on tour--
at venues such as the Dance Center of Columbia College, the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Storefront Theater for the Arts, Next Dance Festival,
the HotHouse, Athenaeum Theater, the Cleveland Performance Festival, Dancespace,
throughout New Orleans, and most recently at the Building Stage's "Objects
in Motion Festival". She is recipient of several grants from the
Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, a Ruth Page nomination for Collaborative
Artist of the Year, and a National Endowment for the Arts New Forms Grant
(both with the Sock Monkeys). Kay was a founding member of the Sock Monkeys,
a popular/critically-acclaimed fixture on the Chicago dance scene in the
90's. Additional performance credits include work with internationally-known
artists: extensively with Timothy Buckley and the Buster King Dance Club
(including tour to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival), the Chicago community
casts of: Bill T. Jones' "Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Promised Land",
the White Oak Project's "Past/Forward" and David Dorfman's "Underground",
and Chicago artists/companies including Bob Eisen, Breakbone DanceCo.,
the Chicago Moving Company, RedMoon Theater, Loose Combat, and The Humans.
Kay graduated (dance) from New Orleans' public performing-arts high school