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About Pivot Arts

Sharing stories that connect us to who we are.

Pivot Arts Festival 2026
New work: local and urgent.

Every year, the Pivot Arts Festival hands the stage to Chicago’s boldest independent artists and lets you watch new work come to life. This year we turn toward some of the most searching, genuine work being made right now. Our four Artists-in-Residence move across theater, dance, photography, performance art, and installation, each wrestling with a question worth sitting with: What do we swallow to keep the peace? What if abundance came with no catch? What happens when the dancers become the music?

From Kayla Reefer’s photographic reckoning with Afro-Panamanian lineage to Sarah Bock’s raw, introspective theater, Mikee Parangalan’s multidisciplinary performance and installation, and Jessica Leyva’s live street-dance score, the 2026 festival is a bet on process, risk, and the artists shaping what’s next.

PIVOT ARTS FESTIVAL

New works-in-development by Kayla Reefer, Mikee Parangalan, Sarah Bock, and Jessica Leyva

Traces and The Money Tree to be shown in exhibition at Wirtz Center Chicago; exhibition dates to be announced. 

What I Wish I Could Say and JESSICA LEYVA PROJECT

Friday, August 14, 2026 | 7:30 PM CST

Sunday, August 16, 2026 | 2:00 PM CST

Wirtz Center Chicago — Abbott Hall, Northwestern University Chicago campus

710 N Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Il
Pay-What-You-Can Tickets

 

In Community,

Jorge Silva

Executive Artistic Director

An abstract new play about the gap between what a young woman says and what she truly means. As she moves through her romantic and platonic relationships, reality unfolds in stark white light while bu

A live street-dance score rooted in popping, where dancers are assigned to elements of the beat and freestyle a sound score into being — asking, what if the dancers are the musicians?

A photographic reckoning with Afro-Panamanian heritage that weaves family archives, alternative printmaking, and sound into an act of remembering, building belonging for Afro-Latine communities.

A tender, hopeful performance and installation, made after author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, that pushes back against a scarcity mindset with one radical proposition: abundance can arrive with no catch