In the spirit of HPP’s 2025 campaign “We care for ourselves, as we care for others” our programming year focuses on creative development, community engagement/offerings, and revenue generation toward sustainability. This year we highlight a new project called Pleasure Power Portal (PPP) exploring acts of memory, pleasure, and ancestral connection through the relationships, places and things that bring us fulfillment. We also continue our signature programming via The Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM), an archive designed by Honey Pot Performance documenting the lived experiences of Black Chicagoans and social culture from the Great Migration through the rise of house music and beyond. Finally, our creative pedagogical arm, the Creative Design Lab (CDL), is an experimental space designed for individuals to explore new ways of devising and designing performance that resonate with the richness of AfroDiasporic cultures and feminist perspectives as they seek to rejuvenate their creative practices.

2025 SUMMER PROGRAMS

UPCOMING PROGRAMS

Chicago Black Social Culture Map Series: DJs in Dialogue
The Economics of the Booth
Saturday, September 27, 2025
2-5pm @First Church of the Brethren (425 S. Central Park Blvd)

Being a DJ isn’t just about the music. There’s a lot that goes into it financially. You’ve got the equipment - turntables, mixers, speakers, and headphones. Then, there’s the music itself - buying tracks can add up fast. Finally, let’s not forget the cost of promoting yourself and getting gigs.

Join DJs Jo de Presser and Jaytoo as they discuss the hustle required to stay in game of this craft. Records vs Downloads vs Ripping. Top 40’s vs Exploration. Performance vs Background Stimulation. We’ll be digging into the nitty gritty numbers.

PAST PROGRAMS

Chicago Black Social Culture Map Series: Dance Cypher & DJ Livestream
Between Hip Hop, Juke, and House: Chicago's Street & Club Dance Culture from the '80s on
Saturday, September 20, 2025
6-9pm @First Church of the Brethren Garden (425 S. Central Park Blvd)

Step into the underground with Chicago’s movers and multi-hyphenate artists who’ve shaped the city’s street and club dance scene—where a story cypher will transform into an open dance cypher connecting movers across generations of Housing, Juking, Hip House, Flexing and Hip Hop.

This evening’s panelists include Madeline Andino and Wes Black II—members of Chicago’s legendary Untouchables dance crew—who’s accolades include dancing for the pioneering DJ and Producer, Fast Eddie, who popularized the Hip House sound globally. Come learn about Chicago’s rich house and street dance history through their stories.

Moderated by Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood and Kelsa “K-Soul” Rieger-Haywood, this live and intimate convo/cypher will explore the dynamic differences and soulful synergies between House, Juke and Hip Hop in Chicago.

Featuring sounds by JO DE PRESSER

Chicago Black Social Culture Map Series:
A Praise Song for Memory: Material Traditions and Methods for Storytelling Through Quilting
Saturday, September 13, 2025
2-5pm @First Church of the Brethren Garden (425 S. Central Park Blvd)

A Praise Song for Memory: Material Traditions and Methods for Storytelling Through Quilting is a shared space that invites community members to slow down and reflect through the labor and intimacy of hand stitching.

Guided by rhythms of conversation and music, we will explore sewing as both a dance and a form of memory work. Moving in and out of personal and ancestral stories, we will choose materials that remind us of home, stitch them into place, and speak to what sewing means to us. Sometimes its heartbeat, its lineage, its an accessible tool to join past and future. In honoring the haptic traditions shared across generations, we recognize quilting as medicine, as praise song, and as a common thread that binds our stories together.

This participatory workshop is co-facilitated by artists Zahra Baker, Sonja Henderson, Jalen Hamilton, and DJ Sadie Woods.

A Praise Song For Memory is part of the CBSCM Archiving Series. Please bring a piece of memorabilia for storytelling.

Pleasure Power Portal: Adult Tea

Saturday, July 26, 2025

6-9pm @Starling by Duo (3243 W 16th St)

We invite you to be our intimate partners in the next chapter of the Pleasure Power Portal—Adult Tea.

Honey Pot Performance is building our newest work titled "Pleasure, Power, Portal." As part of our devising process, we are inviting community to take part in a series of activations. This is our third and the theme centers the adult experience. This time, we’re exploring the pleasure of intimacy—not just in romantic relationships, but in those we walk with, those with whom we practice survival.

We invite you to join in moments of intimacy to understand pleasure as a portal to power, from the position of trust and intimacy. What is required to receive pleasure? How do we allow pleasure to empower us/one another? We have partnered with Starling by Duo and curated a host of collaborative intimate gestures and sensory experiences to explore deepened connection:

-Erotic Poetry led by none other than Khari B "Discopoetry"

-Partner Hand Washing

-Kizomba dance instruction led by the one and only Shafeeha Monae

-“60 Seconds in Heaven: Storytelling Massage” — deep listening and gentle massage during 1:1 storytelling

-Feed and Be Fed

-Aphrodisiac inspired teas and specialty drinks brought to you by Monday Coffee

This is about intimacy out loud, connected and public. A space to show up fully with your safety, trust, and vulnerability.

Come get close.

Fifth City Revisited: Exhibition Tour, Film Screening, and Discussion with creator Meida McNeal, Filmmaker David Weathersby, and Assistant Director Keli Stewart

Sunday, July 27, 2025

6:30 PM Food and Drinks
7 PM Tour and screening
8 PM Discussion at 8 PM

@6018North (6018 North Kenmore Ave.) - Link here for more information

Fifth City Revisited tells the story of a radical community movement from the 1960s-1990s on the Westside of Chicago. Part memoir, part history lesson, and part urban planning critique, Fifth City Revisited explores how we create healthy communities while also considering the scale at which we must do this work in order to grow and sustain it.

The work uses dance, story, and media to consider the impact of Fifth City's community power against the backdrop of city planning systems that have all but erased its work. What lessons does the Fifth City movement have to teach us in our current and cautiously hopeful era of grassroots change where a renewed commitment to neighborhood investment is bubbling up across Chicago’s West and South sides?

This event is a part of the exhibition Myth of the Organic City and Art Design Chicago, a citywide
collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage
and creative communities. Myth of the Organic City is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Pleasure Power Portal: Fifth City Festival

Saturday, August 23, 2025

1-6pm @First Church of the Brethren Garden (425 S. Central Park Blvd)

Chicago! Summer's not over yet... Our fourth offering in the Pleasure Power Portal activation series is happening Saturday August 23rd in the garden of the First Church of the Brethren, and we want YOU there.

Part end of summer celebration, part back to school community jam, this free + all ages festival will center creative expressions of joy and empowerment for, by, and about the next generation's dreams and desires.

Featuring art, music, wellness workshops, food, footwork battles & more, we're using pleasure to help break down barriers and lift up our young people. Close out Summer with us the right way, the Fifth City way.

Creative Design Lab: If Then Artist Lab Series
Saturday, August 30, 2025
2-5pm @First Church of the Brethren Garden (425 S. Central Park Blvd)

Featuring Crystle Dino, Johanna Middleton, Sunshine Lombre, and Allen Moore.
Curated by Jennifer Ligaya (HPP Core Ensemble).

The If Then Artist Lab explores performance as a divine instrument. How do we as creative beings tune in to higher plane energies? How do we build from the power and magic of collective creative decision-making using trust and intuition alongside structured methods? This lab invites participants and witnesses to engage in fluid combinations of play and ritual - a series of incantations and spells, casting of shells, deconstructing lists of directions & tasks, sculpting a recipe book of invitation, love, & cooperative joy - to encourage collective magic.

The Creative Design Lab (CDL) is an experimental space designed for individuals to explore new ways of devising and designing performance that resonate with the richness of AfroDiasporic cultures and feminist perspectives as they seek to rejuvenate their creative practices.

The lab is open to the public. We invite you to witness creative play and work in development. Light refreshments available.

Honey Pot Performance's Summer 2025 Programs

Support arts and culture on Chicago's Westside!