Hi everyone,

Writing from the wildfire-fueled haze of Chicago with some updates about upcoming summer art moments. Further below are some telling-on-myself behind-the-scenes juicy tidbits (? alright alright let’s not oversell ourselves) to make it worth your while. FIRST THOUGH, THE HEADLINE:

COSMIC DOCKS Summer 2026 Tour Dates

In this trans tall-tale about orbiting the sources of yourself and searching for clarity in a broken world, a 30-something stumbles into the dumpster out back of their local top surgery office and finds an alien missive providing guidance to queers on earth. Through looping choreographies, chronicles, characters, and choruses, they build a world where personal history and sci-fi futurism intersect to chart a pathway beyond story or self.

New York City - Friday, July 24 (that’s next week!) - HOT Festival at Dixon Place - TICKETS HERE

Kansas City - Friday, August 14 - Queer Narratives Festival hosted by No Divide KC at Greenwood Social Hall - TICKETS HERE

If you’re in New York or Kansas City or have people there, please send them to the show! It’s a tight hour that people tend to like; see:

"This is one of the best shows by one of the best people ever- touches the depths of being alive and searching- u will laugh and cry I'm srs!!!" - artist Noelle Choy

"I've seen everything this festival has presented since it started 10 years ago, and this was the best" - anonymous audience member, Bentonville, AR

And now some notes on dreams of stages unseen:

In spring 2025 I premiered Cosmic Docks, a solo show I made over the course of 3 years of on-and-off development, via 2 performances on a shared festival bill at the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago. During the week of the show and in the aftermath I ended up in an admittedly somewhat fragile physical and mental place. It was a lot of buildup to a uniquely significant opportunity, I felt a lot of pressure for it to be excellent and to make the most of said opportunity, I was hellaaaaa stressed about ticket sales and whether the fuck anybody was going to come, and I also just wanted the work to successfully get across what I was trying to get across (even while I was still figuring that out). Blah blah blah, being an artist is self-wrought torture, I’m sure you feel me.

Anyway the physical fragility was because during show week I had my worst-yet flare-up ever of a consistent hip pain issue I’ve had since 2019, which I now know has generally to do with a labrum tear. No surprise it flared during show week, the brain being connected to the body and all that jazz. My shows were Thursday and Saturday, and on Friday I was literally hobbling around struggling to walk. Columbia had asked me to come speak at their Dance Professionalism course on Friday morning and I vividly remember clutching the railing of the staircase down to my local CTA station, each step a gamble, and then I took my transfer the wrong direction downtown and showed up to the Dance Center on the tail end of an absolute meltdown. Very funny to walk into a classroom with undergrads and be like, what’s up aspiring Dance Professionals, apparently from the other side that means being late AF and injured AF. My friends bought a cane on Saturday morning for me to keep in the wings off-stage in case I needed it partway through the show. (as if I had planned the piece to work with such a support?) I didn’t use it during the show but I did use it the following week.

Speaking of the following week, hoooo boy that was bad. Thanks and apologies to my loved ones who witnessed me/dealt with me being a wreck. From my journal on March 17, 2025: “I honestly just feel devastated and destroyed and bitter except at the people who were good to me and showed up for me” (no period on the end of that lol). Long story short, I was having general nervous system comedown, plus injury, plus the specific forms of shame I experience after a major event (basically feeling like I did a bad job and it’s embarrassing/wrong to have asked for people’s support and attention when what I did was ultimately mid)…

PLUS, and don’t worry here’s where it circles back to tour dates - I was also feeling bummed out about the classic joke of the performance field I’ve been in which is that you work on something for years and then perform it twice. (Literally saw Hubbard Street of all people make a joke about this in their collab with Second City many years ago, so it’s not just us indies.) Lots of people I know are doing a great job shifting this dynamic/experience in creative ways, but in the meantime it can definitely still feel like a hazard of the industry and funding landscape.

Enter: touring dreams! On the other side of the premiere I remember clearly identifying that a way to feel less wrecked might be to put some effort into extending the lifeline of the work. Endless emails and applications later, we’ve been to Philadelphia and Bentonville, are headed to New York City and Kansas City this summer, and who knows, maybe more to come after that.

A funny thing is that at some point last summer I put up social posts that said “Nora Sharp’s Solo Show On Tour” because you gotta manifest and all, and then I’d run into acquaintances and they’d say “how’s tour going??” Turns out sometimes people take things at face value, who’d have guessed. Anyway if you’ve pictured me romantically on the road, I’m here to let you know I’ve been mostly whispering “idiot! idiot!” whilst sweatily workrotting at my laptop - BUT upcoming shortly your vision (my vision as well) shalt be realized. And for that I am grateful.

Lots more I could say: about how one finds or cultivates these opportunities, about what they cost you vs. what they give you back, about the way I could never do any of this without a lot of support from other people let alone a full-time salaried day job (even if said job contributes to being a wreck a lot of the time), about a conversation with a friend regarding the mythology of “touring” as a marker of success and how like everything else that’s a construct and to some extent an unrealistic holdover from realities long passed. (Or is it past?) But for now I’ll close with just a few notes:

1) The reason I write all this is in my continued hope that sharing the scribbles from my own little artmaking back pages might be comforting if anyone out there has scribbled similarly. I feel you bro!! Slash, I also find all of this kinda embarrassing, and not really for public eyes, and yet, sometimes, putting it in public makes it initially more embarrassing and then, somehow, eventually, less? Bc catharsis of togetherness??

And 2) all self-wrought torture, shame-ridden emotional hangovers, and semi-permanent cartilage damage notwithstanding, this shit always ends up being very meaningful and a fucking privilege. I want to be in these rooms together, and I’m honored and super grateful that we get to do so.

So thanks, Dixon Place and No Divide KC/Greenwood Social Hall and all your respective audiences from the Missouri to the Harlem Rivers, for having me to town. See you in a week or 4.

And to folks reading this wherever you are, I hope you’re safe and supporting those you can. Here’s where I gave money this week, if that’s something you seek to do. Gratitude to the firefighters, rapid responders, and Sunrisers big time this month. If I missed your show it was probably due to family travels or an anxiety attack, but we got that beta blocker prescription on automatic refill, so please invite me to the next one.