Photo by Eric Hausman

It’s now Monday morning, and our two evenings of performances are over. Despite our cancelled Friday performance, Sunday evening's raincheck date was packed with thousands of people who had chosen to brave the unseasonably chilly weather. Surrounded by a veritable armada of police and coast guard protection, Ilotopie deftly navigated the choppy waters of Lake Michigan amidst a fiery backdrop and gave us a performance the likes of which I'd imagine most of our audience had never seen.

The whole production team walked away from this weekend's performance with an immense amount of respect for the tenacity of this French company. The cast all agreed by the end of their time with us that this was the second most difficult "venue" they had ever performed in. Though they had visited Chicago in advance to take a look at the water, they were surprised by just how much the lake's wave movement impacted them. Despite this, and the significant damage sustained to their scenery in the days leading up to the performance, there never seemed to be any doubt in their minds that we would find a way to accomplish the performances.

Institutionally, this process has been immensely successful in the new trails we have been able to forge for this kind of art. One of the most difficult aspects of realizing this performance was that it was so "out of the box." Creating a vocabulary through which we can discuss this sort of large-scale installation performance will be an investment in future projects. This is our second summer of creating this sort of spectacle, and with the common language we've developed with both our government collaborators , and with our audiences, our hope is that we'll be able to continue to explore this thrilling art form in the years to come.