Cosmic Docks

Overview

Cosmic Docks is a trans tall-tale about orbiting the sources of yourself and yearning for clarity in a broken world. Comedian and choreographer Nora Sharp builds a world where personal history and sci-fi futurism intersect in the dumpster out back of a local top surgery office, eventually charting a pathway beyond story or self.

Cosmic Docks premiered on the Spotlight Festival at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago in March 2025. Its development was supported by Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Queer|Art, Hambidge, and the Ruth Page Center for the Arts.

CHOREOGRAPHER, WRITER, & PERFORMER: Nora Sharp
LIGHTING DESIGN: Christine Shallenberg
PROJECTION DESIGN: Ruby Que
SET DESIGN & BUILD: Bluestem Building & Restoration – Erin Bliss, Gisselle Dorado, and Bryan Saner
ORIGINAL SOUND: Nora Sharp
ADDITIONAL MUSIC: Remi Wolf
PERFORMANCE DEVELOPMENT: Sophie Minouche Allen & Zachary Nicol, with earlier support from Charlotte Long & Will Davis
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jessi Barber

About the Artist

Working across performance, film, and community facilitation, Nora Sharp hosts audiences in worlds where language and embodiment merge in unexpected, illuminating, and often funny ways. Their work addresses the perpetual unraveling of queer+trans identity formation, the kinks in the fabric of artmaking economies, and the reverberation of key moments in familial, romantic, and casual relationships. A 2023 Queer|Art Mentorship Fellow in Performance, 2024 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and 2025 Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive Fellow, Nora has had work presented by the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, On the Boards, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Steppenwolf Theatres LookOut Series, New Dance Alliances Performance Mix 37, Open TV, Midwest RAD Fest, the Fly Honey Show, the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Synapse Arts - New Works, and at DIY artist-led performance nights across the country; and supported by residencies at the University of Chicago Performance Lab, The Croft, Hambidge, Links Hall, and High Concept Labs. Outside making their own work, they have facilitated regular work-in-progress performance spaces, performed or dramaturged for many independent artists, shared Amtrak coupons for creative research, and co-organized artist collective response efforts, in addition to working full-time in social change organizing.

Credits