Mark Hackman
Dance Crash + The Saints
The Last First
Turning a shutdown year into a story worth preserving.
When COVID halted live events, performance organizations lost their primary revenue streams overnight. The goal was to keep Chicago Dance Crash creatively active for funders, fulfill a commissioned partnership deliverable, and use an impossible moment to reach audiences beyond the company’s usual geographic footprint.
The Work
Rather than produce another generic pandemic-era performance piece, we developed a documentary centered on the lived reality of professional dancers navigating 2020 in Chicago. The project explored how artists were earning income, rehearsing remotely, processing civic unrest, and continuing to create during one of the most volatile years in recent memory.
Filmed entirely by the dancers themselves, the project was directed remotely through shot guidance, story development, and editorial shaping. Individual moments captured across the city were later assembled into a cohesive longform narrative.
The Impact
The Last First expanded awareness beyond the organization’s traditional audience, earned awards recognition, and created a lasting cultural time capsule of artists experiencing a historic year from a perspective few others could document. It proved that limited resources and physical distance did not have to limit ambition.
