The audience can take a seat at To Leave You. You can also get up and follow the dancers. On November 9 and 10, Robyn Mineko Williams & Artists bring the 50-minute performance to Three Top Lounge at Chicago’s Salt Shed, where the audience gets to decide when to change its view.
The piece began with something Williams wanted to leave her son. In a conversation with MCA Chicago curator Laura Paige Kyber, Williams described having things to tell him that came more easily in music and movement than in words. A memory she later shared with WBEZ gives a sense of the scale she had in mind. Her grandmother taught her to cut cucumbers on the diagonal. That small instruction stayed with her.
Williams developed the work with dancers Jessica Tong and Jason Hortin, musician Nate Kinsella of American Football and visual artist Julia Miller of Manual Cinema. Kinsella wrote the music and Miller designed the visuals, but both also move through the performance. If you follow the musician across the room, you’re following some of the choreography, too.
MCA Chicago commissioned To Leave You and presented its first performances in September 2025. For this staging, the company’s audience guide says general-admission seats will be spread around the lounge. The all-ages show also offers a VIP ticket with early entry and preferred seating.
Both performances start at 7:30 p.m., with doors at 6:30. Three Top Lounge has its own marked entrance on the Elston Avenue side of the Salt Shed, at 1357 N. Elston Ave. Anyone choosing a ticket around a particular seating or access need can reach the company at the address in its audience guide.
A 2025 publicity photograph for Robyn Mineko Williams & Artists’ To Leave You. Photo by Chris Strong, courtesy of MCA Chicago’s Chicago Performs press kit.
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