DanceMN News

Come experience Out of the Ashes, the powerful and evocative dance film created by Threads Dance Project showing one night only at the Capri Theater in Minneapolis.

This award-winning dance film, choreographed by renowned artistic director Karen L. Charles, is a poignant tribute to those affected by 9/11 and explores the possibility of forging a better way of living in its aftermath. Join us for a special screening of this compelling film followed by a panel discussion and community conversation about the lingering impacts of 9/11.

Wednesday, September 11
7:00-9:00pm
Doors open at 6:30pm.
Tickets: Advance purchase is $10, at the door is $12; plus service fees.

Threads Dance Project is dedicated to examining, exposing, and celebrating the threads that connect us while making a positive impact through dance performance, education, and outreach. By creating dances that explore themes of human connectedness and fostering a space for reflection and dialogue, Threads seeks to promote understanding and acceptance and celebrate the human spirit.

Take advantage of this opportunity to engage with a film that not only honors the past but also inspires a brighter future.

ARENA DANCES shares an evening of repertory works with Monument.

Thursday, September 12 at 7:30pm
Friday, September 13 at  7:30pm
Saturday, September 14 at 2:00pm – pay-what-you-can, starting at $10
Saturday, September 14 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $10-25

ARENA DANCES proudly announces its upcoming contemporary dance performance, Monument, to kick off its 24/25 season and captivate audiences.

Monument showcases a selection of Artistic Director Mathew Janczewski’s favorite works, chosen for their contemporary relevance, physical rigor, and musical passion. Monument features dancers Gabriel Anderson, Non Edwards, Dustin Haug, Isaiah Langowski, Sarah McCullough, Kelli Miles, Jacob Nerhbass, Vy Nguyen, and Leslie O’Neill, with apprentices Rachel Holmes and Athena Rodriguez.

The evening includes:

• Huddle (2010): a powerful men’s quartet set to the music of Radiohead that challenges conventional notions of masculinity and success and explores what it means to break free from predefined roles.
• For Entertainment Purposes Only, a new rendition of Picturing That Day (2017), set to the timeless music of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.
• The premiere of a new duet, As of Now, performed by Dustin Haug and Leslie O’Neill to an original score by Joshua Clausen, immerses the audience in a tangle of infinite limbs, evoking a sense of time travel and dropping them into the midst of a profound experience.
• Navigations (2003), originally created for Zenon Dance Company, highlights the power of a unified ensemble.

Sponsors: McKnight Foundation

This week, Annika Johansson presents LILACS as part of Red Eye Theater’s curated rental program.

Running from September 12-15, this dance show will explore personal themes through a series of short, evocative works. Each is a unique reflection on gender, presentation, grief, and selfhood. The pieces range from theatrical and meticulously arranged, to introspective and improvisatory – creating a rich collage of movement that captures glimpses of the vibrancy of our experiences.

Dancers: Kendall Edstrom, Annika Johansson, Rachel Lieberman, Judee Shuǐ Xiān, and Elayna Waxse
Lighting Design: Alice Endo
Costume Design: Abigail Johansson
Stage Manager/Board Op: Lily Conforti

Performances
Thursday, September 12 at 7:00pm
Friday, September 13 at 7:00pm
Saturday, September 14 at 7:00pm
Sunday, September 15 at 2:00pm

Tickets are on a sliding scale of $15-35, before fees. If cost is a barrier, please email annikajoyhans@gmail.com for additional options.

Free tickets are available to front-of-house (FOH) and strike volunteers. FOH tasks include things like checking in audience members and selling tickets at the door. Strike tasks include things like carrying out props, sweeping, and mopping. FOH volunteers arrive 1 hour before performances, and strike volunteers will stay after Sunday’s performance for up to an hour. Email with your interest and for more information!

To request large-print programs, ASL interpretation, audio description, or other support, please email your request to annikajoyhans@gmail.com with as much advance notice as possible to ensure we can accommodate your needs. We look forward to welcoming you to the show.

Annika Johansson is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Celebrate Off-Leash Area’s twenty-fifth anniversary with its eighth annual Neighborhood Garage Tour!

This year’s tour brings back their energetic and imaginative family-friendly production, The Medicine Show of the 25th Century, to St. Anthony, Bloomington, and Stillwater.

The Medicine Show of the 25th Century is set in the distant future and follows a troupe of technology-hybrid humanoids as they travel from town to town, hawking a cure-all elixir for solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Filled with raucous slapstick, whimsical beauty, and plenty of winks and nudges, The Medicine Show of the 25th Century is Off-Leash Area’s thirty-fifth original production.

Tickets are by suggested donation of $5-30.

Remaining Performances
Friday, September 13, 7:00pm
Saturday, September 14, 7:00pm
Sunday, September 15, 2:00pm – Audio Description
Friday, September 20, 7:00pm
Sunday, September 22, 7:00pm – ASL Interpretation

Amidst fall colors and falling leaves, dancers Sarah Baumert, Suzette Gilreath, Erika Hansen, and Megan Mayer perform in the site-specific Fall Sound Garden performance installation along the wooded trails and open spaces at Caponi Art Park as part of the annual Eagan Art Block Festival.

Saturday, September 14
12:00-4:00pm
Rain date: Sunday, September 15.

Directed and designed by composer JG Everest, the Fall Sound Garden will also feature embedded sculptures and poetry throughout the site, with live guided poetry tours and live roving musical accompaniment by members of the Free Range Orchestra and Choir.

Please note that the Fall Sound Garden runs both Saturday, September 14, and Sunday, September 15, but the above movement scores are only performed on Saturday, September 14; unless that event is canceled for rain, in which case movement scores will take place on Sunday, September 15.

The Fall Sound Garden event is a free, family-friendly, self-guided durational event that features a sound installation of over 60 small, wireless speakers distributed throughout the park, with live accompaniment by roving musicians and dancers. Each small speaker is playing a different part of the whole piece of music, creating a unique, immersive experience that is described as “a concert you can move through.”

The Fall Sound Garden event is free, but registration is requested to send weather updates and possible program changes.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Creating Joy Association is excited to host our first Info Session and Fundraiser Gala next weekend, and we’d love for you to join us. Here’s what you need to know:

Who are we?
We are a non-profit organization centered around the healing and lifestyle development of inner city youth through art making.

What’s Happening?
Learn all about our mission and innovative programming aimed at empowering inner-city youth. Discover ways you can support to bring this organization from idea to operation! And enjoy a vibrant potluck with delicious dishes brought in by the community—bring something to share!

Jennifer Glaws’ Jagged Moves brings It’s Physical to the Southern Theater stage.
A multi discipline work holding performance, sculpture, sound, and visual elements.
September 19-22

It’s Physical is a world fabricated by liminality and opposition; a living sculpture where emotional experiences are embraced in physicality and ideological landscapes, personal capacity, and aggregate mood.

Direction, choreography, and production by Jagged Moves’ Jennifer Glaws in creative collaboration with: set designer and sculpture artist, Jess Kiel-Wornson; sound engineer and composer, Dan Dukich; and performing artists Annika Johansson, Ayumi Shafer, Colin Edwards, and Dexter Carlson.

Including videography by Cully Gallagher and lighting design by Mark Ruark.

Tickets
Thursday, September 19 at 7:30pm – pay as able performance
Friday, September 20 at 10:30am – post-show Q&A and streamed live
Saturday, September 21 at 7:30pm – post show reception
Sunday, September 22 at 2:00 pm

Join us for SOLO at The O’Shaughnessy
Friday, September 20 and Saturday, September 21 at 7:30pm

Each year, three exceptional Minnesota dance artists receive the coveted honor of a McKnight Dancer Fellowship. To celebrate them, we commission a solo dance for each of them from a choreographer of their choice.

The 2022 and 2023 McKnight Dancer Fellows have selected an outstanding group of local, national and international dance artists to bring their choreographic imaginations to new and reimagined works expressly tailored for these exceptional performers. The result is an evening of Minnesota premieres, ranging from Baladi to Breaking, to Ballet and more. Join us and celebrate the 20th anniversary of this unique Minnesota dance concert.

Additional events:
Friday, September 20, 6:30pm: Performance preview with SOLO choreographers in the O’Shaughnessy Recital Hall
Saturday, September 21: Meet-the-Artists: post-show discussion immediately following the performance

Get tickets: $15-25, plus fees

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gay Man opens at Illusion Theater on September 20, 2024, and runs through October 6. Come for the dances, stay for the storytelling! Sliding scale, $15-$35-$X5.

It begins with me as a teenager (pretty clueless, but very curious) and ends in 1980, traversing my coming out story, and growth into an artist and activist, all set against a backdrop of LGBTQ victories and defeats, local and global. If your own life intersects with this time period, memories will be reawakened. If this was before your time, it promises an engaging history lesson that no school has yet taught.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gay Man is the first work in my autobiographical series Somewhere Along the Rainbow.* Stories of my personal life, my life as an artist and activist, and LGBTQ progress and setbacks. In the show I tell stories, I dance. What could be more fun?

I previewed Portrait… in June in Grand Marais for their Pride festival. They got a bomb threat. “Should I still perform? Will I survive?”  The threat represented by “Don’t Say Gay” is as current as it is ‘nothing new’. That’s why I created this show.

Me, a 70-year-old man looking back to see what has changed, and what has not. Researching and writing, I waded and swam in the silence and invisibility that surrounded being gay back in the 70’s. I’m often sad revisiting how I internalized that. Sometimes uncomfortable. And I get to celebrate me figuring my way out of that!

*Thanks to James Joyce and Kevin Kortan for the titles!

Sunday, September 22 at 4:00pm

Celebrate our new season with us! Please join us as we come together at summer’s end to celebrate the beginning of a new season with James Sewell Ballet. Dancers will perform a sneak peek of the 2024-25 season at 5:00pm. Wine and buffet supper to follow. Mingling and merriment throughout!

Choose your level of engagement:

Garden Glory – Individual Ticket – $200, 4:00-7:30pm
Welcome to the full experience! Arrive to abundant appetizers and beverages, a reserved chair for the performance, and a scrumptious buffet dinner. Converse with JSB artists, collaborators, other friends of the company. And catch one of the best sunsets in town.

Dock n Dash – Individual Ticket – $55, 4:00-6:00pm
Enjoy some appetizers and a single beverage, mingling with guests and artists, and standing room (or floating room) only for the performance. Guests are welcome to join by way of lawn or lake*! *BYOB – Bring your own boat.

The event happens on the southeast shore of Cedar Lake in Minneapolis – exact address provided in registration confirmation email.

Dancing to find unity and radiance
Dancing to the music that lives within you
Dancing to death

Ruby Josephine Dance Theater (RJDT) presents CHOREOMANIA, a show featuring 3 distinct works that all celebrate the drama, emotion, and musicality of dance in their own unique ways. Allow yourself to be swept up into new worlds and stories, offered through choreography by RJDT’s artistic director, Ruby Josephine Smit, and our first international guest artist, Natalia Fernandes.

Friday, September 27 at 7:00pm
Saturday, September 28 at 7:00pm
Sunday, September 29 at 2:00pm
Sunday, September 29 at 7:00pm

Featured Dance Works:
“Rabi’a” – Choreographed by Ruby Josephine Smith in 2022
“Melomania: Unmaking Sound” – New work by Brazilian choreographer Natalia Fernandes
“Ophelia” – New work by Ruby Josephine Smith

Choreographers: Ruby Josephine Smith and Natalia Fernandes
Dance Artists: Brenna Mosser, Colin Myles Edwards, Devyn Hannon, Jake Nehrbass, Karen Christ Aalgaard, Kendall Kramer, Sara Karimi, and Shannon Dolan
Featured Original Music: Cooper Lee Smith
Photos: Armour Photography

Tickets: $30 for General Admission and $25 for Students.

Come and experience our full-bodied dramatic showcase of contemporary dance and storytelling. Experience CHOREOMANIA.

Help Twin Cities Ballet (TCB) kick off its dynamic 2024/25 season!

TCB’s Season Preview is an intimate, in-studio performance that introduces our professional company dancers and apprentices while sharing more about the exciting performances coming up this season. Learn how we are making ballet accessible, relatable, and fun for all!

Join us after the performance for a Silent Auction Fundraiser with items generously donated by local businesses and nonprofit organizations, and a reception where you can meet and mingle with our dancers, artistic directors, board, and staff. Families, friends, supporters, and the curious are all welcome!

Saturday, September 28
7:30pm

Suggested Donation: $10

“As relevant as any living American artist. His art speaks directly to the moment that we find ourselves in.” —Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

Among the most influential cross-disciplinary artists of his generation, MacArthur Fellow Ralph Lemon returns to the Walker with an explosion of sound and movement.

Tell it anyway, an ambitious new performance, arrives 10 years after his landmark premiere of hybrid lecture-performance-musical Scaffold Room. Brimming with artistic fury (and grace) befitting our times, Lemon and his multidisciplinary collaborators—including artists with backgrounds in performance, sculpture, acting, and music—examine issues of memory, race, and impermanence. Concurrently, Lemon and Kevin Beasley’s hypnotic sound and video installation Rant redux (2020–2024) is on view in the Perlman Gallery.

Tell it anyway, 2024 is an event/performance involving the participation of Kevin Beasley, Dwayne Brown, Lysis (Ley), Paul Hamilton, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, April Matthis, Roderick Murray, Mariama Noguera-Devers, Okwui Okpokwasili, Angie Pittman, Samita Sinha, and Mike Taylor.

COLLIDE Theatrical Dance Company presents Bonnie and Clyde at The Luminary Arts Center in Minneapolis.
Thursday-Sundays, October 11–November 3

Notorious outlaw couple Bonnie and Clyde come to life in this electrifying production told through Collide’s entertaining blend of dance and popular music.

Discover the outrageous true story of two small town kids from Texas who were turned into legends by the American media. Bonnie and Clyde were a pair of daring bank robbers and fugitive lovers destined for a date with death. The mythology surrounding their story is part of American folklore, and it would be criminal to miss it!

Tickets available online or by calling 651-395-7903, ext. 701.
Season tickets are also available for purchase.
For group discounts and questions, please email Grace@collidetheatrical.org.

Get ready to experience chills and thrills this Halloween with Twin Cities Ballet’s (TCB) spectacular showcase of spooky stories.

The program features TCB’s thought-provoking interpretation of the classic gothic novel Frankenstein, and Denise Vogt’s powerful all-female ensemble work Red, inspired by the compelling narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale. Also on the program is the premiere of Phantom, a new work based on the timeless Phantom of the Opera, and Grave Matters, the hit playful zombie ballet by talented guest choreographer James Sewell.

Saturday, November 2 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 3 at 2:00pm

Tickets: $33.50-49.50

Choreographed by KDT Artistic Director Rita Mustaphi, Panchatantra is based on a series of ancient Asian Indian animal fables originating in the 3rd century BCE. The Panchatantra tales are short, crisp, simple to understand, and always end with a moral that is still relevant today – issues of friendship, conflict, separation and union––especially as they relate to equality and social justice.

Using Kathak, the Indian classical dance form and featuring gorgeous handmade animal masks, Panchatantra will portray the stories through intricate footwork, lyrical movements, spinning pirouettes and gestural storytelling. Set to recorded music by the great J.D. Steele, his company, and musicians from India using energetic beats of Asian Indian compositions.

Panchatantra – The Dancing Tales of Wisdom
November 9 at 7:30pm
November 10 at 2:00pm – ASL-interpreted
90 minutes, no intermission.
$15-$35

Kathak (pronounced “Kah-tahk”) is an Indian classical dance tradition native to North India. Its origins can be traced back to as early as 400 BCE, when it began as a form of sharing stories, myths, and Hindu scripture in temples and royal courts. Characterized by both rhythmic and lyrical elements, it features graceful hand gestures, pirouettes, and complex footwork, performed with expressiveness and precision. Over the centuries, it has grown to incorporate diverse influences and viewpoints with KDT at the forefront of its artistic evolution.

This work is funded in part by MHC with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. It is also made possible by a grant from the F. R. Bigelow Foundation.

Background photo by Erik Saulitis.

Let Us Entertain You – Season 11 Annual Gala and Performance
Saturday, November 30
6:00–9:00pm

Join us as we celebrate our 11th season of dance theater and raise crucial funds to support the future of the company. Hosted by Twin Cities actor Sasha Andreev (Guthrie’s Into the Woods), our annual Gala will include a performance by Collide dancers featuring highlights from some of our most memorable productions.

Schedule
6:00-7:30pm: Hosted beverages and heavy appetizers
7:30pm: Performance and Fund-A-Need

Attire: cocktail or semi-formal.

Tickets can be purchased online, or by calling 651-395-7903, ext. 701.