Archive: Performances and Events

A performance not to be missed. Join us for an evening of rhythms and dances from Guinea, West Africa.

After a three-year hiatus from our annual performance and workshop, Fakoly, it is time for a REUNION. Fode Bangoura is bringing in his brothers from across the world as well as some of the greatest talent in Guinea drum and dance to celebrate this special moment of community, family and friends coming together again.

Reunited and it feels so good!

Saturday, June 18 at 7:00pm
Tickets: Adults $25; 12 and under $15.

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.

Off-Leash Area presents Minotaur, in which we behead the patriarchy with dance, mask performance, live music, and live animated projection as we delve into the world of the violent and labyrinth-bound creature, half-bull half-man.

With Minotaur, OLA Co-Artistic Director and Choreographer Jennifer Ilse leads a gender diverse, multi-generational, and fiery cast to take audiences on a thoroughly interdisciplinary and utterly imaginative journey exploring the possibilities laid bare by the metaphorical beheading of the patriarchy. With this production, the artists ask: Once the patriarchy is laid asunder, and after knowing nothing other than a labyrinthine system of oppression, how do we know when we are free of a hierarchical system’s seductive power?

Dancers Nieya Amezquita, Gabby Garcia, Jennifer Ilse, Jesse Schmitz-Boyd, and Joseph Wurm will perform Minotaur with contemporary dance and mask performance. Accompanying the performers and immersing the entire audience will be a live music and sound score by Dameun Strange, and a live animated projection design by OLA Co-Artistic Director Paul Herwig. All together, Off-Leash Area will take the audience to an otherworldly space where ancient myth, dreams of a future, and our urgent present collide.

Thursday-Sunday, July 14-17, 2022
All performances 7:30pm

Tickets: Admission is $10-30, sliding scale.

COVID-19 Precautions: Masks required; N95, KN95, or other high-filtration masks encouraged. Audience will be required to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test within 72 hours at the door.

Acknowledgements: 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.

LÍNEAS de SANGRE – A dance film by Choreographer Taja Will and Filmmaker Sequoia Hauck

On Demand Viewing
You can watch from your home, couch, bed, with a sweetie, with your family, with your favorite snacks, at any time during the date range. LÍNEAS includes open captioning and runs 54 minutes.

Tickets on sale now! View May 20–June 5.

LÍNEAS de SANGRE is the third chapter in a trio of works that instigate from archetypal and ancestral work. This chapter defines itself through a devotion to plant ancestors and land sovereignty, to indigenous solidarity and decolonization in artistic practice. This dance film is the biomythology of bodies in Latine diaspora, Boricua, Chicana, Chilean. We journey with the archetypes which support/guide/mask/empower us, we are LOVER, VIRGEN, SHADOW, SERVANT, SIREN and ALCHEMIST. We are here now, and ancient, elders in training and millennials, we are stress, and meditation, we are tired and we are growing.

Artistic Team
Choreographer, Director, Performer: Taja Will
Director of Photography and Editing: Sequoia Hauck
Collaborative Authors of Movement and Performers: Marisol Herling and Margaret Ogas
Sound Design and Composition: Brandon Anderson Musser
Dramaturg: Lisa Marie Brimmer

The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts and the McKnight Fellowships for Dancers’ biannual showcase event, SOLO, pairs six Minnesota dancers with renowned local, national, and international choreographers. An encore viewing of the films will take place at Silverwood Park on Thursday, May 26, 2022, at 8:15 PM. This outdoor showing is free and open to the public and will take place outdoors as a movie in the park. Audiences are encouraged to bring a chair or blanket for seating. SOLO will have Spanish and English captioning throughout the films.

The six dancers being showcased are Renée Copeland, Yeniel “Chini” Perez Domenech, Sharon Mansur, Erin Thompson, Joseph “MN Joe” Tran, and Elayna Waxse. Each are recipients of a McKnight Dancer Fellowship, an annual award given to three mid-career Minnesota dancers whose work demonstrates artistic excellence. The 2021 collaborations range from innovative Hip Hop to contemporary Arab imaginings, to intimate site-specific explorations and more.

Thursday, May 26, 2022, at 8:15pm CST
Free and open to the public. Bring a chair or blanket for seating. If rain threatens, check our Facebook page for updates.

For more information: www.mcknightdancechoreo.org/solo and/or www.silverwoodonstage.org.

As part of the spring fundraising campaign, the Young Dance Board of Directors will offer multiple events for donation. This weekend is our last event:

Virtual Cooking – Sushi Making
May 28, 10:00-11:00am
Learn the basics of sushi making from home with Soph Myers-Kelley! Your new skills will save you money and you are guaranteed to laugh at how silly your first rolls look! Zoom link sent upon registration. Suggested donation $20/person.

Register by emailing info@youngdance.org. Donations can be made online here, or by check to Young Dance, sent to 655 Fairview Ave North St. Paul, MN, 55104.

We are so excited to gather with you in 2022, and thank you for supporting Young Dance.

Join the party!

This festive event centered around dance will include performances of José Limón’s ionic solo Chaconne—a work from 1942 set to music by Bach, and Andrea Miller’s virtuosic duet Island performed by GALLIM.

The evening will also include delicious food and drinks, live music by the Bluewater Kings Band, dancing, and special guests all in support of Northrop’s Centennial Commissions.

$75/$125 VIP tickets, with backstage Artist Meet and Greet Reception, are still available!

Tracing Sacred Steps will be performed the following days and times:

June 3 at 7:30pm
June 4 at 2:00pm
June 4 at 7:30pm

There will be a talk back following all performances.

Tracing Sacred Steps (TSS) blends modern dance, figure skating, and Ring Shout. In her essay, “Hoodoo Religion and American Dance Traditions: Rethinking the Ring Shout” Katrina Hazzard-Donald states:

“It was from the African sacred circle, that the first truly African American dance was born: the ‘Ring Shout.’ The Ring Shout was a counterclockwise, sacred circle dance that appears to have been done universally among [enslaved Africans] and later among freedmen. […] In the sacred circle, the center was a vortex of spiritual energy and power which represented a separate and sacred realm, one not of the material realities of enslavement. It represented a reality which connected one to the ancestors and reconfirmed a continuity through both time and space. Within the circle, the interaction between the individual and the community was mediated by sacred spiritual forces evidenced in spirit possession.”

Tracing Sacred Steps engages elements of this practice to illustrate how it continues to serve as a pathway to healing within so many Black spaces. It 1) illustrates how this practice continues to be relevant, 2) pays homage to these important cultural rituals, and its practitioners: forcibly displaced Africans that found a way, amidst grave adversity, to work towards restoration and wholeness.

Tracing Sacred Steps features an all-Black cast of 4 professional skating artists and actor/vocalist Thomasina Petrus.

Come to Hopkins Dance Company’s annual Spring Recital on Saturday, June 4!
Two performance times: 12:00 and 6:00pm.

Tickets available at the door or at: https://buy.tututix.com/hopkinsdancecompany

Concerto Dance by Jolene Konkel presents Girls in the Band at the Bloomington Center for the Arts June 16-18. 

Join us for our full-length premiere of Girls in the Band, an original jazz dance production illuminating the history and untold stories of female musicians and composers who paved the way for women in jazz from the 1930’s to today. Told through dance narration and film, Girls in the Band celebrates the “Ladies Who Swing the Band!”

June 16 at 1:30pm – Senior Homes Matinee
June 16 at 7:30pm
June 17 at 7:30pm
June 18 at 2:30pm – pick your price available
June 18 at 7:30pm

Your ticket also includes free admission to:

• The film screening of the full documentary film The Girls in the Band directed by Judy Chaikin, June 18 at 4:30pm. Runtime: 90 minutes.
• All ages jazz dance masterclass June 18, 10:00-11:00am.

Tickets:
$30 Adults
$22 Seniors/Students

Box Office: blm.mn/bcatix or 952-563-8575.

Visit www.concertodance/girls-in-the-bandfor more info.

Due to our previous venue’s inability to uphold our Covid standards, we have moved the performance to the Tek Box Theater at the Cowles Center, which has also necessitated new dates: June 16, 17, 18 and 19. Don’t miss this captivating exploration by 7 talented artists!

Seven artists share their captivating takes on the theme “Organ Recital” in the Off-Kilter Cabaret! Using dance, storytelling, theater, spoken word, puppetry, and performance, artists with disabilities explore the theme in wildly different ways, ranging from hilarious and thought-provoking to heart-breaking and profound.

Featuring the following artists:
Braille
Martha Bird
Atlas O Phoenix
Daniel Reiva
Amy Salloway
Scott Sorensen
Young Dance

Off-Kilter is Off-Leash Area’s new cabaret performance program designed to highlight and support artists with disabilities, which makes space for and gives voice to artists with disabilities in the design and leadership of the program. Curated by the Off-Kilter Leadership Group, the inaugural year is organized around the theme “Organ Recital.” Off-Leash Area is excited to partner with Young Dance this year, whose mission is transforming lives through movement.

Performances:
June 16, 17, and 18 at 7:30pm
June 19 at 2:00pm.
Friday night performance will be followed by a Q&A with the artists.

Admission is $5-30 sliding scale, suggested donation. Tickets available at https://off-kiltercabaret.eventbrite.com

Accessibilty: All performances will have audio description available. Friday, June 17 and Sunday, June 19 will be ASL-interpreted. Saturday June 18 will have live captioning. Performances are held at the fully accessible Tek Box. If you require an accommodation not listed here, please reach out to Off-Leash Area at offleash@offleasharea.org at least two weeks in advance of the show.

COVID-19 Protorcols: Audience will be required to show proof of vaccination at the door. We will provide physically distanced seating and require participants to wear masks as they are able, and otherwise follow CDC and State guidelines at the time of the performances.

Acknowledgement: This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.