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Fall Forward Festival Opens at The Cowles Center

The Fall Forward Festival is a month-long festival of shared evening performances celebrating the incredibly talented and robust Minnesota dance community. New dance audiences will experience a sampler of genres in one sitting, while avid dance-goers will see their favorite artists alongside equally stellar new-to-them artists. Each weekend features a new roster and a variety of experiences from new work commissions and Cowles stage debuts to community favorites and Cowles Center veterans.

Week One, October 29-30
Duniya Drum & Dance will take audiences on an energetic journey to Guinea West Africa with a vibrant premiere by Guest Artist Naby Bangoura. Twin Cities Ballet debunks ballet’s stereotypes of elitism, gender roles, and formality in exciting, creative, and accessible ways. With their signature groove-driven jazz, Rhythmically Speaking will share sneak peek of a new work set to jazz renditions of Radiohead.

Week Two, November 5-6
Featuring Threads Dance Project and Atlantis13

Week Three, November 12-13
Featuring Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre, Black Label Movement, and Crash Dance Productions

Week Four, November 19-20
Featuring Aparna Ramasawmy and HIJACK

In-person tickets are $25. Purchase a ticket to all four weekends and receive 20% discount. Click here to learn more about each weekend and get tickets!

Rhythmically Speaking at the Cowles Center’s Fall Forward Festival

Rhythmically Speaking is thrilled to be making our Cowles Center debut as a part of their inaugural Fall Forward Festival!

As a company inspired by jazz and American social dance styles, forms with African roots and European influences, we are excited to share a bill on the first weekend with Duniya Drum & Dance and Twin Cities Ballet. We will be sharing a segment of our RadioBody film in preview of an evening-length premiere in February 2023 featuring original jazz renditions of the music of Radiohead, as well as a segment of BASSline, a recent guest work by Kathleen Doherty (Halifax, NS Canada), and a company rep piece.

Saturday, October 29 at 7:30pm
Sunday, October 30 at 2:00pm
Tickets

From the Cowles: “This month-long festival of shared evening performances celebrates the incredibly talented and robust Minnesota dance community. New dance audiences will experience a sampler of genres in one sitting, while avid dancegoers will see their favorite artists alongside equally stellar new-to-them artists. Each weekend features a new roster and a variety of experiences from new work commissions and Cowles stage debuts to community favorites and Cowles Center veterans.”

RSVP on Facebook for here for the Saturday show, and here for the Sunday show. We hope you’ll join us for our weekend and for other weekends!

Young Dance Leads Movement Activities at Orchestra Hall

Young Dance Teaching Artists Gretchen Pick and Brittany Keefe will be leading activities in the lobby of Orchestra Hall before and after the Minnesota Orchestra performance of Symphonic Chills and Thrills on October 30.

This event is part of the relaxed family concert series designed for all ages and including individuals with autism or sensory sensitivities. Young Dance activities will help audience members to embody this theme. 

For more information visit the performance page on the Minnesota Orchestra website.

Informal Studio Showing with UMN Cowles Visiting Artist Taja Will

Since 1987, through the generosity of Sage and John Cowles, University of Minnesota Dance has annually hosted dance professionals of international renown in residencies ranging from one to two weeks. The guests teach, choreograph new dance work, rehearse repertory, and lecture in the department and the Twin Cities community at large.

Taja Will (they/them) is a non-binary, chronically ill, queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee. Taja’s approach integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance. Their work has been presented throughout the Twin Cities and across the United States. Including local performances at the Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks, the Radical Recess series, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival.

Friday, November 4
4:30pm
Free

Threads Fall Performances – Abolition in Evolution (Part 1)

A dark skinned woman is being lifted by another dancer. Her arms are outstretched overhead

Threads Dance Project concludes its 11th year with the commissioned premiere of Abolition in Evolution (Part 1) as part of the Cowles Center Fall Forward Festival Week 2. Choreographer Karen Charles explores the potentialities of a new embodied abolitionist movement and the idea that one person/one act can change things for the common good. If abolition can be defined as radical imagining, where would that radical imagining take us and how do we manifest that place physically? What would be eradicated if we could all move towards instead of away from one another?

An encore performance of Abolition in Evolution (Part 1) will be part of a longer program at the Bloomington Center for the Arts that includes Threads repertory that further asks us to reflect on how we can move towards a new abolitionist movement to eradicate the ills that prevent us from fully realizing our humanity.

At the Cowles Center
Fall Foward Festival Week 2
November 5 at 7:30
November 6 at 2:00

At Bloomington Center for the Arts
November 17 at 7:30pm
November 18 at 7:30pm

Contempo Open Rehearsal 

Saturday, November 5
12:00-1:00pm
Immediately following Mario Nascimento’s master class.
Cowles Center, Studio 5B
Free and open to the public.

International McKnight Choreographer Mario Nascimento and Contempo Physical Dance invite any interested guests to experience the company during their creative process.

Critical Conversations: Raising Awareness around Environmental and Climate

Critical Conversations Roundtable Discussion
Raising Awareness around Environmental and Climate Concerns Through Art

Sunday, November 6, 11:30am–1:00pm
The Cowles Center – Tek Box
Free. Lunch provided.

Inspired by the recent choreographies of Mário Nascimento around the Amazon rainforest degradation and moderated by 2018 McKnight Choreography Fellow Taja Will. This conversation is open to the public and artists of all mediums. Come and share your own experiences or join us to listen to others.

Moderator
Taja Will, 2018 McKnight Choreography Fellow

Participants will include:
Mario Nascimento, 2022 McKnight International Choreographer
Brenna Mosser, Analog Dance Works
Members of the Outreach through Science and Art (OSA) student group at UMN
More to be announced

Black Label Movement’s Riding The Maelstrom Premiere

Two dancers suspend a third dancer leaping toward the camera

Come see the Black Label premiere of Riding The Maelstrom during the third weekend of The Cowles Center’s Fall Forward Festival.

Riding The Maelstrom is a non-linear work that visualizes the dynamic energies released from the poisons of chemotherapy during Flink’s mother’s fight with cancer. This work, commissioned for St. Louis’ MADCO had a 2020 postponement/2021 premiere in Missouri – and we’re eager to share this work in our community this fall.

Concerto Dance Fall Fundraiser: Dancing, Drinks, and Dessert

Join Concerto Dance for a night of dancing, drinks, and dessert!

Sunday, November 13 from 6:30-8:30pm at Creo Arts and Dance

The evening includes performances by the company, followed by a social hour with drinks, dessert and a 1/2 swing dance lesson taught by Corey and Betsy Mills. All ticket sales go toward presenting our upcoming performance at the Southern Theatre in March featuring two new premieres by visiting guest artists Cynthia Gutierrez-Garner and Steve Rooks along with repertory by Artistic Director Jolene Konkel.

Get tickets here!

The Snow Queen

Show image of a light skinned dancer in a shimmering blue dress and pointe shoes

Introducing The Snow Queen! Travel to magical lands through this sparkling holiday production that will warm you from the inside out. From the screen to the stage, Ballet Co.Laboratory’s original 2020 ballet made for film will be transformed for the theater with newly expanded scenes and choreography.

Join us December 2-4, 2022 at The Cowles Center for Dance & Performing Arts as we follow Gerda, a little girl filled with moxie on a quest to rescue her brother, whose heart has been frozen by an icy fragment from the Snow Queen’s enchanted mirror.

Tickets are available here: https://bit.ly/BCLSnowQueen