Erin Thompson Teaches Advanced Contemporary Classes In Person and on Zoom

Erin’s advanced level contemporary hybrid class through Zenon Dance School includes floor work, standing warm-ups, and phrase work, all designed to enhance the healthy use of joints and muscle groups as dancers release their weight fully into the support of the ground. Experiential awareness, body mapping, improvisation, and creative work are included as dancers channel their own expressive artistry within the movement. The delightful Dean Magraw will accompany on guitar.

Thursday mornings, 9:30-11:00am

Registration is open through Zenon’s MindBody portal and closes ten minutes before class.
See you, in person or virtually, soon!

Zenon Dance School – Xchange Program/Work-Study

We are looking for volunteers to be a part of our Xchange Program for the upcoming Winter Session! Xchange is Zenon’s work-study program that allows students to volunteer in exchange for dance class credit.

Online shift = one class credit

In-person shift = two class credits

If you are interested in working with the Xchange Program, please fill out this interest form: https://forms.gle/z6K1BhmGaH8QUTNw7

Zenon Dance School – Winter Classes In Person and Online

Zenon Dance School is excited to welcome you back for another season of dance this winter! Classes run through March 20, 2022.

Monday
9:30am: Intermediate Contemporary/Modern with Joanna Lees – Hybrid
11:15am: gaga/people with Berit Ahlgren – In Person
5:30pm: Cardio Dance Jam with Ariel Linnerson – Online
5:30pm: Contemporary Ballet with Anne Lentz – Hybrid

Tuesday
9:30am: Intermediate/Advanced Contemporary with Chloe Nagle – Hybrid
5:30pm: Contemporary Floorwork with Javan Mngrezzo – In Person
7:00pm: Beginning 1 Jazz with Allison Rubin Forester – Hybrid

Wednesday
9:30am: Composition/Improvisation with HIJACK – Online February 23, In Person March 2
11:15am: Intermediate 1 Ballet with Nic Lincoln – Hybrid
5:30pm: Beginning 1 Ballet with Lisa Erickson – Online
5:30pm: Intermediate Contemporary with Ruby J. Smith – Hybrid
7:00pm: All Levels Hip-Hop with Gabby Abram – Hybrid
7:00pm: Beginning/Intermediate Jazz with Jennifer Glaws – In Person

Thursday
9:30am: Advanced Contemporary/Modern with Erin Thompson – Hybrid
5:30pm: Afro Modern with Roxane Wallace – Online
7:00pm: Intermediate Modern with Dustin Haug – Hybrid

Friday
10:00am: All Levels Jazz with Erinn Liebhard, Karla Grotting, and Guests – Hybrid – Karla teaches February 25
12:00pm: Intermediate 2 Ballet with Penny Freeh – Hybrid

Saturday
9:00am: All Levels Yoga with Ariel Linnerson – Online
9:15am: Creative Movement for ages 4-6 with Anne Petrich – In Person
10:00am: All Levels Tap with Dorian Brooke – In Person
10:00am: Beginning Modern with Roxane Wallace – In Person
10:15am: Youth Ballet for ages 7-10 with Sarah Bartlett – Online
11:00am: Musical Theatre Jazz with Dorian Brooke – In Person
12:30pm: Beginning 2 Ballet with Ben Johnson – In Person

Sunday
10:00am: Creative Movement for ages 4-6 with Margaret Ogas – In Person
11:00am: Youth Ballet for ages 7-10 with Kendall Kramer – In Person
12:00pm: Youth Modern for ages 10-14 with Kendall Kramer – In Person

Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies

Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies by Ananya Chatterjea

This book argues that contemporary dance, imagined to have a global belonging, is vitiated by euro-white constructions of risk and currency that remain at its core. Differently, the book reimagines contemporary dance along a “South-South” axis, as a poly-centric, justice-oriented, aesthetic-temporal category, with intersectional understandings of difference as a central organizing principle. Placing alterity and heat, generated via multiple pathways, at its center, it foregrounds the work of South-South artists, who push against constructions of “tradition” and white-centered aesthetic imperatives, to reinvent their choreographic toolkit and respond to urgent questions of their times. In recasting the grounds for a different “global stage,” the argument widens its scope to indicate how dance-making both indexes current contextual inequities and broader relations of social, economic, political, and cultural power, and inaugurates future dimensions of justice.

Ananya Chatterjea is Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota, USA, where she teaches courses in Critical Dance Studies and Contemporary Technique. Her work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a philosophy of #OccupyDance. She is artistic director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a Twin Cities-based professional dance company of Black and brown women and femmes, and Co-director of the St. Paul-based Shawngrām Institute for Performance and Social Justice.

Ananya Dance Theatre Anthology: Dancing Transnational Feminisms

Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice

Edited by Ananya Chatterjea, Hui Niu Wilcox, Alessandra Lebea Williams

Drawing from more than fifteen years of collaborative dance-making and sustained dialogues based on deep alliances across communities of color, Dancing Transnational Feminisms offers a multigenre exploration of how dance can be intersectionally reimagined as practice, methodology, and metaphor for feminist solidarity. Blending essays with stories, interviews, and poems, this collection explores timely questions surrounding race and performance, gender and sexuality, art and politics, global and local inequities, and the responsibilities of artists toward their communities.

“Honest, true, and poignant. ADT demonstrates throughout the pages of this book that the affect of being with, in relationship alongside, and in creative alliance for a purposeful act is a labor of love and a beautiful thing to behold.” – Exceprt from the foreword by D. Soyini Madison

Karla Grotting Teaches Hybrid Friday Morning Jazz Class at Zenon – February 25

Regular FMJ co-teacher Karla Grotting is thrilled to be bringing her body-friendly, music-based, history-infused, jazz stylings to this open-level (skewing toward intermediate level), adult jazz dance class through Zenon Dance School. Come in-person (masked and socially-distanced) or zoom in for a high-quality Zoom experience. Drop-ins welcome! We’ll ease back into our bodies, build some heat, coordinate, groove, and find rhythmic satisfaction and joy in dancing together!

Fridays, 10:00-11:15am CST.

The rest of our winter teaching schedule is as follows:
February 25: Karla Grotting
March 4: Erinn Liebhard
March 11: Jolene Konkel
March 18: Erinn Liebhard

Find out more about FMJ by following our class Facebook page. Class will remain hybrid, offering 10 physically-distanced spots for masked folks to come into the studio to take class, and unlimited spots for folks to attend from home via a high-quality Zoom experience.

Register here: conta.cc/39fJDXN

We hope to see you soon! #zenondanceschool #wewillmoveyou #getyourasstoclass

The Arena – Space for Rent

Located in the heart of the LynLake community, The Arena is available for your rehearsal, class and event needs!

Our space offers:

  • 1,305 square feet (30×40) of sprung floor
  • Marley dance flooring
  • Full wall-length mirrors (with curtains for covering if preferred)
  • Free wifi
  • Changing room

We are situated on multiple bus lines, including the 21, 4, 23, 612, 18, with plenty of free street parking around the building.

To request space, please email arenadances@gmail.com.

The Arena Offers Contemporary Flow with AD Mathew Janczewski

Mathew’s work is best described as contemporary, spanning an array of styles – from quietly evocative to physically demanding, full of spiraling momentum that draws energy into the core and spreads it out like disco ball beams of light. At times, movement focuses on the dancers’ bends and folds, creating shape as one shifts and moves, creating moments of connection.

Class focuses on opening up curiosity, finding internal pathways within the body and the contrast of those same pathways. An assortment of texture, speed, density, length, force and resistance will be taught to open these skills.

Fridays, 10:00-11:30 am
Through April 8
Pre-register at https://www.arena-dances.org/the-arena/
Drop-in rate is $17 with flexible pricing and free parking!

Mathew Janczewski’s inquisitive, immersive and heartfelt approach to contemporary dance reaches beyond the surface and holds the viewer in its embrace. With over 35 works in his repertoire and more than two decades of experience as a choreographer, Mathew has cultivated a highly diverse and mesmerizing style of movement.

Mathew’s work has garnered praise in the Twin Cities and beyond. He has created commissioned works for companies such as Minnesota Dance Theater, Cleveland Repertory Co., aTrek Dance, and Zenon Dance Company. He was the Bates Festival choreographer (2001), received the Sage Award for Outstanding Performance (2005), and won the McKnight Choreographers Fellowship (2005). In 2008, Dance Magazine named him as one of their “25 to Watch.”

Shortly after receiving his degree in dance at the University of Minnesota and performing internationally, Mathew founded his own non-profit dance company, ARENA DANCES, in 1995. ARENA serves as the vehicle for his body of work and provides young, aging and underserved segments of the Twin Cities community with opportunities to experience the transformative power of dance.

ARENA DANCES Presents Studio Stories with Kevin Kortan

Join ARENA DANCES for our weekly Studio Stories podcast, where each week we reminisce on Twin Cities dance history with a new special guest. This week, we hear from Kevin Kortan.

Kevin Kortan is the originator of Evolutionary Yoga. He is a Certified Yoga Therapist and Teacher, Movement Educator, and Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner. He has danced with Zenon Dance Company in Minneapolis, Concert DancenCompany of Boston, and numerous New York companies; performing in works by Mark Morris, Wendy Perron, Mark Dendy, Laura Dean, Merce Cunningham, Kei Takei, David Gordon, Charlie Moulton, and others. In New York, he performed in the companies of Mark Taylor, Mark Dendy, Wendy Perron, Nina Wiener, and Victoria Marks. From 1990-96, Kevin danced with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. He has collaborated with choreographers Jaime Ortega, Patrick Scully, and has shown his own work in the U.S. and France.

Tune in this Thursday, February 24 at 12:00pm to hear Kevin Kortan’s studio story and glimpse into his extensive and impressive career.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

MotionArt Adult Modern Dance Classes

MotionArt’s mission is to share the art of dance and the joy of movement with people of all ages and abilities. We strive to enrich lives by fostering creativity, body awareness and self-expression in a fun, non-competitive, welcoming environment.

We offer ongoing dance classes in-studio, on Zoom, and outside – weather permitting. Paying the regular rate helps keep our organization afloat; however, no one will be turned away for inability to pay. There is also an option to pay what you can.

Please go to motionartmn.org to sign up for classes, or contact Pam Gleason for info.

Ageless Dance
Monday, 4:00-5:15pm – Center for Performing Arts, Studio #105
Thursday, 4:30-5:45pm – Center for Performing Arts, Sunroom

Beginning Modern Dance
Tuesday, 5:00-6:15pm – Zoom only

Intermediate Modern Dance
Wednesday, 10:30am-12:00pm – Center for Performing Arts, Sunroom

Mixed Level Modern Dance
Tuesday, 7:00-8:15pm – Center for Performing Arts, Studio #105
Saturday, 4:00-5:30pm – Hybrid: Center for Performing Arts, Sunroom and Zoom