Sally Rousse, a native of Vermont, is a dance artist who performs, teaches, choreographs, writes, and advocates. Branded “Renegade Ballerina” Sally has received two McKnight Fellowships for Dancers (2001/14), a Sage Award for Outstanding Performer (2013) and was named Artist of the Year by CityPages (2010). She co-founded James Sewell Ballet (JSB) in New York City in 1990, serving as its managing director and artistic associate throughout its move to Minneapolis in 1993. Since leaving JSB in 2014, Rousse’s site-specific works have taken dance off the tradition stage, into venues such as the Kwon Tung Pier in Hong Kong and up in the tree of a vacant lot. Her work features artists who identify as LGBTTQ+, mature/aged, Disabled+, female, and BIPOC. Recently, as the Cowles Center’s first Artist in Residence, she engaged the local community through free workshops, art installations, tours, discussions, and the acclaimed promenade performance ICON SAM: Temple Dances (“Best Performance of 2018,” CityPages). Her choreography has been seen in both theatrical and commercial venues such as the Guthrie, Southern, and State Theaters; the Walker Art Center, MASS MoCA, the Cartoon Channel, and Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre. Rousse performed as a leading dancer with the Royal Ballet of Flanders and Ballet Chicago, dancing works by Maurice Béjart, Jiri Kylian, and over 75 new works created on her by contemporary and post-modern choreographers. Sally is certified in Floor-Barre©, Reiki, and Brain Gym® and currently contributes labor to two national organizations, Creating New Futures and BreakBank, which are focused, respectively, on ethics and equity in dance and performance, and promoting balanced screen usage while de-centering whiteness.
HIJACK is the Minneapolis-based choreographic collaboration of Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. HIJACK is the confluence and clash of two independent compositional/kinesthetic impulses. Their dances embrace juxtaposition. Their dances house unlikely intimates and question “who is the enemy?” Specializing in the inappropriate, HIJACK is best known for "short-shorts:" pop song-length miniatures designed to deliver a sharp shock.Over the last 25 years they have created over 100 dances and performed in venues ranging from proscenium to barely-legal. HIJACK manipulates context by employing a site-specific approach to every performance and toying with audiences' expectations. HIJACK has performed in New York (at DTW, PS122, HERE ArtCenter, Catch/Movement Research Festival, La Mama, Dixon Place, Chocolate Factory), Japan, Russia, Central America, Ottawa, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, at Fuse Box Festival in Austin Texas, and Bates Dance Festival in Maine and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation. HIJACK questions where and for whom contemporary dance is performed, gigging regularly in both social settings and concert settings. HIJACK has enjoyed long relationships with Red Eye Collaborations (as part of their Critical Core), Bryant Lake Bowl Theater where their 1996 "Take Me To Cuba" was the theater’s first ever dance concert), Zenon Dance School (where they have taught every Wednesday morning for 18 years), and Walker Art Center where they have performed in every imaginable context including the opening of the McGuire Theater, at Dyke Night, First Free Saturday children’s programming, in the sculpture garden, and in the light of the Benson Film Collection in the Mediateque. In 2013, Walker Art Center commissioned “redundant, ready, reading, radish, Red Eye” to celebrate twenty years of HIJACK and Contact Quarterly published the chapbook “Passing for Dance: A HIJACK Reader”.Their 2018-20 projects include: performing End Plays with Lisa Nelson, curating and hosting Future Interstates (a series of dance improvisation performances initiated by HIJACK and Body Cartography in 2015), creation and premiere of Jealousy (a collaboration with sculptor Ryan Fontaine and lighting designer Heidi Eckwall at Hair + Nails Gallery), touring an evening of dance with films to micro-cinemas and managing & dancing in the 2019 McKnight International Choreography residency of Galia Eibenshutz at Cedar Cultural Center.
Christine Maginnis, a native of Minneapolis, has been an active dance artist in her home town for almost four decades, a good chunk of that time spent as a performer and teacher with Zenon Dance Company under the artistic direction of Linda Z. Andrews. With Zenon she toured to Switzerland, Aruba, Saipan, Russia, New York and throughout the Midwest. She had the honor of performing in over 100 works by dance makers from around the world including Susana Tambutti, Bebe Miller, Doug Varone, Danny Buraczeski, Bill Young, Wil Swanson, Joe Chavala, Gyula Berger and Jeanine Durning, to name a few of her favs. Outside of Zenon she has worked with Cathy Young Dance, ARENA DANCES, Movement Architecture, Shapiro and Smith Dance, Off Leash Area, DAdance, CWDC, Borrowed Bones, Jagged Moves and Ballet of the Dolls. She also worked with indie choreographers Cathy Wright, Penelope Freeh, Zhauna Franks, Sally Rousse, Karla Grotting and Gerry Girouard. Other memorable shows include The Minnesota Opera's "Carmen", "Transatlantic" and "Macbeth" as well as Ruth Mackenzie's "Kalevala". Christine has been making her own dances for the past two decades and was commissioned by Minnesota Dance Theater ("The Fermentation of Suzie and the Sailor"), James Sewell Ballet's 'Ballet Works Project' ("Cabaret Niche"), Decadance Productions ("My Name is Vincent"), Lira Dance Theater of Sioux Falls ("E Finito?"), and L1 DanceLab in Budapest, Hungary ("Azalea Nights"). She has been invited to show work in many showcases around town including 'Renovate', 'Rhythmically Speaking' and '16 Feet' as well as created two evening length repertory concerts, "Unzipped" for the Red Eye Collaboration's 'Isolated Acts' and "Femme de la Swashbuckle Box" in collaboration with composer Matthew Smith for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. She collaborated with former Pilobolus/Momix dancer, Tim Latta, on the project, "An American Movement", that toured for a summer throughout Italy. Delving into the baggage of the human psyche using images from cinema, cartoons, mythology, musicals, vaudeville, fairytales, nature and spiritual ritual, Christine's goal is to create a "dream-logical" narrative leading the audience down a twisted path of emotional transformation often spiced with dark humor and melodrama as well as film for juxtaposition and dimension. She has been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Assistance Grant (1987), City Pages Best Dancer shout out (1998), a McKnight Fellowship for Dancers (2001) and a Sage Award for Outstanding Performer (2016).
A St. Paul native and tap and jazz dancer through high school, Colleen went to Utah andmajored in dance. She came back to the Twin Cities on fire with the idea of performing andchoreographing and teaching dance in the schools. While in Utah, she was exposed to andembraced for the first time “modern dance”. She came back to Minnesota in 1979 with arenewed idea of how deep and wide dance could be and became an apprentice with the Nancy Hauser Dance Company and a member of Loon on a Log Dance Company with Joan Sloss.Colleen received a Mcknight Choreographic Fellowship award, a State Arts Board Award, a Dancer Pool Award and co-produced many of her own concerts as well as being produced by The Minnesota Dance Alliance’ Summer Dance series. Her work was also featured in the Walker Art Center's “Choreographer’s Evenings” multiple times through the 1980’s and 90’s. At the same time, she was teaching dance at Minneapolis North High for 15 years and finally at Minneapolis Southwest High for 20 years; she also began and has sustained the Dance Educator’s Coalition since 1986 who’s mission is to increase the quantity and quality of dance K-College throughout the state. She is a recipient of the 2007 Sage Award for Minnesota Dance Educator, the 2011 National Dance Educator of the Year award through the National Dance Education Organization and 2014 Dance USA’s “Inspiration Award”.
Morris Johnson, Jr is a choreographer, teacher and dancer who started his formal dance education in Broadway District in New York. He is a two(2) time recipient of the Judith De Jean Memorial Scholarship Award from the New Dance Group Studio and also received scholarships from The Bernice Johnson Dance Studio and the American Dance Machine under Lee Theodore and Ann Rankin. Morris has performed nationally and toured internationally with various dance companies and musicals including Africa, South America, The Caribbean and the Netherlands Antilles. He has performed for such noted artists as Eartha Kitt at the Apollo theater, Desi Arnez, Barbara Striesand, Prince, Charles Moore's Drums and Dances of Africa, Pearl Primus, Arrow and Chuck Davis. Morris has choreographed for stage and videos to include The Steeles, Robert Robinson, the Jetts, Penumbra Theater, The Walker and various other venues. He also premiered dance fables, Langa and Naga at the Southern Theater and has collaborated with Cassandra Shore's Jawaahir' s Caravan and Tree Tales with the Ragamala Dance company.Morris has taught for the U of Mn/Guthrie Theater BFA Actors Training Program, U of Mn dance dept, The Arts Connection in NY, and community classes around the Twin Cities. He received the Sage Award for Outstanding Dance Educator in 2012 and received grants from The McKnight foundation, The Jerome Foundation, MRAC, Dancer pool, SpaceSpace and a Travel Study grant from the Jerome Foundation to study in Salvador, Bahia with Bale Folklorico Da Bahia
Leigh W. Dillard retired as Professor Emerita, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University, in 2015. She taught dance at CSB/SJU for fifteen years and was Chair of the CSB/SJU Theater Department for eight years. She was honored with the Linda Mealey Faculty/Student Collaborative Research and Creativity Award in 2015. Currently, Ms. Dillard is teaching dance to seniors as part of a research project funded by the Aroha Foundation. She has also been working as a choreographer and movement coach at Saint John’s Preparatory School, North Hennepin Community College and the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University Music Department. Ms. Dillard has served on a variety of artist grant panels, including the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation. Ms. Dillard was co-founder and Artistic Director of New Dance Ensemble, a professional repertory company in Minneapolis, 1981-91. Ms. Dillard received a Master of Fine Arts, Dance, from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, 1973, and a Bachelor of Arts, Dance, from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, 1971. She has been a FGNA certified Feldenkrais practitioner since 1997.
Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy's Ragamala Dance Company is the embodiment of an immigrant story. Founded in 1992 by Ranee, and currently under the leadership of Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna and Choreographic Associate Ashwini Ramaswamy (mother and daughters), their aesthetic is deeply influenced by their cultural hybridity as Indian-American artists. Practitioners of the South Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam, they explore the myth and spirituality of India to engage with what they see as the dynamic tension between the historical, the ancestral, and the personal.
In addition to the just-released From the Flutes of Our Bones (Nodin Press) Mary Moore Easter is the author of three other poetry books, The Body of the World (Minnesota Book Award in Poetry Finalist, 2019), Walking from Origins, and the forthcoming Free Papers: poems inspired by the testimony of Eliza Winston, a Mississippi slave escaped to freedom in Minnesota in 1860 (2021). She edited Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: poems in the wake of racial injustice (Rain Taxi 2020).In a long dance career in Minnesota and nationally, her awards include a Bush Artist Fellowship in Choreography, and McKnight Awards in Choreography and in Interdisciplinary Arts from Intermedia Arts. She most recently performed as a dancer in Paula Mann’s Invisible.Her career as an independent dancer/choreographer and Founder and Director of Carleton College’s dance program overlapped with writing as a Cave Canem Fellow. She is a 2020 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Easter holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. in Music for Dancers from Goddard.
Christopher Watson was a member of the New Dance Ensemble of Minneapolis and has performed with the Chicago Moving Company, Harbinger Dance Company of Detroit, and Joanna Haigood's Zaccho company in San Francisco, dancing in works by Pearl Lang, David Gordon, Dan Wagoner, Linda Shapiro, Kathryn Posin, Doris Humphrey, and Margaret Jenkins, among others.Christopher received a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Coe College and a Master of Science degree in journalism from Northwestern University prior to beginning his dance training. He began dance study at the Houston Ballet Academy and subsequently trained with the Chicago Moving Company and at the Merce Cunningham and Joffrey Ballet studios in New York. Christopher then received a Master of Fine Arts in dance from the University of Michigan. From 1978-1982, he co-directed the Dance Theatre 2 Company and School in Ann Arbor, MIAs associate director of American Inroads and Theater Artaud in San Francisco, he produced a wide range of dance, music, and theater events, including the concert premiere of John Adam's Opera Nixon in China, a concert version of Phillip Glass' Liquid Days with Linda Ronstadt, and the first annual Black Choreographers Moving showcase, as well as performances by noted artists Bebe Miller, Susan Marshall, Stephen Petronio, and the Kronos Quartet, among many others. He founded the Christopher Watson Dance Company in Sacramento, CA in 1991 after performing as an independent choreographer and dancer for several years. Mr. Watson returned to Minneapolis in the fall of 1994.A former member of the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Dance Alliance, Christopher has served on committees and panels for the Michigan Dance Association, Dance Bay Area in San Francisco, and the Sacramento Area Dance Alliance. He has served as a consultant for local arts agencies and organizations including the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently he serves on the board of directors for Ressl Dance!A distinguished teacher, Christopher has served as a guest artist at Eastern Michigan University, California State University Sacramento, University of California at Davis, University of Minnesota Duluth, the Sacramento Visual and Performing Arts High School, and the Pinole Valley Arts Magnet School in the San Francisco Bay area.Mr. Watson's work has been supported through grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts, the New Works Program of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, the Jerome Foundation through the SpaceSpace Co-Project, the Linden Hills UCC Fund, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the Lyndale Neighborhood Association, Minneapolis Arts Commission, the Minnesota Dance Alliance, and Mervyn's.
Robin Stiehm's professional dance career spans 4 decades, beginning as a ballet dancer at the Minnesota Dance Theatre. She was a soloist at MDT, performing in ballets such as Concerto Barocco, Les Sylphides and La Bayadere and became a prime interpreter of choreographer Loyce Houlton's contemporary ballet.In 1989 Robin transitioned to modern dance and worked with New Dance Ensemble, also in Minneapolis, MN. There she was privileged to work with many choreographers, including Bill T. Jones, David Dorfman, Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon and a host of others.Robin began choreographing in 1990 and in 1994 formed her own group, Dancing People Company, based in Minneapolis. During her Minneapolis years, Robin’s work received support from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. In 2000, she received a prestigious Bush Artist Fellowship.In 2003 she relocated the company to Ashland, Oregon. In the 13 years DPC was in Oregon, Robin developed strong professional dancers and maintained a salaried company with whom she created many pieces. She also developed an innovative high school program that introduced modern dance to many hundreds of students in rural Southern Oregon, and created an annual community-based Winter Solstice program. Both of these endeavors created strong connections between the professional company dancers and the community it served. DPC’s work in Oregon was supported by the Oregon Community Foundation, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Carpenter Foundation, the City of Ashland, and many others.During the 20 years of her directorship at DPC Robin choreographed over 50 works and brought the company on tour to Poland, Russia, Belarus, and Japan as well as traveling in the USA. Robin has been a guest teacher and choreographer at international festivals and at colleges, including the University of Minnesota as a Cowles Chair Guest Artist; University of Oregon; St. Olaf College; Mankato State University; Pacific University; and Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlan. She has choreographed pieces for Zenon Dance Company, Ballet Pacifica, Ballet Arts Minnesota, ARENA DANCES, and Traduza Dance Company, in addition to the many pieces she created for her own company.
Pramila Vasudevan is a cultural worker, choreographer and trans disciplinary artist. She is the founding Artistic Director of Aniccha Arts (since 2004), an experimental arts collaborative producing site-specific performances that examine agency, voice, and group dynamics within community histories, institutions, and systems. This is her fifth year as director of Naked Stages at Pillsbury House Theatre, a 7 month program for early career performance artists. The pandemic has had devastating consequences for artist communities and she is currently researching what it means to build self sustaining artist ecologies that are not dependent on traditional funding models.Pramila is on a personal journey to examine her caste privilege in her body, artistic, spiritual and daily life, as she searches for paths to be in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. She was born in the US, lived in India and has been studying, living, and working on stolen Dakota land for about 25 years. During the pandemic Pramila and her family have been taking walks to the Bdote - a place of genesis, regeneration and beauty, close to Fort Snelling which is a site of genocide of the Dakota people. She is committed to continue learning about the history of her Tamil ancestry as well as where she lives and works and further building relationships with members of indigenous communities here and learning about her neighborhood and this land.
Dance training with, Louise Revere Morris, 1926-1936; dance training with, Doris Humphrey, 1926-1936; dance training with, Charles Weidman, 1926-1936; dance training with, Hanya Holm, 1926-1936.
Patrick Scully is a Minneapolis based choreographer/dancer and performance artist. He began dancing in 1972 as a college freshman. In 1976 he co-founded Contactworks, a Minneapolis based dance collective focused on contact improvisation. In 1980 he left Contactworks in search of a way to bring his voice as a gay man into the work he was creating. This eventually led him to Remy Charlip’s Naropa East workshop in 1984, Meetings with Remarkable Women. That led him to dance with Remy, beginning with Remy’s Ten Men show in BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 1984. In his heart, and daily life, Patrick is still dancing with Remy. Patrick’s most current project is Leaves of Grass – Illuminated, about Walt Whitman. In addition to his performing work, Patrick is the founder and long time director of Patrick’s Cabaret, in Minneapolis.
Gary Peterson has been a part of Minnesota’s dance community for nearly 40 years. In addition to his work as managing director of Ananya Dance Theatre and research collaborator with Dr. Ananya Chatterjea, he has served as dance student, consultant, and as executive director of James Sewell Ballet, Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre, Zenon Dance Company, and the Southern Theater. He has produced professional dance performances at more than 300 domestic and international venues, including seven New York City engagements, Bermuda, Iceland, and Ethiopia. Gary’s perspectives are informed by experiences in law office management, legislative lobbying, federal multidistrict litigation, political candidacy, public affairs radio broadcasting, newspaper publishing, and by public service on the Washington staff of Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. In 2017-18, he secured the location and led the build-out of Ananya Dance Theatre’s Shawngram Institute for Performance & Social Justice in Saint Paul. He holds a BA degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota, and serves as a director of the Friends of the University of Minnesota Libraries.
Prolific is perhaps the best word to describe Myron Johnson's career as Artistic Director and Choreographer of the Ballet of the Dolls and the Ritz Theatre. He's produced well over 150 ballets and shows no signs of slowing down or softening an edge that has defined his 50 years on the stage. But as he transitions into a new phase of his career, Johnson's 2011 solo show Songs for a Swan reflects on his training with Marcel Marceau in Paris in the 1970s, dancing in New York in the 1980s and the past 20 years performing and creating in the Twin Cities.Prolific is perhaps the best word to describe Myron Johnson's career as Artistic Director and Choreographer of the Ballet of the Dolls and the Ritz Theatre. He's produced well over 150 ballets and shows no signs of slowing down or softening an edge that has defined his 50 years on the stage. But as he transitions into a new phase of his career, Johnson's 2011 solo show Songs for a Swan reflects on his training with Marcel Marceau in Paris in the 1970s, dancing in New York in the 1980s and the past 20 years performing and creating in the Twin Cities.
A dedicated performer, teacher and creator, Karen Long Charles received a BFA Ballet/BS Computer Science from Texas Christian University and M.Ed. in Administration from Georgia State University. Charles has performed with numerous dance companies including Room to Move Dance Company (Atlanta, GA), Susan Warden Dance Company (Kansas City, MO) and was awarded a fellowship to study at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Charles served as Director at Perpich Arts High School and she was the founding Principal/Executive Director at Main Street School of Performing Arts. Charles has created/presented works for James Sewell Ballet, Carleton College, Macalester College, Main Street School of Performing Arts and Perpich Arts High School. Threads Dance Project was founded by Karen L. Charles in 2011. Karen and her Threads Dance Project were nominated for a SAGE Dance Award for Outstanding Performance in 2015, have successfully toured to sold-out audiences in Atlanta, GA, and co-hosted the 2017 McKnight International Choreographer, Salia Sanou, of Burkina Faso/France.Threads was also honored as one of six companies featured in American Dance Abroad’s (ADA): Pitchbook Volume II (Winter 2016) for In-Development Projects, for the Fall 2017 premiere piece “Uncertain Reality.” ADA’s publication is used as a representation of American dance around the world at festivals, performances and marketed to international programmers.
A native of Mendota Heights, MN, Neil Greenberg studied from the age of 11 with Minnesota Dance Theatre and School, taking class and performing alongside Toni Pierce(-Sands), Robin Stiehm, and Lea Thompson (see photo). He moved to New York City in 1976, and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1979-1986. As a choreographer he is known especially for his Not-About-AIDS-Dance, which employs his signature use of projected words as a layering strategy that provides doors into “meanings” in the dance, while also raising questions about the nature of meaning-making. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards, repeated fellowships from the NEA, a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and repeated support from the MAP Fund and NYSCA. He has created two works for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project. Greenberg is currently Professor of Choreography at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, and has previously taught at Purchase College, Sarah Lawrence College, and UC Riverside. He served as dance curator at The Kitchen in NYC from 1995-1999. His most recent project, To the things themselves! (2018), continues his interest in the move away from representation toward an experience of the performance moment in and of itself.https://vimeo.com/channels/neilgreenbergneilgreenberg.org
Laurie Van Wieren has been a creative force in the Twin Cities for 30+ years. Her choreography has been shown in the Twin Cities, nationally, and in Europe. 9x22 Dance/Lab, her monthly showcase, is the pre-eminent performance platform for local and visiting choreographers. She’s developed work for the Walker Art Center’s Open Field performance, which highlighted 100 local choreographers.Van Wieren has curated performance for the Southern, Ritz, Bryant Lake Bowl Theaters and Soo Visual Art Center. She is a recipient of fellowships/grants from McKnight, Jerome, Bush, NEA, Rockefeller Foundations and Mn State Arts Board. She has received a Special Citation SAGE Award and a SAGE Award for Outstanding Performance. Van Wieren received a City Pages Artists of the Year in 2016 for her solo dance Temporary Action Theory and her ongoing curation. She is currently making site-specific ensemble dance performances for parks and large spaces and a series of solo works for small spaces.
Amy Behm-Thomson studied dance at the University of Minnesota. She was a very active member of the Minneapolis dance community for over 15 years. Amy joined ARENA Dances in 1999 and Zenon Dance Company in 2000. She has also performed with Dancing People Company, Ragamala Music and Dance, Catalyst - Dances by Emily Johnson, and Cathy Young Dance. She is the proud mother of two young children living in North Carolina with her husband and teaching yoga at Franklin Street Yoga.
Greg Waletski is a graduate of Chaska High school and St. Old College. He has been a member of the Twin Cities dance scene for over 30 years. For 22 of those years he was a member of Zenon Dance Company. His most recent projects have been dances by Megan Meyer, including (FW) Redux which has been interrupted by Covid. In 2013 Greg began a career transition to American Sign Language/English Interpreting and now works as an Interpreter. He was awarded McKnight Fellowships for Dance in 2000 and 2013, and a SAGE Award for outstanding performer in 2011. He is also a DJ, spinning soul 45s at the monthly dance night, Hipshaker.