Claim OwnershipSTUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY
Subscribed: 4Played: 88
Subscribe
© 2025 STUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY
Description
Stories are among our most potent tools. We need to unearth old stories that live in a place and begin to create new ones. We are story makers, not just storytellers. All stories are connected, new ones woven from threads of the old. (Paraphrased- Robin Wall Kimmerer) Join ARENA DANCES every Thursday at noon for Studio Stories, a podcast reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance history. Hosted by Mathew Janczewski, each week will feature a new renowned dance artist who has made an impact on the dance landscape in this big dance town. Know of someone whose connections should be shared? Let us know! Email us at arenadances@gmail.com
175 Episodes
Reverse
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 ...
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 a...
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...
A St. Paul native and tap and jazz dancer through high school, Colleen went to Utah and majored in dance. She came back to the Twin Cities on fire with the idea of performing and choreographing and teaching dance in the schools. While in Utah, she was exposed to and embraced for the first time “modern dance”. She came back to Minnesota in 1979 with a renewed 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 Lo...
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 includi...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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 Un...
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, D...
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 co...
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 w...
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...
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...
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 wa...
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...
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 C...
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 200...
Comments
Top Podcasts
The Best New Comedy Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best News Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Business Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Sports Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New True Crime Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Joe Rogan Experience Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Dan Bongino Show Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Mark Levin Podcast – June 2024
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States