Archive: Dance Writing, Reviews, and Podcasts

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 continue our special CANDY BOX Dance Festival edition hearing from Happy Hour Artist Emily Michaels King.

Emily Michaels King is a performing artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota exploring sensory and embodied engagement in live experiences through movement, multimedia, and visual art. Pairing minimalism and subtlety with cacophony and bared irreverence, Emily’s works employ the lush landscape of the inner world and the power of unapologetic vulnerability.

Tune in this Thursday, April 14 at 12:00pm to hear about Emily’s Happy Hour showing, 5:30-6:30pm of  ELECTRIC on Friday, May 6 as part of the CANDY BOX Dance Festival happening May 2-7 at the Southern Theater.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

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 continue our special CANDY BOX Dance Festival edition hearing from Featured Artist Leila Awadallah‘s and her company Body Watani.

Leila Awadallah (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker based between Minneapolis and Beirut. A body of indigenous Palestinian, Arab-American, SWANA, Sicilian and mixed Mediterranean ways and waves. She is the founder of the Body Watani dance project in partnership with Noelle Awadallah.

Tune in this Thursday, March 31 at 12:00pm to hear about Body Watani’s new work TERRANEA: Hakawati of the Sea as part of the sixth Annual CANDY BOX Dance Festival happening May 2-7 at the Southern Theater.

TERRANEA: hakawati of the sea is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project, co-commissioned by ARENA DANCES, Arab American National Museum, LINKS HALL INCORPORATED, and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

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 continue our special CANDY BOX Dance Festival edition hearing from Happy Hour artist, Alys Ayumi Ogura.

Alys Ayumi Ogura is a storyteller through her movement, voice, and quirky humor. Her dance training began in Japan, studying from the late famed godmother of Japanese contemporary dance, Mika Kurosawa. Her choreographies and performances have been curated for the Walker Art Center’s Choreographer’s Evening by Megan Mayer, BodyCartography Project’s/HIJACK’s Future Interstates, and most recently completing residence as part of Naked Stages. 

Tune in this Thursday, March 31 at 12:00pm to hear about the work Alys Ayumi Ogura is doing as part of the sixth Annual CANDY BOX Dance Festival happening May 2-7 at the Southern Theater.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

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 continue our special CANDY BOX Dance Festival edition hearing from Featured Artist power couple, Chris Yon/Taryn Griggs.

After many years of calling Minneapolis home in the 2000s’ Chris + Taryn now teach, perform and choreograph in Winston-Salem, NC, each with an impressive CV of a who’s who in the dance world and performance history of their work together.

Tune in this Thursday, March 24 at 12:00pm to hear about the homecoming of Chris Yon/Taryn Griggs as part of the 6th Annual CANDY BOX Dance Festival happening May 2-7 at the Southern Theater.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

What does it mean to be a truly welcoming organization and how can arts leaders be more inclusive hosts who foster belonging?

Dig into a discussion with two artists who regularly tackle these questions, Ananya Chatterjea and Marcus Young.

Filling the Well is a new podcast hosted by Marianne Combs and supported by Arts Midwest. After the episode, go deeper and explore tangible tools over at the Arts Midwest Ideas Hub.

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 continue our special CANDY BOX Dance Festival edition hearing from Happy Hour artist Ayumi Shafer.

Ayumi Shafer is an educator, choreographer, dancer, and co-founder of DanceBARN Collective. In 2013, she relocated from Oregon after she earned her MFA in Dance at the University of Oregon. Passionate about dance and education, she completed her thesis research on the idea of play and creativity being effectively integrated into a curriculum in dance in higher education. Prior to her arrival at the UO, Ayumi extensively trained in modern dance in the city of San Francisco, and earned a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University.

Tune in this Thursday, March 17 at 12:00pm to hear what Ayumi Shafer is sharing as part of the 6th Annual CANDY BOX Dance Festival happening May 2-7 at the Southern Theater.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

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 begin our special CANDY BOX Dance Festival edition hearing from Happy Hour artist Alexandra Bodnarchuk.

Alexandra Bodnarchuk, creates original works ranging from solos to evening length group works for the stage and screen. She is a 2021 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow at Jacob’s Pillow and a 2020 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow Finalist. Her most recent work, dance film Heritage Sites, premiered in 2020 and has been screening around the globe. She has been moving with Black Label Movement under the direction of Carl Flink since 2017.

Tune in this Thursday, March 10 at 12:00pm to hear what Alexandra Bodnarchuk is sharing as part of the 6th Annual CANDY BOX Dance Festival happening May 2-7 at the Southern Theater.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

Filling the Well, a new podcast from Arts Midwest, debuts on all platforms on February 28, 2022. Created to nourish, provoke, and inspire artists and arts leaders, this 5-part series features creative changemakers who share takes on how to harness creativity by shifting power dynamics, avoiding burn-out, building authentic community, sharing resources, and advocating for support.

Listen Now

“This podcast is for anyone who’s been struggling to navigate the past two years,” said Torrie Allen, President & CEO of Arts Midwest. “Whether you’re helping to imagine better futures or trying to solve complex problems, this is for you and your creative potential.” 

Filling the Well guests include Dr. Joi Lewis, Joe Davis, DeAnna Cummings, Tish Jones, Ananya Chatterjea, Marcus Young, Ashley Hanson, Anne O’Keefe-Jackson, Emily Ruddock and Michelle Ramos. 

Filling the Well is hosted by Marianne Combs, named 2020 Journalist of the Year by the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. “It’s been such a pleasure to have these conversations with some of the most creative minds in the field,” said Combs. “I hope artists and arts administrators will find the Filling the Well series both useful and inspiring as they navigate the challenges and opportunities of this unique moment in history.”

After each episode, listeners can access free articles in the Arts Midwest Ideas Hub to explore episode ideas further and act in their local community. Learn more about upcoming Filling the Well episodes, featured guests, and our podcast production team below.

Filling the Well is made possible with financial support from the Barr Foundation. Based in Boston, the Barr Foundation’s mission is to invest in human, natural, and creative potential, serving as thoughtful stewards and catalysts.

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 Rebecca Katz Harwood.

Rebecca Katz Harwood, the associate professor of Dance & Musical Theater at the University of Minnesota – Duluth, with an eclectic career as a performer, choreographer, teacher, researcher, and arts administrator. 

Tune in this Thursday, March 3 at 12:00pm to hear Rebecca’s studio story.

Available on our website or wherever you get your podcasts!

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.