Works of Edgar Allan Poe animate James Sewell Ballet's fall performances, Oct. 26-Nov. 4

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The poetry and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, a literary icon of American Romanticism, provide the grist for James Sewell’s choreographic mill and his company's new ballet, “Takes On Poe.” James Sewell Ballet will present the new work as part of a dance macabre-themed fall program at The Cowles Center for Dance in Minneapolis, Oct. 26-Nov. 4.

James Sewell Ballet • Oct. 26-Nov. 4 • Photo Erik Saulitis

For "Takes On Poe," Sewell draws animation from Poe’s poems “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells,” and the short stories “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” all published in the 1840s. 

Born in Boston in 1809, Poe grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and gained renown as author, poet, editor, and literary critic before his death in Baltimore in 1849. He has been tagged as the “inventor of the modern detective story.”

The fall program also will include the classical “Giselle Pas De Deux,” and the revival of Sewell's “Grave Matters” (2011). Kathy Staszak designed costumes and Kevin A. Jones designed lighting for the program.

“An Autumn Scare,” a 60-minute matinee for families, Saturday, Oct. 27, will feature excerpts from the fall program and a costume parade across the stage for young audience members “as they are or will be” for Halloween.

Tickets are available on-line at thecowlescenter.org, and by phone at 612.206.3600.


James Sewell Ballet's fall season follows on its performance, Oct. 12, at the Tuacahn Center for the Arts in St. George, Utah.


Updated: Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012, 08:37am: The company's fall program also will be presented at Edson Auditorium, University of Minnesota Morris, 7:30pm, Friday, Oct. 19. For tickets call 320.589.6077. A ballet master class, free and open to the public, will be offered in the Humanities Fine Arts building, Thursday, Oct. 18, 4pm-5:30pm.

A Minnesota dance family reunion and legacy

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Someday, scholars pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Minnesota will write the definitive histories of Minnesota's and the Twin Cities' performing arts scenes. Significant portions of their research will draw heavily upon records generated over the past 50 years by members of a remarkable family of artists.


Many of the artistic heirs of that family's influence reunited in Minneapolis' Lowry Hill neighborhood, May 5, for an evening of mellow memories and music. Approximately 100 grandparents, parents, and toddlers gathered in the soon-to-be-former family home of the Nancy Hauser Dance Company and School, overlooking the intersection of Franklin and Hennepin avenues from the upper floors at 1940 Hennepin.


For Minnesotans who came of age in the 1960s and 70s, the Hauser company and school occupied one of the central artistic positions in the zeitgeist that produced housing coops, anti-Vietnam war protests, and the worker-owned coop movement. In those days, we knew that ballet was something that came from Communist Russia when Ed Sullivan featured it on his Sunday night variety show on CBS television. What little we knew of modern dance emanated from the doings of Hauser and her colleagues at the Guild of Performing Arts, a music and dance school with a small theater and art gallery centered in the bohemian enclave of Minneapolis' West Bank. The area was known for a time as the Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest.


While Hauser's work flowed from the Mary Wigman and Hanya Holm traditions of modern dance, the remarkable story of her company is that of its service as the crucible from which the elements of contemporary dance in Minnesota exploded and continue to differentiate themselves, 51 years after its founding in 1961.


As fashions and generations changed, it was perhaps inevitable that present-day dance afficionados have little or no knowledge and appreciation of the statewide, domestic, and international touring the company accomplished, nor of the far-reaching contributions made by its students, performers, and choreographers.

A small list of Hauser alums includes the choreographer Ralph Lemon; Lisa Naugle, the chair of dance at the University of California-Irvine; the choreographer and artistic director Gary Lund, whose work has been presented throughout Europe and at New York's Joyce Theater and Dance Theater Workshop; Sara Pearson, a professor at the University of Maryland; Stephen Koester, a professor at the University of Utah; and Nancy Evans Doede, director of the Nancy Evans Dance Theatre in Los Angeles. Artists from the milieu who remain active in the Twin Cities include Gerry Girouard, Derek Phillips, Pam Gleason, Susana di Palma, Laurie Van Wieren, and Jane Peck, among many others.


The artistic talents and interests of the Hauser family exceed the dance pursuits of Nancy and her daughter, Heidi Hauser Jasmin. They include the sculpture and visual art of Alonzo Hauser, who founded the Art Department at Macalester College in 1945, and the classical and flamenco guitar virtuosity of sons Tony and Michael.

My first close crossing of paths with the Hauser company and family occurred in 1986. To help establish a new purpose for itself following the opening of the Ordway Center for Performing Arts in January that year, The O'Shaughnessy, a 1,700 seat auditorium on the campus of St. Catherine University in St. Paul, created the O'Shaughnessy Dance Series, featuring six or eight Twin Cities dance companies during the spring months. I attended rehearsals and performances of those companies, including Hauser, and wrote reviews for my radio program on KFAI. Pam Gleason, who organized last week's reunion, was a performer in my review.

In addition to a bountiful, pot-luck spread of food, a quintet, the Aurora Club Jazz Jam Live, provided music – kicking off with "Days of Wine and Roses" – while those touched forever by Hauser Dance took to the dance floor with each other or themselves to recall where they learned to love dance, some recreating favored roles from days past.

Jasmin announced that, since she stopped teaching last October, she and her husband, Paul Jasmin, have been organizing and archiving the company's 51 years of history, disposing of props and costumes, and preparing to end the 501(c)(3) status at the end of August. The archival documents will be turned over to the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota.

Updated: 10/19/2012 - 11:30pm CDT

Zenon Dance Company stands tall with brilliant program for its 29th spring season

Minneapolis, Minnesota


A poster hangs in a stairwell of my house for the first performances by the Zenon Dance Company, presented in a studio setting at the Hennepin Center for the Arts, April 6-8, 1983. Preview performances were held a week earlier, March 30-31, at the Edina Community Center. 

Leslie O'Neill & Scott Mettille, rock stars in Zenon's shining galaxy

The occasion represented a leap of faith for the dancers and their artistic director, Linda Andrews, as they assumed the trappings of a professional ensemble, replacing their previous status as advanced students with the pre-professional Rezone [modern] and Just Jazz companies fielded by the Ozone Dance School.


The new, professional Zenon was viewed by many as an impertinent upstart, and its debut program offered what most observers at the time, and for some years afterward, considered to be an improbable and unworkable mix of modern and jazz dance choreography. The opening bill featured works by Hannah Kahn, Charlie Vernon, Lewis Whitlock, Linda Shapiro, Wil Swanson, Lynn Simonson, and Anne Gunderson.


The notion that dancers could cross-train to perform many styles of modern dance, as well as jazz dance, was considered to be something of a joke by many local and national gatekeepers who served on the staffs and granting panels of service organizations, foundations, government agencies, and the media. It took many performance seasons and grant-making rounds to convince them to open their minds, trust their eyes, and lend their support.


After 29 years, many of those original pooh-bahs consider Zenon to be Minnesota's artistic leader in dance and a competent competitor as a national innovator. 


After 29 years, the Hennepin Center for the Arts is known as the "education wing" of The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, and is connected to the new, 500-seat Goodale Theater, the first venue in Minnesota built specifically to serve the presentation needs of concert dance.


After 29 years, Zenon's program lineup remains an eclectic mix of the modern, the jazz, the cerebral, the entertaining, the dynamic, the bizarre, and the right-on. It is one of three companies (the James Sewell Ballet and Ballet of the Dolls are the others) that can draw an audience of respectable size for two weekends of performances twice a year.


Also after 29 years, Twin Cities dance artists retain a pathological need to label, rate, and categorize each other, their work, and venues. In that, they could save themselves much drama and misspent energy. As observed by the dance writer Lightsey Dharst, many modern dance companies in the Twin Cities "share dancers, and all rely to some extent on those dancers to generate movement, which means that you get to see the same great moves in concert after concert." 


Zenon's commissions of work from a variety of choreographers – many from afar and who are not one of us – mitigate the effects of this dynamic. This is particularly true of the standing tall program presented for the company's 29th spring season that opened May 4 at the Cowles Center, and runs through May 13. The program shines with a brilliance that should not be missed.


The world premiere of "Wine Dark Sea," reflecting on the connection of humans to ocean and choreographed in a modern dance style by Minnesota's Wynn Fricke, featured a symbiotic, original composition and performance by the percussionist Peter O'Gorman. The composer's participation represented one of the first projects underwritten by the Live Music for Dance Minnesota program of the American Composers Forum.


At rise, eight dancers in close proximity faced the audience from upstage center, heads uplifted, elbows crooked above their faces, and legs moving to lateral tendu in costumes crafted by Annie Cady. For an instant, one perceived thrilling aspects of Alvin Ailey's "Revelations," presented in Minneapolis earlier in the week by the Northrop Dance Series.


Two major movements featured two, well-crafted quartets. That for the men, Tristan Koepke, Scott Mettille, Stephen Schroeder, and Gregory Waletski, resembled voguing at times, and that for the women, Mary Ann Bradley, Tamara Ober, Leslie O'Neill, and Laura Selle Virtucio, worked on and into the floor. During the latter, the men crouched across and behind an upstage scrim, unfolding vertically while each struck, in turn, a single toned triangle in sync with O'Gorman's larger theme.


Although an audience member was overheard at intermission to say that most dances, everywhere, could stand to be cut by five minutes, the primal and solid "Wine Dark Sea" ended with an abruptness that called out for one more movement to lend a sense of completeness.


I retain my earlier assessment that "Booba" (Hebrew for "doll") from 2008, represents "an odd set of excerpts" from a full-evening work by Andrea Miller, a graduate of The Juilliard School. Set to music by Balkan Beat Box, the work engages with a series of personality-expressing divertissements, opening with a stage-right-to-left shimmy led by Schroeder, followed by O'Neill, Mettille, Ober, Koepke, and Bradley. Miller's choreography resembles a cross between disco and breaking, and Schroeder and O'Neill shine in a duet that could reflect characters from The Big Bang Theory.


If anything will instill in me an appreciation for postmodern dance that moves beyond grudging, it will be the dances of the choreographer Morgan Thorson, whose work has been recognized and supported by nearly every major funding entity in the field. She accepts, on an elemental level, that dance should include at least a minimal amount of intelligent movement that also does not require an advanced degree to follow and understand. 


In her new, second creation for Zenon, "All Parts ˆAre Welcome," she crafts a mesmerizing world that seeks to "stare down our worst conflicted feelings about life." Thorson immerses herself holistically in the details of her creations, holding credit here for costuming in addition to choreography, and sharing billing for lighting design with Mike Grogan. 


She has described "All Parts ˆAre Welcome" as bringing "everything that makes us human into the choreographic process by way of observation, same sex attraction, flipping, dominance, rejection, a desire for intimacy, lies, compartmentalizing, obedience, manipulation, wanting to be seen, arrogance, love" and more.

Some of her parts struck me as weird, but very pleasingly so. From the opening moment when Selle Virtucio burst through the curtains upstage center, we took a journey both light and dark with music created by Chris Schlichting and occasional vocalizations by the dancers. On first viewing, the ending appeared to fritter away weakly in contrast to the intentional composition that preceded it, almost as though Thorson lost her nerve or her interest, and walked away.


In the dance's latter minutes, Thorson has the leggings, the curtains that mask the sidelights and offstage walls, rise into the fly-loft, seemingly because they can. The time-worn gimmick adds nothing here and, frankly, her work has outgrown it.


With no sets or gimmicks, a wearied and troubled world needs the moments of joyful and spectacular uplift delivered by "Pink Martini," the evening's closer.


Since its debut last fall, "Pink Martini," has served a heart-melting grin from beginning to end, and as the capstone work of Zenon's sterling, 2011-12 season. It represents a level of sleek and chic choreographic and performance sophistication that the town needs in its collective dance repertoire. With some smoothing of sound transitions between musical segments, one hopes it might become a signature work for a company that has never known one. 


For audiences present at the work's creation, however, any future cast will be hard-pressed to match the accomplished appeal of the present ensemble of eight, collectively the strongest and best of Zenon's 29 years. The choreographer, Marius Olszewski, created it for them and they own it totally. 


Crafted as a series of ballroom dance vignettes using cha-cha and mambo styles set to music of Rosemary Clooney and Perez Prado and His Orchestra, "Pink Martini" offers the dancers star turns that exude confidence, drip with sex appeal, and glow with glamour. 


The opening solo by Mettille, a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota's Dance Program, set the exciting tone and standard for all that followed. When joined by O'Neill for an ensuing duet, their combined effort was electric. The pairing of these natives of Minnesota (him) and of Wisconsin (her) created a charisma that elevated them to rock stars in the company's shining galaxy.


Additional pairings – of Waletski and Bradley, Selle Virtucio and Schroeder, Ober and Koepke, O'Neill and Schroeder, Mettille and Waletski, and Bradley and the guys, along with quartets for the men and for the women – combined to evoke a huge "Yes!" and ovation from their audience.


Over time, dancers and dance companies, like athletes and sports teams, experience seasons of triumph and loss. For one who discovered the idea of Zenon before its debut performances in 1983, the company has danced through periods difficult to watch. Not so in recent years. The triumph of the present season holds cause for much celebration and higher aspiration for the times to come.


For tickets to Zenon Dance Company at The Cowles Center, call 612.206.3600. 

What a wearied, troubled world needs: Zenon Dance Company in Marius Olszewski's  "Pink Martini"

Gary Peterson served as managing director of Zenon Dance Company from 1986 to 1991. • Photos by Steve Niedorf.

Behind the scenes of the Sewell Ballet's "Opus 131"

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Beethoven completed his Quartet for Strings No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 131, in 1826, the year before his death. That he was deaf when he composed the 40-minute work remains reason for amazement, even – and especially – in the jaded, show-it-to-me culture of our present century.


I recall the first time I heard the work.

"Opus 131" • Cory Goei & Leah Gallas

Following the conclusion of a performing arts conference and showcase in Chicago, I was driving across Wisconsin to Minneapolis on a Sunday afternoon in September 1995 with three members of the James Sewell Ballet. We had stopped earlier at the resort town of Wisconsin Dells, primarily just to say we had done so. 


James Sewell was going to begin choreographing a new ballet set to Opus 131 the next day. None of us had heard the music, so Sewell played it over the van's sound system as we drifted along I-94 toward the Minnesota border and into setting sun. The seven movements, each with a distinct feeling, are played through without pause.


Created for six dancers at its 1995 premiere at The O'Shaughnessy in St. Paul, "Opus 131" featured three partnered pairings by Anna Laghezza and Sewell, Sally Rousse and Christian Burns, and Penelope Freeh and Joel Klausler.


When reprised during the 2002-03 season, Sewell expanded the work to four pairings: Freeh and Matthew Keefe, Rousse and Sewell, Peggy Seipp and Benjamin Johnson, and Julia Welsh and Justin Leaf. JSB's touring schedule was extensive that year, and "Opus 131" saw action on stages throughout the country. 


One of those stages, a college in New England, would be followed by a Sunday matinee at Brooklyn College in New York City. It would be the company's first gig in the city since performing at Hunter College in Manhattan in March 2001.


In Minneapolis on Friday, April 11, 2003, it occurred to me that it would be fun to make the scene in Brooklyn, and I told my administrative colleagues that I would go if fares were under $200. Through the wonders of online booking, I found a round-trip to LaGuardia for $184, and arrived at the hotel in Brooklyn 30 minutes before the company drove in the next afternoon.

The Parker Quartet

Sunday, April 13, was Palm Sunday, and the staff at Brooklyn College had no expectations of filling even half of the 2,500 seats in Whitman Hall. I arrived at the theater in the morning with Kevin Jones, the production manager, and Matthew Keefe, who served the dual role of dancer and wardrobe master. My job was to not interfere, pace, and hold court in the lobby when the audience arrived.


For a while, it seemed as though there would be no audience. In addition to being Palm Sunday, it was one of those bright and romantically languid Sundays that only New York City can muster, and the streets of Brooklyn were bereft of movement. Finally, as though a faucet was turned on, people arrived from nowhere to take their seats. 


The performance began, and I watched from the back of the theater where I could pace with my usual thoughts, hoping that the performance went well, that the audience had an engaging time, and that terrorists or some other mayhem did not disrupt the scene. 


My blood pressure shot up as a series of episodic camera flashes appeared from the audience, not far from the stage. Cameras are never allowed in live performances out of consideration for other audience members and to protect performer safety and intellectual property interests. The nature and length of the music and dance, however, meant that trying to confiscate a camera would be more disruptive than the flashes, and I seethed in silence.


At intermission, while stationed near the lobby exits looking for a wayward camera, a college press officer walked up and asked if I was with JSB and could I identify photos of the dancers for Anna Kisselgoff, the senior dance writer for the New York Times. In our brief, pleasant exchange of business, she noted – a bit archly, I thought – that our public relations game had left something to be desired for this performance.


Neither we nor the college had thought of trying to schedule a photo call for the press given that we had a single performance, and I was thunderstruck by the thought that Kisselgoff had brought a photographer "all the way to Brooklyn" on Palm Sunday. I also was glad that we had taken pains to make our program notes look as respectable as possible. 


Back in Minneapolis, two mornings later, I received an early call from the mother of a JSB dancer who told me I would never believe that day's New York Times. She was right.


Across the top, front page of the arts section, and under the headline "Balletic Sonnets, Surprises Included," was a full-color photo of the JSB dancers taking a curtain call in Brooklyn for "Opus 131."


In her review, Kisselgoff wrote,

Someone needs to give the James Sewell Ballet from Minneapolis and Mr. Sewell's always imaginative, often exquisite ballets a full season in New York. In the meantime, thanks go to the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts for presenting Mr. Sewell's chamber troupe with three New York premieres at Brooklyn College's Whitman Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Sewell is one of American ballet's best choreographers, albeit one who composes sonnets rather than epics. This lack of pretension can make his work look deceptively gentle, but it is not modest. Grounded in a neoclassical style that is exploited in different ways, his choreography brims with surprises in movement invention.

This rich texture was obvious on Sunday in ''Opus 131,'' a fanciful, plotless ballet set to Beethoven.

Quite simply, reviews do not get much better than that. Most artists, let alone dancers, will never get their names and photos splashed across a page of the New York Times.


It is no longer my job to pace at the back of theaters during JSB performances. Instead, I sit calmly and expectantly in the audience, as I did last Friday at The Cowles Center for the latest iteration of "Opus 131," this time for seven dancers: Nicky Coelho, Leah Gallas, Cory Goei, Chris Hannon, Nic Lincoln, Sally Rousse, and Eve Schulte.


This go-round has its own special excitement. For the first time, the dancers are performing to live music, provided by The Parker Quartet, an exquisite ensemble of passionate talent whose members include Daniel Chong, violin, Karen Kim, violin, Jessica Bodner, viola, and Kee-Hyun Kim, cello. 

 
You can catch them at 8pm, April 20-21, and 2pm, April 22. Call 612.206.3600 for ticketing.


Gary Peterson served as executive director of James Sewell Ballet from 1995 to 2008.

Renovate: A Choreographers' Evening, v. 2012

Minneapolis, Minnesota


For five years, the Ballet of the Dolls and the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis have presented "Renovate," annual dance performances that display the creative outcomes of a dozen different dance makers and the performers they enlist or employ. Bravo to all involved, both for this year's production and for the sustained effort over time!


These presentations help keep dance insiders informed about the creative currents and personalities of their field. They also provide new and independent artists an opportunity to have their work seen by a public. Whether they also help develop a broader audience for the art form, however, is less certain. As a dance insider myself, I knew about this year's performances, but only barely.

  

"Renovate" • 5th Annual Choreographers' Evening at the Ritz Theater

For sure, enticing an audience in the hope of its engagement can be tough when the daily newspaper in town does not include one's performance in its print calendar listings. However, people with dances to be seen, whether their efforts are emerging or established, can and must do more to help their cause.


At minimum, we must consider how we communicate about what we are doing. Like other sponsors in this city and elsewhere, the Ritz attaches the title of "choreographers' evening" to these performances, even when an evening might be an afternoon. Moreover, for those not familiar with the ways and words of dance, the phrase "choreographers' evening" may evoke either opaque stares of incomprehension or visions of a who's-who cocktail party at which one is probably not welcome. 


If their intent is to introduce a performing product line to new customers, presenting venues and their partners may find it apt to use more vernacular descriptions, something, for example, like "a sampling of dance morsels," and explain how they are like the cheese samples handed out in grocery stores on Saturday mornings. Food, in other words, designed for the heart, mind, and soul.

"Going to the Soirée" • Jim Smith

God lives in the details, and words matter in a hyped-up world. People who cast ballots at the polls and spend dollars in the marketplace are a discerning lot. They pay attention to nuance. They seek value and authenticity. They can appreciate genuine innovation, but not claims of greatness or uniqueness. First, though, they must understand that and how each election, shopping trip, and performance is an occasion worth their participation.


I started this line of musing when a friend and I shared observations about the sparse attendance and performer-specific cheering sections at "Renovate: A Choreographers' Evening" at the Ritz, March 16. It may be bad form or insensitive to say so, but with 12 featured choreographers and many more performers taking the stage, the house, with seating for 240, should have been full and the level of applause more generalized.


Getting to there is no easy task. On the same evening, across the river and a mile away, a dance company celebrated its 20th anniversary with foot-stomping live music and dancing, veteran performers, and a new house built for dance. All 500 seats of the Cowles Center were sold out. With disrespect to no one, one wonders what the Cowles attendance might have been without the explicit sense of anniversary occasion. Often, when looking at standing room only, we consider "a win a win" and move on.


I have learned repeatedly not to trust the hopes and predictions of novice and veteran marketing administrators in the arts. As a friend from a presenting venue in northern Minnesota told me last month, "Ten years ago, I could look like a hero to my board of directors because all my projections came within 1% of plan and budget. Now, nothing that I put on stage is predictable, no matter what I do." 


Ultimately, these issues intertwine with the reality that no performing venue in our state, new or old, suffers from overcapitalization. In that, the allocation and distribution of Legacy Amendment funds by our arts establishment has been disappointing: they gamble too much on projects for the present with too little or no investment for the long term. That is musing for another time, however.


Given all that ballyhoo, how did I like "Renovate: A Choreographers' Evening"? Answer: The first half lacked a certain je ne sais quoi, primarily because the several excerpts from larger works did not fully engage. Overall, the evening provided a chewy and nourishing meal, with a varied selection of novice and experienced dance artists. Featuring fewer works of greater length might be a consideration for the future.


For five years, Lisa Conlin has curated Renovate with a panel of three consultants. This year's panel included Colette Illarde, Jim Lieberthal, and Carol Meyer, one of whom told me that this year's 12 choreographers were selected from an audition field of 21. The program got under way with a late start at 8:07pm.

Sarah LaRose-Holland

Sarah LaRose-Holland is a modern dance choreographer and performer with degrees in finance and dance from the University of Florida. Among other pursuits, she serves as artistic director of the Kinetic Evolutions Dance Company, presenter of the Kinetic Playground series at the Perpich Center for Arts Education and the Burnsville Performing Arts Center, and presenter of the Kinetic Kitchen dance series at Patrick's Cabaret. The excerpt offered from "Going to the Soirée," a work she premiered with Kinetic Evolutions at Old Arizona last November, did not stand up particularly well by itself as the program opener. Excerpts can be a gamble that way. It was a colorful work, with red, green, and white dresses, danced competently by Una Setia, Hai Dang Nguyen, Kayla Schiltgen, and Jenny Snug. Set to music by Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald.


"How to Make a Paper Crane," a solo created and performed by Lindsay M. Anderson, featured a precise, graceful dancer moving with and against the rhythms and images of music composed by Steffen Basho-Junghans and a film edited by Amanda Doerr. The difficulties in starting the film at the beginning of the work were not as unfortunate as if they had occurred during, and the technical crew knows that. Anderson, a modern dancer who has worked and performed with LaRose-Holland and others, holds degrees in dance and English from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.


Conlin, a dancing member of Ballet of the Dolls, staged the Lost Orphans excerpt from her "Blue Heaven," a poetic, seven-movement journey through the stages of grief. The full work had been presented a few weeks earlier at the Ritz and in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Four women, Conlin, Leila Awadallah, Raena Smith, and Jennifer Mack, moved to an original score by Mike Hallenback in a segment that worked as a cohesive unit. A question: A couple performers left the stage and moved into the house with lighting that was insufficient for the audience to see them; were they doing something that mattered? If not, why were they there?

Angharad Davies

Angharad Davies earned an MFA in dance from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, has performed throughout the world, and choreographed and taught in the United States and Germany. Currently, she teaches at the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and lectures at the University of Minnesota. "Fear," an excerpt from a larger work presented at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, studies the masking and managing of everyday anxieties, and was inspired by silent film images and German expressionist dance. Erin Search-Wells and Sam Johnson, both members of SuperGroup, joined Davies in a vocalized accompaniment to a less than satisfying movement segment. The visuals were striking: all three barefoot, Davies in purple dress, Search-Wells in red dress, and Johnson in white suit. In this setting, the lanky Johnson's expressive – though hirsute – face resembled that of a young Stan Laurel. 

Amanda Leaveck

Amanda Leaveck graduated from the University of St. Thomas with degrees in neuroscience and dance. She choreographed "I Love You," a fascinating solo danced by Christina Omlie to live guitar accompaniment by Tazz Germaine Lindsey. Nice, but I wanted more. We will probably see more with time. Leaveck directs Face Forward, a booking, event planning, and multimedia organization, and serves as artistic director of the Energy Dance Collective.

Christine Maginnis

Christine Maginnis, one of Minnesota's long-reigning dance divas, crafted an original, complex and complete psycho-drama. Throughout "Achtung Bitte!" its characters changed the orientation of set furniture pieces to reflect changing perspectives on three, time-lapse sequences. With Karl Heinzerline/The Butler as a witness, Maginnis/Frau Marquis vied for the attention of Gregory Waletski/Herr Marquis to scratch a particular and insatiable itch. Music of Frankie Yancovic, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, and Sergie Rachmaninoff. Maginnis will perform with Ballet of the Dolls for the first time in May 2012.

Jennifer Mack

Returning from intermission, the stage floor was covered with overlapping sheets of plastic laid wing-to-wing for "Just Within," a solo created and performed by Jennifer Mack. Accompanied by singer/guitarist Matt Marka, Mack moved slowly beneath the plastic from center stage left to upstage center where she emerged, as though from water, in a floor-length white frock and free-flowing long hair. The sound of moving plastic suggested that of rippling wind and water and complemented the distinctive visual imagery. Mack started her dance training in Rochester, Minnesota, and graduated with degrees in dance and arts management from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Karen Charles

For her part, Karen Charles holds degrees in ballet and computer science from Texas Christian University, and a Masters in education administration from Georgia State University. In Minnesota, she served leadership roles with the Perpich Center for Arts Education and the Main Street School of Performing Arts in Hopkins before founding the Threads Dance Project. Four of her company's dancers – Mackenzie Beck-Esmay, Michala Cornell, Karen Gullikson, and Jenny Pennaz – worked with a bench and a long stretch of black veiling fabric in "Childless Mother," set to Sweet Honey in the Rock. The program note told the tale: "A child should not leave the world before its mother. What does a mother do when her identity has been taken from her?" 


Jaime Carrera, a multi-disciplinary artist from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, totally owned his solo, "Residency," with a confidence – a conviction – that I have not seen in some of his earlier performances. Clad only in briefs, with house lights up, he brushed his teeth and danced for himself as one might do before a bathroom mirror when believing no one else was present. Or not caring if they were. Music by The Bad Plus.

Joanie Mix and Jason Lande

Another artist with a foot each in the Rochester and Twin Cities dance worlds has been busy since graduating with a degree from the University of Minnesota. Along with other activities, Joanie Mix co-directs the Rainy Day Cabaret. Roughly half of the eight dancers (Emma Barber, Lindsay Bullock, Sarah David, Emily Hansel, Jennifer Mack, Morgan Olson, Anat Shinar, Ashley Tanberg) in "Promenade Danse la Nuit" are members of that company. They performed to music of CocoRosie and Sneaker Pimps against a black-and-white film projection created by Mix and Jason Lande. From a dance and film with a social message that does not bash, we learn that there are 12,300,000 victims of sex trafficking every year, more than nine million are women, and many are minors. 


If one discounts the summer class sessions I took from a former Broadway hoofer who smoked through kick-ball-changes at the old MacPhail Center for the Arts, then Denise Armstead, another of our divas regnant, was my first get-down-to-business jazz instructor at Zenon Dance Company and School. "Feel My Monkey (WTF)" brought on a pleasant reverie as Armstead and Maginnis danced to Stephanie Lien and The Who with the sound of wind and old-time radio singing voices – Jackie O meets Maria Callas. I want to see these two dancing when both are 70. Armstead will perform at Patrick's Cabaret, Mar. 23-24 and 30-31, and at the Burnsville Center for Performing Arts, June 8.

Carrie Lande

Carrie Lande-Homuth holds a degree in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and moves in dance circles similar to the Rainy Day Cabaret whose ranks provided the six dancers for "Out of my Skin," her second work for a Renovate evening: Emma Barber, Lindsay M. Bullock, Non Edwards, Mackenzie Lewis, Joanie Mix, and Ashley Rose Tanberg. Set in two strong sections to music by Varttina, the first movement, in particular, displays powerful imagery with fists and arms. Parts of the work are strong enough to compete for a SAGE Dance Award. Lande-Homuth will have work represented at Kinetic Kitchen, May 4.


The original of this post was updated to correct the misnamed character portrayed by Gregory Waletski in Christine Maginnis' "Achtung Bitte!"

Olé! Viva flamenco y viva Zorro!

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The word "delight" describes one's reaction to the very full house that greeted the Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre for its debut performance at The Cowles Center for Dance, Feb. 24. With a near-capacity crowd of 500, the audience was probably the largest the company has enjoyed since its 1993 engagement at the 472-seat Joyce Theater in New York City.

"Zorro" artwork and animations by Jonathan Thunder

Unlike many of the Minnesota dance companies that have stepped-up their performance games by adding live music for the Cowles' inaugural season, Zorongo's dancers always have shared the stage with at least one instrumental and one vocal musician. For this occasion, the company included seven musicians, led by its musical director and guitarist Pedro Cortés, Jr. Their number included vocalists Vicente Griego and Marisa Carr, guitarist Tony Hauser, percussionist José Moreno, flautist Bobb Fantauzzo, and percussionist and vocalist Óscar Valero.


As she has throughout a long and storied choreographic career of translating authentic flamenco from Spain to both Minnesota and the concert stage, Artistic Director Susana di Palma crafted an original, flamenco story ballet, this time bearing the title of "Zorro in the Land of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker (Moningwunakauning)."

Susana di Palma, artistic director

For the stage drama, Di Palma drew autobiographical inspiration from the story of her great grandmother, Susan Peacock Chisholm, whose Ojibwe name, Naa'wakwe Gaabow i kwe, means "Center Standing Woman."


In a nutshell, Chisholm married a Scottish fur trader and lumberjack. In the family struggle about the upbringing of their children, around 1900 a Franciscan missionary priest baptized their two daughters and took them forcibly to the Catholic boarding school for Native children at Bayfield, Wisconsin, designed to obliterate their language and culture. 


Family tradition recounts Chisholm's rage at the injustice and her determination to get her girls back. At one point, she walked from the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin, all the way to Bayfield on the shore of Lake Superior, a distance of 80 miles. All of this drama was incorporated into the production.


Di Palma drew inspiration also from the novel "Zorro" by the Chilean writer Isabelle Allende, whose hero of Spanish and Shoshone parentage fights injustices against Native people in colonial California. In her fancy, Di Palma conjured the embodiment of the Ojibwe Trickster who morphs into Zorro to assist her great-grandmother.

Dancer Antonio Granjero, Zorro/Trickster

The production's impressive scale included poetry by the author Heid Erdrich, animation by the visual artist Jonathan Thunder, costumes by Sonya Berlovitz, puppets by Kristen Ternes, and lighting design by Mike Grogan.


The narrative, including requisite black capes and sword fights, played out against an omnipresent full moon among stylized birch trees with a dancing cast led by Antonio Granjero in the title role. Bridget O'Flaherty portrayed Susan Chisholm as a young woman, and Di Palma her older spirit form.

Pedro Cortés, Jr.

Rich in imagery on all levels, the performance was easily worth at least twice the admission price of $28, and Granjero's solo turns were worth that in themselves. I confess to missing the significance of Zorro's second cape which sported bright red lining.


A strong cast was rounded out by dancers Deborah Elias, Colette Illarde, Carolina Sierra, Gabriela Sierra, Myron Johnson, Andrea Plevan, Laura Horn, Jenna Laffin, Christine Kozachok, Catherine Higgins Whiteside, and Sarah Bartlett.


In its aspirations to provide a destination and all the tools of theater for the art form of dance, the Cowles Center was imagined and wrestled into existence to make possible exactly the kind of production that was Zorongo's "Zorro." One hopes to see many more like it, witnessed by capacity audiences.

Minnesota's Ananya Chatterjea performs in Albuquerque festival

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Ananya Chatterjea, artistic director of Minnesota's Ananya Dance Theatre, presented a solo performance as part of a festival of indigenous performing arts in Albuquerque, March 9-10. 

l-r: Sina Soul, Rulan Tangen, Ananya Chatterjea • March 9, 2012

The festival, titled "Night of Stars*Moon*Water," was produced by Dancing Earth, an ensemble led by Rulan Tangen that performs contemporary indigenous dance works. The festival was presented in partnership with the National Hispanic Cultural Center at the Albuquerque Journal Theatre. 


In addition to Chatterjea, festival performers included members of Dancing Earth, songstress Sina Soul, Orixa dances, guests from the Santa Fe Indian School Poetry Team, and Miss Blackfoot Nation of Canada 2008 (aka Andrea True Joy Fox).


Tangen, one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" in 2007, leads the Dancing Earth ensemble in Albuquerque, while her colleague, Jesus "Jacoh" Cortes directs Cuicacalli Escuela de Danza, an affiliated youth training program in San Francisco.

Why does my ticket state "8pm"?

Minneapolis, Minnesota


One of life's enduring mysteries: Why do most professional and student dance performances in the Twin Cities begin after the appointed hour announced in marketing materials and printed on tickets?


The practice of late starts disses patrons who place a priority on arriving early, meaning on time. Time is money, and keeping an audience of 200 waiting for five minutes past the stated curtain rise wastes 16 hours.


Many dancers and ensembles have built the habit of "holding for 5" into their modus operandi as a preferred standard. Even at that, some groups still cannot get their shows on the stage for five or 10 minutes more.


Presumably, these delays are rationalized as a courtesy to those who are running late for any reason or no reason. However, the standard should be "If you are late, you are late."


Which leads to another peeve endemic to dance performances. What's with all the continuous and mindless seating of late-comers?


If late to the orchestra, opera, and most theater, the protocol is to wait for "an appropriate break" in the action. This can mean cooling one's heels in the lobby for 30 minutes. Been there and done that.


I recently attended a dance performance that already had started 15 minutes past the posting. Two people arrived even later and insisted on using their assigned seats in the front row. Never mind that the row was screwed up and only one seat was available. Exit one patron and the usher to a vestibule to conduct an animated and audible discussion before the usher carried in and placed a chair at one end of the front row. This incident was neither exceptional nor specific to one venue.


Just as a sold-out performance teaches audience members to buy ahead the next time, the establishment and enforcement of start times and late seating policies will prompt more people to plan ahead. 


Routine delays do not reflect a first-rate organization at work. When I purchase a ticket for your performance, we have an agreement that leaves no room to argue about the timing of our respective roles in the transaction.

All the campus a stage, and all its men and women merely players of many parts

Minneapolis, Minnesota

When Minnesota's outside temperature hits 52º in January, we do not waste the opportunity. While walking through the University of Minnesota's East Bank campus in Minneapolis last month, I took extra time to explore corners to which I had not returned since graduating in 1983.


Scott Hall, situated behind and west of the Northrop Memorial Auditorium, first inspired me when, as a high school thespian, I attended a play there, directed by a former colleague. Scott's use as a theater pre-dated the present-day Rarig Center and West Bank Arts Quarter.


A bit further west, the much more familiar Elliot Hall occupies an expanse along East River Road atop the Mississippi River bluff. I attended numerous classes in this old bastion of behavioral psychology while nailing down a degree in the subject. In relative terms, Elliot was a new campus structure 30 years ago. Today, it has an older, more settled appearance, hemmed in by mature trees of recent vintage and by the much older Burton Hall just to the north east. I had no reason to go inside.


I was present for the better part of a week in Burton Hall as a delegate to the Japan-America Student Conference in August 1974. Students from throughout the United States and Japan gathered for lectures, forums, and roundtables on culture, government, politics, and economics. We resided in East Bank dormitories, made a swimming trek to Amery, Wisconsin, held late-night conversations on the shores of Lake Nokomis in south Minneapolis, and closed with a day-long picnic on the shores of Lake Independence in the western suburbs. A highlight was an evening address by Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey.


The campus structure holding the greatest significance for the course of my life, however, was Norris Hall, tucked between Elliot and Burton halls at 172 Pillsbury Drive. When I walked by last month, bulldozers were tidying up debris from the building's demolition and filling in the depression where the swimming pool had been.


Norris Hall served as a resource for the Department of Physical Education in which the University's dance program had been housed for nearly 60 years. In 1982 and 1983, a few hundred other students and I attended modern dance classes in the Norris gymnasium with its wood-over-concrete floor. One class, in the summer of 1982, was taught by guest dance artists, Rob Esposito and Marcia Weadall-Esposito.


Rob and Marcia assigned us to attend dance performances and submit written papers about them. In those days, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board sponsored free, open-air dance performances at the Nicollet Island Amphitheater. To save money, most of us went to the Island for our assignments. These performances provided my first introductions to the New Dance Ensemble, the Rezone Dancers, and the Just Jazz Dancers. The latter two subsequently merged to form the Zenon Dance Company which I joined as co-manager four years later.


When, in 1983, the University moved to abolish the dance program for cost-cutting reasons, Nadine Jette – who had been my first modern dance instructor – marshaled the forces that moved dance to the Department of Theater Arts (and Dance), and began the fund drives for endowed professorships and for the new building that opened in 1999 as the Barbara Barker Center for Dance.


Campus buildings serve as mere stages for some of the scenes from our lives. One can only wonder what today's dance students will find and recall when walking through 30 years hence!

Contempo Physical Dance: Standing ovation, sold-out house greet newest Twin Cities dance company

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Half-way through the debut performance by Contempo Physical Dance, the new dance company founded by Marciano Silva dos Santos, I realized that tears were trickling down my face. My brain told me it was all about the refreshing innocence and conviction, and the promise of something good that was happening before my eyes.

Marciano Silva dos Santos

As an audience member, these are the moments to live for, not because the performance was flawless; it was not. Rather, it was impressive and inspiring. It engaged. It had raised the expectations of people who like dance that truly moves, and it had met – even exceeded – them.


The date was February 3, 2012. The setting was the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis. The dancers were the five men and three women who, in addition to dos Santos, presented a fusion of Afro-Brazilian dance, capoeira, and contemporary dance. The audience of 240 allowed the proprietors to hang up the "sold-out" sign.


The 60-minute performance offered a strong, presentational opening with dos Santos seated on the floor at center stage, rotating himself with his feet as, from alternating wings, the dancers entered singly, first four men, then the three women, and a final man. 


From this point, dancers and choreographer led their audience on a journey through 14 seamless sections set to music by Gilberto Gil, the Mavambo Trio, Evelyn Glennie, Divan, Naná Vasconcelos, Dan Savell, and Virginia Rodrigues.

Members of Contempo Physical Dance, Minnesota's newest company

Both capoeira and Afro-Brazilian dance were created by African slaves and their descendants during Brazil's colonial era. The primary characteristics of capoeira, a musical martial art, include speed, power, and complex, sweeping leg movements. In certain casual respects, it roughly resembles hip hop breakdancing.


Afro-Brazilian dance uses the feet to mark rhythm, while arms, chest, head, and hips move freely and independently. Classes in the form emphasize full-body expression, rhythm, and fine-tuned motor control.


The fusion danced by Contempo is both exceedingly rhythmic and musical. However, a dancer who cannot repeatedly crouch, stand, leap, and move while on demi pointe (the balls of the feet) will find the going near impossible in this company because s/he will lack the overall strength and stamina the work requires. Ditto for the dancer who cannot master discrete control over every part of one's body.


It seems to be a principle of this dance form that the dancers' bodies, and not their faces, do the expressing. Often, throughout, I wished the performers would let their faces do the talking, as they did so joyfully during the curtain call. It would have added so much more.

Contempo rehearsing capoeira and Afro-Brazilian dance

At least eight dancers filled the stage for at least 80% of the program. Early on, the rivulets of sweat flowing from the faces of a few of them appeared to be choreographed. Later, I noticed no sweat at all. Even when the full company fills the stage, dos Santos tends to keep the men grouped and moving in patterns separate from those of the women.


The dance ended, as it had begun, with dos Santos seated on the floor at center stage, rotating himself with his feet as, from alternating wings, the dancers entered singly, first four men, then the three women, and a final man.


Mike Grogan's lighting design was probably the best I have ever seen him accomplish. The costumes, designed by dos Santos, were striking in their simplicity. Initially, all wore dark, multi-colored and patterned tights to mid-calf. These were replaced later by plain white trunks to which, still later, were added white, faux fishnet vests.


For the dancers, being present at the creation of a new company may be an infrequent feature of their careers. This group is both very strong and very young. All of them had control of most of the choreography most of the time, and it will be satisfying for us and for them as they become even more self-possessed and strong in their new technique.


Four of the men are still pursuing BFA degrees in the dance program of the University of Minnesota's Department of Theatre and Dance: Davente Gilreath, Timothy Herian, Orlando Hunter, and Justin Reiter, while Irving Amigon is a recent graduate. Both Gilreath and Hunter previously attended the Perpich Center for Arts Education.


The women are more experienced performers. Laura Klein grew up in south Minneapolis, and has studied dance with the Laura Balfour Dance Company, the University of Minnesota, and Batsheva Dance Company in Israel. Roxanne Wallace has danced with Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater for more than 10 years. Jenny Pennaz, Contempo's co-founder, holds degrees in biology and dance from the University of Minnesota, and has studied dance in Brazil.


Dos Santos is a native of Brazil where he studied and performed dance with a number of schools and companies before moving to the United States in 2006. In Minnesota, he danced for five years as a member of TU Dance, and also has performed with the Penumbra Theatre and Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theatre. Dos Santos also teaches for the dance programs at the University of Minnesota and Carleton College, and offers workshops and residencies at other educational institutions throughout the state.


The title of Contempo's debut, full-length work is "Motirô," an indigenous word in Brazil that means "a meeting of people to build something together, helping one another along the way." That is an apt description of the endeavor that dos Santos and his colleagues have undertaken.


Contempo Physical Dance performances continue at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis, through February 5, 2012. For tickets: http://ritzdolls.com. Photos by Dwayne Williams Photography.

Dance theater at the intersection of artistic excellence and social justice

Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

The year 2012 marks the eighth anniversary of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT) as a creative and performing dance company based in Minneapolis. Led by its founder, Ananya Chatterjea, the ensemble’s 12 dancers employ the classical eastern Indian dance form of Odissi, combined with Yoga and the martial art of Chhau, to create and stage original works rooted in the life experiences of women of color.

Ananya Chatterjea

Chatterjea, a native of Kolkata (Calcutta), India, serves as ADT’s artistic director and choreographer. She also holds the positions of professor, and head of the dance program in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theatre Arts and Dance.

Her work has been supported and recognized by the Asian Arts Initiative, the McKnight, Jerome, and Bush foundations, Minnesota State Arts Board, City Pages, Minnesota Women’s Press, Black Indian Hispanic Asian Women In Action, and the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus, among others.

About her company’s work, Chatterjea says, “We pursue excellence in our artistry to forge pathways that generate forces of strength and beauty, galvanize strong communities, and embody a philosophy of possibility and liberation in a shared humanity.” 

ADT’s repertoire consists of more than 24, abstract and evening-length dance narratives built upon social justice themes. For example, the company examined environmental issues and their impact on women’s daily lives in a trilogy of works created over the three years of 2006 to 2009: “Pipaashaa” (extreme thirst), “DAAK” (call to action), and “Ashesh Barsha” (unending monsoon).

More recently, the dancers began a four-part examination of violence against women in the exploitation of land (“Kshoy!,” 2010) and the mining and distribution of gold (“Tushaanal,” 2011). It will complete this expressive study by addressing oil in 2012 (“Moreechika”) and water in 2013 (“Mohona“).

ADT presents one major production in the Twin Cities each year during September, emphasizing excellence of performance over frequency. Its productions, presented since the company’s inception at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis, feature original music, often with live musicians, and original costume, lighting and set designs.

ADT: Dance at the intersection of artistic excellence and social justice

ADT’s work is informed by its dancers’ research about social justice issues that arise from the lives and stories of women of color around the world. Their use of dance as a catalyst to engage audiences in a dialogue that poses questions and re-imagines the world makes constituent response a valued and welcome component of their creative process.

The year 2011 held numerous, accomplishments for this Twin Cities organization with a worldwide influence:

• Artistic director Chatterjea received a Guggenheim Fellowship in choreography;
• Performance on International Women’s Day at the College of St. Catherine, sponsored by Refugee and Immigrant Women for Change;
• Performance at re-opening ceremonies of the Weisman Art Museum;
• Performance at a presentation by environmental activist Majora Carter at the Ted Mann Concert Hall;
• Premiere of the evening-length “Tushaanal” at the Southern Theater;
• Company’s open audition attracted 20 aspiring dancers;
• Chatterjea presented lectures and solo demonstrations in Spain;
• Company was represented by performance and booth at the Midwest Arts  Conference, a “trade show” for the arts, and Chatterjea was invited to address “Equity in the Cultural Landscape.”

Over the years, ADT’s work also has been presented in 11 other U.S. cities (including Madison, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles), nine other states (Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and California), and nine other countries (Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, and Japan).

ADT’s next Twin Cities production, “Moreechika,” will be presented in September 2012.




Gary Peterson has been a member of the board of directors of Ananya Dance Theatre since 2009. Photos: V. Paul Virtucio.