Archive: Dance Writing, Reviews, and Podcasts

Airing Thursday, July 10 at noon, we speak with Doug Hooker to close out Season 18.

Doug graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Dance. He has had a variety of professional performing opportunities, including with the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps, the Broadway show Blast!, Dancing People Company, and locally with ARENA DANCES, Collide Theatrical Dance Company, Concerto Dance, José A. Louis, Paula Mann, Shapiro and Smith Dance, Rhythmically Speaking Dance, and Threads Dance Project.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join us at noon on Thursday, July 3, for Episode 186 with Frances Machala Cerro.

Frances built a distinguished dance career performing under Loyce Houlton at the Contemporary Dance Playhouse (later Minnesota Dance Theater), holding principal roles in works by Houlton and Glenn Tetley from 1963 to 1972. She went on to found a contemporary dance school and performing company in Santa Fe, Argentina, choreographed for major orchestral collaborations, and later helped establish Tulsa’s Local Motion Foundation while teaching through the Lincoln Center Institute.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kaleena Miller for Episode 185 airing at noon on Thursday, June 26!

Kaleena makes sound-focused dance and performance work, rooted in tap dance technique and deep listening modalities. She co-founded and co-directs Twin Cities Tap, which produced the acclaimed Twin Cities Tap Festival from 2015-2021. She also directs KMD2, a making-driven pre-professional ensemble, currently on hiatus. She is a proud member of the recently formed HeardTheory Collective, a group of interdisciplinary tap dance artists and scholars.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Photo credit: Galen Higgins

Studio Stories continues Season 18 with Aneka McMullen for Episode 184 airing at noon on Thursday, June 19!

Dancer and choreographer Aneka McMullen is an independent performing and teaching artist who lives to dance through life, inspire, and connect with all people through her passion for movement of all types. She hails from Minneapolis and holds a BFA in dance from The Ohio State University. Her extensive dance experience spans more than two decades and includes dynamic skills in performance and instruction in the genres of West African, Afro Modern, Modern, Ballet, Jazz, Hip Hop, Lyrical, and Liturgical.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Photo credit: BLAQBible

Studio Stories continues Season 18 with Jennifer Hart for Episode 183 airing at noon on Thursday, June 12!

Jennifer is an accomplished choreographer with commissions from notable companies like Ballet Austin, Wonderbound, and the University of Kansas. Hart has made a significant impact in both concert dance and cabaret, while also contributing as a teacher and curriculum supervisor at Ballet Austin’s academy. She trained at Minnesota Dance Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. Her performing career includes Minnesota Dance Theater, Ballet of the Dolls, and L.A. Chamber Ballet, as well as independent choreographers.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Photo credit: Matt Bradford

We launch season 18 of Studio Stories, with Sam Aros-Mitchell for Episode 182 airing at noon on Thursday, June 5!

Sam is an enrolled member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians and an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator. His work spans performance, sound, light and scenic design, choreography, and embodied writing. Rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, his practice activates performance spaces as sacred sites of transformation, remembrance, and futurity. Through embodied scholarship, he interrogates colonial histories, uplifts BIPOC artistic excellence, and envisions just futures. For more information, visit www.samarosmitchell.com.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Photo credits: Canaan Mattson

Studio Stories from April 24 is a special conversation hosted by Megan Mayer and Caroline Palmer of Mathew Janczewski talking about the inspiration and process behind Only the perverse fantasy can still save us – Episode 181.

Mathew Janczewski shares personal connections to the work and insight into the inspiration and making of the work.

A major new work from Minnesota-based choreographer Mathew Janczewski interrogates binaries and asks how creative repression changes us. After receiving a diagnosis of leukemia, Janczewski learned that his condition was caused by the mutation of a single chromosome. For him, the experience brought new resonance to artist Matthew Barney’s epic five-film The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002), which considers the embryonic stages of sexual differentiation—another biologically determined process that shapes our lives. Only the perverse fantasy can still save us takes inspiration from Barney and features an original score by Minnesota-based composer Joshua Clausen.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

May 16-17 at 7:30pm
McGuire Theater
Tickets start at $15, fees included.

Only the perverse fantasy can still save us is commissioned by the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN).

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Photo by Galen Higgins

Studio Stories from April 24 is a special conversation hosted by Megan Mayer and Caroline Palmer of Mathew Janczewski talking about the inspiration and process behind Only the perverse fantasy can still save us – Episode 181.

Mathew Janczewski shares personal connections to the work and insight into the inspiration and making of the work.

A major new work from Minnesota-based choreographer Mathew Janczewski interrogates binaries and asks how creative repression changes us. After receiving a diagnosis of leukemia, Janczewski learned that his condition was caused by the mutation of a single chromosome. For him, the experience brought new resonance to artist Matthew Barney’s epic five-film The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002), which considers the embryonic stages of sexual differentiation—another biologically determined process that shapes our lives. Only the perverse fantasy can still save us takes inspiration from Barney and features an original score by Minnesota-based composer Joshua Clausen.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

May 16-17 at 7:30pm
McGuire Theater
Tickets start at $15, fees included.

Only the perverse fantasy can still save us is commissioned by the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN).

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Photo by Galen Higgins

Studio Stories this week airing at noon on April 24 is a special conversation hosted by Megan Mayer and Caroline Palmer of Mathew Janczewski talking about the inspiration and process behind Only the perverse fantasy can still save us – Episode 181.

Mathew Janczewski shares personal connections to the work and insight into the inspiration and making of the work.

A major new work from Minnesota-based choreographer Mathew Janczewski interrogates binaries and asks how creative repression changes us. After receiving a diagnosis of leukemia, Janczewski learned that his condition was caused by the mutation of a single chromosome. For him, the experience brought new resonance to artist Matthew Barney’s epic five-film The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002), which considers the embryonic stages of sexual differentiation—another biologically determined process that shapes our lives. Only the perverse fantasy can still save us takes inspiration from Barney and features an original score by Minnesota-based composer Joshua Clausen.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

May 16-17 at 7:30pm
McGuire Theater
Tickets start at $15, fees included.

Only the perverse fantasy can still save us is commissioned by the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN).

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Photo by Galen Higgins

Studio Stories this week is with the CANDY BOX 2025 Featured Artist Cheng “Technica” Xiong for Episode 180 airing at noon on Thursday, April 17!

Cheng Xiong is a local artist, teacher, and community leader. Xiong grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Dance at the University of Minnesota. Though he began his journey as a street dancer, through his studies, he broadened to different styles and professional skills. Xiong is also a Hmong dance artist/researcher who is among the first in Minnesota to fuse forms of breaking, contemporary, and acrobatic dance styles. He is currently a company member of Black Label Movement and has recently worked with local professional companies such as STRONGmovement, BRKFST Dance, and Minnesota Timberwolves’s First Avenue Breakers.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Come see Cheng “Technica” Xiong’s premiere at the ninth annual CANDY BOX Dance Festival, April 24-26. Tickets here!