Archive: Dance Writing, Reviews, and Podcasts

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 the threads of the old. – Robin Wall Kimmerer, paraphrased

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 Marilyn Habermas-Scher for Season 12, Episode 140!

Listen here, or check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

Marilyn Myo-O has an extensive background in the performing arts, including choreography, opera, vocal improvisation, performance art and story-telling. She is also trained in a number of body-mind practices, including Qi Gong and Body Mind Centering™. She is the originator of VoiceWork™, a body-based voice training, which she offers in private practice and she has taught at several colleges and universities.

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 the threads of the old. – Robin Wall Kimmerer, paraphrased

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 learn of Pam Gleason’s journey.

Visit http://www.arena-dances.org to listen, or check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

Pam has been creating, teaching and performing dance for over 40 years. She was involved with the Nancy Hauser Dance Company/Hauser Dance from the mid-1980s through 2011 as an apprentice, company member, teacher and choreographer, along with freelancing in the community. As director of MotionArt (co-founded in 2013 with Diane Moncrieff), she is dedicated to providing opportunities for people – no matter their age or ability – to move, express, learn, create and find community in dance – whether through the Ageless Dance class she initiated with Heidi Hauser Jasmin twenty years ago, or through other adult and children’s classes, monthly improvisation gatherings, somatic workshops and performances.

Join us this week for Studio Stories with the Off-Leash Area duo, Jennifer Ilse and Paul Herwig, for Season 12, Episode 138.

Off-Leash Area was founded in Minneapolis in 1999 and creates original interdisciplinary performance work. In its 23 years, OLA has created 31 original, evening-length performance works and many short-form works, taught classes in Inverted Dance and workshops in Performance and Scenic Design, been commissioned by the Walker Art Center and the O’Shaughnessy, and collaborated with an ever-growing community of the Twin Cities’ most exciting performance makers.

Visit here to listen, or check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

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 the threads of the old. – Robin Wall Kimmerer, paraphrased

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 sat down with Toni Pierce-Sands to learn about her journey. 

Prior to co-founding TU Dance, Minnesota native Toni Pierce-Sands performed with Minnesota Dance Theatre, Tanz Forum in Germany, Rick Odums in Paris, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where she was a featured soloist in such signature pieces as Revelations, Cry and Rainbow Round My Shoulder. Her command of the Horton Technique has led to teaching posts throughout the United States and Europe.

Toni directs programming and teaches classes at TU Dance Center in Saint Paul. She was a full-time core faculty member at the University of Minnesota for twenty years and also served as Director of University Dance Theatre. Toni has been featured in COSMOPOLITAN Germany and GQ publications, the American Express Alvin Ailey commercial, and the Lester Horton Technique instructional DVD series. She has written columns for Dance Studio Life magazine on various pedagogical approaches for modern dance. Toni was awarded a 2004 McKnight Artist Fellowship in Dance, named the Sage Awards’ 2011 Outstanding Dance Educator, and a panelist for the 2018 Dance Miami Choreographers’ Program. She currently serves as a member of the University of Minnesota’s Northrop Advisory Board.

Visit http://www.arena-dances.org to listen, or check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

Studio Stories airs Thursday, August 17 at noon with Deneane Richburg for Season 11, Episode 136.

Deneane is the founder and artistic director of Brownbody. Through Brownbody, the creative home for her choreographic work, she honors the complex narratives of U.S.-based Black diasporic communities by taking participants on journeys that disrupt assumptions and ideologies and disenfranchise popular narratives around blackness. Once a competitive figure skater, Deneane pushes the boundary of creative expression on the ice and stage.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Studio Stories airs Thursday, August 17 at noon with Nic Lincoln for Season 11, Episode 135.

Take a listen and learn about Nic’s path in dance, from traveling to perform with Dayton Ballet and Cleveland San Jose Ballet –  landing in Minnesota to dance for years with James Sewell Ballet. He has been named one of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine in 2013 and one of the “Artists We Love” by MN Monthly magazine, and selected for numerous prestigious commissions from the McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dance, O’Shaughnessy Theater, and Momentum at the Southern Theater.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Studio Stories airs Thursday, August 10 at noon with Suzanne Costello for Season 11, Episode 134.

Suzanne Costello joined Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater in New York City in 1979 and became its Artistic Co-Director in 1984. During her career with the company, she has been highlighted as a performer, choreographer, teacher, and rehearsal director. As Director of Arts & Education and Arts & Healthcare Programs for the company, she creates and facilitates the many community-inclusive projects SPDT has come to be known for nationally and internationally.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Studio Stories airs Thursday, August 3 at noon with Jane Skinner Peck for Season 11, Episode 133.

Jane Skinner Peck is a researcher, choreographer, dance historian, teacher, writer/playwright, and performer. She has worked across the United States, Canada, and France for over thirty years. She found that dance history enables her to combine her love of history with her love of dance. She has extensive training in both modern dance and dance history, directing performances with her company, Dance Revels Moving History, since 1990. Jane’s period choreography conveys varied past cultures and economic classes of the Upper Midwest and Europe in a most immediate and authentic way.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Studio Stories airs Thursday, July 27 at noon with husband and wife team, Matthew Keefe and Brittany Fridentstine-Keefe for Season 11, Episode 132.

Matthew Keefe and Brittany Fridenstine-Keefe – husband and wife dancers, choreographers, teachers and co-artistic directors of DanceCo Performance Company. Each have a depth of stories to share dancing throughout the country and internationally, and most know them as performers with James Sewell Ballet. 

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Studio Stories airs Thursday, July 20 at noon with Jess Forest (Jesse Neumann-Peterson) for Season 11, Episode 131.

Jess is a dancer, theater performer, choreographer, and visual artist that toured nationally as a company member, teacher, and community outreach worker with Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater (SPDT) for eight seasons. Before joining SPDT, he was a
company member, performer, and teacher with the intergenerational dance company Kairos Dance Theater (Kairos Alive!). As an independent dancer, he has performed with a number of local choreographers, such as Rosy Simas, Off-Leash Area, and many more. Jess is a 2014 Sage Award Recipient for Outstanding Dance Performer, awarded for his performances in The Student by Vanessa Voskuil, Under the Current by Sharon Picasso, and Azalea Nights by Christine Maginnis.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!