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ARENA DANCES Presents the CANDY BOX Dance Festival

We hope you’ve enjoyed the first couple days of the CANDY BOX Dance Festival gatherings and can join us for the remaining offerings. Featured Artists’ performances kick off Thursday, April 25 – opening night!

April 24-27, 2024
At The Southern Theater.

Featured Artists Performances – April 25-27, 7:30pm
Tristan Koepke
Paula Mann/Time Track Productions
jess pretty

Tickets:
$27 online and at the door; $20 student/senior discount.
Saturday, April 27 at 2:00pm is pay-as-able, available at the box office.

Dance Classes – April 24-26, 4:00-5:15pm on The Southern Theater stage
Wednesday – jess pretty
Thursday – Tristan Koepke
Friday – Kaitlyn Hawkins
Tickets: $10 for single class or $25 for 5-class pass.

Happy Hour Showings – April 24-26, 5:30-6:30pm
Wednesday – Amez Dance
Thursday – Duniya Drum and Dance
Friday – Penelope Freeh
Tickets: Suggested $12 donation or $25 for pass to all Happy Hour showings; pay-as-able at door only.

CANDY BOX Dance Festival Master Classes

CANDY BOX Dance Festival will offer master classes on The Southern Theater stage:

April 24-26, 4:00-5:15pm 
Wednesday – jess pretty
Thursday – Tristan Koepke
Friday – Kaitlyn Hawkins

Register
$10 for single class.
$25 for 5-class pass, saves you $5 for all three.

TU Dance: THREAT Educational Performance

We would like to invite the educators in our community and their students to attend this special event!

TU Dance is providing an educational performance featuring THREAT, a company project with choreography by Yusha-Marie Sorzano and other concepts and elements of the art form of dance. Our 10 dancers (including 5 dancers from TU Dance’s CULTIVATE, trainee program) welcome you to experience the connective power of dance. This educational performance is only available to students enrolled in schools throughout the district.

Thursday, April 25
10:30-11:25am
At The O’Shaughnessy at St. Catherine University.
Cost: $3.50
For more information about THREAT and to register, click here.

TU Dance educational performance featuring THREAT is provided thanks to a generous grant provided by the Saint Paul Foundation and Bigelow Foundation.

TU Dance: THREAT by Yusha-Marie Sorzano

THREAT is an evening-length work choreographed by TU Dance Guest Artist Yusha-Marie Sorzano.

THREAT is a concert dance theater work that aims to provoke an interrogation of the roles we play as individuals and communities in hierarchies. The work posits that hierarchies have the power to control our behavior and infiltrate our thoughts, even when no authority is present to enforce the rules. Using a physical language and soundscape that fuses multicultural traditions and styles of the West and the African Diaspora, this social exploration invites audiences into a modern narrative that speaks to the universal experience of authority, obedience, and rebellion.

Friday, April 26 at 7:30pm
Saturday, April 27 at 7:30pm

Purchase Tickets
Adult: $40
Student/Senior: $30
St. Kate’s Student: $5
Subscription information can be found here.

TU Dance is one of four dance companies participating in the pilot program The O’Shaughnessy Dance Cohort.

“Making Climate Change Visible” Open Exhibition with Performance by RJDT

Ruby Josephine Dance Theater (RJDT) has been commissioned to create a durational performance reacting to and dancing within local textile artist Carolyn Halliday’s work. Halliday’s current exhibition titled “Making Climate Change Visible” is on display at the Kolman and Reeb Gallery where RJDT will perform on May 2 as a part of the Northrup King Building’s Open Thursdays.

This performance is an improv score about the beauty that can be contrastingly present within and despite destruction. Created by artistic director Ruby Josephine Smith in collaboration with the dancers, Kendall Kramer and Colin Myles Edwards (Bzychln), this cycling duet will weave around Halliday’s large woven sculptures in the gallery space and react to live music played by local cellist Rosa Vieirra Thompson.

Thursday, May 2
Performance from 6:00-6:30pm with an artist talk to follow at 7:15pm.
Free event.

More information about the exhibition.

Minnesota Dance Theatre Presents SPRING

Last chance for now! Don’t miss this opportunity to join Minnesota Dance Theatre for the company’s parting performances.

Witness the Minnesota premiere of And yet here we are, by Seattle-based choreographer Nia-Amina Minor. This piece, originally created on Pacific Northwest Ballet, lives in an imaginative space propelled by rhythm. Set to a soundscape that is both turbulent and reflective, this work urgently explores what is and the possibilities of what could be.

The performance is rounded out by world premieres from local choreographer Javan Mngrezzo, MDT company member Zachary Tuazon, and MDT Interim Artistic Director Elayna Waxse. With music from Chopin to jazz to indie rock, this program displays the diversity and power of our remarkable dancers.

Friday, May 3 at 8:00pm – pay as able
Saturday, May 4 at 8:00pm
Sunday, May 5 at 2:00pm
Friday, May 10 at 8:00pm
Saturday, May 11 at 8:00pm
Sunday, May 12 at 2:00pm

Tickets: $32. Student: $20.

MotionArt First Friday Improv Gathering

Friday, May 3
6:30-8:00pm
Center for Performing Arts, Studio 105w – next to 38th Street entrance.
Suggested donation is $5-$15. No one turned away for lack of funds.

This event is open to people of all ages and abilities. Enjoy being present in the moment, responding to other dancers, finding new ways of moving, and discovering form as it emerges during this fun evening of creative movement. We’ll begin with an informal warm-up before improvising together based on movement ideas offered by participants. 

Come to move, to dance, to observe, or some of each!

Feldenkrais® ATM + Gaga/people

A workshop lead by Sarah Baumert and Berit Ahlgren, combining the rich languages of Feldenkrais and Gaga. Both practices aim at discovering powerful connections in the body through movement and mindful listening of the physical experience.

Friday, May 3
6:00-8:00pm

This two-hour workshop will consist of a gaga/people class and Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lesson, with hybridized class content and time for discussion at the end. Comfortable clothing to move in is suggested.

Everyone is welcome.
No prior experience required.

Sarah Baumert is known for her thorough and diverse instruction and her dedication to holding space for individual personal discovery. She facilitates whole body alignment in her students as a way for them to access balance, strength, mobility and physical clarity. Through sensory rich movement experiments, she guides students in cultivating mindfulness and deepening their learning process.

Receiving Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Grant in 2011, Berit Ahlgren traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel to study the Gaga Movement Language, and subsequently moved to Israel to pursue teacher certification between 2011— 2012. Ahlgren earned her MFA in Dance from Tisch School of the Arts in 2016, and has since been on faculty at the University of Minnesota and Winona State University, performing with independent choreographers between Minneapolis and New York, and choreographing her own body of work for both stage and camera under her dance organization, HoneyWorks.

Tapestries 8.0 by Threads Dance Project

New work from Tapestries 8.0, Threads Dance Project’s annual showcase of emerging choreographic talents.

This year’s show commissions new works from three choreographers – Da’Rius Malone, Averie Mitchell-Brown, and Shoko Tamai. The show also features the repertory work CALL by Threads Dance Project’s Artistic Director, Karen L. Charles. CALL uses the African/American tradition of call and response to sculpt the often difficult relationship between the dancer and the dance.

Friday, May 3 at 7:30pm
Saturday, May 4 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 5 at 2:00pm

Tickets:
$30 General Admission
$25 Seniors
$22 Students

Tapestries 8.0 celebrates diversity of thoughts and ideas through each choreographer’s varying style and movement stories. From Hip Hop to Contemporary dance, the audience will experience dance artistry at its best.

About the Guest Performances
Inspired by “The Shadow-Work Journal” and “The Inner Work,” Da’Rius Malone embarks on confronting hidden hardships, healing their inner child, and breaking generational trauma through vulnerable movement creation with dancers’ stories intertwined.

Averie Mitchell-Brown explores groundbreaking dance performances celebrating Hip Hop social dances, street styles, and movements of the African diaspora. Set to revolutionary music, these performances foster dialogue, community, and transformative exploration of societal norms and perspectives.

Shoko Tamai invites you on a dance journey inspired by life’s transformations, from moon cycles to butterfly metamorphosis, exploring self-discovery, forgiveness, and intergenerational connections.

Apply: Ballet Co.Laboratory’s 2025 Emerging Choreographer

Are you a Minnesota-based emerging choreographer with formal ballet training? Apply for our Laboratory II: Emerging Choreographer Program for a paid opportunity to create a new, full-length, staged production performed by the upper-level students at The School of Ballet Co.Laboratory in March 2025!

The story that Ballet Co.Laboratory will be asking the 2025 emerging choreographer to draw inspiration from is the children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon – inspired by Harold going to the State Fair. Applicants who apply can choose to present this narrative as a classical or contemporary ballet. The selected choreographer will work alongside the Ballet Co.Laboratory artistic team in selecting the music, designing scenic elements, creating costumes, and casting roles.

Choreographers applying to this program are encouraged to think critically about how ballet can continue to evolve in becoming more inclusive and forward-thinking. Artists are asked to create a production with a story line that sparks the imagination and challenges the audiences’ perception of what ballet is.

All applicants must live in Minnesota, have had formal ballet training, and consider themselves to be an emerging choreographer.

Applications close on May 10, 2024.