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 Joanie Smith.
Joanie Smith founded Shapiro & Smith Dance (S&S) in New York City with husband Danial Shapiro. Smith’s works and their collaborative works have been commissioned by companies as diverse as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Repertory Dance Theater of Salt Lake City, Utah and the PACT Dance Company of Pretoria, South Africa. S&S Dance has toured all over the world from Toledo to Tashkent and over 600 dancers in professional and university dance companies have performed “To Have And To Hold,” aka “Bench.” Smith holds the Barbara Barker Endowed Chair in Dance and the John Black Johnston Distinguished Professorship at the University of Minnesota and has an M.A. in Dance from UCLA.
Shapiro & Smith Dance will be performing two works for the festival:
Ferdouganal – a call to arms—a women’s march and
SHIRT – an absurd competition by three men over a shirt
Tune in this Thursday, April 21 at 12:00pm to hear about the work Shapiro & Smith are sharing 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!