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TU Dance Celebrates 20 Years at The O’Shaughnessy

Join us in the spring of 2025 as TU Dance celebrates its 20th anniversary and marks this significant milestone by featuring the works of prominent and renowned African American choreographers who have been supportive and connected to TU Dance since its inception.

Works will include Alvin Ailey’s Witness, an excerpt from Ronald K. Brown’s Four Corners, Alonzo King’s MA (duet from Who Dressed You Like A Foreigner?), and an excerpt from Camille A. Brown’s New Second Line and Yusha-Marie Sorzano’s recently premiered work This World Anew, commissioned as part of the Edges of Ailey exhibition at the Whitney Museum. TU Dance is deeply honored to share works by makers that have contributed so richly to the American dance landscape through their multidimensional perspectives while voicing the shared human experience, which has been core to our own twenty-year history.

Thursday, April 24 at 10:30am – Educational Performance
Friday, April 25 at 7:30pm
Saturday, April 26 at 7:30pm

Tickets can be purchased online or by contacting The O’Shaughnessy Ticket Office at 651-690-6700.

Great Indian Dance Off 2025

Get ready to dance, compete, and win big at GIDO 2025!

Sunday, April 27, 1:00–5:00pm
Mall of America, Huntington Bank Rotunda

Calling all dancers! Whether you’re a seasoned performer or someone who just loves to move, The Great Indian Dance Off (GIDO) is back and bigger than ever—and you could walk away with up to $3,000 in prize money!

What’s GIDO?
Hosted by South Asian Arts and Theater House (SAATH), GIDO is a high-energy, bracket-style dance competition where teams battle it out in rapid-fire, 30-second rounds. Any dance style is welcome—just make sure it’s set to an Indian song!

Why You Should Join:
$3,000+ in prizes!
1st Place: $1,500
2nd Place: $1,000
3rd Place: $500
Two Audience Favorites: $250 each

Register your team today!
Teams can include up to 5 members.
Open to all ages, genders, ethnicities, and dance styles.
Only $25 per team to register (financial waivers available).

Questions? Email us at info@saathmn.org.

Share with your friends! Bring your squad, bring the heat, and bust out those dance moves! Rally your pals and become their biggest cheerleader at the epic dance-off!

Threads Dance Project: Adult Beginning Modern Workshop

Discover the fundamentals of modern dance in a welcoming and supportive environment. This six-week series introduces key techniques such as floor work, center exercises, and basic movement phrases, helping students build strength, coordination, and creative expression.

Designed for beginners and those looking to deepen their confidence in movement, this session is an extension of the early spring series, but remains open to new learners.

Adult Beginning Modern Workshop:
April 28-June 9 — No class on Memorial Day (May 26)
Mondays, 5:30-7:00pm
Instructor: Lily Conforti
Cost: $135

Threads Dance Project Presents Tapestries 9.0

Threads Dance Project proudly continues its tradition of amplifying new choreographic voices with Tapestries 9.0, a program highlighting emerging choreographers. This year’s production features original works by Colin Edwards, Rachel Lieberman, and Hannah MacKenzie-Margulies, alongside repertory by Artistic Director Karen L. Charles.

The program includes excerpts from Let America Be America, Charles’ powerful work inspired by the chant “Make America Great Again” and the reality that America has never been great for everyone. Through spoken word and dance vignettes, the piece highlights the joys and struggles of “the America that is” and “the America that could be.”

About the Tapestries 9.0 selected works:

  • Colin Edwards explores the manifestation of unity and the circadian rhythms of sisterhood, revealing the ebb and flow of connection through the contrasts of night and day.
  • Rachel Lieberman is trying to make sense of time. Collaging text, textile, movement memories, griefs, and missing pieces, she is asking everybody: how did I get here, and where are we?
  • Hannah MacKenzie-Margulies indulges in millennial nostalgia, reflecting on memories that refuse to fade and futures that failed to materialize, set to a soundtrack of high school anthems resuscitated from home-burned CDs.

Friday, May 2 at 7:30pm
Saturday, May 3 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 4 at 2:00pm
Tickets: $30 for General Admission, $25 for Seniors, and $22 for Students

MotionArt First Friday Improv Gathering

First Friday Improv Gathering on April 4 is cancelled.

Friday, May 2 from 6:30–8:00pm
Center for Performing Arts, Studio 105w – next to 38th Street entrance

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, then improvise together based on movement ideas offered by participants.

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

Suggested donation $5-$15. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Pilates Chair and Barrels Instructor Training at Paragon Pilates and Physical Therapy

Balanced Body® Pilates Chair and Barrels Instructor Training encompasses both the Pilates Chairs and the Pilates Barrels courses. The Pilates chair is great for strengthening athletic clients, and as an addition to group programming. The chair can be used to incorporate standing and upright core work into a client’s studio experience. This course includes exercises, programming, and variations for the original Wunda chair, the EXO chair, and the split pedal Combo Chair. This weekend module also includes exercises and variations for the Step Barrel, which is a great addition to group classes, and the Ladder Barrel, most commonly used in a studio setting. Both are excellent tools for enhancing spinal mobility and core strength.

Friday, May 2, 3:00-8:00pm
Saturday, May 3, 11:30am-7:30pm
Sunday, May 4, 9:30am-6:00pm

Fee: $599 + $120 materials ($649 after April 12)
Prerequisites: Mat 1 and Reformer 1
Instructor: Matthew Hodge-Rice

Walker Art Center/ARENA DANCES: Only the perverse fantasy can still save us

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.

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.

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

An American in Paris

Sway through the streets of 1950s Paris with Peter Davison’s An American in Paris. This ballet is inspired by the musical starring Gene Kelly and set to memorable George Gershwin melodies, such as “I Got Rhythm”. Follow along as Jerry, our aspiring American painter, works to succeed in both art and love. 

Choreographed by: Peter Davison
Performed by: The Company and School of Ballet Co.Laboratory

Dates
Friday, May 16 at 7:00pm
Saturday, May 17 at 2:00pm and 7:00pm
Sunday, May 18 at 2:00pm

All performances at E.M. Pearson Theatre.

Tickets
Adults: $40
Seniors: $35
Children/Students:$30
Group (15+ tickets to the same performance): $35

Laboratory II: Emerging Choreographer Program

Ballet Co.Laboratory believes in the development of the whole dancer and works to invest in artists’ professional growth. One way Ballet Co.Laboratory aids professional dance makers in evolving their artistry is through our Laboratory II: Emerging Choreographer Program. Each season, one choreographer is hired through this program to create a new, full-length, staged ballet production which is performed by the upper-level students at The School of Ballet Co.Laboratory (ages 11 – 20).

Ballet Co.Laboratory knows how difficult it can be to find paid work as an emerging choreographer. Some organizations offer free space and artists to perform their work, but many do not compensate emerging artists for their creation/rehearsal time and even fewer cover production costs such as costumes, sets, stage management, etc. The choreographer selected through the Laboratory II: Emerging Choreographer Program is not only compensated for their work and the materials/staff to create their production, but will simultaneously receive mentorship from Ballet Co.Laboratory staff in production design and arts administration to get a complete picture of what it is like to create, market, and fundraise for a new work.

The story that Ballet Co.Laboratory will be asking the 2025 emerging choreographer to draw inspiration from is the children’s book, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. 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. Rather than create a piece that is simply based on movement, artists are asked to create a production with a storyline 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.

Minnesota Dance Theatre: Young Children’s Division Summer Camps

Minnesota Dance Theatre invites young children, ages 4-7, to fun-filled, week-long camps. Young dancers will discover the joy of movement, music, and imagination. Students will enhance their coordination, develop fundamental dance skills, and challenge their brains in learning basic choreography!

Daily ballet and jazz classes, themed arts and crafts, stretching and conditioning, story time and dance media, and more!  An end-of-week showing for parents and families gives dancers a performance opportunity to share all they have learned throughout the week!

Students can sign up for one or both weeks, half-day or full-day options. Class sizes will be limited, with two instructors.

Week 1: Monday-Friday, June 9-13
Week 2: Monday-Friday, June 16-20
Half-day: 9:30am-12:00pm
Full-day: 9:30am-3:00pm
At the Center for Performing Arts

Registration is open until Thursday, May 15.