STUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY

Marciano Silva dos Santos is a Brazilian native recognized by the American Folkloric Society as a folk artist of unique and exceptional ability. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Contempo Physical Dance, where his extensive research has culminated in a dynamic fusion of Afro-Brazilian and contemporary dance. His professional dancing and choreography have earned widespread acclaim; he was...

Growing up, Rachel trained, performed, and taught primarily with Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago. She moved to the Twin Cities to attend Macalester College, graduating in 2018 with a BA in Geography, and has since performed in works by Contempo Physical, Melissa Clark, Leila Awadallah, Off-Leash Area, A Cripple’s Dance, Mathew Janczewski, Javan Mngrezzo, Annika Johansson, Analog Dance Works, Zoë Koeni...

Dance Rec Pickup League is a group of friends who recreate together. Leslie O’Neill, Sarah Baumert, Erika Hansen, Gabriel Anderson, Jamie Ryan-Karels and Eva Mohn design proposals, scores, games and questions as a way to make dances. 

A native of the North Chicago suburbs, Ronna Rochell started dancing at age 5. At that young age, she started with creative movement classes, and by the time she was in junior high, she had evolved into a serious modern dance student. She was fortunate to have a fabulous teacher from junior high and high school who taught her the technique of Martha Graham and Alwin Nikolai.  Her dance teacher’s n...

Kaitlyn trained with Loyce and Lise Houlton at Minnesota Dance Theatre and at the School of American Ballet (SAB) in New York City, where she earned the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise in 2004. She danced with the New York City Ballet (NYCB) from 2006 to 2011 and was named the company’s 2010 Janice Levin Dancer. After leaving NYCB, Kaitlyn became a sought-after freelance artist and began...

A multifaceted dance artist and a practitioner of experiential mechanics, Joe Tennis is an improviser and moment maker based in New York City. Engined by discovery and play, he is viscerally drawn to movement through experiencing it. He is in perpetual research of improvisation in service to attunement, the mechanics of intuition through floorwork and the prolonged effects of subtle integration. T...

Betsy Schaefer Roob was born and raised in Elm Grove, WI. Now based in Minneapolis for over fifteen years, she has worked with Rhythmically Speaking, ARENA DANCES, Threads Dance Project, 43X94 Movement Research, Dance & Other Behaviors, faux pas, as well as nationally and internationally based choreographers Sasha Kleinplatz, Salia Sanou, and Pat Taylor among others. Her own choreography for R...

Susan Chilcote-Wade  Originally from Michigan, I received a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theater and Dance. In 1982 fresh from college, I was one of 7 original members of the New Dance Ensemble, a post-modern repertory dance company in Minneapolis, and in ’89 joined the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in San Francisco. Those were amazing formative years...

Madeline’s life pursuit is the discovery of how the human body moves. Over 30 years in the field of movement, her curiosity explored all aspects of movement in dance, Pilates, yoga, Gyrotonic®, fitness training and from studies of human biomechanics, human cadaver dissection labs, osteopathic and manual therapies. Madeline is the author of “Centered: Organizing the body through movement theory, ki...

Catherine Jhung is a dancer, actor, teacher and school administrator. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and Denver, CO., she graduated with a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and holds a Master’s degree in early childhood education from Brooklyn College.  Catherine appeared as a featured dancer and royal wife in The King and I on the First National Tour of the Tony Award-winning 1997 Broadway r...

Ololade Gbadamosi, also known as O, is a Twin Cities native who is a dancing artist, an educator and administrator. Ololade specializes in the dance styles Krump, Hip Hop and Afro Social dances. Krump is a street dance that stands for Kingdom Radically Uplifting Mighty Praise. Ololade is mostly self taught in this style and has traveled outside of Minnesota to participate in battles and also take...

Vanessa Voskuil is a choreographer, director, performer, writer, designer, and teaching artist. Ranging from large community-inclusive performance works to ensemble and solo works for site-specific locations and theater settings, her work has been described as “visually arresting,” “boldly and uncompromisingly moving within its own time and its own logic,” and “interlaced with surrealist sensibili...

Cecil Neal, also known as Virgo and The Final Warning, is an artist born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and based in Minneapolis. His training began in his high school dance program and at SPCPA (St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists), and was refined under the mentorship of Herb Johnson from the age of 16. Cecil’s artistry has carried him to stages such as the Ordway, the Super Bowl, Walker Art Cen...

Kayla Schiltgen is an interdisciplinary artist based in rural Two Harbors, Minnesota, blending dance and film to cope with and communicate her existence. Guided by her belief that subjectivity and vulnerability serve as an echo palette for others, Kayla creates screen dance, installation, and performance to facilitate exchange that affirms, affects, and inspires both artist and audience. She takes...

Emily Michaels King is a performing artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota exploring authentic expression and human depth through movement, multimedia, and visual compositions for the stage.  Emily is known for her fearless personal work, provocative compositions, and collaged evening-length solo performances, including: her award winning show MAGIC GIRL; multimedia online work DIGITAL; IN PERSON, a...

Malia Craft is from Hartwell, Georgia and began her training at Hot Shots Dance Company, where she trained in ballet, modern, contemporary, hip hop, and jazz and found her love for performing, as well as teaching. Malia attended the University of Georgia, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, with a minor in exercise and sports science, and a certificate in K-12 dance education. Malia wa...

Twin Cities–based dancer and choreographer Dominick Burkhardt discovered his passion for the arts early in life, growing up in his mother’s dance studio. Immersed in a creative environment from a young age, he trained extensively in all styles of dance—including ballet, jazz, hip hop, tap, contemporary, modern, and acro—building a versatile and dynamic foundation. He honed his technical and perfor...

Growing up, Rachel trained, performed, and taught primarily with Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago. She moved to the Twin Cities to attend Macalester College, graduating in 2018 with a BA in Geography. She has since performed in works by Contempo Physical, Leila Awadallah, Off-Leash Area, A Cripple’s Dance, Mathew Janczewski, Javan Mngrezzo, Annika Johansson, Analog Dance Works, Zoë Koenig, Xina, Black...

 Alex Arce is an Ecuadorian American artist born and raised in Minnesota has been dancing since the age of 5 culturally and socially as well as technically. He focuses his practice within hip hop and Latin diasporic dance forms as well as contemporary/Modern Dance. He is a graduate of Larkin Dance Studio and Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. Upon his high school training he has also...

Doug Hooker 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 & Bugle Corps, the Broadway show Blast! and the Dancing People Company, and locally with ARENA DANCES, Collide Theatrical Dance Company, Concerto Dance, José A. Louis, Paula Mann, Shapiro & Smith Dance, Rhyth...

Frances Machala Cerro Grew up in Cumberland, Wisconsin, graduated from St. Catherine’s College in 1965. She met Loyce Houlton there in 1963 when Mrs. Houlton began teaching at St. Catherine’s. Loyce Houton had started the Contemporary Dance Playhouse in Dinkytown by the U of M campus. It was an old Masonic Temple above a Cleaners that later burnt down. Mrs. Houlton took Frances under her wing and...

Kaleena Miller makes sound-focused dance and installation work, rooted in tap dance technique and deep listening modalities. Named one of DANCE Magazine’s 25 to Watch, she has received a McKnight Fellowship for Dance and a Sage People’s Choice Award, and has presented work at the Walker Art Center, Icehouse, First Avenue, Jazz Central and the Southern Theater in Minneapolis, as well as at Arts on...

Dancer and Choreographer Aneka McMullen is an independent performing and teaching artist who lives to dance through life, inspire & 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 i...

Jennifer Hart - Hailed as a choreographer “with an imagination so exuberant that one could not be sure how one movement led to the next” and “not only inventive but heart-rending,” Jennifer Hart has been commissioned by Ballet Austin, Ballet Austin ll, Ballet Nouveau Colorado (now Wonderbound), James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, The Walker Art Center’s Momentum Series, The McKnight Fell...

Sam Aros-Mitchell (he/him) 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 scholarsh...