Mpls.St.Paul Magazine - Out + About - Dance

James Sewell Ballet's "Ballet Macabre"

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:08:47 GMT

James Sewell Ballet celebrates the spirit(s) of Halloween this year by presenting an original work, “Ballet Macabre,” inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Also on the program is a piece called “Grave Matters,” celebrating deceased legends of dance, and Sewell’s unique take on the famously ghostly lovers’ duet in the classic tragedy Giselle. Breathing new life into familiar stories, legends, and mythologies is what JSB does best, and the company can always be counted upon to do sophisticated things with simple, even elemental ideas. Oct. 26–Nov. 4. Cowles Center, 528 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-672-0480, jsballet.org

Dance Revolution

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:16:42 GMT

In the winter of 1999, when the neglected and aging Shubert Theater was rolled down the block to its current resting place on Hennepin Avenue, city planners and arts community leaders were hoping/guessing/praying/betting that within five years, the burgeoning Twin Cities dance scene would be robust enough to support a landmark facility dedicated to the art of bodily movement. Unfortunately, what moved most during that time was the project’s timeline.

But that’s all in the past. After 11 years of fundraising and spirit-boosting—and several bleak periods when it seemed as if the project might never be completed—the $42 million Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts (renamed in honor of long-time dance supporters/philanthropists Sage and John Cowles) is finally scheduled to open. A three-day gala is planned for September 9–11, and the first official performance in the space will be the world premiere of Ragamala Dance’s Sacred Earth on September 23.

The new center is really three structures connected by some ingenious architectural glue. On the south side is the imposing masonry of the 1888 Hennepin Center for the Arts, which houses the administrative offices of the Cowles Center and several of its resident companies. In the middle is a gleaming glass façade, the complex’s forward-looking face, on the first floor of which is an attractive new lobby (with a full bar and carpet that is supposedly “spill-proof”). The second floor features a large practice and rehearsal space outfitted with videoconferencing equipment for educational purposes.

On the north end is the center’s showpiece, the 500-seat Goodale Theater, housed in the historic shell of the old Shubert. Built in 1910, the Shubert has been a Broadway theater, vaudeville house, burlesque palace, and movie theater, but not much of the original interior remains. According to Colin Hamilton, vice president of creative capital for Artspace, the organization that managed the project, the goal of the renovation was to preserve the unique “experience” of seeing a show at the Shubert, albeit improved with state-of-the-art technology,exquisite acoustics, and a lot more legroom.

“Part of what people find appealing about the Shubert is the intimate feel of it,” says Hamilton. “It’s unusually broad and not very deep, so performers can have eye contact with anyone in the theater. But they used to pack 1,500 people into that space. We’ve got 500 seats, so it’s much roomier, and all sorts of things have been done to tailor and optimize the acoustics. The building itself is a finely tuned instrument.”

Designed specifically for dance, the stage has a sprung floor, roomy wings, and a pit large enough for a 42-piece orchestra. The seats are arranged in a fairly steep bowl above the stage, so sightlines are superb—and, in keeping with a long Shubert tradition, there is no center aisle. The exterior façade has also been extensively repaired and polished, preserving the building’s original Beaux-Arts design and glazed terra-cotta finish.

Taken together, this three-in-one complex embodies the dreams, vision, sweat, and financial support of many disparate people with a common goal, and when the ribbon is cut on September 9, it will open a new chapter in the history of local dance. “I’ve been dreaming about this day for 25 years,” says Linda Z. Andrews, artistic director of Zenon Dance Co., one of the primary tenants of the Cowles and the most successful modern-dance company in town. “Despite the delays, I did not lose hope. I was just hoping it would open in my lifetime.”

Zenon, like many local dance companies, spent years performing in various rental spaces, particularly The Southern Theater, often adapting its work to the limitations of the space in which it was performing. “As much as I liked the bombed-out look of The Southern, the floor was hard and there were things we just couldn’t do,” says Andrews. Not so with the Cowles. “Artistically speaking, the Cowles opens up enormous creative possibilities. There are no limitations,” she says. “I can’t wait to get in there, because I want to bring bigger, better choreography and do things that have never been done before.”

The Cowles raises the Twin Cities’ national profile as well. Besides the Joyce theater in New York, there is no comparable facility of its kind anywhere in the country. There are multiple-use facilities that include dance in their mix (such as Northrop Auditorium, Walker Art Center, Ritz Theater, and the Ordway), and there are individual dance companies that operate their own multi-million-dollar facilities, but there are no multiple-company institutions of the Cowles’ size and budget dedicated primarily to dance. Seventeen local dance companies will call the Cowles home, but they are not all capable of filling those 500 seats nightly. Consequently, the national dance community is watching to see if the Cowles’ model can actually work.

“The Twin Cities is a national hot spot for dance,” says Amy Fitterer, executive director of Dance/USA, a national service organization for American dance. “There are many cross-disciplinary presenting houses around the country, but the great thing about the Cowles is the strong community commitment to dance it represents. If it can unite the dance community and expand the ecosystem and audience for dance—that’s very powerful.”

Keeping the Cowles Center in the black over the long haul is not going to be easy, however, and no one knows that better than executive director Frank Sonntag, who was hired in February after a successful stint as director of the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts in New York. “To succeed, we need to continue fundraising, keep courting donors, cross-promote and expand the local audience for dance, develop partnerships with other arts entities in town, and take full advantage of the buzz we’ve created,” says Sonntag. “The first two years are crucial.”

The challenges are not trivial. After all, the audience for dance is relatively small and fragmented; the people who attend dance events are often intensely loyal to one specific dance company or style (ballet, jazz, flamenco, modern, ballroom, etc.); people who don’t care about dance really don’t care about it; and efforts to “expand” the local dance audience beyond its natural limits have a long history of futility.

Then there’s the location: downtown, between the architectural carcass of Block E and Dreamgirls strip club—a forlorn tract of real estate that has been successfully deterring suburbanites for generations. For the time being, nothing can change that—but people are trying. Hennepin Theatre Trust, which owns the State, Orpheum, and Pantages theaters, recently received a $200,000 “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to begin exploring how to “re-invent” the entirety of Hennepin Avenue from the Walker Art Center to the Mississippi River as an “arts-inspired cultural corridor.” If it ever happens, the stretch from 5th Street to the river, where the Cowles Center sits, will represent a formidable challenge.

It’ll be years before there’s any movement on that front, however, and the Cowles needs droves of Minnesotans to start falling in love with dance now. “If the Cowles Center can find a way to make dance more attractive and palatable to the general public, they will be tackling a problem that has existed here forever,” says John Munger, an elder statesman of local dance who teaches at Zenon Dance and performs under the moniker of Three Rabbit Dance. “The problem is that the dance community and the general public are seriously disconnected,” says Munger. “The general public has no idea that the Twin Cities is one of the top four or five dance communities in the nation.”

To be sure, there are 15 dance companies in the Twin Cities with budgets of more than $1 million each. There are dozens who work on more frugal budgets, and there is an entire network of independent choreographers and dancers, many of whom are nationally prominent. What many people don’t know, says Munger—who is completing an as-yet-unpublished census of Minnesota dance-making entities he conducted for Dance/USA—is that “culturally specific dance organizations (e.g., Native American, Hispanic, Irish, Polish, folk, hip-hop) in the Twin Cities have a total audience of more people than the top 15 dance companies in the Twin Cities combined.”

That’s a fact that Cowles director Sonntag recognizes and is cunningly using to his advantage, says Munger. In addition to performances by the larger companies in town—e.g., Minnesota Dance Theatre, James Sewell Ballet, TU Dance—Cowles is programming performances by several smaller companies, such as Native Pride Dancers and Breaking Boundaries Dance Co. “It’s important to give smaller companies an opportunity to attract a larger audience,” says Sonntag. “We want the Cowles to be aspirational, but we also want it to be accessible.”

The other secret weapon in the Cowles’ quiver is education. Over the past decade, even as fundraising for the renovation slogged along, the organization was quietly training more than 48,000 students and adults, including 16,000 in 38 communities throughout greater Minnesota—all of whom represent a potential audience the Cowles is intent on nurturing.

The recent implosion of The Southern Theater as a producer and presenter of local dance will help fill the Cowles as well. This spring, financial difficulties forced The Southern to lay off its entire curatorial staff and abandon most of its programming, dealing a severe blow to the dance troupes and independent choreographers who depend on it. The Cowles can pick up some of the slack, but not all. “We can’t be everything to everyone,” says Sonntag—though he recognizes the hole left by The Southern and says he’s open to ideas (an independent choreographer’s showcase, say) that might help fill it.

In any case, the Cowles will present 114 performances by 22 companies in its inaugural season, most—though not all—of it dance (the vocal group Cantus will also perform, and Illusion Theater is presenting a play, My Antonia). Only one non-local company, New York’s Keigwin & Co., will appear—a fact that “is a testimony to the strength of our commitment to Twin Cities dance, and the strength of local dance itself,” says Sonntag.

How it will all play out remains to be seen. The Cowles has set for itself the modest goal of filling 50 percent of its seats in its first season.

Let the dancing begin.

Global Water Dances

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:27:36 GMT

Clean water. It’s essential for human life, and there is less of it to go around every year. To raise awareness of the importance of clean water in our lives, the city of Minneapolis will participate this month in a global art initiative spanning 50 cities and six continents. Called Global Water Dances, the event engages dancers all over the world in a series of choreographed performances inspired by water. In Minneapolis, the audience will stand on the Stone Arch Bridge and watch as dozens of dancers—atop buildings and grain elevators, in kayaks, on the doors of the lock, and in Gold Medal Park—pay homage to the liquid that sustains us. June 25. Stone Arch Bridge, Mpls., globalwaterdances.org

Khmer Rebirth

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:07:02 GMT

The dancers move slowly, revolving without friction, as if underwater. When they walk, they glide forward regally, their heads level. They keep their crystalline balance as they draw one leg up behind them in a flying pose, their hands and feet blooming open like lilies.

Cambodian classical dance developed its refined style in the height of the Khmer Empire. These Apsaras, or celestial dancers, can still be seen carved in the ruins of Angkor Wat, their curving forms swaying from the crumbling walls. But this ancient and beautiful dance was nearly obliterated by the brutal Khmer Rouge’s mass murder of artists and intellectuals in the 1970s.

Now a new generation of Cambodian artists is breathing life into this art, including National Heritage Fellow Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, whose dance drama A Bend in the River, presented by Northrop and performed by the Khmer Arts Ensemble, receives its world premiere in Minnesota this month. Using 15 dancers and several large puppets, Shapiro’s choreography, at once classical and contemporary, showcases the ancient technique alongside modern stagecraft to retell a village fable about love and justice.

The Twin Cities Cambodian community, one of the largest in the United States, looks forward to the performance. Vuthy Pao, president of the Cambodian Student Association of Minnesota, says this performance is the first by a Cambodian national dance ensemble in the Twin Cities, and it represents “a way to pass down traditions” to second-generation Cambodian-Americans.

Just as Angkor Wat now belongs to the people of Cambodia and the world, the descendants of the celestial dancers now perform their royal dance for everyone.

April 5. State Theatre, 805 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-625-6600, northrop.umn.edu

Kettly Noël and Nelisiwe Xaba’s "Correspondances"

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:12:57 GMT

What comes to mind when you think of African dance? Colorful costumes, lively rhythms, every part of the body in joyous motion: American audiences love traditional African dance.

But traditional dance isn’t all there is to dance from Africa. Lately, African contemporary dance has been lighting up international stages. Now, in a program called Voices of Strength, the Walker Art Center is bringing together five female choreographers for a weekend immersion in this new African dance.

What makes this dance different? To start with, African dance has a present as well as a past. Contemporary African choreographers draw from their vibrant traditions, but they also struggle in a world plagued by poverty and war, where despotic governments rule and widespread oppression of women is the norm. These choreographers address their world—and its relation to ours—in stark and dreamy images. In Maria Helena Pinto’s Sombra, a lone figure feels her way with a bucket on her head, hidden yet spotlit. In Kettly Noël and Nelisiwe Xaba’s Correspondances, Xaba, a beautiful black woman, dances with a small white puppet as carefully as a girl with her doll.

The choreographers in Voices of Strength also embody the future of African dance. They’ve trained and performed all over the world, and their dances reflect their education and worldliness at the same time as they draw from deep local roots. Stylistically, they exhibit devastating strength and whisper-fine grace, along with wit that cuts through lies to reach truths that are both dark and beautiful. Oct. 10–13. Walker Art Center, 612-375-7600, walkerart.org

Rebellious Spirits

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:22:58 GMT

Minnesota Dance Theatre’s Nutcracker Fantasy is a holiday tradition for many Twin Cities families. But the venerable company, founded by Loyce Houlton in 1962, goes beyond classical ballet. Every spring, artistic director Lise Houlton says, “We have to find our way back to our dark side”—that is, to her mother’s legacy of adventurous dance.

This spring’s concert is Fierce/Feminine: Dance by Women Choreographers, a program that spans three generations of accomplished women. Dance is dominated by men—as company directors, choreographers, powerful dancers, and funders—so, Houlton says, on the day she and her staff needed to name the show, “We just felt a little rebellious.”

The rebellion starts from Loyce Houlton, whose groundbreaking “craziness and courage” still inspire her daughter and her company. This year, the younger Houlton is bringing back her mother’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, “a really beautiful piece,” a sweet world “seen through the eyes of a child.” Houlton digs into her mother’s rich archive as company depth and funds allow: “I try to bring back as much of her work as I can because I think she did some kick-ass work.”

Among the choreographers in Fierce/Feminine is Emery LeCrone, who is in her 20s but already an acclaimed ballet choreographer. Houlton is lucky to get LeCrone while she can and happy LeCrone “has opportunities to work with great dancers but is still interested in coming here.” In the male-dominated world of ballet choreography, LeCrone is a standout hope for a badly needed new future in ballet.

The show’s final piece comes from Joanie Smith (of Shapiro & Smith Dance) and is, Houlton says, “about as fierce and feminine as it gets.” May 16–19. The Cowles Center, 528 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-206-3636, thecowlescenter.org

Relationship Status: Complicated

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:32:38 GMT

Big red hearts, love at first sight, sickly sweet candy, and happily ever after—around Valentine’s Day we’re used to saccharine, simplified visions of our favorite passion. But real love isn’t like that. Valentine’s Day not only hides the downside of love—from cruelty and heartbreak to the mess and frustration of a real-life happily ever after—but also misrepresents the upside of love, making a comforting greeting card cliché out of this beautifully strange risk we can’t help but take.

If you’re ready for something different this year, delve into love’s complexity with Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater’s The Ends of Love, an evening-length look at love that ranges from breathless and breathtaking surges of pure longing, to a Greek chorus cut from funny/sad personal ads, to philosophical takes on what Pimsler calls “that old dilemma.”

Among several newer cast members, keep your eyes out for Brian Evans, who’s been earning applause for the muscular jumps and emotional flights of his dancing. In that regard, he’s a classic SPDT dancer: Strong as this company is, its dancing always aims at more than technique. What Pimsler and his company drive at is connection—and isn’t that what everyone really wants for Valentine’s Day? Feb. 11–13. The Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Mpls., 612-340-1725, southerntheater.org

BodyCartography’s "Super Nature"

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:19:17 GMT

BodyCartography’s new project Super Nature finds these local geniuses “going inside the social to find the animal, going inside the animal to find the social,” explains co-director Otto Ramstad. Either way, it’s bound to be a wild ride. “The performance starts as soon as you enter the building,” Ramstad promises. Oct. 25–27. Walker Art Center, 612-375-7600, walkerart.org