STUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY

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 Koenig, Xina, Judith H Shuǐ Xiān, and Black Label Movement. Rachel’s choreography engages themes of h...

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 name was Carol Walker, who later went on to serve as Dean of the Department of Dance at SUNY ...

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. Tennis dances to find, and to show.

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 and deep in my matrix. Dovetailing dancing was my bodywork practice including Therapeutic an...

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 revival. Modern dance credits include Bill Young and Dancers (New York City), Silesian Dance ...

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 sensibility and bracing intelligence.” Voskuil has received two Minnesota Sage Dance Awards for Outstandi...

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 a multidimensional approach rooted in the Rural—working as choreographer/editor, dancer, cinemat...

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 was also a part of the Georgette’s Dance Team for three years. She is currently an artist with Thre...

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 Label Movement, and Judith H Shuǐ Xiān. Rachel's choreography engages themes of home/place/...

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, Rhythmically Speaking Dance, and Threads Dance Project.

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 Site, Center for Performance Research and Symphony Space in New York. Previously, she co-founded ...

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 Fellowship for Dancers, Metropolitan Ballet Project, University of Kansas, University of Massachusett...