STUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY

jess pretty is an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the current artistic director of AUNTS; a punk/DIY performance series that hosts events/festivals/shows to highlight the works of experimental dance makers in NYC. she has shown her work at La Mama Experimental Theater Club (2017 La Mama Moves Festival), New York Live Arts (as a 2016/17 Fresh Tracks artist), CATCH!, Gibney Dance Center, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, the CURRENT SESSIONS, panoply performing arts space, Green Street Studios, three ACDA conferences, and the Chocolate Factory Theatre. pretty has been an artist in residence at Kent State (2017), the Chocolate Factory Theatre, and the Center for Performance Research (2019-2020) and was also a 2020 member of the Queer Art Fellowship. pretty has collaborated and been a part of the works of: Will Rawls, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Beasley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Born, Catherine Gallasso, David Thomson, Katie Workum, Niall Jones, Jennifer Monson, Cynthia Oliver, Leslie Cuyjet and Dianne McIntyre. call and response is a methodology for building connection and community; a celebration and appreciation for black life; an archival tool; and lens for embodiment. this work is personal and archival; calling on me to turn towards my own story, lineage and memory as the site of choreographic creation. in looking at myself, i aim to build a black queer archive to provide proof of life (instead of the constant images of black death we experience) for future generations. how do we come together? how do we see each other? how do we care for each other? how do we make space for pleasure, joy, ease and non-urgency? how do we 'get free' using the body as the site for radical transformation? taking place somewhere between an improvised self portrait and the middle of the dance floor, call and response directs our attention inward to the deep histories our bodies hold. calling us to say ‘yes’ to "the encounter”, to vulnerability, to the collective, to the moving body, to change and to transformation.

Tristan Koepke (he/him) is a dancer, choreographer, and educator based in Portland, ME. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is currently Assistant Professor at Bates College and Associate Director of the Young Dancers Intensive at the Bates Dance Festival. Benny Olk (he/him) is a performing artist based in Minneapolis with an interest in contemporizing and contextualizing American modern and post-modern dance. As a member of Lucinda Childs Dance Company, he performed reconstructions of pieces such as Dance and Available Light. He performed in reconstructions of works by Merce Cunningham, and has premiered works by Moriah Evans and Anthea Hamilton. He is part of the Isolated Acts 2024 cohort at Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis. Benny holds a BFA in Dance from NYU and an MA in New Performative Practices from Stockholm University of the Arts. There’s More Than One Bed is the second collaboration between Tristan Koepke and Benny Olk. Inspired by the creative and amorous relationship between Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Instagram thirst traps, speculative masculinities, and romance novel tropes, Koepke, Olk, and their collaborators interrogate what devotion and commitment to love, longing, and process can look like when you make room for more than two.

Paula Mann has been creating dances for 44 years and is a graduate of New York University. She was full time faculty at the University of Minnesota Department of Theater and Dance from 1993-2013. She is co-artistic director of Time Track Productions. APRIL 25-27, 2024 CBDF Featured Artist Work: Nothing A trio: performed by myself, Leila Awadallah and Roxane Wallace. We question and interrogate our understandings of our realities through movement. Building a focused movement vocabulary since November 2022, we are intent on shifting the structure of the movement and its qualities, hoping to convey that assumed constructs of our perceptions might not be truth. Imagery projected onto our bodies at the end of this section (part one), will contrast speed, timing and content. The meaning of those images and their relationship between the movement and the piece will amplify and articulate our physical vocabulary. Our movement/physical vocabularies will reflect our formative perspectives and perceptions -- the realities we grew into. Ranging from black and white broadcast for the oldest of us, to online mobile devices for the youngest, the streams of our understanding begin here. Sound score by Tarek Abdelqader This is part (one) of the trilogy and will be performed at The Candy Box Festival in April 2024 at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis. Everything and Nothing is a three-part series of dance performances, each 25 minutes in length, that will be performed over a two-year period in venues throughout Minneapolis/St Paul Minnesota. In 2026, all three parts will be performed together as an evening-length work.

For over forty-five years I was a movement educator, dancer and choreographer devoted to the exploration of the expression of the mind through the body. I graduated from the Juilliard School in 1971 and my first professional job was working in dance pioneer Anna Sokolow’s Players’ Projects. I continued to dance and perform professionally until 1995. My creative work as a choreographer and dancer always focused on how movement could fully express the states and conditions of the mind and heart. The objectification of movement has never been my interest; rather my concerns were always about excavating and exposing the roots of the subjective experience through my work. As a director of two dance companies and an independent choreographer I received numerous grants from private foundations, the states of Indiana and Minnesota and a National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship. I was a dance teacher throughout my dance career and taught all over the United States and Canada. I was on the faculty at the University of Minnesota from 1980 –1988 and then again from 1996 through 2019. In 1990 I began my transition from dancer, choreographer and dance teacher to body-worker and movement educator. I graduated from the School for Body-Mind Centering ® in 1994 and became a Certified Practitioner and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator. As a bodyworker and movement educator I help individuals discover and use the body's intelligence as they journey towards health and balance. My practice served women and men who wanted to find fuller physical presence, compassion for themselves and freedom from movement or behavioral patterns that are recapitulations of past trauma. Although much of my practice concerned psychotherapeutic application, I also worked with individuals (lots of dancers) recovering from physical injury, surgery or living with chronic pain. A small but important part of my practice included children who had developmental challenges. An important dimension of my work in the world was and is my ongoing practice in Buddhist mindfulness meditation. I integrated the methodology of mindfulness both in my private practice and in my coursework at the University. Teaching clients and students how to clarify the direct experience of mental activity and body sensations through awareness lead to a much fuller embodied presence in the here and now, whether that was dancing, performing or just living your life. I began teaching Body-Mind Centering at the University of Minnesota in 1996 first at the introductory level and advanced levels. These courses included an Introduction to Body-Mind Centering, graduate level courses covering a five-semester series, (the graduate level courses in Body-Mind Centering were discontinued in 2009 due to draconian budget cuts that affected the entire University) and The Articulate Body, a required course for Dance Majors enrolled in the BFA program. In 2018 I retired from private practice and then in 2019 I taught my last class at the UM, mostly due to hearing loss and a reluctance to do so much driving. I have lived in the country north of Elk River for over twenty-five years, am an avid gardener with a large vegetable patch, perennial gardens and borders, growing food and flowers. I have three children, nine grandchildren and much beauty in my life for which I am deeply grateful.

Joe Chvala has created over 30 original works for the stage that have toured from New York to Paris and from Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival to Litle Falls, MN. He is the founder and artistic director of the highly acclaimed percussive dance company, Flying Foot Forum. Articles and reviews of his work have appeared in national and international magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, La Monde, the Chicago Tribune, Dance Magazine, and the Village Voice. The range of his work has been described as "somewhere between Sammy Davis, Jr. and Samuel Becket" and has earned such accolades as "Fred Astaire on acid" and "the Agnes DeMille of the tap." Chvala has also choreographed, directed, and/or been commissioned to create new work for a variety of venues including the Walker Art Center, The Ordway Center, the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, the Minnesota Opera, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, The Children’s Theatre Company (to name a few). He has received Ivey and Minnesota SAGE Awards for theater and dance, as well as numerous other awards, fellowships, and grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, Target, and McKnight Foundation. Chvala also choreographs and directs dance for films. His first short film, COOKAPHONY, has been chosen as an official selection at 14 film festivals, winning four awards at various festivals including Paris Short Film Festival, Sedona International Film Festival, Vasteras International Film Festival (Sweden) and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Internatonal Film Festval.

Swan Song Studies marks Zhauna's 6th full evening length production. Previous productions: The Dream Channel- Episodes 1 & 2 at The Ritz Theater, Episode 3 (in 3D) at Open Eye Figure Theatre, Her Hysterical Nostalgia (Open Eye Figure Theatre) and Beauty and the Beast (Minneapolis Fringe- Best Dance Production-Audience Choice Award). In New York Zhauna was featured in over 500 shows spanning 3 years with the award winning off-broadway immersive productions Sleep No More- Punchdrunk and Then She Fell- Third Rail Projects. She was an original member of Ballet of the Dolls for 25 years and Associate Artistic Director for 8 years, appearing in over 100 original productions.

Kathryn (Thern) Anderson started her dance training at the U of M in 1968 with Margret Dietz, Heidi Hauser and Judith Mirus. In 1971 she joined Margret’s Company, Choreogram ,and danced there until 1976. She then moved to Port Townsend, WA to work with Meg Robson, then to Portland Oregon to dance with Spira, and started Oregon Dance Consort with other dancers from the Wigman tradition. She was in New York from 1980 to 1987, studying at the Erick Hawkins studio, Floor Barre with Zena Rommet, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Anatomy and Kinesiology, Ideokinesis at NYU, Subtle Self with Judith Blackstone and Klein technique with Barbara Mahler. In Washington D.C. from 1987until 1993 she taught through Liz Lerman’s Dnce Exchange, working with senior adults, psychiatric outpatients and hospitalized children. In addition, she taught many children’s Creative Movement classes at Jane Bittner Dnce Studio in Olbey MD. Back to Minnesota since 1993, she has performed with Sharon Varosh, Maureen Koelsch, a children;s show with Linda Aus,”Seca” by Marciano Silva dos Santos, “Orphans” with Off leash Area, Pam Gleason,, “Invisible” with Paula Mann and as a guest artist with Christopher Watson Dance Co. In the Twin Cities, she has taught at Zenon, TU Dance, “Dancing your Story” with Mary Waster through TU Dance and Aroha Philanthropies, Patrick’s Cabaret and currently teaches Modern Dance at Tapestry.

When Cathy was 15, she fell in love with dance and mime while studying at the Children’s Theater School with Myron Johnson and Wendy Lehr. She went on to dance with Zoe Sealy’s Minnesota Jazz Dance Company where she met aspiring choreographer Ken Delap. As an original member of Ken Delap’s Ozone Dance Company, Cathy performed across the Midwest and in New York City at the American Theater Laboratory. Other performance highlights include playing the lead in Kenneth Robbins’ production, “Accidently Exalted” at St. Paul’s Landmark Center, numerous productions at Chanhassen Dinner Theaters, Minnesota Opera, Kentucky Opera, and Minnesota Orchestra’s Summer Pops Concerts, and live business theater events. Choreography credits include Chanhassen Dinner Theater, Minnesota Opera, Theatre Exchange, History Theater, Skylark Opera, Target Corporation, as well as colleges and high schools. As a mime, Cathy was an artist in residence through the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artists-in-Education Program, co-authored “The Mime Alphabet Book” with her sister, Nina, and performed as a Yoplait mime in New York and New Jersey. Since 1996, she’s been working as a marketing writer for Twin Cities-based creative agencies and corporate clients. She still enjoys performing but now as a storyteller at The Moth, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Patrick’s Cabaret, TEDx, Story Club, and Island of Discarded Women podcast.

Maria Genné is a dancer, choreographer and educator, recognized as a pioneering leader in the intergenerational interactive participatory performing arts, and arts and health fields. Her national award winning work to create interactive dance, music and story programs for intergenerational participants is designed to tap into the artistry and creativity of older adults and invite them to be central collaborators in the artistic process of dance, music and storytelling. It models a new and vital role in society for the community based professional performing artist, and new possibilities of intergenerational community enjoyment and understanding. Her 65+ choreography works are recognized for their ability to highlight the beauty of human experience through movement and story. In 2001, Maria developed The Dancing Heart™, a nationally recognized, evidence-based program which engages older adults of all abilities in weekly, interactive arts participation and health education. It was featured in the 2012 PBS documentary, Arts & the Mind, and is recognized as a model arts involvement program by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Center for Creative Aging (NCCA), and winner of awards for program innovation by the American Public Health Association, American Society on Aging, and others.

Rita Mustaphi is choreographer, dancer, educator and a disciple of the living legend Pandit Birju Maharaj in Kathak style of Indian classical dance. She is known for her visionary approach and innovations in dance, her multi-disciplinary productions incorporating spoken word, live and commissioned music, and the utilization of production elements. She is Founder and Artistic Director of Katha Dance Theatre (est. 1987). Under her vision and leadership, the company has become renowned for its dynamic productions, distinctive movement style and technical virtuosity. Her work, intelligently crafted storytelling, is recognized as being profoundly moving and effortlessly intimate. Ms. Mustaphi is a recipient of three McKnight Fellowships (1998, 1992, 1988) for choreography, and recently received the forth McKnight Fellowship for Choreography (2023). She received a Leadership award from the Council of Asian Pacific Minnesotans, a Lifetime Achievement award from the India Association of Minnesota and an Education award from the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in the category of Excellence in Vision. With a career and a commitment to Kathak dance spanning 35+ years, over 500 performances, and 50+ original choreographic works, she still revels in the process of directing bodies in space, creating movement on her own body and exploring what “moves” an audience to become engaged emotionally, intellectually and musically. Her works have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, The McKnight Foundation, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and many others. Ms. Mustaphi has been commissioned by the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and toured her productions throughout the US, Canada and India.

Christian Burns is a Teaching Artist, Performer, and Choreographer. His body of work is built upon interdisciplinary projects relating to the intersection of Improvisation, Choreography, and Training. Some of his collaborators include Hope Mohr, Bobbi Jene Smith, Alessio Silvestrin, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Eric Beauschsne, Shinichi Lova-Koga, and Kirstie Simson among others. He was a guest artist with The Forsythe Company and a member of Alonzo King Lines Ballet and James Sewell Ballet among others. He helped create burnsWORK, The Foundry, and Parsons Hall Project Space. His formal training from The School of American Ballet has been complemented by 25 years of Contact Improvisation and Somatic movement practice. He has been commissioned for his choreography and master teaching by dance companies and universities throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, residencies, grants, and commissions, as well as being a contributor for When Men Dance; Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders (Oxford University Press). He is currently expanding his new virtual 1:1 coaching program for Improvisational research and continues to be a long-standing faculty member of Alonzo King Lines Ballet Training Program, an Adjunct Professor for Lines Ballet BFA at Dominican University, and in 2023 was a Guest Lecturer for the Stanford University Dept. of Theater & Performance Studies.

Myo-O Marilyn Habermas-Scher has an extensive background in the performing arts, including choreography, opera, vocal improvisation, performance art and story telling. She is trained in Qi Gong and Body Mind Centering TM, as well as practicing yoga and Gyrotonics. She is the originator of VoiceWork, a somatically based voice training, which she has offered in private practice for nearly fifty years. She has taught at several colleges and universities. She has received a number of grants for her choreographic work, and founded a vocal improvisation group, AWAKE! In addition, she has offered Voice Healings at Pathways, a complementary healing center in Minneapolis, for three decades. Myo-O has practiced meditation in the Zen tradition since 1975 when she began practicing with Dainin Katagiri roshi, founder of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. She was fully ordained and given permission to teach in 2012 by Dokai Georgesen, Head Teacher at Hokyoji Zen Practice Community in SE Minnesota. She has taught classes and led retreats and lectured in many settings from Unitarian Societies to maximum security prisons. From 2006 to 2021 she worked as an inter-faith chaplain at Hennepin County Hospital and the University of Minnesota Medical Center, MHealth Fairview. She is also a mom and grandma to two little boys.

Pam has been creating, teaching and performing dance for over 40 years. She was involved with the Nancy Hauser Dance Company/Hauser Dance from the mid-1980s to 2011 as an apprentice, company member, teacher and choreographer, along with freelancing in the community. As director of MotionArt (cofounded in 2013 with Diane Moncrieff), she is dedicated to providing opportunities for people - no matter their age or ability - to move, express, learn, create and find community in dance – whether through the Ageless Dance class she initiated with Heidi Hauser Jasmin twenty years ago, or through other adult and children’s classes, monthly improvisation gatherings, somatic workshops andperformances. Her collaborations with professional and nonprofessional dancers spanning nine decades in age, along with musicians, composers, visual artists and film makers have resulted in over 50 choreographed pieces, eight theater productions and four films. She has taught, performed and/or presented dance in many Twin Cities venues, several US cities, in Taiwan, Japan, Russia and Ireland, and her work has been supported by grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Commission. In 2019, she was a “50 over 50” honoree by AARP/Pollen for her contributions and achievements in the arts and for disrupting outdated beliefs about aging. Pam received a BS in Community Health Education with minors in Dance and Psychology from UW-Madison, where she first delved into the study of Modern Dance. She holds an MA in Kinesiology from the University of Minnesota and has been a Pilates instructor and personal trainer since 1999. She taught “The Articulate Body“ (Dance Kinesiology), Pilates and Modern Dance in the University of Minnesota Dance Department, was a faculty member in the Physical Education department at North Hennepin Community College, a community health educator for research in the Epidemiology Department at the University of Minnesota and has been a guest artist at several Midwest colleges. As a teacher, Pam draws from her strong interest in both the art and science of the body in motion to offer biomechanically sound classes infused with individual exploration and improvisation. As a choreographer, inspirations are as varied as life itself, planted in her psyche and often manifest when she’s not looking. These seeds of inspiration have resulted in a wide body of work - from abstract to theatrical, solo to large ensemble, melancholy to slapstick and are reflective of her fascination with universal principles of motion and universal aspects of being human.

Paul Herwig has been working for over 40 years as a professional visual and performing artist. Paul is the founding Co-Artistic Director/Manager of Off-Leash Area, a dance and theater company creating original interdisciplinary performance work, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA, which is now in its 25th year, and has presented 30 original productions. Paul is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq (1981-1983), and regularly performs lead and ensemble roles in the company’s productions, as well as having designed and built sets for all its 30 productions. Paul is a self-taught visual and digital artist, working in live animated projection art, and projection mapping. Paul has received many awards, including a McKnight Theater Fellowship, 5 MN State Arts Board individual artist grants, a Jerome Travel grant, among others. His set designs and performances have been listed in the Minneapolis press’ Best of the Year lists eighteen times since 2002. In 2019, Paul was chosen among a group of US designers to exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance and Design. Recently, Paul has been working in public art. Earlier this year he presented Facing the Fire (2), a public art project that wrapped the ruins of the former 3rd Police Precinct building with projections and sound. This building is located in the heart of the Minneapolis neighborhood where Paul has had a home for twenty years, and formerly housed the officers who murdered George Floyd, a traumatic event which set off an international movement for racial justice. Most recently, Paul was commissioned by the MN State Fair, and created Canopy/Calliope, a fantasia of carnival rides, farm animals, and musical instruments. Jennifer Ilse grew up in rural northern Wisconsin, and first studied dance in a professional setting in Duluth, Minnesota. She then moved to Eugene, Oregon to continue her studies at the University of Oregon. In Eugene she also studied with the Eugene Ballet under Susan Zadoff of Ballet Russe, at the Musical Feet school of tap, and performed four seasons with the Dance Theatre of Oregon. After moving to Minneapolis in 1997 she co-founded the dance/theater/visual art hybrid company Off-Leash Area, for which she has performed lead roles, choreographed and directed most of its 30 original full-length interdisciplinary productions. She was a City Pages Artist of the Year, has been featured on TPT’s MN Original, received 5 Arts Board Artist Initiative grants, was chosen among a group of local choreographers to participate in the NEFA RDDI Dance initiative, and her production work with OLA has garnered 2 Ivey Awards. Her work as a dance educator has included professional and pre-professional programs at Zenon and TU Dance, to children community education programs in Oregon and Minneapolis, and at studios throughout the Twin Cities.

Toni Pierce-Sands (Founder & Artistic Director) Prior to co-founding TU Dance, Minnesota native Toni Pierce-Sands performed with Minnesota Dance Theatre, Tanz Forum in Germany, Rick Odums in Paris, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where she was a featured soloist in such signature pieces as Revelations, Cry and Rainbow Round My Shoulder. Her command of the Horton Technique has led to teaching posts throughout the United States and Europe. Toni directs programming and teaches classes at TU Dance Center in Saint Paul. She was a full-time core faculty member at the University of Minnesota for twenty years and also served as Director of University Dance Theatre. Toni has been featured in COSMOPOLITAN Germany and GQ publications, the American Express Alvin Ailey commercial, and the Lester Horton Technique instructional DVD series. She has written columns for Dance Studio Life magazine on various pedagogical approaches for modern dance. Toni was awarded a 2004 McKnight Artist Fellowship in Dance, named the Sage Awards’ “2011 Leadership Training and a panelist for the 2018 Dance Miami Choreographers’ Program. She currently serves as a member of the University of Minnesota’s Northrop Advisory Board.

Deneane Richburg (Choreographer, Dancer, former Competitive Figure Skater, Founder/Artistic Director of Brownbody) grew up a competitive figure skater—in spaces where she had to check her blackness at the door, as world skating was dominated by whiteness and rooted in values that subjugated her ancestry’s truths; to quote Zora Neale Hurston, she always felt “most colored when [she was] thrown against a sharp white background.” Richburg realized the need to carve out space for her ancestral history hence her decision to establish Brownbody. Since 2013 Brownbody has honored complex narratives of U.S.-based Black communities by disrupting assumptions, and disenfranchising ideologies, around blackness. She received her MFA in dance and choreography from Temple University in 2007, an MA in Afro-American Studies from UW Madison, and a BA in English and African American Studies from Carleton College. Richburg has been choreographing work for both the stage and ice since 2007 most recently completing an evening-length work called “Tracing Sacred Steps” which brings ring shout onto the ice. Deneane was a recipient of a 2017 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and a Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

The scope of Nic Lincoln’s choreographic career is comprised of 29 works, and he dancedprofessionally in the Twin Cities for over 20 years. His pieces have been commissioned by James Sewell Ballet, The O’Shaughnessy Theater, Hope College, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, DITA in Michigan, and the Human Rights Campaign. Most recently, he received the Cowles Center’s Generating Room: Open Proposal Initiative (2020), Minnesota State ArtsBoard Artist Initiative Grant (2015), a prestigious commission from Momentum for the Southern Theater, funded by the Walker Arts Theater, the Jerome Foundation, and the Cowles Theater (2015), and was Named One of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine (2013), and a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dance (2011). As a dance artist and activist he has teamed with OutFront MN, The Red Door Clinic, Transforming Families, The MN AIDS Project and The Human Rights Campaign. For his most recent work, “Escalade”, he is teaming with RECLAIM. RECLAIM works to increase access to mental health support so that queer and trans youth may reclaim their lives from oppression in all its forms. Follow Nic on Instagram @popartseeker

SUZANNE COSTELLO joined Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater in New York City in 1979 and became its Artistic Co-Director in 1984. During her career with the company, she has been highlighted as a performer, choreographer, teacher, and rehearsal director. As Director of Arts & Education and Arts & Healthcare Programs for the company, she creates and facilitates the many community-inclusive projects SPDT has come to be known for nationally and internationally. Over the past decade she has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts for programs across the country that give voice to those whose stories have not been heard. Currently, she is developing a national performance project for persons with spinal cord injury, From Where I Sit, which will be premiered in Birmingham, AL in 2025. Recently, she directed the NEA project I Believe / The South Dakota Prison Project. This five-week program engaged men at the Sioux Falls Penitentiary in creating performance through writing and movement to express their non-carceral stories. Past NEA community performance projects include Our Country’s Keepers at the Walter Reed Military Center, Bethesda, MD, engaging active military and veterans; Raising Our Voices for the Birmingham cancer community; and LISTEN / Stories of Cancer told through Movement, Music & Voice, commissioned by Gilda’s Club of the Twin Cities, with participants impacted by cancer. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/389513015 Ms. Costello has been invited to present on this body of work at the International Conference on Culture, Health, and Wellbeing Conference in Bristol, UK, and at the International Conference on Parole & Probation in Ottawa, Canada. National presentations have included the National Organization for Arts in Health, Austin, TX; Expressive Therapies Summit, NYC, NY; and Performing Arts Alliance, Atlanta, GA; among others. Ms. Costello’s choreographic work has been honored with three Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and has been commissioned by national dance companies and individual artists. She directed and choreographed CATS for Broadway at Iroquois, Louisville; Go, Dog, Go! for Metro Theater Company, St. Louis, and Stage One, Louisville; and choreographed Grimm Tales for Children’s Theatre Company, Minneapolis. She has been a Guest Artist at colleges and universities across the U.S. and abroad and has twice been a Cowles Guest Artist as well as Affiliate Faculty for six years at the University of Minnesota. In New York City, Costello performed with several companies, including David Gordon Pick Up Co. and Billy Siegenfeld & Dancers. She has also worked with colleague Joe Goode in San Francisco who created a solo for her, Movie Star Life. Ms. Costello began her study of dance under Annelise Mertz at Washington University in St. Louis, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Dance.

JANE SKINNER PECK is a researcher, choreographer, dance historian, teacher, writer/playwright and performer. She has worked across the U.S., Canada, and France for over thirty years. She found that dance history enables her to combine her love of history with her love of dance. She has extensive training in both modern dance and dance history, directing performances with her company Dance Revels Moving History since 1990. Jane’s period choreography conveys varied past cultures and economic classes of the Upper Midwest as well as Europe in a most immediate and authentic way. She has created work for St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, MN History Center, Sibley Historic Site, Mpls. Institute of Arts, Macalester College, NY Baroque Dance Company, Carleton College Theater, U of MN , Luther College. Her work has been seen at the Long Island NY Fringe Festival, Long Island University NY , Winnipeg's Festival de Voyageur, Ordway Center for the Arts, Walker Art Center, and Intermedia Arts among others. Jane studied Renaissance and Baroque dance in California, NY, and France. She studied French-Canadian dance with Jean-Paul Cloutier of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Metis dance with Sandy Poitra of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Reservation of North Dakota. Jane’s dance theater shows involve characters, stories, and live music. Dance Revels toured Jane’s show of MN Metis history through dance throughout MN schools and museums for 15 years. Since 2015 she annually writes and directs new History Alive! Lanesboro Pop-up Plays , with her original scripts about small town history, dance, and music staged in the streets of historic Lanesboro, MN. Jane is a highly regarded dance educator, having taught school residencies for 20 years and has mentored teachers in the arts across the state for years through the Perpich Center for Arts Education. She is a frequent grant recipient and has taught at Winona State University, U of MN, UW Madison, Gustavus Adolphus, and Bemidji State. An historian, she is published by MN Historical Society.

Matthew Keefe has served the dance field for over 20 years as a dancer, teacher, choreographer, administrator, production & stage manager, non-profit consultant, board member, and artistic director. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa and a non-profit management certificate from Rutgers University. Matthew has danced with James Sewell Ballet, Louisville Ballet and BalletMet Columbus, Charleston Ballet Theatre, has appeared as a guest artist for dozens of performances across the US and abroad including productions with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, and MN Orchestra’s 2015 production of Carousel. He has choreographed over 50 ballets for professional and student ensembles. Matthew served on the board of Dance/USA for six years, chairing the Trustee Committee and a member of the Executive Committee. He served as the Artistic and School Director of the Rockford Dance Company where he led an increase in enrollment and reduction of deficit while creating several innovative productions with the performing company. He was the stage manager for the 2010 and 2016 Youth America Grand Prix and appears (briefly) in the documentary, “First Position”. Matthew directed multiple productions for Children’s Dance Theatre in Rochester, MN including: The Mermaid (2016), The Jungle Book (2017), Cinderella (2018), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2019), and Alice in Wonderland (2021). Matthew is proud to work at the University of Minnesota Extension as a Development Associate. Brittany Fridenstine-Keefe danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Ballet Memphis, Minnesota Dance Theatre, James Sewell Ballet, American Repertory Ballet, Terpsicorps Dance Theater, Terra Firma Dance Company, Chamber Dance Project, Collide Theatrical Dance Company, at the National Choreographers' Initiative, and with Morphoses. She performed in a solo improvisation show in Germany and Italy under the direction of Luca Veggetti, and was selected to be an American ambassador at the international dance festival in Cali, Columbia. Administratively, Brittany is the Marketing and Communications Director and Young Dance and previously served as the School Coordinator of the Rockford Dance Company. Brittany is certified in the GYROTONIC® exercise system and runs a home-based studio, My Spiral Motion, helping people to “live better in their own bodies!”