Joanie Smith

2014 Choreographer Fellow

Joanie Smith founded Shapiro & Smith Dance with Danial Shapiro in 1987 developing a collaborative method to create their work. Danial Shapiro died in 2006 and now Joanie Smith serves as sole Artistic Director and Choreographer and is honing that process in new ways with the members of Shapiro & Smith Dance.

Shapiro & Smith’s work has been commissioned by companies as diverse as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and the PACT Company of South Africa. The Company has toured all over the U.S. and abroad including performing four times at The Joyce Theater in New York City, ten years at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis and now three seasons at The Cowles Center For Dance And The Performing Arts. Over 600 dancers have performed, To Have And To Hold, and S & S’s production of ANYTOWN had more than 40 performances across the U.S., including The Joyce Theater and The Guthrie Theater.

Smith was recognized as an “Artist Of The Year,” in 2011 by City Pages and received a Sage Award for, “Outstanding Performance,” in 2012. She has received a Bush Fellowship in Choreography, a McKnight Choreographer’s Fellowship, and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Helsinki, Finland. Smith holds the Barbara Barker Endowed Chair at the University of Minnesota and the John Black Johnston Distinguished Professorship. Shapiro & Smith Dance has received continued institutional support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The McKnight Foundation, and The Target Foundation.
Joanie Smith created The Danial Shapiro Fund in 2008 and annually awards funds to Twin Cities’ choreographers.

Visit their site for more information.

Wynn Fricke

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

2014 Choreographer Fellow

Wynn Fricke is a choreographer, dancer and somatic movement educator. She has served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, Winona State University and as choreographer-in-residence for Minnesota Dance Theater. She is currently director of the dance program at Macalester College. For nine years, she danced with Zenon Dance Company and in 1997 became founder and artistic director of Borrowed Bones Dance Theater. She has received commissions from Ballet Arts Minnesota, James Sewell Ballet, Ruth MacKenzie for her creation of Kalevala, Dream of the Salmon Maiden, and Zenon Dance Company, among others. Her choreography has been produced nationally and abroad in Russia and Micronesia.

Wynn is a recipient of grants from the Jerome Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the New York State-funded grant Arts International and Trust for Mutual Understanding. In 2012, Wynn was honored with a Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Performance for Wine Dark Sea, performed by Zenon Dance Company and created in collaboration with composer Peter O’Gorman. She also received a Live Music for Dance award from the American Composers Forum to create Twine with composer Marc Anderson. She also worked with Frank Theatre on Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Wynn is co-founder of Common Ground Meditation Center where she teaches Integral Hatha Yoga.

For more information about her work visit her site.

Penelope Freeh

2014 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Penelope Freeh won a Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Performer in 2010. With composer Jocelyn Hagen she received a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Arts Activities Grant (2013) and two American Composers Forum New Music for Dance Grants (2010, 2014). Additional awards include: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dancers (1998), MN State Arts Board Fellowship (1998), two Career Opportunity Grants (1999, 2001) and Artist Initiative Grant (2012), and a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant (2001). In May 2008 she was featured in and wrote "Why I Dance" for Dance Magazine.

Commissions include: James Sewell Ballet, MN Ballet, Gem City Ballet, the Walker Art Center/Southern Theater’s Momentum, MN Orchestra, 3-Legged Race, Skylark Opera, Nautilus Music Theater, Theater Mu, the University of MN, MN State University, and Russia’s Link Vostok Dance Festival among others. She has twice been presented by New York City’s Ballet Builders. Residencies include: the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, MN Dance Lab (Regional Dance Development Initiative) at the College of St. Benedict, St. Catherine University, Carleton College, the Reif Center, St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, and Perpich Center for Arts Education.

Freeh danced for James Sewell Ballet for seventeen years, serving as Artistic Associate from 2007-11. She is affiliate faculty at the University of MN and Zenon and summer faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.

For more information, visit her site.

Sally Rousse

2014 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Sally Rousse has built a distinguished, multi-faceted life in dance that includes performing, teaching, curating, advocating, choreographing, and writing, with noteworthy honors and grants. She is a two-time recipient of the McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dancers (2001 and 2014) and received a 2013 Sage Award for Outstanding Performer. Named “Artist of the Year” (City Pages, 2010), she began dancing in Barre, Vermont, going on to train at the School of American Ballet and with David Howard before performing as a leading dancer with Ballet Chicago, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, and James Sewell Ballet (JSB), which she co-founded in NYC 26 years ago. In addition to many roles in the classical and Balanchine repertoires, Sally has danced works by Maurice Béjart, Jiri Kylián, and more than 100 new works created on her by contemporary choreographers. The Cowles Center and JSB honored Rousse with a tribute and retrospective in 2014.

In 1994, Sally began studying and performing Improvisation and Contact, primarily with Patrick Scully, Chris Aiken, and Hijack, aiming to draw upon a larger movement palette to extend the definitions, aesthetics, and relevance of ballet and ballerina. Grants awarded by the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board helped her delve deeper into the state of ballet and her place in it.

Rousse's work as a choreographer has been supported by diverse venues and organizations: the Southern Theater, Walker Art Center, VocalEssence, Marshall Field's, Harvard's American Repertory Theatre, the Cartoon Channel, Nickelodeon, Omaha Ballet, JSB, 3-Legged Race, the Jerome Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation. While Artist-in-Residence at the American Swedish Institute from 2013-14 she co-created Kom Hit! – a roving, immersive dance/theater work with Noah Bremer. 

Sally continues to work with several diverse dance entities in the Twin Cities and around the world, among those most recently, Hijack, Penelope Freeh, and Hong Kong’s Kanta Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Ph.D. She serves on several Boards and panels, awarding grants, fellowships, honors and opportunities in the performing arts that help shape the local and global cultural environment. She lives and raises her two children in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

SOLO Choreographer Arthur Pita

Max Wirsing

2014 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Max Wirsing has been dancing in the Twin Cities since 2005. He has had the opportunity to perform and collaborate on works by Chris Schlichting, Emily Johnson, Justin Jones, Nick LeMere, and Karen Sherman, as well as dancing with Morgan Thorson as part of her last three touring projects. Max has created his own dance work as part of Jaime Carrera's Outlet Series, and the Jerome Foundation's Naked Stages Fellowship, and has been a part of various video installation projects such as Peter Becker Nelson's On Dying, Techtonic Industries' the desire to stay versus the inevitability of change, and Andy Underwood-Bultman’s Silver Lake. His recent design collaborations with Morgan Thorson, Emily Johnson, and Chris Schlichting have garnered many accolades including a Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Design for Schlichting's Matching Drapes.

SOLO choreographer Lauren Simpson

Kenna-Camara Cottman

2014 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Kenna-Camara Cottman has worked in the field of dance and art for over 20 years, and has been a full-time artist since 2005. Kenna is a Black American Griot, following in the oral tradition of storytelling through art. She has studied traditional and contemporary drum and dance forms from experts such as Ananya Chatterjea, Koto N’Gum, Fode Seydou Bangoura, Backa Niang and William Atchouellou. She is a dance educator who teaches about the history of African peoples through art, culture, movement and song. Managing her own company: Voice of Culture Drum and Dance, has given Kenna the opportunity to train with world class artists and develop her traditional drum and dance skills. Combining these forms with her experiences, Kenna creates contemporary Black dance that deals with interesting topics, confusing cultural ideas, and movement-based puzzles. Kenna is a skilled dancer, and she supports choreographer colleagues such as Pramila Vasudevan and Leah Nelson by dancing in their work. Kenna is also a member of Oyin Dance Collective, a unique collaboration of Black women who study and perform African Based dance forms. Kenna-Camara Cottman is supported by her artistic family, William and Beverly Cottman, Yonci Jameson and Ebrima Sarge.

SOLO Choreographer Deja Stowers

Osnel Delgado

2014 International choreographer

Photo by Bill Cameron

Osnel Delgado has received major Cuban awards including the Premio a Mejor Coreografia del Concurso Solamente Solos (Award for Best Solo Choreography), and a Special Mention award at the VII Iberomerican “Alicia Alonso” Choreography competition in Madrid. He was a member of Danza Contemporanea de Cuba from 2003 to 2011 and founded MalPaso Dance Company in 2013, where he currently serves as choreographer and artistic director. Delgado's work expresses the passion and uncertainties that define Cuban life and are embodied in the country's rich dance tradition.

Delgado began his residency in Minneapolis in August 2014 , when he created a new work for Zenon Dance Company, our partner for the 2014 residency. Delgado taught classes in Cuban dance at both the Zenon Dance School and Northrop, and participated in a variety of dance community events.

Delgado’s classes focused on the Cuban technique of modern dance, which is a dense and unique blend of North American modern dance patterns and Afro Cuban dance elements and movement modes. The classes approached key Cuban popular dance styles related to the Rumba Complex; and some dance styles belonging to the Cuban religious dance traditions mostly related to the practice of Santería or Yoruba culture. 

Additionally, two community classes were offered from Minneapolis-based, Cuban-born dancers René Thompson and Chini Perez at Zenon Dance Studio. Thompson’s class taught the uniquely Cuban steps of salsa, chachacha, rumba, mambo, and other traditional Cuban rhythms. Perez taught an all-levels combination of Latin dance and Afro Cuban including Cuban style salsa, merengue, bachata, son, chachacha, rumba, and Columbia.

A public talk called “Baseball and Dance in Cuba” led by Fernando Saez, cofounder of MalPaso and director of the Performing Arts Program of Fundación Ludwig de Cuba, was held at Northrop.

Osnel Delgado returned to Minneapolis in November 2014 for the premiere of his new work, Coming Home, on Zenon Dance Company's season. He was also featured in An Evening With Voice Of Culture Drum and Dance. 

For more information.