2015

Patrick Scully

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

2015 Choreographer Fellow

Patrick Scully is a Minneapolis based choreographer/dancer and performance artist. He began dancing in 1972 as a college freshman. In 1976 he co-founded Contactworks, a Minneapolis based dance collective focused on contact improvisation. In 1980 he left Contactworks in search of a way to bring his voice as a gay man into the work he was creating. This eventually led him to Remy Charlip’s Naropa East workshop in 1984, Meetings with Remarkable Women. That led him to dance with Remy, beginning with Remy’s Ten Men show in BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 1984. In his heart, and daily life, Patrick is still dancing with Remy. Patrick’s most current project is Leaves of Grass – Uncut, about Walt Whitman. In addition to his performing work, Patrick was founder and the long time director of Patrick’s Cabaret, in Minneapolis.

Chris Schlichting

chris-s.jpg

2015 Choreographer Fellow

Chris Schlichting is a Minnesota-based choreographer and performer who believes in flexible definitions of dance. His choreography leans on the formality of structural investigation and the emotion of earnest expression. His dances have a tendency to simultaneously evoke the grandiosity of spectacle and the delicacy of intimate moments. Schlichting develops dances outside the constraints of thematic and conceptual frameworks, allowing choreographic process to develop focus through physical intuition and sensory awareness. 

Schlichting was named Best Choreographer in 2013 by Minneapolis-St. Paul City Pages for his work Matching Drapes, which also received two Sage Awards, including one for “Outstanding Performance” and one for “Outstanding Design”. He is the first recipient of the American Dance Institute’s (Rockville, MD) Commissioned Artist award, a new project that provides commissioning funds, fiscal sponsorship, developmental and production support for a new work from one U.S. based choreographer every year. 

Schlichting has been presented by venues throughout Minnesota, including the Southern Theater, the Bryant Lake Bowl, the Red Eye Theater, the Walker Art Center and many more; in New York at Danspace Project and as a frequent contributor to CATCH! performance series; at ODC in San Francisco, CA; and at Velocity in Seattle, WA. He frequently collaborates with Morgan Thorson, including performances in "Faker" and "Heaven", both of which enjoyed illustrious tours throughout the U.S. and for "Faker" also in Daejeon, South Korea. 

Schlichting’s work has been commissioned by Danspace Project at St. Marks (by Tere O’Connor for Food for Thought, by Judy Hussie-Taylor for the Body Madness Platform), James Sewell Ballet (Ballet Works Project), the Walker Art Center (The Momentum Series, the 25th Sculpture Garden Celebration, and for a new work in the 2014/15 performance season), The Southern Theater, Young Dance, and Zenon Dance Company.

Vanessa Voskuil

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

2015 Choreographer Fellow

Choreographer and director Vanessa Voskuil has created more than twenty contemporary performance works ranging from large community-inclusive performance projects 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 Outstanding Design and nominated twice for Outstanding Performance. She has been named one of the “7 Artists to Watch” by Minnesota Monthly Magazine and recognized by the Star Tribune as one of “9 Minnesota Artists to Expect Great Things.” 

Related

Alanna Morris-Van Tassel

2015 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Professional contemporary dancer, teaching artist, and choreographer, Alanna Morris-Van Tassel, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has studied many dance styles at various dance schools in the US and Canada. These include: Creative Outlet Dance Theater (Brooklyn), Ballet Hispanico, The Ailey School, The Joffrey Ballet, Jacobs Pillow and Springboard Danse Montreal. Upon graduating with honors from the famed LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and The Performing Arts (NYC), she received a partial scholarship to The Juilliard School, where she earned a B.F.A. in Dance. She has worked professionally with Nathan Trice/RITUALS, Gallim Dance, and Janis Brenner & Dancers. In 2007 she was invited to Minnesota to join St-Paul based dance company, TU Dance, (directors Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands), where she is currently a performing and teaching artist. In 2011 Alanna received a MN SAGE Award for Outstanding Performer. In 2013, she and her husband, collaborator/composer Brian Van Tassel, received a Live Music for Dance MN grant. They are currently producing Arabah: a prayer for peace, a full evening of collaborative original dance, music, spoken word, visual art, and community dialogue dedicated to fostering peace among religions. Additionally, Alanna teaches youth in public schools, camps, and theater companies throughout the Twin Cities, creating classes that develop movement skills and imagination in young actors, dancers and performers.

SOLO choreographer Idan Sharabi

Brian J. Evans

2015 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Brian J. Evans is a Professional Performing Human. For the past eight years, Evans has had the privilege and pleasure of engaging in a vast array of fields. Teaching in public and private institutions, working with healthcare providers in the US and abroad, performing as singer, actor, dancer in churches, theaters, basements, outdoor stages, any space provided that encourages the arts to thrive. An artist striving for social justice, Evans places high value in process and product, having had most of his training out in the 'Arts field' of the Twin Cities, working with over 50 artistic directors on more then 200 projects from solo endeavors to collaborating as a self-employed professional performer & teaching artist. Primarily as a principle dancer and musical director for Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater, Evans has continued to investigate the idea that connections exist between us all and it's the responsibility of the Arts to rediscover those connections, highlight them to allow us to feel holistically human. 

 

SOLO Choreographer Tamara Ober

Kaleena Miller

2015 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Kaleena Miller  is a Minneapolis-based performer, choreographer and teacher best known for her work in the tap dance genre. She is a founding member of Rhythmic Circus, and currently tours nationally and internationally with their production Feet Don’t Fail Me Now!  As a solo artist, she is a 2007 SAGE Award recipient for People’s Choice and a 2011 nominee for Outstanding Performer. She has received funding from the Jerome Foundation, and has twice been commissioned to create works for the Walker Art Center.  She graduated from the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities with a BFA in Dance, and credits Char Weiss and Karla Grotting for her tap training. 

SOLO Choreographer Derick Grant

Gioconda Barbuto

2015 Mcknight International Choreographer

Italo-Canadian dancer and choreographer Gioconda Barbuto is the 2015 McKnight International Choreographer. A dancer of explosive wit, subtle intelligence, and a fine sense of theatricality, Gioconda has distinguished herself throughout her career in an impressive number of works by choreographers such as George Balanchine, Nacho Duato, Michel Fokine, Christopher House, Jiri Kylián, Hans Van Manen, Ginette Laurin, James Kudelka, José Limon, Brian Macdonald, Mark Morris, Martino Müller, Ohad Naharin, Fernand Nault, Anthony Tudor, Robert Wilson and many others. She danced with the Minnesota Dance Theatre before becoming a soloist with Les Grand Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, where she danced for 16 years.  In 1998 she was invited by Jiri Kylian to join Nederlands Dans Theater III in The Hague, Holland, with a group of high caliber dancers, all over the age of forty, and toured internationally with the company for eight years. Gioconda is featured in two of Jiri Kylian's award winning Films, Birth Day and Car Men.  

In 1996 she was nominated for the Kennedy Center Fellowship and was the recipient of the Clifford E. Lee choreography award. She is a recipient of several grants from the Canada Council and has created many of her own solo and group projects with many renowned dance artists. 

Gioconda’s choreography has been presented at Ballet BC,  Ballet Jorgen, Banff Festival Ballet, Danse Cite, Tangente, L’Agora de la danse, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, BJM Danse Montreal, Alberta Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, Northwest Dance Project, McKnight Fellowship SOLO Commission (for Abdo Sayegh Rodriguez), Bravo FACT, CBC Canada/Films Piche Ferrari, Ballet Kelowna, The Juilliard School, Arts Umbrella Dance Company, You Dance/National Ballet of Canada, Dutch National Ballet Academy, Nederlands Dans Theater Choreographic Workshop, and the National Circus School.

More information on Gioconda Barbuto can be found on her website.

 

Photos of commissioned work "Footprint" courtesy of TU Dance and photographer Michael Slobodian.