Melissa Clark

2020 DANCER FELLOW

photo by V. Paul Virtucio

Melissa Clark is originally from Gary, Indiana. She began studying dance at the age of two, and teaching at fourteen. She is the founder of COHORTS, a collective for artists that creates opportunities for artists to stage, perform, contribute, and expand artistically through cross-genre collaboration.

As a Diasporic artist, Clark travels both domestically and internationally to research the anthropologic roots of traditional dance and rhythms, and the influence of historical events on the evolution of dance and culture in the Diaspora. Her specific interests focus on identifying and promoting cross-cultural intersections in dance and arts aesthetics, musicality, historical content, and curative elements. Melissa’s background includes: Afro–Brazilian Contemporary, Afro–Cuban, Ballet, Capoeira, Chicago House and Footwork, Contemporary, Hip Hop, Modern, Samba, Tap, Traditional Haitian Dance, as well as Traditional West African Dance from Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.

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2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographers: Alhassan Bangoura, John “Boodilla” King & René Thompson

Non Edwards

2020 Dancer FELLOW

photo by V. Paul Virtucio

Non Edwards is a dancer, choreographer, and ​GYROKINESIS® Method​ Trainer. Originally from Iowa, she has been in the Twin Cities since 2009.

Non has performed in small, DIY, and non-art spaces as well as the Twin Cities’ Fitzgerald, McGuire, and Goodale Theaters; on the East Coast at Jacob’s Pillow and as far west as the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. Her dancing interests include improvisation, the phenomenology of dancing, and site-specific choreography. She has created original roles in compositions by HIJACK, Mathew Janczewski, Valerie Oliveiro, Kerry Parker, Jinza Thayer, Morgan Thorson, and Laurie Van Wieren.

She has produced and made work parallel to her performing career, most recently ​The Thank You Videos (2016-2017), a 27-video series; ​Repressed Midwest​ (2017); ​Scarlet Gesture​ (2018); and ​Habitat​ (2019). Her choreography investigates the intersection of live and video dance and prioritizes the agency of the performer.

As a ​GYROKINESIS® Method ​Trainer, Non teaches online and out of her home studio in the Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis. She is passionate about creating an environment for students to feel better - - - physically, emotionally, and mentally.

In addition to teaching, dancing, and making dances, Non is a freelance writer, grant writer, and editor for DanceMN.

2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Anna Shogren

Marciano Silva dos Santos

2020 DANCER FELLOW

photo by V. Paul Virtucio

A native of Brazil, Marciano Silva dos Santos is recognized by the American Folkloric Society as a “Brazilian artist of unique and exceptional ability and merit.” he has performed with renowned companies such as TU Dance, Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater, Penumbra Theatre, and in his dance company Contempo Physical Dance. Marciano has been named “Best Dancer” by City Pages and “one of the most graceful movers on any Twin Cities stage” by the StarTribune and “one of the hottest choreographers in town” by Minnesota Monthly Magazine

Silva dos Santos has established a much-celebrated dance company Contempo Physical Dance with a mission to create work that is artistically exceptional, riveting to watch and that speaks to the cultural dynamics of his ancestry. Marciano is both Afro-Brazilian and indigenous. He is interested in contemporary movement and the ways it intersects with traditional movement forms. Marciano has garnered numerous recognitions as a choreographer and a performer. He has worked in residence at the University of Campinas (Brazil), Minnesota State University- Mankato, St. Olaf College, Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and many others.

Contempophysicaldance.org

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2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Gil Mendes Coelho

HIJACK (Arwen Wilder and Kristin Van Loon)

2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOWS

photo by Jaime Carrera

HIJACK is the Minneapolis-based choreographic collaboration of Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. HIJACK is the confluence and clash of two independent compositional/kinesthetic impulses. Their dances embrace juxtaposition. Their dances house unlikely intimates and question “who is the enemy?

Over the last 26 years they have created over 100 dances and performed in venues ranging from proscenium to barely-legal. HIJACK has performed in New York (at DTW, PS122, HERE ArtCenter, Catch/Movement Research Festival, La Mama, Dixon Place, Chocolate Factory, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 9 Herkimer), Japan, Russia, Ottawa, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, at Fuse Box Festival in Austin Texas, and Bates Dance Festival in Maine and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.

HIJACK has enjoyed long relationships with Bryant Lake Bowl Theater (where their 1996 Take Me To Cuba was the theater’s first ever dance concert), Zenon Dance School (where they have taught every Wednesday morning for 19 years), and Walker Art Center (which commissioned redundant, ready, reading, radish, Red Eye to celebrate twenty years of HIJACK). In 2014, Contact Quarterly published the chapbook “Passing for Dance: A HIJACK Reader”, edited and instigated by Lisa Nelson. Jealousy (HIJACK’s 2019 installation/performance collaboration with Ryan Fontaine and Heidi Eckwall) was selected as one of the “Best of 2019” shows by the Star Tribune.

Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy

2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOWS

photo by Ed Bock

Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy are Artistic Directors of Ragamala Dance Company, founded by Ranee in 1992. Through their work, they explore the dynamic tension between the ancestral and the contemporary, highlighting the fluidity between the secular and the spiritual, the human and the natural. Their training in the South Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam under legendary dancer/choreographer Alarmél Valli, known as one of India’s greatest living masters, is the bedrock of their creative aesthetic.

Ranee and Aparna are recipients of Guggenheim Fellowships, Research Fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (Italy) and Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), and Doris Duke Artist Fellowships, among others.

The New York Times writes “Ragamala shows how Indian forms can be some of the most transcendent experiences that dance has to offer.” Ranee and Aparna’s work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, American Dance Festival, the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, and Walker Art Center, among others; and has been presented widely, highlighted by the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Cal Performances, and National Centre for Performing Arts (Mumbai, India).

Ranee serves on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama. Among her awards are a 2012 United States Artists Fellowship, and a 2011 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. Aparna is a recipient of a 2016 Joyce Award, and a Bush Fellowship for Choreography, among others, and was selected one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2010.

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Karen Sherman

2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW

photo by Aaron Rosenblum

Karen Sherman’s work incorporates her background in dance, writing, theater, music, and the manual trades. Hands-on in all aspects of her work, she choreographs and performs, builds sets and props, designs sound, and writes text. Her explorations in craft and visual art, including glassblowing, woodworking, and sculpture, illuminate how the body extends to and through other materials, culminating in an interdependent world where objects elucidate bodies, choreography is language, and words become tools. She has been a freelance stage technician, technical director, and production manager for 25 years, which allows her to instinctively strategize the technical execution of her work as she creates it, and signals a lifelong commitment to helping other artists realize their work.

Her projects have been presented nationally by Walker Art Center, P.S. 122, Center for the Art of Performance UCLA, PICA/TBA Festival, Fusebox Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater, American Realness, The Southern Theater, Diverseworks, Movement Research, Highways, ODC, and many others. Honors include a 2007 Bessie Award for her performance in Morgan Thorson's Faker, multiple McKnight Fellowships, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Performance Lab, ADI/Lumberyard, Movement Research, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy. She was a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellow in The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and is an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in- Residence in its dance program. Her writing has been featured in such forums as e-flux journal, Movement Research Performance Journal, Criticism Exchange, and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman.

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