Brian J. Evans
2015 Dancer Fellow
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
Amy Behm-Thomson
2011 Dancer Fellow
Image courtesy of the artist
Amy Behm-Thomson studied dance at the University of Minnesota and joined ARENA Dances in 1999 and Zenon Dance Company in 2000, and continues to perform and teach yoga and dance. She has also performed with Dancing People Company, Ragamala Music and Dance, Catalyst - Dances by Emily Johnson, and Cathy Young Dance.
Amy is the proud mother of two children.
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Johan Amselem
2012 International Artist
McKnight International Fellow 2012 Residency June 11-30, 2012
JOHAN AMSELEM
Cie la Halte-Garderie (The Nursery)
The McKnight Fellowship program selected Paris-based choreographer/dancer Johan Amselem as the first McKnight International Choreographer. Amselem was in residence June 11-30, 2012 in Minneapolis to develop a new work entitled Bon appetit!
Bon appetit! Work in Progress Showing
Friday, June 29, 2012 8:00 pm
JSB Tek Box, The Cowles Center
Johan worked with dancers Rachel Freeburg, Erika Hanson, Melanie Verne, Ryan Dean, Dustin Hawg, and Zachary Teska; video artist Kevin Obsatz; DJ Shannon Blowtorch; and dramaturgs Morgan Thorson and Karen Sherman.
"We're still going on exploring the dark side of pleasure. It will be particularly about the pleasure to consume and be consumed. I think of the piece like a recipe that principal ingredients will be your wonderful bodies. As I was thinking on a twisted pleasure that nobody should understand, I came to cannibalism. So we'll work on generating into the audience the desire to eat you. Kevin will increase the hunger with the video. It will also be about promiscuity, bodies against bodies, desire and fear, excesses-we'll be on a burning dance floor stove. And for that I count on Shannon's powerful music and personality live on stage." ~Johan Amselem
Johan Amselem, a 36 year old French choreographer, was born in Toulon, French Riviera, and lives in Paris. He began to learn ballet at 6 years old at Toulon Opera House Dance School, and then modern dance at the National Conservatory of Dance in Avignon and National Center of Contemporary Dance in Angers, directed by L'Esquisse Company - Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia.
He worked for five years as a dancer with Laura Scozzi (known in France and abroad for her directions and choreographies of operas) and was also her choreographic assistant on tour on Platée, an opera-ballet produced by Opéra de Paris - Palais Garnier. Amselem also works as a dancer for Da Da Dans Company with choreographer Helle Bach in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ameslem is a choreographer of many modern dance solos and duos, often performed in very atypical ways such as choreographic walks around gardens and others public spaces. He also choreographs for popular performances in theaters such as the musical Froufrou les Bains, which won the Moliere Award in 2002 for best musical. Ameslem has also choreographed and directed a musical produced by Vidy Theater in Lausanne, and participated in the first big national celebration of dance last September at the Grand Palais in Paris, organized by the famous Spanish choreographer Blanca Li.
He creates dance theater performances, participative events such as an electro couple dance ballroom with a DJ, gives workshops for professionals and amateurs, adults, teenagers, and children, and creates customized events for enterprises and municipalities.
Amselem has been working with Opera de Paris on a pedagogic program for schools. He works on raising public awareness of dance virtues. Notorious French institutions such as Atelier de Paris, directed by Carolyn Carlson, support him. His company, La Halte-Garderie (The Nursery), is sponsored by Paris City Hall.
Amselem is Mediterranean, and born of a North African Jewish family. His work is sharp and full of joy, rituals, flesh, and spirituality, along with emotions, pleasure, and greed.
George Stamos
2014 International Artist
Photo courtesy of the artist
George Stamos, choreographer, dancer, and artistic director, received a BA in choreography from Amsterdam’s School For New Dance Development. In 1997 he relocated to Montréal where he has been active in the dance community since his arrival.
Stamos’ choreographies have been presented across North America, in Europe, and seasonally in Montréal since 1998. Stamos has also taught many workshops in technique, improvisation, and creative process. Currently he dances in his new duo Liklik Pik and works as a dancer with Zab Maboungou Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata a contemporary African dance company in Montréal.
Organizations who have presented work by Stamos include L’Agora De La Dance, The Baryshnikov Center For The Arts, Neighbourhood Dance Works, Studio 303, Theatre D’Aujourd’hui, Live Art Productions, The Canada Dance Festival, The Fluid Festival, Tangente, Dancemakers Center For Creation, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Vancouver International Dance Festival, Harbourfront Centre, Amsterdam's International Ness Festival, and many others.
Satmos' experience outside of the contemporary dance world includes volunteer work with community based organizations from 1987-1999 and at the occupational therapy department of Giant Steps School for Children with Autism in 2010.
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro
2013 International Artist
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a choreographer, dancer, vocalist, and educator whose dances have infused the venerable Cambodian classical form with new ideas and energy. Her work has toured to three continents hosted by such venues as New York’s Joyce Theater, Cal Performances, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Venice Biennale, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, University Musical Society/Ann Arbor, Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival and Amsterdam’s Het Muziektheater. Works include Samritechak (2000), The Glass Box (2002), Seasons of Migration (2005), Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute(2006), Spiral XI (2008), and Shir-Ha-Shirim (2008), a collaboration with John Zorn. The Lives of Giants premiered in the Fall 2010.
Shapiro is a 2009 recipient of the National Heritage Fellowship, a lifetime honor awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and a USA Knight Fellowship. She was awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture in 2006 and has received Creative Capital, Durfee, Guggenheim, and Irvine Dance Fellowships, among many other honors.
Born in Phnom Penh, Shapiro was a member of the first generation to graduate from the School of Fine Arts after the fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime and was a member of the dance faculty there from 1988 to 1991. She studied all three major roles for women (neang, nearong, and yeak), which is rare. With the school’s ensemble, she toured India, the Soviet Union, the USA, and Vietnam. She immigrated to Southern California in 1991, where she studied dance ethnology at UCLA on undergraduate and graduate levels. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Khmer Arts, a transnational organization dedicated to fostering the vitality of Cambodian dance across borders.
Shapiro lectures and teaches at conferences and universities around the world. Her many essays have been published in Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors (1997, Yale University Press), Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion (2008, Scarecrow Press); Cultural Identities: Tokyo to Bombay (2008, Centre national de la danse), Beyond the Apsara: Celebrating Dance in Cambodia (2009, Routledge), and elsewhere.
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.
Kaleena Miller
2015 Dancer Fellow
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.
