Minnesota Dance Lecture Series (Part 14) WINTER TRADITIONS

Hosted by Michèle Steinwald, with speakers Alberto Justiniano, Derek Philips, April Sellers, and Elizabeth Simonson

Sunday, November 5, 2017 from 2-4pm

In the Ordway’s Target Atrium

One quintessential winter holiday tradition, the Nutcracker ballet, has been reinterpreted several times over. In the Twin Cities, we have seen it throughout the years reduced into a drunken one-man show, stretched into a parade of the children’s talents, and twisted into a sexy provocation in lingerie. While not the only way dance finds its way into our winter holiday traditions, local choreographers share how they use dance to bring communities together for artistic and cultural celebrations at the end of each calendar year.

Of Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence, the New York Times critic summarizes the book’s central trope: “For an artist, influence is everything.” The 2017-2018 Minnesota Dance and the Ecstasies of Influences series, curated by Michèle Steinwald, is presented by Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts and the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries.

The series was originally developed in 2014 for The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, in consultation with Kristin Van Loon, choreographer and curator; Judith Brin Ingber, choreographer and writer; Cecily Marcus, curator, and Kathryn Hujda, assistant curator, of the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries; Nancy Mason Hauser, videographer, and Linda Shapiro, choreographer and writer, founders of the Minnesota Dance Pioneers Oral History Project.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.