Catherine Jhung is a dancer, actor, teacher and school administrator. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and Denver, CO., she graduated with a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and holds a Master’s degree in early childhood education from Brooklyn College. Catherine appeared as a featured dancer and royal wife in The King and I on the First National Tour of the Tony Award-winning 1997 Broadway revival. Modern dance credits include Bill Young and Dancers (New York City), Silesian Dance ...

Ololade Gbadamosi, also known as O, is a Twin Cities native who is a dancing artist, an educator and administrator. Ololade specializes in the dance styles Krump, Hip Hop and Afro Social dances. Krump is a street dance that stands for Kingdom Radically Uplifting Mighty Praise. Ololade is mostly self taught in this style and has traveled outside of Minnesota to participate in battles and also take classes from other proven krumpers including the creators of the dance style Chez "Tight Eyez" Wi...

Vanessa Voskuil is a choreographer, director, performer, writer, designer, and teaching artist. Ranging from large community-inclusive performance works 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 Outstandi...

Cecil Neal, also known as Virgo and The Final Warning, is an artist born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and based in Minneapolis. His training began in his high school dance program and at SPCPA (St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists), and was refined under the mentorship of Herb Johnson from the age of 16. Cecil’s artistry has carried him to stages such as the Ordway, the Super Bowl, Walker Art Center, and Orchestra Hall with the Minnesota Orchestra ensemble. Internationally, he has represente...

Kayla Schiltgen is an interdisciplinary artist based in rural Two Harbors, Minnesota, blending dance and film to cope with and communicate her existence. Guided by her belief that subjectivity and vulnerability serve as an echo palette for others, Kayla creates screen dance, installation, and performance to facilitate exchange that affirms, affects, and inspires both artist and audience. She takes a multidimensional approach rooted in the Rural—working as choreographer/editor, dancer, cinemat...

Emily Michaels King is a performing artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota exploring authentic expression and human depth through movement, multimedia, and visual compositions for the stage. Emily is known for her fearless personal work, provocative compositions, and collaged evening-length solo performances, including: her award winning show MAGIC GIRL; multimedia online work DIGITAL; IN PERSON, a companion to DIGITAL; the raucous CHICKEN WING; and the harrowing STAR KEEPER. An in-progres...

Malia Craft is from Hartwell, Georgia and began her training at Hot Shots Dance Company, where she trained in ballet, modern, contemporary, hip hop, and jazz and found her love for performing, as well as teaching. Malia attended the University of Georgia, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, with a minor in exercise and sports science, and a certificate in K-12 dance education. Malia was also a part of the Georgette’s Dance Team for three years. She is currently an artist with Thre...

Twin Cities–based dancer and choreographer Dominick Burkhardt discovered his passion for the arts early in life, growing up in his mother’s dance studio. Immersed in a creative environment from a young age, he trained extensively in all styles of dance—including ballet, jazz, hip hop, tap, contemporary, modern, and acro—building a versatile and dynamic foundation. He honed his technical and performance skills at both Larkin Dance Studio and the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, ...

Growing up, Rachel trained, performed, and taught primarily with Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago. She moved to the Twin Cities to attend Macalester College, graduating in 2018 with a BA in Geography. She has since performed in works by Contempo Physical, Leila Awadallah, Off-Leash Area, A Cripple’s Dance, Mathew Janczewski, Javan Mngrezzo, Annika Johansson, Analog Dance Works, Zoë Koenig, Xina, Black Label Movement, and Judith H Shuǐ Xiān. Rachel's choreography engages themes of home/place/...

Alex Arce is an Ecuadorian American artist born and raised in Minnesota has been dancing since the age of 5 culturally and socially as well as technically. He focuses his practice within hip hop and Latin diasporic dance forms as well as contemporary/Modern Dance. He is a graduate of Larkin Dance Studio and Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. Upon his high school training he has also been a part of a pre professional dance program known as the Cli Conservatory in Massachuset...

Doug Hooker graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Dance. He has had a variety of professional performing opportunities, including with the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps, the Broadway show Blast! and the Dancing People Company, and locally with ARENA DANCES, Collide Theatrical Dance Company, Concerto Dance, José A. Louis, Paula Mann, Shapiro & Smith Dance, Rhythmically Speaking Dance, and Threads Dance Project.

Frances Machala Cerro Grew up in Cumberland, Wisconsin, graduated from St. Catherine’s College in 1965. She met Loyce Houlton there in 1963 when Mrs. Houlton began teaching at St. Catherine’s. Loyce Houton had started the Contemporary Dance Playhouse in Dinkytown by the U of M campus. It was an old Masonic Temple above a Cleaners that later burnt down. Mrs. Houlton took Frances under her wing and studied, taught and performed with the Contemporary Dance Playhouse, later the Minnesota Dance T...

Kaleena Miller makes sound-focused dance and installation work, rooted in tap dance technique and deep listening modalities. Named one of DANCE Magazine’s 25 to Watch, she has received a McKnight Fellowship for Dance and a Sage People’s Choice Award, and has presented work at the Walker Art Center, Icehouse, First Avenue, Jazz Central and the Southern Theater in Minneapolis, as well as at Arts on Site, Center for Performance Research and Symphony Space in New York. Previously, she co-founded ...

Dancer and Choreographer Aneka McMullen is an independent performing and teaching artist who lives to dance through life, inspire & connect with all people through her passion for movement of all types. She hails from Minneapolis and holds a BFA in dance from The Ohio State University. Her extensive dance experience spans more than two decades and includes dynamic skills in performance and instruction in the genres of West African, Afro Modern, Modern, Ballet, Jazz, Hip Hop, L...

Jennifer Hart - Hailed as a choreographer “with an imagination so exuberant that one could not be sure how one movement led to the next” and “not only inventive but heart-rending,” Jennifer Hart has been commissioned by Ballet Austin, Ballet Austin ll, Ballet Nouveau Colorado (now Wonderbound), James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, The Walker Art Center’s Momentum Series, The McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, Metropolitan Ballet Project, University of Kansas, University of Massachusett...

Sam Aros-Mitchell (he/him) is an enrolled member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians and an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator. His work spans performance, sound, light and scenic design, choreography, and embodied writing. Rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, his practice activates performance spaces as sacred sites of transformation, remembrance, and futurity. Through embodied scholarship, he interrogates colonial histories, uplifts BIPOC artistic excellence, and envisions just fut...

Mathew Janczewski’s inquisitive, immersive and heartfelt approach to contemporary dance reaches beyond the surface and holds the viewer in its embrace. With over 40 works in his repertoire and more than two decades of experience as a choreographer, Mathew has cultivated a highly diverse and personalized style of movement. Increasingly, his performances explore pressing social issues, providing a platform for dialogue and action. Mathew’s work has garnered praise in the Twin Cities and beyond....

Cheng Xiong is a local artist, teacher, and community leader. Xiong grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and received his Bachelors of Art in Dance at the University of Minnesota. Though he began his journey as a street dancer, through his studies, he was able to broaden to different styles and professional skills. Xiong is also a Hmong dance artist/researcher who is among the first in Minnesota to fuse forms of Breaking, Contemporary, and acrobatic dance styles. He is currently a company member of...

Joe Chvala (Artistic Director/Flying Foot Forum) is the founder and artistic director of the highly-acclaimed percussive dance company, the Flying Foot Forum. In addition to the Flying Foot Forum, Chvala has directed, choreographed, and been commissioned to create new works for a variety of theater and dance companies including the Guthrie Theater, the Walker Art Center, the Ordway Music Theater, the Minnesota Opera, Chicago Shakespeare, Children's Theater Company, Arkansas Repertory, T...

Under the direction of Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Doma Dance Theater creates dance works for the stage and screen that explore the body as a tangible site of culture. Doma, the Carpatho-Rusyn word for “at home,” cultivates a sense of belonging, curiosity, and exuberant self-expression for its performers and audiences. Doma’s cross-cultural approach creates powerful contemporary dance works that examine shared experiences of diaspora and displacement. Informed by Bodnarchuk’s pan-Slavic...