Summer Program – The Cohort: Stage & Screen

Details:

- Where: The Southern Theater – 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55454
- When – Stage: August 17-19 @ 7:30pm | August 19 @ 2pm
- When – Screen: August 19 @ 4pm
- Tickets: Purchase info coming soon

The Program:

The Cohort 2023 features new and revisited stage works by local artist Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone and visiting artists Cara Hagan (NYC) and Carlos R.A. Jones (Buffalo, NY), as well as RS Artistic and Executive Director Erinn Liebhard, and a program of screen works curated and presented in collaboration with Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (Boulder, CO). Learn more about the program and this year’s artists below!

The Cohort program is built to support and share different perspectives on and via the vibrancy of jazz and American social dance ideas by MN-local and visiting artists alike through both stage and screen works. Following ten years of annually presenting dance works by eight to nine mostly-local artists and their varied casts of performers each Summer, in 2019 we shifted to provide more in-depth support to fewer artists creating longer works, and a company of dancers to perform them. This new vision of the RS annual Summer production continues support of new work by local choreographers while providing opportunities for artists based outside of Minnesota to show their work here. In 2022, to support the flood of new creation in screendance prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and incentivize jazz-inspired artists to create in this medium, we began working with curating partner Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO) and presenting partners the Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop and the Twin Cities Film Festival to develop a dance film component of the program.

In 2023, we are excited to once again support and present works for both the stage and the screen, the later in continued collaboration with Sans Souci and Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop (who will present a Boulder showing of the screen program)!

The Artists – Stage:

Cara Hagan (Visiting Artist – New York City, NY)

Cara Hagan’s work exists at the intersections of movement, digital space, words, contemplative practice, and community. Hagan’s work has been presented at numerous events including recent appearances at Performatica in Cholula, Mexico, the Conference on Geopoetics in Edinburgh, Scotland, Roehampton University in London, The Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City, The Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh, NC and right here in Minnesota at the DanceBARN Festival! Hagan is an Associate Professor and Program Director of the MFA in Contemporary Theatre Performance at The New School in New York City. carahagan.net/ @carahagan_art

Carlos Jones (Visiting Artist – Buffalo, NY)

Carlos R. A. Jones is professor of musical theater and dance, coordinator of Africana Studies, and associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Buffalo State. He has also served on faculty at Chapman University, Loyola Marymount, UCLA and St. Cloud State University. His early career was in television, film, musical theater, and concert dance, where he worked with Broadway legend André De Shields, SNL veteran Ellen Cleghorn, and television icon Carol Burnett, among others. A few of his credits: Film/TV – The Drew Carey Show, The Nanny, Dance With Me, and Uptown Girls. Directing/Choreography – Don’t Bother Me I Can’t Cope, Camelot, Beehive and Hairspray. Concert Dance – Jazz Antiqua Dance and Music Ensemble, Bethune Theaterdanse, Movement Source and his self-named, Carlos Jones and Company. He is a contributing author and co-editor of Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century. @thegroovydean

Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone (Local – Twin Cities, MN)

Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone is a movement artist, educator, and stylist born and raised in Maquoketa, Iowa. Across all modes of creating, she strives to slow down perception of time in order to provide spacious opportunities for human to human connection and expanding self-awareness. Laura has a bachelor’s degree in dance and fashion studies at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and was a member of Zenon Dance Company in Minneapolis 2016-2019. Laura received her MFA in Performance and Choreography from Smith College in 2022. She has a long-time collaborative relationship with Leila Awadallah and Emma Marlar in their creative trio Kelvin Wailey, is the founder and artistic director of Slo Dance Company, and has been an instructor at the Zenon Dance School, the Performing Institute of Minnesota, and St. Paul Conservatory for the Performing Arts. As a freelance performer, Laura has been featured in several productions for John Mark Creative, ranging broadly from Sylvan Esso’s music video, PARAD(w/m)E, to performing on stage with Weird Al. lauraosterhaus.com/ @losterstone & @slodancecompany

Rhythmically Speaking Artistic and Executive Director Erinn Liebhard will also be creating a new work. We extend a warm thank you to all who submitted!