Upcomings!

Coordinating:
Rhythmically Speaking’s 2016 Call for Choreographers
When: Application available March 15, due April 15
More Info: rhythmicallyspeakingdance.org

Rhythmically Speaking, the organization I Artistic Direct, is excited to announce the call for choreographers for our 8th annual production! We present some of the Twin Cities’/ Minnesota’s best jazz, vernacularly-inspired and rhythm-driven choreography each year, and also support these forms by welcoming guests from other cities! Join the ongoing conversation by applying.

Teaching and Choreography:
American College Dance Association North Central Region Festival
Where: University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
When: March 19-23

Serving as faculty at Winona State University this year has brought many excellent opportunities including this! I’m teaching three of my “Jazz Dance: Moving Musicianship” classes and presenting my new work . . thWUmp . .. It has been a pleasure to work with the WSU students, and I’m looking forward to this experience with them! Photo by Taylor Nyman.

Coordinating, Choreographing and Performing:
Circulation: Connecting Through Embodying Rhythm
Where: Patrick’s Cabaret (Minneapolis)
When: April 8 and 9 @ 7:30pm

This spring, I have been fortunate enough to be selected a Guest Curator for iconic Patrick’s Cabaret in Minneapolis. My event features a collaboration I am working on exploring jazz standards with Bob DeBoer and BrassZilla, as well as the work of the following notable dancer-choreographers and musician-composers: Karis Sloss/ the Eclectic Edge Ensemble, Karla Grotting, Arturo Miles, SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE, Dameun Strange, Darrius Strong, THE SUMMER COATS and Magnolia Yang-Sao-Yia. Classic jazz, waacking, rock, tapping, acid jazz, funk, house, swing and other approaches to rhythm will circulate through this evening, connecting styles and people through deeply-felt aural and kinesthetic experiences.

Besides these events, I am looking forward to a full spring of my regular pursuits as a dance artist, including teaching for Winona State University and the Cowles Center as one of their Teaching Artists. I really enjoy teaching for them; it keeps me as close as Twin Cities public and private schools and flings me as far as libraries in Alaska (via video conferencing through the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration!). I am also co-teaching the Friday Morning Jazz Class at Zenon with the illustrious Karla Grotting: come join us Fridays March 25 – May 29 at Zenon Dance Company and School! I continue to train in house, ballet, modern, tap, jazz and various other stylistic approaches I sniff out both in the Twin Cities and beyond as I travel, and am excited to be working on a scholarly project about the sociocultural aspects of the Zumba! dance fitness phenomenon. As a choreographer, I will continue work on the Standards Project, an exploration of how gigging culture for jazz musicians can translate to dancers, and Rhythmically Speaking activity is shifting into an upswing as we plan for our eighth annual production in August!

Come May, I’m looking forward to teaching a summer jazz dance intensive at Winona and flexing my physical comedy muscles again as Nerdette at Saint Paul Saint’s Baseball. The rest of the summer brings several fun teaching gigs, professional travel to Dallas, Newport and Elkins, W.V. to learn, present and most of all DANCE, and of course the eighth annual Rhythmically Speaking! This year’s show is running August 18-20 at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.

Any of the above interesting? Want more info? Just want to say hi? Please reach out (ekliebs@gmail.com); any friend of jazz, rhythm-driven and vernacularly-inspired dance is a friend of mine!

Groove on,
Erinn