ZONE RESIDENCY.

CHOREOGRAPHERS.

Zenon Dance School is delighted to announce the Zenon Dance Zone Choreographers for the Summer 2024 season. We are excited to work with April Sellers and Erika Martin, who will collaborate with the Zone dancers for the next twenty weeks to create exceptional works of art.

The Zone Dance program is designed to provide a shared dance experience for Zenon’s community of dancers with local choreographers. This season will culminate in a showcase, where Zenon Dance Zone works will be shared with guest artists on December 13 & 14 at 7:30 pm. The showcase will take place at the TEK Box in Hennepin Center for the Arts (2nd Floor).

We invite you to join us for an unforgettable experience, featuring some of the most talented dancers and choreographers in the field. We are confident that the showcase will be a testament to the creativity and dedication of the Zenon Zone artists, and we look forward to seeing you there.

April Sellers.

April Sellers is a choreographer with a desire to lift and celebrate ignored streams in society. She founded the April Sellers Dance Collective in 2002 as a home for her work exploring complex expressions of gender and identity. Using pop culture, activist politics, experimental aesthetics and audience participation she infuses life’s extreme moments and human stories with dance craft, controlled bedlam and superb comedic chops. In 2021 Sellers received the National Dance Project Production Grant for Rumble Strips, her most recent work. Her works have been commissioned by The Right Here Showcase, Candy Box Festival, Southern Theater, Hennepin Theater Trust, Red Eye Theater and Dancing Queerly. She has been supported by National Endowment for the Arts, MN State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and McKnight Foundation. She received a Sage Award for Outstanding Performance for “House of Big Love,” created and performed with collaborator Judith Howard. In 2017 she received the City Pages “Artist of the Year” award. She has curated performances for the Southern Theater, Bryant Lake Bowl, Hennepin Theater Trust, Gamut Gallery, and Link’s Hall, Chicago. Over the past decade, Sellers’ work has been recognized by invitations to several well-known artist residencies, including the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Santa Cruz CA), Maggie Allessee Center for Choreography (Tallahassee FL) Tofte Lake Center (Ely MN) and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Thesis Residency, where she received her MFA in Dance.

WORK DESCRIPTION

Inspired by Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s history of dissenting opinions and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence we will explore meaningful avenues of dissent and revolution. We will begin rehearsals with improvisations, using verbal and visual prompts to generate movement drawing inspiration from vaudevillian spectacle, punk rock anarchy, post-modern dance and anthropological methodology. We will explore rhythmic patterns. probe exaggerated emotional states and learn set movement patterns in the development of new narratives.

REHEARSALS

Monday: 7:00 – 8:30 pm | in-person: Studio 4A at Zenon Dance School. Starting July 8, 2024.

Shannon Hartle Dolan; photo by William Cameron Photography

Erika Martin.

Erika Martin is a Minneapolis-based dancer, choreographer, teacher, and engaged citizen. Originally from North Carolina, Erika received a BA in Dance and American Studies at Connecticut College. Their research investigates identity performance and how experience is manifested in movement.

Erika has had the privilege of studying abroad at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Dance in London and performing works by Kyle Abraham, Ronald K. Brown, David Dorfman, Elm City Dance Collective, Ori Floman, Ohad Naharin, Paula Mann, Doug Varone, and Shen Wei. They are the 2015 recipient of the Martha Myers Prize and the 2017 recipient of the Joan Connell Memorial Award.

From 2012-2015, Erika taught Ballroom Dance at Carolina Ballroom of Cary (NC) and from 2017-2019 returned to ballroom as an instructor and then manager for Dance With Me USA (NJ/NY). Since moving to MN in 2019, Erika has taught at Zenon Dance School, The Cowles Center, and DanceBARN. To date, Erika’s professional works have been shown in museums, theaters, and public spaces in Connecticut, New York, Maine, and Minnesota: notably at the Lyman Art Museum (CT), Schaefer Theatre Box, Bates Dance Festival (ME), Melrose Ballroom (NY), Praxis Gallery, the Cowles Center for Dance and Performing Arts, Barbara Barker Center for Dance, DanceBARN, Dances by the Lake Festival, The Southern Theater, and Soiled Dance Series (MN).

Erika is the Artistic Director of eMartin Dance, co-founder of Dance Projects by ME, home of the Minnesota International Dance Festival, and School Coordinator for Zenon Dance School.

WORK DESCRIPTION

This work will explore the connection between fluid and grounded movement as it relates to elemental textures like water and earth. I am inspired by both the tranquility and power that water can harness, and will use choreography and improvisation scores to explore ways in which that can be embodied.

REHEARSALS

Saturday 2:00-3:30 pm | in-person: Studio 4A at Zenon Dance School. Starting July 13, 2024.