Choreographer

Vanessa Voskuil

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

2015 Choreographer Fellow

Choreographer and director Vanessa Voskuil has created more than twenty contemporary performance works ranging from large community-inclusive performance projects 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 Outstanding Design and nominated twice for Outstanding Performance. She has been named one of the “7 Artists to Watch” by Minnesota Monthly Magazine and recognized by the Star Tribune as one of “9 Minnesota Artists to Expect Great Things.” 

Related

Penelope Freeh

2014 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Penelope Freeh won a Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Performer in 2010. With composer Jocelyn Hagen she received a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Arts Activities Grant (2013) and two American Composers Forum New Music for Dance Grants (2010, 2014). Additional awards include: McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dancers (1998), MN State Arts Board Fellowship (1998), two Career Opportunity Grants (1999, 2001) and Artist Initiative Grant (2012), and a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant (2001). In May 2008 she was featured in and wrote "Why I Dance" for Dance Magazine.

Commissions include: James Sewell Ballet, MN Ballet, Gem City Ballet, the Walker Art Center/Southern Theater’s Momentum, MN Orchestra, 3-Legged Race, Skylark Opera, Nautilus Music Theater, Theater Mu, the University of MN, MN State University, and Russia’s Link Vostok Dance Festival among others. She has twice been presented by New York City’s Ballet Builders. Residencies include: the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, MN Dance Lab (Regional Dance Development Initiative) at the College of St. Benedict, St. Catherine University, Carleton College, the Reif Center, St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, and Perpich Center for Arts Education.

Freeh danced for James Sewell Ballet for seventeen years, serving as Artistic Associate from 2007-11. She is affiliate faculty at the University of MN and Zenon and summer faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.

For more information, visit her site.