HIJACK

2013 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

HIJACK is the Minneapolis-based choreographic collaboration of Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. HIJACK is the confluence and clash of two independent compositional/kinesthetic impulses. Their dances embrace juxtaposition. Their dances house unlikely intimates and question “who is the enemy?”

Specializing in the inappropriate, HIJACK is best known for "short-shorts:" pop song-length miniatures designed to deliver a sharp shock.

Over the last 25 years they have created over 100 dances and performed in venues ranging from proscenium to barely-legal. HIJACK manipulates context by employing a site-specific approach to every performance and toying with audiences' expectations. HIJACK has performed in New York (at DTW, PS122, HERE ArtCenter, Catch/Movement Research Festival, La Mama, Dixon Place, Chocolate Factory), Japan, Russia, Central America, Ottawa, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, at Fuse Box Festival in Austin Texas, and Bates Dance Festival in Maine and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation. HIJACK questions where and for whom contemporary dance is performed, gigging regularly in both social settings and concert settings.  

HIJACK has enjoyed long relationships with Red Eye Collaborations (as part of their Critical Core), Bryant Lake Bowl Theater where their 1996 "Take Me To Cuba" was the theater’s first ever dance concert), Zenon Dance School (where they have taught every Wednesday morning for 18 years), and Walker Art Center where they have performed in every imaginable context including the opening of the McGuire Theater, at Dyke Night, First Free Saturday children’s programming, in the sculpture garden, and in the light of the Benson Film Collection in the Mediateque. In 2013, Walker Art Center commissioned “redundant, ready, reading, radish, Red Eye” to celebrate twenty years of HIJACK and Contact Quarterly published the chapbook “Passing for Dance: A HIJACK Reader”.

Their 2018-20 projects include: performing End Plays with Lisa Nelson, curating and hosting Future Interstates (a series of dance improvisation performances initiated by HIJACK and Body Cartography in 2015), creation and premiere of Jealousy (a collaboration with sculptor Ryan Fontaine and lighting designer Heidi Eckwall at Hair + Nails Gallery), touring an evening of dance with films to micro-cinemas and managing & dancing in the 2019 McKnight International Choreography residency of Galia Eibenshutz at Cedar Cultural Center.

LINKS:

https://mancc.org/artists/hijack/

https://walkerart.org/calendar/2013/hijack-2

Emily Johnson

2013 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhof

Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body based work. Originally from Alaska, she is currently based in Minneapolis. Since 1998 she has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment—sights, sounds, smells—interacting with a place's architecture, history, and role in community. She works to blur distinctions between performance and daily life and to create work that reveals and respects multiple perspectives. Johnson received a 2012 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production for her work, The Thank-you Bar at New York Live Arts. She is a 2012 Creative Capital and Joyce Foundation grant recipient. She is a 2011-12 Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Returning Choreographic Fellow, a 2012 Headlands and MacDowell Colony Artist in Residence, a 2011 Native Arts and Cultures Fellow, a 2012, 2010, and 2009 MAP Fund Grant recipient, and a 2009 McKnight Fellow. Current works include The Thank-you Barand Where (we) Live with SO Percussion, directed by Ain Gordon. Niicugni premiered at MANCC/Florida State University/Seven Days of Opening Nights and tours through 2013 with support from National Dance Project to MassMoca, The Redfern Art Center at Keene College/Vermont Performance Lab, The Coil Festival/PS122 at Baryshnikov Arts Center, TigerTail, Arizona State University/Gammage Theater, Northrop/O'Shaughnessy, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Bunnell St. Gallery in Homer, Alaska. Johnson is of Yup'ik descent and is a shareholder in the Calista Native Corporation. Her family is from Bethel and Akiak, Alaska and she was raised on the Kenai Peninsula. 

 

• For more information: Catalyst Dance

Karen Sherman

2013 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Aaron Rosenblum

Karen Sherman moved to Minneapolis in 2004 from NYC. Her work has been presented nationally by P.S. 122, Walker Art Center, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dance Place, Fusebox Festival, Highways Performance Space, ODC, The Red Eye Theater, and many others. She has worked and collaborated with such artists as Morgan Thorson, Sally Silvers, Dan Hurlin, Emily Johnson, Lisa D’Amour, Katie Pearl, Nami Yamamoto, Neal Medlyn, NTUSA, The Love Everybody Players, Tanya Gagné, Circus Amok, and the feminist punk pop band, Le Tigre.

She has received numerous awards for her work as a choreographer, performer, and designer, including a 2007 “Bessie” Award for her work in Morgan Thorson'sFaker, McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography (2006) and Dance (2009), a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship (2009), Sage Awards for her work as a Performer (2006) and Scenic Designer (for her 2008 work, copperhead), City Pages Best Artist Awards as a Dancer (2007) and Choreographer (2009), MacDowell Colony Fellowships (2010, 2003), a Movement Research Artist Residency (1999-2000), and a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship and residency in Liguria, Italy (2010).

She holds a BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (with a double major in Women’s Studies) and is also a singer, fifth-generation lasso spinner, and former student of flying trapeze. Her background in these areas, as well as her work in nearly every facet of arts production as a producer, production manager, technical director, scenic and sound designer, and technician, informs each aspect of her work. As Administrator and Production Manager of New York’s legendary Judson Church from 1994-2004, she co-created, produced, and curated START, a multi-disciplinary series integrating politics and arts. Her writing, including essays and poetry, has been featured on many live, web, and print forums, including The Movement Research Performance Journal, Culture Bodega, The Performance Club, and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman (Off The Park Press).

One with Others, incorporated dance, writing, and carpentry and toured in 2014 to TBA Festival (Portland), Red Eye Theater (Mpls), Fsebox Festival (Austin), DiverseWorks (Houston), and The Chocolate Factory (NYC).

Related

• Karen Sherman 2014 Solo Choreographer

• Karen Sherman Performance

Kari Mosel

2013 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhof

Kari Mosel hails from Eau Claire, Wisconsin where she grew up riding horses, climbing trees, and tripping over her own feet. She received her BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota in 2004. In 2002 Mosel began her professional career with an apprenticeship for Shapiro & Smith Dance. She became a full company member in 2006, while tour managing and understudying for ANYTOWN. Mosel also serves as the administrative assistant and board secretary for Shapiro & Smith Dance. In 2005 she became a company member and teaching artist with Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater (SPDT). Performing with them nationally and internationally for the past 8 years, Mosel has assisted in SPDT workshops and residencies in educational and healthcare. She was SPDT’s company manager from 2009-2011 and now serves as their video editor and archivist. Mosel has also danced with Time Track Productions, Kats D and the Paneer Project, Marciano Silva dos Santos, Jim Lieberthal, Black Label Movement, Jenny Pennaz, Julie Warder, Cade Holmseth, and as apprentice for Zenon Dance. In October 2012 Mosel was nominated for a Minnesota SAGE Dance Award for Outstanding Performer. In addition to performing, she creates her own work, which has been presented at The Women’s Club, Patrick’s Cabaret, and The Ritz Theater in Minneapolis and has also been commissioned by The University of River Falls Dance Program for the past several years. Mosel is also the performance coach for the Hudson High School Gymnastics Team.

Related

• Solo Choreographer Lane Gifford
• Shapiro and Smith Dance
• Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater

Tamara Ober

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

2013 Dancer Fellow

Tamara Ober is a dancer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary creator based in Minneapolis. She has received Minnesota SAGE Award nominations for Performance, Performer, and Design (2012) and has been presented in Red Eye’s Isolated Acts (2013) with solo show, Sin Eater. Ober’s critically acclaimed multidisciplinary solo show, Pipa toured across the U.S., Canada, and to Budapest, and received Montreal Fringe’s first-runner-up Centaur Award (2009), City Pages Best Artist (2009), MN SAGE Award for Dance for Outstanding Performer (2010), and Metro Magazine’s Keeper Award (2011). 

Supported by the MacPhail Center for Music Artist grant (2012), the Spotlight Series (2012), and the American Composer’s Forum Live Music for Dance MN grant (2013), Ober, composer/musician Julie Johnson, and New York filmmaker D.J. Mendel created a MN Fringe sellout, Standing on the Hollow. In 2015, Ober created an evening-length dance film for Johnson’s live music composition, Seasons of Time. She received a 2015 MRAC Next Step grant to create a new trio, premiering in June 2016.

Ober has served on panels, performed lecture/demonstrations, and workshops for various dance and theater educational institutions. She is Wonderlust Production's choreographer, and has collaborated on the NEA supported Veteran’s Play Project (2013), and the Adoption Play Project (2016).

A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Dance and BA in Sociology, Ober joined Zenon Dance Company in 2002 and has worked with over 40 emerging and world-renowned choreographers, touring to New York, Russia, Hungary, France, and Cuba.

Related

• Tamara Ober
• Solo Choreographer D.J. Mendel
• Solo Commission by Brian J. Evans

Gregory Waletski

2013 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Gregory Waletski grew up in Chanhassen, Minnesota and is a 1987 graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Inspiration for a dancing life began there with his first teacher, Toni Sostek. He has been a member of the modern and jazz repertory company, Zenon, for the past 22 years. As such he has worked with a wide range of choreographers including Susana Tambutti, luciana achugar, Netta Yerushalmy, Danny Buraczeski, Colleen Thomas, Bill Young, Sean Curran, Doug Varone, Morgan Thorson, Mariusz Olszewski, and Faye Driscoll. He has also performed in the companies of several Twin Cities' based choreographers including Megan Meyer, Wynn Fricke, Cathy Young, and Matthew Janczewski. In 2000 he was awarded a McKnight Fellowship for Dance and was the recipient of a 2011 Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Performer. Waletski also has a rich and varied life outside of dance. For many years he has worked as a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska's Bristol Bay. He is also an avid record collector and DJ at the monthly funk and soul dance night, Hipshaker. He left Zenon Dance Company but does plan on returning as a guest artist and also for the company's outreach residencies with the deaf, hard of hearing community.  He completed a two-year program for a Sign Language Interpreter/Transliterator AAS degree and now also works as an interpreter.

Related

• Solo Choreographer Karen Sherman

George Stamos

2014 International Artist

George Stamos, choreographer, dancer, and artistic director, received a BA in choreography from Amsterdam’s School For New Dance Development. In 1997 he relocated to Montréal where he has been active in the dance community since his arrival.

Stamos’ choreographies have been presented across North America, in Europe, and seasonally in Montréal since 1998. Stamos has also taught many workshops in technique, improvisation, and creative process. Currently he dances in his new duo Liklik Pik and works as a dancer with Zab Maboungou Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata a contemporary African dance company in Montréal.

Organizations who have presented work by Stamos include L’Agora De La Dance, The Baryshnikov Center For The Arts, Neighbourhood Dance Works, Studio 303, Theatre D’Aujourd’hui, Live Art Productions, The Canada Dance Festival, The Fluid Festival, Tangente, Dancemakers Center For Creation, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Vancouver International Dance Festival, Harbourfront Centre, Amsterdam's International Ness Festival, and many others.

Satmos' experience outside of the contemporary dance world includes volunteer work with community based organizations from 1987-1999 and at the occupational therapy department of Giant Steps School for Children with Autism in 2010.

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro

2013 International Artist

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a choreographer, dancer, vocalist, and educator whose dances have infused the venerable Cambodian classical form with new ideas and energy. Her work has toured to three continents hosted by such venues as New York’s Joyce Theater, Cal Performances, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Venice Biennale, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, University Musical Society/Ann Arbor, Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival and Amsterdam’s Het Muziektheater. Works include Samritechak (2000), The Glass Box (2002), Seasons of Migration (2005), Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute(2006), Spiral XI (2008), and Shir-Ha-Shirim (2008), a collaboration with John Zorn. The Lives of Giants premiered in the Fall 2010.  
 
Shapiro is a 2009 recipient of the National Heritage Fellowship, a lifetime honor awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and a USA Knight Fellowship.  She was awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture in 2006 and has received Creative Capital, Durfee, Guggenheim, and Irvine Dance Fellowships, among many other honors. 
  
Born in Phnom Penh, Shapiro was a member of the first generation to graduate from the School of Fine Arts after the fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime and was a member of the dance faculty there from 1988 to 1991. She studied all three major roles for women (neang, nearong, and yeak), which is rare. With the school’s ensemble, she toured India, the Soviet Union, the USA, and Vietnam. She immigrated to Southern California in 1991, where she studied dance ethnology at UCLA on undergraduate and graduate levels. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Khmer Arts, a transnational organization dedicated to fostering the vitality of Cambodian dance across borders. 
 
Shapiro lectures and teaches at conferences and universities around the world.  Her many essays have been published in Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors (1997, Yale University Press), Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion (2008, Scarecrow Press); Cultural Identities: Tokyo to Bombay (2008, Centre national de la danse), Beyond the Apsara: Celebrating Dance in Cambodia (2009, Routledge), and elsewhere.