HIJACK in partnership with McKnight Artist Fellowships program, The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, and The Cedar Cultural Center present
GALIA EIBENSCHUTZ (2019 McKnight International Choreographer) with HIJACK & dancers with closing set by Itch Princess
Two Nights! Wednesday, October 16 and Thursday, October 17, 2019*
Doors: 7:00 PM Show: 7:30 PM
All Ages • Seated Show
$15 General Admission
*The October 16th show will be followed by public reception. The October 17th show will be followed by a conversation with the artists.
This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served limited seating, both on risers and seats on the floor. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
General Admission tickets are available online and by phone.
About the Dance
HIJACK in partnership with McKnight Artist Fellowships program, The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, and The Cedar Cultural Center announce the premiere of a new dance work by Mexican choreographer Galia Eibenschutz featuring Minneapolis dancers Julia Gavin Bither, Lelis Brito, Eben Kowler, Theresa Madaus, Judy Holo Shuī Xiān, Laurie Van Wieren and the HIJACK duo of Kristin Van Loon & Arwen Wilder. The original music score will be performed live on drums by NYC-based, multi-talented artist Katelyn Farstad. Farstad will close the evening with a set of original songs as her alter-ego Itch Princess.
This project combines curiosity, luck, mystery, sweat, and political intention. HIJACK’s Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder were selected as the Minnesota Partner for the McKnight International Choreographer program with the aim of highlighting the vibrant local improvisation dance community. HIJACK has choreographed and performed improvisation nationally and internationally and has taught dance improvisation locally at the University of MN and Zenon Dance School for almost 20 years.
In turn, a little over a year ago HIJACK and the McKnight International program selected Galia Eibenshutz who was suggested by visual artist and experimental musician friends. They visited her studio in Mexico City and were entranced by photos of her marking wide charcoal arcs on the walls and a piece she performed with her mother. They watched her videos of dancers drawing on each other’s backs and translating sensation into shapes and marks with a mysterious beauty, and saw a cardboard model and intriguing notations for the dance she was designing.
After a year of on-line communication, compiling a visa application that weighed five pounds and a classically nail-biting wait from immigration offices, HIJACK’s Van Loon & Wilder are ready to perform in the Mexico City dance artist’s work along with an ensemble of some of their favorite local dance improvisors. Ms. Eibenschutz is excited to create this new dance/drawing work spotlighting unique qualities of each performer in this diverse cast.
Thanks to support of the McKnight International Choreographer program, Galia Eibenschutz will enjoy a month-long residency with an intensive schedule of workshops and rehearsals in preparation for the performances at The Cedar. Galia speaks poetically (in her second language) of her plans: inspirations include textures of paper and fur, memories of landscapes, the writings of John Berger, dance movement born of the practice of drawing.
It was the integration of drawing into Galia’s performances that drew HIJACK to The Cedar Cultural Center. This new work requires vast floor and wall surfaces to be covered with paper for drawing by dancers. The Cedar has been a perfect partner for this project with its long history of presenting international artists in the West Bank neighborhood. While it is currently known as a music venue, presenting dance is in The Cedar’s mission; it was the home venue for Minnesota Dance Theatre back in the 1970s, and it features one of the smoothest, largest wood dance floors left in Minneapolis. To ramp up for this international residency, HIJACK worked with The Cedar to present a bi-monthly showcase of dance improvisation called FUTURE INTERSTATES in winter/spring 2019.
HIJACK and the Minneapolis dance cast are excited to dive into the unknown with Galia’s arrival in mid- September. All are thrilled to be the part of an international collaboration between US and Mexican artists in the midst of so much political tension and ugliness. HIJACK believes that being in a room together, working to make something beautiful, specifically dancing and working with the shared humanity of bodies is a gesture of action and hope.
About the Artists
Galia Eibenschutz is a dance and multimedia artist from Mexico City whose work has developed through both movement and visual art techniques. Her work registers the passing of time as well as the scenic presence of the human body and its projection within architectural spaces. Her most recent performance pieces include presentations at Teatro de la Danza (Mexico City, Mexico; 2018); Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca (2018) in collaboration with musician Natalia Perez Turner; FABRIKA in Beirut, Lebanon (2016) in collaboration with Corinne Skaff; at Ex- Teresa Arte, and during Art Basel at The Center for Visual Communication (Miami, 2013).
Her work has also been displayed as part of several collective exhibitions at Modern Art Museum (Mexico City); Carrillo Gill Art Museum (Mexico, City); Contemporary Art Museum of Oaxaca, MUCA Roma and MUCA CU (Mexico, City); Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes (Mexico, City); Witte de Witt (Rotterdam), Blain|Southern (London branch); Mexican Cultural Center (Paris); Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts (Montreal) and in Stedelijke Museum Voor Actuele Kunst Gante (Belgium).
She has been in residency programs in Casa Wabi; Casa NANO, Villa Iris (Botín Foundation), L’École des Sables (Senegal) and the Mexican Fine Arts Museum of Chicago. As a performer, Eibenschutz has also participated in projects from other artists such as Joan Jonas and Carlos Amorales. For more information about Galia, visit her website.
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. http://www.mcknightdancechoreo.org/fellows//hijack
Julia Gavin Bither (they/them) is a performer and dance-maker based in South Minneapolis. Julia creates movement-based installation work with Claire King and co-publishes Good Job dance zine with Eben Kowler. Julia has danced with HIJACK, Chris Schlichting, Laurie Van Wieren and Anna Marie Shogren.
Lelis Brito is a Venezuelan-American theater director, choreographer, educator, performer, and director of the Center for Moving Cultures. As director of CMC she advocates for tactile/kinaesthetic knowledge in education and cultural transmission. As an artist, she has performed with local and national companies and has created over 70 original works, varying from 6-minute dance solos, to one-hour plays and 3-hour long movement-theatre works.
Eben Kowler is a dancer and choreographer in Minneapolis, MN. He is best known for his work in the choreographic collaboration DaNCEBUMS. Founded in 2014, DaNCEBUMS signature style blends the arty with the party. In addition to performances at all the usualplaces, DaNCEBUMS took their dances off the stage and into the bar and music scene to find fans and fame. DaNCEBUMS final performance It's All Real. It's All Fake. It's All DaNCEBUMS., continued their collaboration with musical wünderkind Eric Mayson and under-the-radar visual artist and designer Matt Gorrie to move through what it means to grow-up and confront “real life” surrounded by social media and reality television. Eben has performed in the works of Bart Buch, George Stamos, Body Cartography Project, Paula Mann, and Morgan Thorson. He has created original works for In the Heart of the Beast, Forecast Public Art, Young Dance, and the Red Eye.
Theresa Madaus is a Minneapolis-based dance-maker and performer best known for her work as 1/3 of the choreographic collaboration Mad King Thomas. An improvisor, arts administrator, and writer, she also moonlights as drag sensation Rock Scissors and creates performance at the intersection of drag and dance. Additionally, she helps organize Don't You Feel It Too?, a practice of public dancing for personal liberation and social healing.
Judy Holo Shuǐ Xiān (they/them) is an interdisciplinary choreographer, improviser and sound artist. Their work prioritizes and centers the experiences of QTIPOC, and stands an allyship to those of other marginalized identities. They have presented works at venues including Fresh Oysters Performance Research, Public Functionary, Bryant Lake Bowl, Tek Box, The Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts (Minneapolis, MN) and 9 Herkimer Place (Brooklyn, NY). They have recently enjoyed performing for/collaborating with others including Rosy Simas, Leila Awadallah, Judith Howard, Chris Schlichting, Dua Saleh, Shayna Allen, Pramila Vasudevan, Megan Meyer, Fire Drill, and Erin Drummond. They are a 2017 Q-Stage: New Works Series and a 2019 Momentum: New dance works recipient. 2019 was also their first year as part of the Queertopia curation team.
Laurie Van Wieren's choreography has been shown in the Twin Cities, Chicago, New York and in Europe. 9x22 Dance/Lab, her monthly showcase at the Bryant Lake Bowl Cabaret Theater, is aperformance platform for local and visiting choreographers. She’s developed work for the Walker Art Center’s Open Field performance, which highlighted 100 local choreographers at once. Van Wieren has curated performance for the Southern, Ritz, and Soo Visual Art Center. She is a recipient of fellowships/grants from McKnight, Jerome, Bush, NEA, Rockefeller Foundations and Mn State Arts Board. Van Wieren has received a Special Citation Sage Award and a Sage Award for Outstanding Performance. She has received a City Pages Artists of the Year in 2016 for her solo dance: Temporary Action Theory and her ongoing curation. Van Wieren is currently making site-specific ensemble dance performances for parks and large spaces and a series of solo works. She will be in residence at MANCC in fall 2020 as a recipient of a 2018/19 McKnight Choreography Fellowship administered by The Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation.
Itch Princess is Katelyn ‘Why-The-Fuck-Would-I-Do-This-For-Fun?’ Farstad, aiming from the gut, singing from the ankles, "missing the point intentionally" in Drudge Ballad format - Dirges, Zone Development - populated by moans into the great uncertainty, psych-engineered meaning making strategy, stumbled purpose crafting with raw materials, morning behavior, putting pen to paper, winding down, finding the shady spot, or "if the sun’s in your eyes, just close them". Find within metal, e-tablas, midi double bass, meditation results, 90’s coffee shop nightmare sitcom, time stretched drum performance, inexplicable sporadic compositional implosion, sprinkled moments of genuinely arresting / brain stopping expression.” -Truly Bald
About the McKnight International Choreographer Residency
The McKnight International Choreographer Residency invites one international choreographer each year to spend time in residence in Minnesota, collaborating with Minnesota dance artists and showcasing new work. These programs are part of the McKnight Choreographer Fellowships, funded by the McKnight Foundation and administered by The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts. www.mcknightdancechoreo.org
The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts serves as the Twin Cities' flagship for dance, presenting a wide array of productions each season in the Goodale Theater in the heart of Downtown Minneapolis. The Center’s campus includes three performance spaces, education studios and administrative offices for more than 20 arts and nonprofit organizations – making it a dynamic and vibrant hub for the Twin Cities’ performing arts community and a place where dance can grow and thrive.