- [Announcer] Tonight on Stage, take a front row seat for the inspiration, connection and joy you've been missing.

A special edition of Minnesota Original, showcasing a variety of local dance, including works by Shapiro & Smith, Karen L. Charles, The Hmong Breakers Leadership Council, and more.

(calm orchestral music) - [Brian] Midnight.

(calm orchestral music) Why are we eating so late?

(calm orchestral music) (floor creaking) The meal's gone cold.

Finished, you clear the table.

Ask, what time is it?

Repeatedly.

(calm orchestral music) They asking, a form of keeping time.

(calm orchestral music) (feet stamping) Have you noticed?

(bodies thud) For you, it's a question of economy.

Where do you buy hay in the city?

Enough for a mattress.

Enough to lie down.

An evening long past or a hoped for evening.

I expected you'd have more to say but the gist was clear.

(feet stamping) The platter slipped from your hand splashing the sink with eggshells.

The sink, salt, knife, bowl, chair, chair, drain, range, pepper, candle, table, dish, glass, glass, glass.

It's late.

You must figure I'm asleep.

The clock next to the bed tells me when to leave.

I'm a damned fool.

(floor squeaks) (Megan sighs) Taking the day off love (floor squeaks) with important events undecided.

Each of us daring the other to speak.

Mercy.

(orchestral upbeat music) - Dances are algorithms, they're problems to be solved.

You say, "How do I show this thing with this person's body?"

That's a problem, and like a math problem, how does X equal Y?

(orchestral upbeat music) I guess my life as a computer scientist and dance, they may not seem the same, but arts and science are not as disparate as people believe.

(orchestral music) And so there's lots of connections between what I used to do and what I do now.

(orchestral music) A strong work for me is something that moves me emotionally.

A great piece of work gives you the sense of amazement, the sense of awe.

I'll choreograph with the dancers and I'll say, I'm not feeling it.

Sometimes that means we have to sit down and talk about the intention; why are we doing this movement?

And believe it or not every movement has a meaning and a purpose.

I come from a ballet and a Horton-based background.

Horton is very balletic in terms of modern techniques.

And those techniques resonate with me because A, they're physically and mentally challenging and they show power and strength and they can also show softness.

(calm upbeat music) I've really been creating dance and producing shows since I was eight starting with the Christmas holiday shows in my basement throughout college but I still kept telling myself, nope, nope, you can never make a living at this.

And then my father became ill with cancer.

(calm upbeat music) As I went to visit him, we found out he wanted to be a doctor.

And my dad had always been a postal clerk.

And we were all shocked like, what?

That moment made me realize that I don't want to be at death's door telling my children, I wish I had tried, even if I fail.

So, that was the real impetus for me starting the company and decided to choreograph.

(energetic country music) - Her work has become much deeper over time.

I think she has really had the time and the inclination to explore.

With the piece, "The Secrets of Slave Songs," I went to that concert and I thought, oh my goodness, here we go.

This is on a different level.

Since then I have not had as much to say about, well, think about this or think about that.

No, she's thought about it.

She really bloomed at that point.

(energetic country music) And also to come to the place where her company has chosen to work with a McKnight choreographer, that's terrific.

- [Karen] Salia Sanou is the McKnight International Choreographer for 2017.

We are co-hosting him with the McKnight Foundation.

He has his own dance company.

He choreographs and he tours all across Europe and he's just a wonderful human being.

(speaking foreign language) [Interpreter] Shall we begin with the first tableau?

(Salia speaking foreign language) So, I was thinking something like this.

- [Karen] Salia's work touched me viscerally.

Whenever you get to see another choreographer's process it's always informative and energizing and makes me want to do better.

I've seen so much growth in the dancers just from the month that he's been here.

I've seen them move in ways that I would have never thought about.

(soft piano music) (speaking in foreign language) (gentle piano music) - There were no parameters.

You can create a work about whatever you want.

His work is called "Be Still Standing," which is his idea that all of the good people in the world have to still stand up and still fight despite everything that's going on in the world, which was really surprising given my piece was about chaos.

(gentle piano music) "Uncertain Reality" is a piece that I've created about chaos.

Especially now, I feel that the world is feeling extremely chaotic.

And chaos theory asks is it the chicken or the egg, right?

Are the moments of chaos intermittent moments between times of calm or as chaos a natural state of things?

(gentle piano music) The piece looks at how we humans try to control chaos.

What that does to us, if we perceived chaos is not this threatening thing but understood that it's a natural cyclical entity, that we might be better off, we wouldn't have these power struggles that we have where we try to control others because it makes us feel less chaotic.

(bouncy music) Through out this whole rehearsal process I've allowed chaos in, which is very difficult for me as a mathematician.

In terms of casting the dancers.

I usually put a lot of thought into who's in dance, ABC.

I just randomly assigned.

(bouncy music) I want my audiences, for every show, to learn something.

My hope is that they may leave knowing that chaos is part of who we are and maybe they'll accept that this is just part of life as opposed to resisting.

(feet stamping) Over the six years that we've been performing, I clung to this idea that you can't be afraid and even if you fail you've succeeded because you've overcome the fear of doing that thing that you've always dreamed of doing that you maybe felt like, "I'm not good enough, I don't know enough," 'cause you can always learn.

I'm constantly learning still about choreography every day.

(audience applauding) - One, two, three, hit (feet stamping) (tuba buzzing) (high energy band music) ♪ The main events, the main attraction ♪ ♪ Destination, satisfaction ♪ ♪ Purest kind of interaction ♪ ♪ Matching, running, reaching, grabbing ♪ ♪ Hit the ground running in a supersonic game plan ♪ ♪ Love is like a circus in the middle of a playground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ (fast-paced chimes) ♪ It's zoo out there everywhere through the streets ♪ ♪ Now tigers invest they're trying to rig your treat ♪ ♪ It's viral but then the bound are falling ♪ ♪ Headed up in where the circus calling ♪ ♪ Hit the ground in the supersonic game plan ♪ ♪ Love is like a circus in the of a play ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ (feet tapping) ♪ Well I'm matching like a soldier ♪ ♪ Hoo huh ♪ ♪ But I don't wanna fight ♪ ♪ No, no ♪ ♪ I say love is like a puppy dog ♪ ♪ Woo, woo ♪ ♪ It gets old and wants to bite ♪ ♪ Aah ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ ♪ Running with the supersonic game plan ♪ ♪ Love is like circus in the middle of a playground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ (fast-paced chimes) ♪ The main event, the main attraction ♪ ♪ Destination, satisfaction ♪ ♪ Newest kind of interaction ♪ ♪ Matching, running, reach and grab ♪ ♪ Obstacles, you know they come horses ♪ ♪ It's hard to put a saddle on some iron horses ♪ (trumpet buzzing) (feet tapping) ♪ Come one ,come all ♪ ♪ It's what you've been waiting for ♪ (bouncy band music) ♪ Aah ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ ♪ Running with the supersonic game plan ♪ ♪ Love is like a circus in the middle of a playground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ ♪ Hit the ground ♪ (fast-paced chimes) (slow band music) - Attention!

Turn left!

(drum beats) Lights!

(stage lights pop) (gentle suspenseful music) - There's no good or bad, or right or wrong way of experiencing.

Both of it, it's just experience.

(weeping orchestral music) Enjoy whatever you experience.

Enjoy, if it's uncomfortableness.

You can enjoy uncomfortableness, sadness or fear.

Our society have so much dogma about feelings.

Everybody's supposed to be just happy and joyful or just not feel anything.

But without feeling and without noticing what you're feeling and actually confronting and dealing with it, it's almost like not really living.

(dark orchestral music) (bell chimes) Butoh is Japanese contemporary performance art form that started in late '50s.

French surrealism was coming to Japan, there was Dadaism and all these contemporary art was coming into Japan.

When Butoh first started, it was more of an anti-traditional and anti-establishment movement.

They were trying to create different ways of approaching the body and approaching movement.

The Butoh in itself doesn't have its own form or technique per se.

Butoh is more of like athletics.

Western dance resonates with strengths of human body and Butoh actually resonates with weakness of body.

In the early '60s there was a big problem with mercury poisoning in Japan.

Mercury poisoning actually makes your joint and body shrink and then basically you become like this.

And Butoh kind of captured that kind of a movement.

Butoh performance can be very, very slow.

Controlled movement, twisted, facial expressions.

It's almost like people watching it his just going into hypnosis or fall asleep, whichever comes first.

(laughs) (dark melancholy music) I was born in a little town called the Rokugo.

When I was nine years old I saw "West Side Story" on TV.

And I decided I wanna be a dancer.

When I graduated at University of Minnesota, I started working for Ragamada Music and Dance Theater.

Bharatanatyam, the South Indian classical dance is very strict.

All the shapes of body, where the finger is, the angle.

Everything has to be perfect.

I just start wondering who decides what looks good.

Maybe each person have their own movement in their body.

And what's wrong with that?

Subbody Butoh was developed by my teacher, Rhizome Lee.

Subbody means subconscious body.

I went to study with Rhizome Lee in 2007 from 10 to five every day, five days a week.

All I had to do was dance Butoh, that's it.

That was amazing.

And when I came back I just felt completely disconnected.

So, I had to do something.

So, that's kind of how I started teaching.

In Subbody Butoh, we actually go into our subconscious and let the movement come to surface so it's very free.

Like each Butoh practitioner has their own way of approaching Butoh so each person's body is different, even if there's the same kind of instruction or stimulus everybody's movement is different.

(melancholy music) I think when you practice Subbody Butoh you really get in touch with the things inside but at the same time, you get in touch with everything outside and you learn everything is connected.

Everything is resonating.

In physics as well, everything is energy.

It's just how the energy organize or reorganize different resonance patterns.

And that's what makes us us, what makes light or air or everything else.

(melancholy music) When we are connecting in the level of a perception about what we are and what's others, the sense of separation disappears.

You actually feel more compassion.

You feel more connected.

(melancholy music) (cheerful music) - For myself, choreography is like this empty space and taking in a brush with movement and dancers, and then the human quality of expressing oneself in the movements.

And, kind of thinking it as poetry in a way, poetry with movement.

(cheerful music) (energetic piano music) "The Architect" is solo for the main work and it really is looking at the creative process of how things are made and the self-doubt as the maker of what it takes to accomplish something, to actually make something.

So it's filled with the idiosyncrasies of a mover discovering something and finding how it moves in the body and then also seeing this empty space that you wanna fill as a choreographer myself.

That's what I really dream of doing and see as this open space.

- [Narrator] I'm singing, I'm sobbing, I'm okay, I'm fine.

It's all connected.

I'm thinking I'm determined by walking the way I'm staying away, I'm coming back, I'm sitting down.

- The word architect and thinking about what it is to be a maker of dance and what it is to be a human, how we actually are creative every day.

And what is that process of creation for a creative person to go in and the practice that it takes to be a creator?

The doubt, the self-doubt that comes with being an artist.

And investigating that and putting that forward in front of an audience and letting them witness that information, I think is quite beautiful.

(bouncy hip hop music) - Hip hop is a lifestyle.

It's the way you live, it's the way you eat, it's the way you listen to your music, it's the way you talk to your peers, your parents, your family.

It's a positive energy and that everything we do is for the good and the social gathering.

(hip hop music) We are the Hmong Breakers Leadership Council, we are also known as the HBLC.

HBLC's mission is to bridge the Hmong community with different modern and traditional talents by initiating opportunities with hip hop and the arts as the platform.

So, we are a coalition of different artists of different genres founded by Breakers.

And of all work we hope to build a community that's multi-generational and multi-diverse.

- We reach out to other communities by hosting events.

During those times when we host these we invite as many people, as many dancers to our events and usually during those times we get a variety of different people.

- [Woman] All right, thanks, you guys.

Welcome to Little Mekong Night Market even though HBLC is not only an organizing group.

HBLC is made up of B-boys, B-girls, councilors, and they're gonna break it down for you guys, a little showcase.

- Little Mekong Night Market is an event done back in Southern Asia, where it's too hot to be selling food and to be gathering people.

So they do it in the nighttime.

We wanna recreate it into Saint Paul and the Minnesota community and we have all sorts of hip hop elements into this one event.

(bouncy hip hop music) (indistinct) - [Girl] There you go.

- We're exposing hip hop to the community.

We're bringing it to them.

They're coming out for their own reasons, such as the Night Market but why not expose you to hip hop, and all that we have to offer.

(hip hop music) - We bring a different atmosphere that maybe the Little Mekong wouldn't have had if we wasn't there.

It was just something that was different, something new, something that we created, something original.

(classical hip hop music) - I'm looking for execution, complete battle mentality.

That means you're facing your opponent but you're also making sure we can see your moves.

Musicality.

Musicality is how well you're interpreting the music.

You don't have to even know it but you just gotta be on beat.

- A battle is a street fight without the fighting.

(chuckles) - A battle is definitely a competition.

Who does the best of this?

What does the best of that?

Strength, speed, clinginess, originality.

- And that involves bringing a lot of different aspects from all other like your life into it.

- And then the person that comes on top or the judges liked better or the crowd likes better tends to win the battle.

- The Hmong community and our elders, all they want is just their kids to be doctors and lawyers, to get that professional life and income.

They don't know about the possible success of dance, and especially what we're doing, breaking and hip hop.

And so myself, I went to school for dance and so I have a degree in dance.

- All individuals in the group bring their own backgrounds.

Like Cheng's a professional dancer, James is a professional lifter and I'm just a big advocate for the youth.

And so we're all bringing different views and goals and collectively pulling it together to create these awesome events that will bring the community together and also help us in our own individual fields.

(classic pop music) - Breaking has so many moves that aren't even in a category or doesn't even have a name for it.

But with the basics, there's six categories.

There's toprocks, uprocks, get-down, footwork, freezes, power moves and then there's get-ups.

- In the Hmong community we also have traditional dances and other stuff that we do.

You think about dancing, or in a battle, you're always starting with uprocks and stuff but Hmong people, we have dance moves where our hands fold and stuff.

So, when you come out with that people are just like whoa, what is that?

So, I definitely like the fact that when we express what we have, that only our culture has and we show it off in the dance floor people are like who are you?

Where did you come from?

Where did that dance style come from?

And I can just be like well, I'm Hmong and this is what we do.

- In this community, we're all actual dancers with our own experiences and we're putting it all together to create these opportunities for other dancers to network and join, and meet us as well.

(chill hip hop music) - From a meeting with Red Walk.

They have another room open for us and they want us to help find a way to promote Red Walk more by us gathering activities or open sessions so they can gather people there, which we'll gather more customers.

Actually, they want us to use our first kickoff as an event.

We, as a council, we meet weekly at the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University - A typical council meeting, we usually review what was last said and just looking at new opportunities that are presented to us.

- If we're trying to bring as much traffic as we can for Red Walk, I think the idea would be maybe have a little bit of everything.

- I do really like our meetings, because again we joke around, we do a lot of stuff by the end of the day.

Everybody loves dance.

Everybody loves something about why we're doing what we do.

- Any questions or concerns, or are we done?

- We're good.

- [James] Good.

- [Robert] Good.

- All good.

Good job saying.

The Hmong community has such a sudden burst of population into the US and especially in Saint Paul in California that majority of us youth found a connection with hip hop because it's really the same thing, we live in the poverty and we're trying to find a way up by speaking and telling the world who we are.

(hip hop music) - [James] Nice.

- [Cheng] Let's go, come on.

- With Hmong people, I feel like we might live in poverty, in terms of financial but I feel like the Hmong people, we have other things that we're really rich at and within that richness is where we gather.

And hip hop is like the platform that brings those richness together.

(graphics whoosh) (Laurie breathing deeply) (feet stamping) (breathes deeply) And so they'll say you're afraid of the future isn't mine... (floor creaking) And so if you're who cares?

So frightened, its... She was the cousin to a friend of mine.

If you do that with... (breathing deeply) I'm gonna see if you can... (rod thrumming) Okay.

(peaceful upbeat music) Almost everybody I know uses improvisation in their dance.

I don't know anyone, flamenco, tap dancers, I think everyone uses it but I am interested in how you perform improvisation.

(upbeat music) So, when I walk into a space I am looking at the architecture, I'm looking at the size of the space, how I fit, how the body, people fit into the space and what it feels like, what it sounds like.

(floor squeaking) (edits screeching) You can't repeat something the same ever.

(chuckles) I really am interested in form and structure and then placing the improvisation within that and going inside and outside of those lines.

To feel that tension, it works best for me to stay very tightly with that very specific score and then see what happens and then I change it.

(calm upbeat music) 15 years ago, I looked around as a dance maker in town and saw that there were not many places to perform, to try new things out, to do work in progress and to discuss your work.

- We want some kind of cue that it's done like this but then I want a fade in to full.

And it's gonna stay on full.

- It's where we get this.

9 x 22 is the size of the theater at Bryant Lake Bowl.

Yes, yes, yes.

(clapping) Each month I bring in three choreographers, all different styles.

We do tech.

Each dance artist just gets 1/2 an hour to do other lighting, everything, how they want the curtain, how they want the windows.

And then the audience comes in.

And they show 10 minutes of work and then we talk about it.

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to 9 by 22 dance lab, thank you.

(audience applauding).

Hello, hello, hello.

I'll just get going.

Welcome, Amal Rogers.

(dramatic maracas music) And the feedback's interesting because it's in public.

You're not in an academic setting.

So people will ask, why did you put that costume on?

And why are you using that music?

And I think it really does help people.

- I was really taken by that, and scared and taken.

(Amal chuckles) - It's 15 years and I'm terribly surprised (chuckles) that it's still going and it's still needed I think.

Thank you for being here.

- [Amal] Thank you so much for having me.

(audience clapping) (Indian classical music) - [Rita] Kathak dance started thousands of years ago in the Hindu temples of India.

Kathak comes from the Sanskrit word Katha.

Katha means story.

So, Kathak originated as a storyteller stance.

Kathak is the only classical dance form of India that has been influenced by two different cultures, the Hindu culture and the Muslim culture.

(Indian classical music) Kathak dance is very unique in a way that it has to be subtle, whether it's a facial expression, hand gestures, body movement.

Subtlety is very important, delicacy, preciseness, fluidity has to be there.

The elegance has to be there.

The footwork pattern has to be talking feet, we call it.

(beads jingle) The ankle beads, we wear 100 to 150 on each feet to give a musical quality of your footwork.

(Indian classical music) All of these we put it within a framework of improvisation.

So you're creating spontaneously, keeping all those important things in mind.

And that's what brings Kathak looking very different than any other dance form of India.

(Indian classical music) (slow dramatic music) I was born and brought up in India among lush green vegetation in my village.

So for obvious reason I needed that in Minnesota.

This is our greenhouse.

This is my sacred place.

It takes me back to my childhood and it gives me a lot of inspiration.

Without that I'm very empty.

(dramatic music) I immigrated to United States of America because of an arranged marriage.

When I first came, it was 1970, there was nothing Indian in this town.

We have a handful of people so we basically out of need had to create a little India here.

I was very instrumental in creating School of Indian Language and Culture.

So slowly, slowly a little India's formed here.

(beads jingling) And slowly other people, non-Indians noticed what we do.

And I must say, they inspired me so much.

They took me out of my comfort zone and said, "Show it to the world."

And that's when I started performing outside my community.

(Indian classical music) I'm the Founder and Artistic Director of Katha Dance Theater.

(Indian classical music) We have performances by the company members; nationally and internationally, we have school, as well as we have outreach activities throughout Minnesota.

I've collaborated with many, many, many artists and in that process my artistic growth happened and I've been very blessed for that.

(speaking in foreign language) Asking for blessing from mother earth.

(speaking in foreign language) From heaven to earth I bow to you.

Currently, I'm working with JD Steele along with Billy Steele It's a collaboration of rhythm and blues with Kathak dance.

♪ Today is the day ♪ ♪ We've been anxiously waiting for ♪ ♪ Today before the sunset ♪ ♪ Our leaders will come ♪ - I want to see how Kathak is interacting with rhythm and blues.

Either it's complimenting Kathak or it's shattering it all together.

(beads jingling) - Rita Mustaphi is a sweetheart of a woman and extremely talented with great vision.

And in collaborating with her, it was just a matter of her giving me some of the quotes and scripture from the Mahabharata.

And I studied that and it just sang to me.

♪ Nothing ♪ It's a show called "Connor, The Abandoned Hero" that we premiered at O'Shaughnessy Auditorium and we're about to take it to India.

And I'm really excited.

- We're very fortunate that this project is going to perform at the biggest dance festival in India called the Khajuraho Festival.

♪ Flown in him away ♪ ♪ Flown in him away ♪ - In the process, we learned a lot.

Not only the storyline we created together but also how it was oftentimes challenging to work with rhythm and blues and Kathak, how often it's complimenting with each other.

(dramatic upbeat music) And that was the fun part.

That's how we both learned from each other's work.

All the artists, whether the dancers or the musicians, went through tremendous growth.

Thank you so very much.

- Thank you, guys.

- I think it will be really a fantastic show.

Let's have a group hug.

(JD laughing) - [Dancers] Group hug.

(everyone cheering) (slow brooding music) - Yes, thank you, thank you.

Oftentimes I have to get out of my comfort zone.

I have to take that challenge and I have to take that risk.

(brooding music) Why doing all these things?

Kathak went to a different level in Minnesota.

We incorporated many different layers.

And what I love to see is that, of course my growth happened, but along with me Katha Dance Theater is big part of Minnesota cultural fabric.

And that happened because all those risks we have taken.

(brooding music) I would like people to have open mind, open heart, believe in each other, help each other, learn from each other.

We are all one and we all have to survive by helping each other.

(forlorn orchestral music) (forlorn music) (chill hip hop music) (edits screech) (lighthearted reggae music) - [Broadcaster] This program is made possible by the state's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Stage" is made possible by the Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, the citizens of Minnesota, and by viewers like you.