Fall Forward Festival
October 29 - November 20, 2022
This month-long festival of shared evening performances celebrates the incredibly talented and robust Minnesota dance community. New dance audiences will experience a sampler of genres in one sitting, while avid dance goers will see their favorite artists alongside equally stellar new-to-them artists. Each weekend features a new roster and a variety of experiences from new work commissions and Cowles stage debuts to community favorites and Cowles Center veterans.
Week Four
November 19-20, 2022
In a suite of solos, acclaimed Bharatanatyam soloist Aparna Ramaswamy (Co-Artistic Director, Ragamala Dance Company) explores her layered aesthetic to bring together lineage, rigor, cultural wisdom, and imagination. HIJACK experiments with cohabitation, living in a garden of animated artificial plants created by sculptor Rachel Youn, dancing with the flowers and for them.
Week One
October 29-30, 2022
Duniya Drum and Dance Ensemble will take audiences on an energetic journey to Guinea West Africa with a vibrant premiere by Guest Artist Naby Bangoura. Twin Cities Ballet debunks ballet's stereotypes of elitism, gender roles, and formality in exciting, creative, and accessible ways. With their signature groove-driven jazz, Rhythmically Speaking will share sneak peek of a new work set to jazz renditions of Radiohead.
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HIJACK
Hijack is in the earnest, cynical, ironic, ecofeminist, queer, late-stage-capitalism, hopeful, post-apocalyptic, simulacra of a dance party, sex party, hoarder-house, graveyard, pandemic garden.
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Aparna Ramaswamy
A Guggenheim Fellow and a Doris Duke Artist Awardee, Aparna’s creative work is committed to evolving ancestral knowledge to evoke a shared sense of humanity. It has been described by The New York Times as “soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious.
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Duniya Drum and Dance Ensemble
Both a multi-cultural and multi-generational company, Duniya will showcase traditional rhythms and dances from Guinea West Africa.
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Twin Cities Ballet
Journeys debunks many of ballet's preconceived stereotypes of elitism, gender roles, and formality, by using the hallmarks of ballet in entertaining, creative, and accessible ways.
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Rhythmically Speaking
Rhythmically Speaking's unique groove, interaction, and improvisation-driven approach to jazz honors its roots while continuing to expand and innovate.
Week Two
November 5-6, 2022
Atlantis13 brings together dancers from around the black diaspora to explore how we can choose inner peace in an imperfect world intent on our destruction. Threads Dance Project explores the potentialities of a new embodied abolitionist movement and the idea that one person, one act can abolish societal ills and move us towards instead of away from one another.
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Threads Dance Project
By radically imagining dance as essential to a new abolitionist movement, this piece aims to enliven the idea that one person or one act can affect the common good.
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Atlantis13
Atlantis Origins is about exploring the effects of colonialism and the essence of Blackness. In the face of so much violence, what are we made of that we can still hold true to who we are?
Week Three
November 12-13, 2022
Black Label Movement Artistic director Carl Flink's thrilling movement poem reflects the volatile energies released into his mother during chemotherapy. A prologue to Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” Crash Dance Productions extrapolates what happens when the private rites of teenagers get misinterpreted by the eyes of adults - to disastrous ends. As the birds of the world unite to choose a leader, Zorongo Dance Theatre unites with Hip Hop master Darrius Strong and composer Juanito Pascual to begin a magical journey.
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Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre
Showcasing the power, passion, and virtuosity of Flamenco with live music, song, and dance from the Zorongo dancers and guest artists.
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Black Label Movement
Riding the Maelstrom is a non-linear work that visualizes the dynamic energies released from the poisons of chemotherapy during Flink’s mother’s fight with cancer.
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Crash Dance Productions
Crash Dance Productions conceives and performs interdisciplinary dance works that seam philosophy and science through a dynamic, visceral, and technical aesthetic.
More to explore
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Plan Your Visit
Directions and parking information to know before you see a show.
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Our Season
Get to know all the dance we have lined up at The Cowles Center.
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Box Office
Ticket policies, accessibility information, and Box Office hours.