Driftless Dance Film Tour 2024-2025
View 8 dance films by 7 Minnesota-based dance artists at 6 venues across the Driftless area of Minnesota! Each film features a unique approach to creating dance films and will leave you curious and inspired. After the screenings you’ll get a chance to learn more during an artist Q&A with two of the artists! This tour kicks off at Pop’s Art Theater in Rochester, MN and is put on by Sydney Swanson in collaboration with the venues and would not be possible without the amazing artists whose work will be screened.
Each event will feature the same films and will run roughly two hours with about 75 minutes between 8 films and a 20-30 minute Q&A.
More information on dates, film descriptions, and artist bios can be found below!
Tour dates
Saturday September 14, 2024 - 7pm
Pop’s Art Theater
Rochester, MN
Buy tickets here: Driftless Dance Film Tour - Sat 14 Sep 7:00 PM - Pop's Art Theater (veezi.com)
Saturday October 12, 2024 - 7pm
the happiness at Lark Toys
Kellogg, MN
https://driftlessdancefilmtour-happinessatlarktoys.eventbrite.com
Saturday November 9, 2024 - 7pm
Mainspring
Caledonia, MN
Saturday December 7, 2024 - 7pm
Winona Arts Center
Winona, MN
https://driftlessdancefilmtour-winonaartscenter.eventbrite.com
Saturday January 11, 2025 - 7pm
St. Mane Theatre
Lanesboro, MN
Saturday February 8, 2025 - 7pm
Tower View Barn at Anderson Center
Red Wing, MN
Film Descriptions
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1001 Arab Futures
1001 Arab Futures contemplates imaginative visions, past reckonings, embodied truths and other future potentials from the Arab diaspora. Created by Sharon Mansur, with Director of Photography Sydney Swanson, Sound by woolen lover, Costume by Angie Vo. This film is a reimagining of an evening length site-specific dance performance and visual installation co-directed by Yara Boustany, Andrea Shaker and Mette Loulou von Kohl, in collaboration with Mansur.
Location and community partner: Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts, Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/MN. Research and creation supported by the McKnight Foundation's Dancer Fellowship SOLO Commissioning Project, with additional support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and Art of the Rural
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Batikh
Batikh is a dance time-lapse film created in 2017/2018. Dance time-lapse is a practice Sarah has been developing since 2015 that combines durational performance with time-lapse photo/video as a way of inviting people to move in tandem with the cycles of the natural world.
Sarah Abdel-Jelil is a fiscal year 2017 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Batikh is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
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Elemental Body
This film is inspired by my reconnection to the elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Mineral, Nature as described by Dagara cosmology) through the study of West African spiritual practices. It was created as a way to integrate and lean into the experiences I’ve had studying these practices with Elder Malidoma Patrice Somé.
Created by Sydney Swanson
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interbody.dance
When our only gathering site was digital, interbody.dance wondered about the relationship between sensing, moving bodies, and the digital world. Their fleshy, multidimensional bodies flicker in and out of the flattened digital world as code grows behind them instead of trees. The code, written by a software engineer, builds the film's website (https://interbody.dance/). A user visiting this site joins in. The dance of their own hands on the mouse, trackpad, or screen leaves their digital trace. With the click of a button, they alter their context. And if they visit the “console,” they can see that the site’s thoughts respond to it’s sense of their movement. (Right-click on a PC or Control-Click on a Mac, choose “inspect” and select the “console” tab.
Created by Brianna Johnson
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My Fourteenth Grandmother
There was a study done on roundworms, that proved they remembered a learned, environmental trait for 14 generations.
This film calls on intuition and memory of human and water bodies that invokes grandmothers 14 generations back through embodied evidence found in movement. Searching across fragments that emerge while submerged in underwater portraits. Ghosts that speak through reflections on the water’s surface.
Performers: Noelle Awadallah, Alexandra Eady, Nakita Kirchner, Sharitah Nalule
Music: Renée Copeland
Filming & Editing: Leila Awadallah
My Fourteenth Grandmother was created through the Creative Individual’s grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2021).
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pour la liberté
pour la liberté pushes against the expectation of female-bodied people to be polite, proper, juvenile, accommodating, modest, or sexualized.
Created by Brianna Johnson
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Radiobody
With the harsh yet radiant Minnesota Winter as a backdrop, RadioBody explores the jazz sensibilities and human toil and triumph embedded in the work of pioneering alt-electronic band Radiohead.
Still Image from Film credit: Cully Gallagher
Created by Rhythmically Speaking/Erinn Liebhard
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two birds
They journeyed to earth with suitcases, turned into women and back into birds. A modern tale of shapeshifting, time passing and realizations rich as moss.
Filmed at the Savanna Moon Wildlife Refuge in Pepin, WI, two birds features dancers Emily Craver and Brianna Rae Johnson, an original soundscore by Jean-Paul Jenkins, and concept, text and direction by Erin Drummond. It premiered at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, MN and was selected for the Idaho Screendance Festival in July 2024.
Erin Drummond is a fiscal year 2023 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Dance Film Artists
Sarah Abdel-Jelil is a Mauritanian-American filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer based in Minneapolis, MN. Having grown up in eight different countries in a multicultural, interfaith home, her artwork explores notions of home, movement, and liminal spaces. Her current practice of dance time-lapse combines slow movement with time-lapse photography as a way of inviting people to move in tandem with the cycles of the natural world.
She holds a BA in cinema and media studies from Carleton College and is a recipient of the2019/20 MCAD-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Early Career Artists and the 2017 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Her work has been screened at numerous venues and festivals including the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, St. Cloud Film Fest, and Altered Aesthetics Film Festival. She has completed residencies at Rosy Simas Danse three thirty one space (Minneapolis, MN), Caldera Arts Center (Sisters, OR), and Château de La Napoule (Mandelieu-La Napoule, France). She is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Minnesota ('25).
Leila Awadallah is a dancer and choreographer making and moving in a body flowing with Palestinian blood and Mediterranean spirit, living in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce and sometimes Beirut. She is the Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance: a project and practice that grapples with the question of homeland in the body that she shares in collaboration with her sister Noelle Awadallah. Body Watani's works have received national attention through NPN and NDP grants to support touring and development across the midwest and in Lebanon and Palestine. She is a McKnight Dancer (2022), Jerome Hill (2021) and Daring Dances (2019) fellow and was awarded Arab America’s 30 Under 30 (2022). Leila is a collaborator of Theater of the Women of the Camp (Lebanon), Diyar Dance and Amwaaj Choir (Palestine). She was a member of Ananya Dance Theater for 6 seasons (2014-2019) and has a BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota. In her free time, she prefers to do Aikido, Tai Chi and swim.
Erin Drummond is an interdisciplinary artist working in multiple mediums including poetry, sculpture, film, and experimental dance. She has created performance works in places ranging from the Sonoran Desert to her own studio and continues to be interested in the body’s communicative power within the complexities of place, using movement research as a catalyst for personal, political and environmental change. Her work often explores mystery and the unknown, drawing philosophical and physical inspiration from forces of nature. She has performed and collaborated with numerous artists, companies and collectives nationally and internationally, including Rosy Simas Danse and Robin Stiehm's Dancing People Company. Her choreography has been presented at venues in the Midwest, West Coast, NYC, Canada, Samoa, and Thailand. She holds a BA from Columbia University and an MFA in Dance through Hollins University, in collaboration with institutions in Frankfurt, Germany. She directed the dance program at Winona State University for several years and now teaches at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis.
As a 15-year-old mediocre soccer player, Brianna Rae Johnson walked into her high school’s modern dance department and never looked back. She went on to receive Dance and Biology degrees and an American Racial and Multicultural Studies concentration from St. Olaf College and a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from The Ohio State University. As a mover, she has focused on postmodern release technique and floorwork, contact improvisation, Latinx social dance, and West African Dance. As a maker, she creates immersive, intermedial, and interactive works for the stage, gallery, and screen. Her choreography has been performed throughout the Midwest and her films have been selected for festivals around the world. Brianna performed and toured with Robin Stiehm's Dancing People Company for six years and has performed in throughout the US and internationally in works by Alito Alessi, Erin Drummond, Claire Melbourne, Karen Nelson, Katherine Moore, Kathryn Nusa Logan, Mathew Janczewski, Merce Cunningham, and Paula Mann. Brianna has taught at Carthage College, Mount Mary University, The Ohio State University, and Winona State University, and she is grateful to be back at St. Olaf College as a Visiting Assistant Professor.
^ Photo by Bill Cameron
v Photo by Galen Higgins
Rhythmically Speaking is a Twin Cities-based dance company with a mission to spark vibrancy and connectedness through jazz and American social dance ideas. Using the rhythm that is at our shared human core to groove together, we've been cultivating vibrant, embodied human connection in the Twin Cities and beyond since our founding in 2008. At the helm of the company is RadioBody creator Erinn Liebhard, the Artistic and Executive Director of RS, who grew up dancing socially at her dad’s rock band’s gigs, where she discovered young the exhilaration of playfully experiencing groove alongside others. Beyond her work with RS, she also performs freelance and as self-created character “Nerdette” for St. Paul Saints Baseball’s Entertainment Team, creates new works for high schools, colleges and professional companies, and is on faculty at Carleton College, St. Olaf College and Winona State University, where she spreads her love of groove, interaction and improvisation-driven dance.
erinnliebhard.com | @erinnliebhard.danceartist
rhythmicallyspeakingdance.org | @RhythmicallySpeakingDance
Sharon Mansur is a Lebanese American dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and community mover and shaker based in Winona, MN, Dakota land. A facilitator of people, spaces and imagination, Mansur’s creative practice integrates improvisation, somatics, site responsive actions, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Ongoing curiosities include: Arab/SWANA identity, in betweenness, and subtle intimacies between human and environmental bodies. Mansur’s performances, visual installations and films have been presented throughout the U.S, and internationally. She received Best Performance Award at Mirror Mountain Film Festival (Canada), and was featured in the WomenCinemakers Biennale magazine. Recent screenings include: Noori Screendance Festival (UT), Moonplay Cinema (MN), and Franconia Sculpture Park (MN). Current film projects include: NeitherHEREnorTHERE with Meryl Zaytoun Murman, and Blurring Borders: Between Cinema & Home, a SWANA focused set presented in the 2024 Frozen River Film Festival, co-curated with Michelle Baroody. Sharon also facilitates The Cedar Tree Project and SHIFT~ experimental performance salons.
Sydney Swanson has been using her photographic eye and desire to explore to create site-specific dance films for nearly a decade. She has a background in modern dance and a love of finding unique spaces to move in. Sydney received a SEMAC grant in 2023 to create a new site-specific film called "Elemental Body" which will screen among seven other films she curated for the Driftless Dance Film Tour. Her goal with this series is to bring more awareness to dance film as a genre while partnering with Minnesota-based artists and arts spaces in Southeast Minnesota.
She is a dancer, photographer, videographer, site-specific dance filmmaker, drone photographer videographer, advanced reiki practitioner, certified craniosacral practitioner and cowry shell diviner. These disciplines meld together and inform the lens through which she views the world.
For the past few years her creative practice has focused on site-specific dance filmmaking. Her work juxtaposes her creative impetus with the sites she inhabits, combining improvisational movement with the energy of the space/nature, innovative editing, and unique framing to create unexpected dance film worlds.
FAQ’S
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Dance films are also known as screen dance, dance cinema, or dance on camera.
I specifically chose dance films that covered a wide range of approaches to the genre. In the 8 films that will be screened, you will see varying styles of movement as well as storytelling via this art form.
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You don't have to be a "dancer" to appreciate dance films! Anyone can watch these films and enjoy the movement, storyline, and other visuals without having to know a thing about dance as an art form.
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Each event will show the same 8 films, but will feature two different artists during the Q&A portion of the event.
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The cost is $10 per person, with children 16 and under being $5 each.
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As far as content goes, yes. There is no vulgar movement or language. Depending on how old your child is, the length of some of the films might be a bit much (they range from 2.5 minutes to 14 minutes, with most of them being 9 minutes or longer).
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There is a possibility that the films will be screened online as a separate online viewing. If this is something you are interested in, please let me know!
Sydney Swanson is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
