Media contact: Camille LeFevre

Email: camillelefevre@comcast.net

Office: 651-646-2098

Cell: 651-285-2287

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA—The maverick Zenon Dance Company, a modern- and jazz-dance institution based in Minneapolis, is thrilled to announce its 33rd Fall Season at The Cowles Center, November 13-22, 2015, with world premieres by New York choreographers Joanna Kotze and Stefanie Batten Bland.

During the 33rd Season, Zenon will also engage in two significant international collaborations. This fall Zenon travels to Cassis, France, where the company will work with Batten Bland and composer Jean-Philippe Barrios on the new piece, tentatively titled “Appetites,” and which will premiere during Zenon’s 33rd Fall Season. In January 2016, Zenon travels to Havana, Cuba, to perform and collaborate with Osnel Delgado and Malpaso Dance Company.

Zenon Dance Company’s 33rd Fall Season

What: Zenon Dance Company’s 33rd Fall Season

When: Fridays and Saturdays, November 13-14, 20-21—8 p.m.

Sunday, November 2—2 p.m.

Where: The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts

Tickets: $34 (fees included)

Stefanie Batten Bland:

The Pioneer Press wrote that “Caught,” Batten Bland’s first work for Zenon, included "spectacular daredevil dancing.” NewYork Resident magazine wrote that, “When it comes to tackling demanding subject matter, there are few choreographers as intellectually ambitious as Stefanie Batten Bland.” Stefanie’s new work for Zenon, “Appetite” which will be conceived in France September 2015, deals with western civilization’s constant consumption of everything the world has to offer.

Batten Bland studied dance at the Joffrey School and Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York. She also attended SUNY Purchase for dance and the New School for Social Research for post-colonial literature studies. In 1998 she became a soloist with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She’s worked with Sean Curran, Pina Bausch Tanz Theater Wüppertal, Compagnie Linga, Pal Frenak, Ivory Coast choreographer Georges Momboye and Angelin Preljocaj. She created her company CSBB (Company Stefanie Batten Bland) in 2008, which creates distinct, multi-disciplinary inspiring dances for stage and film. She lives in Paris and New York.

Joanna Kotze:

The Bessie-award-winning choreographer, who has training as an architect, has shown her work at Danspace Project, Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts Studio, Dance New Amsterdam and Movement Research at the Judson Church. A contemporary of Netta Yerushalmy (who often dances in her work and has choreographed two pieces for Zenon), Kotze has been praised by The New York Times for being a “steely and sultry… performer.” Blogger Solomon Says adds that Kotze has created a movement vocabulary that’s “richly articulated and dynamically unexpected.”

Zenon’s History

Linda Z. Andrews, founding artistic director, studied at the Martha Graham School, Alvin Ailey Dance Center, Julliard School, and with Alvin Nikolais, Lynn Simonson and Merce Cunningham before moving to Minneapolis. She formed Ozone Dance School in 1979, which today is the Zenon Dance School, a nationally recognized training center for vocational and professional dancers. In 1983, she formed the professional Zenon Dance Company from her two dance groups: Rezone Dancers (modern) and Just Jazz Dancers (jazz). Since its first performance in 1983, Zenon Dance Company has become one of the nation’s premier contemporary dance repertory companies.

Through the years, Zenon has performed a unique function in the region and throughout the United States: Andrews has created an extensive modern, jazz and post-modern dance repertory by commissioning new works from more than 60 of the world’s most intriguing emerging choreographers.

The repertory includes works by such now-iconic choreographers as Bill T. Jones, David Dorfman, Doug Varone, Bebe Miller, Joe Goode, Tere O’Connor, Sean Curran, Wil Swanson, and Bill Young, Andrea Miller and Kyle Abraham. International choreographers who’ve worked with Zenon include Susanna Tambutti, Johannes Wieland, and Osnel Delgado.

From post-modern choreographers, Zenon has repertory works by Tere O’Connor, Morgan Thorson, luciana achugar, Netta Yerushalmy, Jeanine Durning, Faye Driscoll, Vanessa Anspaugh, Chris Schlichting, Joanna Kotze, Colleen Thomas, Daniel Charon and Stefanie Batten Bland. Zenon is also the repository of jazz choreographer Danny Buraczeski’s works, which the company performs with regularity. In 1989, Buraczeski moved his New York company JAZZDANCE to Minneapolis to merge with Zenon, a fruitful relationship for many years. Andrews has also supported local choreographers throughout three decades, commissioning works from Wynn Fricke, Cathy Young, Robin Stiehm, Linda Shapiro, Uri Sands, Joe Chvala, Myron Johnson, Mariusz Olszewski, Daniel Stark and Chris Schlichting.

For more information on Zenon’s 33rd Fall Season, contact Camille LeFevre at 651-646-2098; camillelefevre@comcast.net.