Coming Up at The Cowles: Education & ELL Students
Contact:
Dana Munson
Marketing Director
612.206.3630
Jessi Fett
Education Director
612.206.3640
The Cowles Center For Dance & The Performing Arts works with ELL students at local high schools in dance residencies to explore identity and personal narrative
Minneapolis, MN 2014 The Cowles Center For Dance & The Performing Arts is partnering with Edison High School and Wellstone High School through dance residencies around identity and personal narrative. On November 14th, 60 students from each high school, most of whom are English Language Learners, attended the Threads Dance Project Student Matinee at The Cowles Center. Inspired by the matinee, which was titled The Secret of Slave Songs and examined the human experience of slavery through movement, students at both schools began writing stories of the struggles and experiences that have shaped them. This January, through The Cowles Centers Distance Learning Program, Teaching Artist April Sellers will spend 4 days at each school helping students create choreography to tell these personal narratives through dance. Sellers, a modern dance choreographer, performer, and educator, is collaborating with English Language specialist teachers Katie Murphy-Olsen at Wellstone and Tara Kennedy at Edison to help students use dance to communicate across language barriers. All 120 students will gather at the Davis Center in North Minneapolis on January 22nd to share their dance stories with each other and their communities.
Who: The Cowles Center for Dance & The Performing Arts
What: The Cowles Center has partnered with Edison and Wellstone high schools through its Distance Learning and Student Matinee programs in dance residencies around identity and storytelling. After attending Threads Dance Projects Student Matinee at The Cowles Center in November, English Language Learner students from both schools will now work with a Cowles Teaching Artist to tell their personal narratives through dance.
The workshops will take place at Edison High School and Wellstone High School, in North and South Minneapolis respectively, throughout January 2015. The residencies will culminate in a joint performance at the Davis Center in North Minneapolis on January 22nd.
When: Friday, Nov 14th Students attended Student Matinee at The Cowles Center
Jan 9th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 20th, 21st Workshops with April Sellers at Wellstone and Edison high schools
Jan 22nd, 11:00-12:00 Culminating performance at Davis Center (open to public)
Where:
Edison High School
700 22nd Ave NE,
Minneapolis, MN 55418
Wellstone High School
4029 28th Ave S,
Minneapolis, MN 55406
Davis Center (Educational Service Center)
1250 W Broadway Ave,
Minneapolis, MN 55411
Note: For security reasons, journalists must notify a school representative to be admitted to the school. Please contact:
About The Cowles Center
The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts is the Twin Cities newest arts center and the flagship for dance in Minnesota. Centrally located in downtown Minneapolis, The Cowles Center includes the newly refurbished 500-seat Goodale Theater; the former Hennepin Center for the Arts, home to 20 leading dance and performing arts organizations; the state-of-the-art Target Education Studio, housing The Cowles Centers distance learning program; and the new U.S. Bank Atrium. The Cowles Center fills the need for a place that is a catalyst for the creation, presentation, education, enjoyment and celebration of dance and the performing arts in the Twin Cities.
About the Distance Learning Program
Now entering its tenth year, the Distance Learning Program uses two-way videoconferencing technology to put Cowles Teaching Artists in direct contact with students throughout the state. Large projection screens allow students and Teaching Artists to see and talk to one another as if they were in the same room, forming "virtual classrooms" that remove the time and cost associated with traveling to see an artist or having an artist visit a school. Through the Distance Learning Program, The Cowles Center serves an average of 2,500 K-12 students each year, with the majority of sessions taking place in schools that would not otherwise have access to dance. All sessions take place in public schools and are completely free for Minnesota schools.
April Sellers Biography
April Sellers is a choreographer, performer and dance educator. She founded The April Sellers Dance Collective, an art-making machine in the form of a dance company in 2002. Sellers has received numerous awards and funding for her choreography. Most notable are 2013 Residencies at MANCC and Djerassi, a 2011 McKnight Choreographers Fellowship, a 2006 Minnesota Sage Dance Award for "Outstanding Performance," and a 2004 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Her work continues to be funded by the Whitney Foundation. A specialist in integrating dance into classroom curriculum, Sellers has led over 100 residencies and teacher-training workshops in New York, Ohio, Montana, and Minnesota. Sellers served as a consultant for the Perpich Center for Arts in Education in Minnesota as a dance specialist and collaborative coach. Sellers spent six years as an assistant professor of Dance at St Cloud State University (SCSU) teaching modern technique, composition, and directing the student dance company. Under her direction the SCSU's student dance company received two ACDFA Gala Selections. Currently, she is teaching Dance Math and Modern Technique at Southwest High School in Minneapolis. Sellers moved to the Minneapolis in 1997, after graduating with a BFA in dance from Ohio State University. Sellers received her MFA in Dance Choreography form the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 2014.
