Rhythmically Speaking Brings The Cohort 2023 to The Southern Theater August 17-19

Rhythmically Speaking is bringing The Cohort back to The Southern Theater August 17-19

Featuring works inspired by the vibrancy of jazz and American social dance ideas, The Cohort 2023: Stage & Screen is the fifth installment of Rhythmically Speaking's reimagined annual Summer production, and fifteenth overall. Following ten years of annually presenting dance works by 7-9 mostly-local artists and their varied casts of performers, in 2019 Rhythmically Speaking shifted to provide more in-depth support to fewer artists creating longer works, and a company of dancers to perform them. In 2022, they innovated further by adding a screen works wing, in collaboration with the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (Boulder, CO). This new vision of the RS annual summer production continues support of new work by local choreographers while providing opportunities for artists based outside of Minnesota to show their work here.

The stage component of The Cohort 2023 features works by an exciting line-up of artists: Laura Osterhaus Rosenstone, a local artist known for her work as a dancer with Zenon Dance Company and now her own company SLO Dance, Cara Hagan of New York City, Program Director of the MFA in Contemporary Theater Performance at the New School and sought-after stage and screen works creator and curator, and Carlos R.A. Jones of Buffalo, NY, Professor of Musical Theater and Dance at SUNY Buffalo and highly-regarded jazz thinker who recently co-edited pivotal text Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the 21st Century. RS Artistic and Executive Director Erinn Liebhard will also have work in the show - a revisiting of Feist(meist)er, created for the first Cohort show in 2019 and recently performed at the Peridance Center in New York City.

From Osterhaus Rosenstone’s poignant, rhythmic explorations of presence in improvisation to Hagan’s consideration of the intersection of forms of body percussion to Jones’ high-energy fusion and Liebhard’s groovy and feisty vibes, the production will run a gamut of feelings while showing a breadth of what ‘jazz and American social dance-inspired’ can mean. The cohort of artists involved in this show also includes RS company members Nieya Amezquita, Doug Hooker, Sara Karimi, RS Artistic Director Erinn Liebhard, Kelli Miles, Javan Mngrezzo, Jake Nehrbass, Kathleen Pender and Betsy Schaefer-Roob. The Cohort 2023 will also include a screening of to-be-selected dance films by artists from all over the world: last year’s screen program included works not only from all over the USA, but also Bulgara, the UK and Spain! There will also be a showing of the same selected screendance works in Boulder, CO by collaborating organization Sans Souci in July 2023, in conjunction with the Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop.

Rhythmically Speaking sparks vibrancy and connectedness through jazz and American social dance ideas. With shared roots of groove, interaction and improvisation, these approaches encourage simultaneous expression of difference and similarity as a means of creating community. RS is proud to be a local and national leader in celebrating the rich history of these forms while nurturing their innovation. Since their founding in 2008, the organization has presented 103 original and remounted works, and engaged 350+ artists and thousands of audience members.