The Cohort - Rhythmically Speaking's New Annual Summer Show comes to the Southern Theater in August

Via a May 13 News Release from Rhythmically Speaking:

Rhythmically Speaking (RS) returns this summer with The Cohort, a reimagining of the organization’s annual August production featuring staged works inspired by jazz and American social dance ideas. Running August 15-17 at the Southern Theater, Rhythmically Speaking presents . . . The Cohort celebrates these ideas as innovative and intelligent launch pads for creating community and inspired movement art. Following ten years of annually presenting dance works by eight to nine artists and their varying casts of performers, The Cohort provides more in-depth support to fewer artists creating and performing longer works. 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 inaugural Cohort will feature new works by local dance artists Erinn Liebhard (RS Artistic Director) and Julie Warder, and remounted works by visitors Rohan Bhargava (New York, NY) and Pat Taylor (Los Angeles, CA). Liebhard’s new work Feist(meist)er is an energetic romp considering learning to listen when everyone in the room wants to speak, and Warder’s new piece What’d You Say is a quirky exploration of communication accentuated in rhythm. Visitor Rohan Bhargava is remounting Kool Kids 2.0, a comical beat-box and dance collaboration satirizing the elusive state of “coolness,” and visitor Pat Taylor is setting her work A Love Supreme, an exploration of redemption set to and named for the jazz music masterpiece by legendary saxophonist John Coltrane.

.

In addition to these four choreographers, The Cohort for 2019 includes a group of nine local dancers who will perform all four pieces on the show. Working with a smaller cast is move toward creating opportunities for Twin Cities dancers to engage more deeply with staged jazz and American social dance ideas through work with both local and visiting artists. The dancers performing in this inaugural Cohort include Nora Anderson, Doug Hooker, Erik Hunder, Sara Karimi, RS Artistic Director Erinn Liebhard, Kelli Miles, Kathleen Pender, Betsy Schaefer-Roob and Cheng Xiong.

.

RS engages people in staged works inspired by jazz and American social dance ideas united by a core of rhythmicity. With shared roots of rhythm, social 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 being founded in 2008, the organization is proud to have presented 91 original and remounted works and engaged 350+ artists and thousands of audience members.

.

Rhythmically Speaking presents The Cohort runs August 15-17 at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.