The Twin Cities dance scene, long a bastion of risk-taking choreographers, is facing an existential threat with a loss of some key infrastructure.
Last March, the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts in Minneapolis went dark. In May, the city’s Minnesota Dance Theatre’s performance company was stilled. In November, James Sewell Ballet in Minneapolis announced its final season.
Arts administrators describe organizations socked by pandemic closures, rattled by disappearing corporate funding and strained by rising costs.
It is “a hard time for dance” in the Twin Cities and across the country, said Abdo Sayegh Rodriguez, executive director of St. Paul-based TU Dance and board chair of Dance/USA, the national, membership-based service organization for dance.
But he and others point to signs of hope, with the city of Minneapolis stepping in with new funding, and needed change. Some shifts in philanthropy have benefited TU Dance, a Black-led nonprofit celebrating its 20th year in 2025.
“We’ve gotten every grant we’ve applied for this year, for example,” Sayegh Rodriguez said, a sign funders are finally working to acknowledge systemic racism within their field.
Audiences have also showed a strong appetite for dance.
They packed the balcony at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for two sold-out performances of Choreographer’s Evening in November. They filled the Southern Theater in the city for up-and-coming dance company Body Watani’s incisive work. In St. Paul, they sustained monthlong runs of Collide Theatrical Dance Company’s jazz dance-style shows.