Photo courtesy of The Somali Museum Dance Troupe

Dancing While Somali
Part 17 of MN Dance & the Ecstasies of Influences

In partnership with The Somali Museum of Minnesota
Sunday, October 18, 2020, 2-4pm

Hosted by and in collaboration with East Side Freedom Library
Curated and produced by Michèle Steinwald
Documented by Tori Hong, Kristin Van Loon, and Flywheel Media Productions

Speakers:
Zakariye Aden, Osman Ali, Awale Kore, Mohamoud Osman Mohamed, Ayan Mohamud, and Bilan Osman

About our partner:
Founded in 2011, the Somali Museum of Minnesota opened the doors of its public gallery in 2013 as North America’s first and only museum devoted to Somali culture and the only museum of Somali culture anywhere in the world. The Somali Museum Dance Troupe studies and performs traditional dances from around Somalia. Their mission is to empower Somali-American youth to dig deeply into studying their culture and embrace their potential to use art as a tool for building community as they grow into the next generation’s leaders. Learn about the Somali Museum’s Dance Troupe here.

The Somali Museum is the home of Somali creativity in North America, displaying a collection of over 700 pieces, offering educational programs about Somali traditional culture that are not offered anywhere else, and is a global leader in advancing and elevating the work of Somali artists, traditional and contemporary.

The Somali Museum’s mission is to use this collection as a tool for education: making it possible for young Somalis who have grown up in the United States to connect with their culture, as well as Minnesotans of other ethnic heritage to encounter Somali art and traditional culture for the first time. The Museum’s programs explore the changing role of traditional arts and culture as the Somali people move across borders and time. By promoting the highest forms of Somali creativity, the Somali Museum believes that it can also help to diminish harmful prejudice and misunderstanding.

Dancing While… is a three-part mini-series—within the larger discussion series, MN Dance & the Ecstasies of Influences—that centers individual stories by dance practitioners and organizers from immigrant and refugee communities in Minnesota.

Launched in fall of 2014, MN Dance & the Ecstasies of Influences has presented 16 unique events in collaboration with The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, Ordway, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and covered varied topics while focused on artists’ influences as a way to begin unraveling the histories that are part of the Twin Cities dance communities. Now in its fifth season, the series is partnering with East Side Freedom Library, where story is a major theme of the library’s mission.

For the series, Michèle Steinwald works in consultation with Kristin Van Loon, choreographer and curator; and in council with Judith Brin Ingber, choreographer and writer; Cecily Marcus, curator of the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries; Nancy Mason Hauser, videographer, and Linda Shapiro, choreographer and writer, founders of the Minnesota Dance Pioneers Oral History Project. MN Dance & the Ecstasies of Influences is an ongoing partnership with the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries and The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts. More information on the series here and the archive here.

View this event LIVE at the East Side Freedom Library Facebook page

Funded by Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Arts Project Support Grant and Minnesota Historical Society’s Minnesota Historical & Cultural Grant

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