Twin Cities dance community presses for support ahead of Cowles Center going dark

As the clock runs down on the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, with the Goodale Theater closing at the end of this month and educational programs ending in May, the Twin Cities dance community is looking for answers about its unknown future.

The Goodale is a stage built for dance, said Ashwini Ramaswamy, choreographic associate of Ragamala Dance Company, to more than 170 artists and administrators at a Woman’s Club of Minneapolis town hall meeting Monday. “Not having that platform for work anymore is going to be a big hit.” The troupe, which is celebrated internationally, had its May performance canceled.

At issue is not only the loss of the performance venue but also the educational and community programs the organization administered. Cowles Center announced in January that it was ceasing operations because of financial troubles.

“Without these programs, there’s going to be a significant vacancy in the education opportunities for the students in our state and in our city,” said Erika Martin, a teaching artist at the Cowles Center. “We can’t let this hole exist for the students in our community.”

Artists like Anat Shinar, director of Young Dance, offered to help in their small way. Shinar said her organization will take on some of the Cowles’ educational programs, including its partnership with the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation.

“We honestly just don’t have the capacity to take on everything that the Cowles was doing,” she said, stressing that if those education programs are discontinued for two years, it will be like starting all over again “because those relationships take a really long time to build.”

Jessi Fett, co-artistic director at the Cowles Center, said the organization will see through all of its educational residency commitments and will finish its Jerome Foundation-funded residency program. “The Cowles Center operations will sunset in May, however the 501(c)3 will stay open but dormant for the time being,” she said in an email.

Meanwhile, dance fellowships funded by the McKnight Foundation administered by the Cowles Center will continue, said Dana K. Kassel, program director for the McKnight Fellowships for Choreographers & Dancers. “Dance artists feel the ground is shaky,” she said.

Kassel, a Cowles employee, will continue her work administering the fellowships with one other staff member at the offices of Artspace, a nonprofit development organization closely tied with the Cowles Center as organizations. According to Fett, Artspace will absorb the McKnight administration for now.

“We are thinking about where the permanent home is going to be,” said Bao Phi, a program officer with the McKnight. “We are very much talking to community members, we’re doing research. We haven’t made a decision yet.”

On April 1, the keys for the Goodale return to the city, which holds a ground lease from Artspace. Back in 2009, to help fund the center’s construction, the city accepted a $12 million bonding grant from the state of Minnesota requiring the ground lease, according to Ben Johnson, director of the city’s department of arts and cultural affairs.

Since the ground lease runs until 2059, the city will be in charge of finding a new operator after Cowles closes its doors.

At the town hall, Johnson said the City Council will likely designate a new operator, with the eventual terms of use and lease agreement needing approval by the city leaders.

“In rough terms, all the processes could take around six to 12 months or more,” Johnson said.

Stakeholders at Monday’s meeting discussed both frustration and hopes for what the future could look like.

“As we continue to think about what the Cowles Center is, I just want to make sure that all dance forms are going to be represented,” said Maia Maiden, who presents hip-hop and street dance through Maia Maiden Productions and directs arts engagement at St. Paul’s Ordway Center.

Others spoke about possible visions. Carl Flink, director of dance at the University of Minnesota, whose company Black Label Movement has performed at Cowles, said he hoped it could be a home for a new Master of Fine Arts program in dance at the university.

“How can we create an MFA that this beautiful dance community doesn’t have and has never had in the Twin Cities?” he said. “And how can we use that MFA that’s community-connected rather than simply being on a campus in the middle of the city?”

Todd Duesing, president and CEO of the Hennepin Theatre Trust, said the trust wants to be involved with Goodale’s future “but can’t step up just yet.” HTT, which ended its public art program and made layoffs last month, is in the process of acquiring the Historic Theater Group, which owns the State Theatre, Pantages and Orpheum Theatre.

“We have an interest, we want this responsibility, but we’re in a precarious situation,” Duesing said. “The challenge we have is, as we acquire the theaters, we also acquired an $80 million loan to pay off the theaters to the city for the next 20 years. So our financing situation makes it challenging for us to take on a loss burden right now.”

The last performances at the Goodale take place March 23-24, with a program called “Merge in March: Mathew Janczewski’s Arena Dances & Taja Will.” Janczewski will be performing for the first time since 2017 in a duet with Dustin Haug. There’s also a solo piece by Will, a trained opera singer, who will employ both movement and singing.

Will and Janczewski will present a piece they made for nine dancers called “Here, Dear Life.” “Our center point was how do we express the joy and grief and visibility of queerness and queer nightlife culture,” Will said.

“Because we are the last — for now, in that space, we’re trying to make it a sunsetting celebration Saturday night,” Janczewski said, and it will be done with a toast and a dance cypher onstage with the audience. (A cypher is a circle dance jam common in hip-hop.) Sunday’s performance will conclude with a panel led by the Twin Cities group Telling Queer History.

“It’s a wild feeling,” Will said. “It feels like a ghost in the room. Like we all are going to know that whole weekend that this is the last show there as we know it now. And we’re approaching an unknown future with the space.”