Greetings from TU Dance!

This time has brought to all of us challenges never experienced, yet an opportunity to regenerate, reimagine, rethink, reenvigour, regroup.

It’s inspiring to connect with our students taking online and in-person classes, and witnessing how our teaching artists and accompanists continue to deliver high-quality training and support to our students. The video below is an example of how TU Dance is sustaining the connective power of dance during this new era, where our students find creative ways to communicate with fierce expressiveness.

The School at TU Dance Center programs have been re-imagined to support our entire community as we transitioned to remote and hybrid learning platforms. We are heartened by the courage, passion, and creativity of our staff, teaching artists, and accompanists as they continue to carry out our mission. Below are a few highlights of their efforts as we continue to navigate this new virtual world:

• We continued offering classes for our Pre-Professional, Children & Teen, and Adult programs during the Spring and Summer.
• We continued our contracts with 24 teachers and 11 accompanists.
• Our company dancers were furloughed in April, and we honored, in full, our contractual responsibilities providing them all severance packages.
• The financial aid application process was reopened in April 2020 and additional funds were allocated beyond what was initially budgeted to our TU Dance Access Fund to aid families affected by unexpected financial hardship.
• We reduced the tuition of the Adult and Dancing Together workshops by 33%.
• We developed brand new programming to support the emotional well-being of our community.
• We facilitated three free weekly online classes with an average participation of 30 local, national, and international students.
• We transformed our Spring Student Showcase into a live interactive virtual event, which included performances from all our Pre-Professional and Children & Teen programs.
• In response to yet another killing in the hands of the police, we offered two virtual community conversations Taking time and space to reset, led by Mary K. Boyd, president and CEO of MKB & Associates, an education and human services consulting business and educator who advocates for the recognition, respect, voice, strength and potential of African/African American children, youth and families.
• Our summer programming continued with masterclasses, summer programs, and intensives with TU Dance Center teaching artists and renowned national teaching artists such as Renee Robinson, Maurya Kerr, and Gregory Dolbashian. Additionally, we collaborated with New York-based dance company Evidence, A Dance Company featuring Artistic Director Ronald K. Brown and Associate Artistic Director Arcell Cabuag. The newly designed summer intensive named Intersect attracted students from many US cities as well as from Japan, Uruguay, and Turkey.
• We re-imagined our Fall classes to include a hybrid of in-person and virtual classes which included national and international guest artists Peggy Seipp-Roy (California), Arcell Cabuag (NYC) and Marcus Jarrell Willis (England).
• With the support of Aroha Philanthropies, and considering the state of social, political and economical hardship, we were able to offer National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) workshops for all of our staff, teaching artists, accompanists, students and parents. www.namimn.org
• We have been participating in local and national conversations about reopening with Dance/USA and IABD (International Association of Blacks in Dance), and other local art groups.

TU Dance reaches through diverse dance traditions to uncover the connective power of dance for audiences, students, artists, and the community.

We’ve continued to fulfill our mission with imagination and remain steadfast and uplifted by our community’s resilience. TU Dance Center will continue to be a space for our community to express the unwavering belief that black and brown lives matter and our hope for the future that we imagine is possible. This season, we are planning a series of community conversations, creating the space for continued reflection and learning.

From Nov 1-19, TU Dance joins the GiveMN’s #GiveMN campaign. We invite you to participate in continuing to build this new chapter of our story. Your contribution to TU Dance will help us maintain and create new and needed programming while we support all of those who make TU Dance’s mission a reality.

Together we will get through this!Please consider making a donation to TU Dance by visiting: www.givemn.org/organization/TU-Dance or by clicking on the “I Gave” button.

Together we got this!

All of us at TU Dance

This is a distressing time in our history. We watched the brutal murder of an unarmed, black man on the streets of Minneapolis on video on Monday, May 25, adding to the United States’ legacy of police victimizing its black citizenry. TU Dance is proud to be a black-led organization based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. We have received a great deal of support from our community while remaining steadfast in the pursuit of equal access to ALL PEOPLE to world-class dance that transforms us and connects us to our shared humanity. At the same time, we are hurting right now because we cannot deny that humanity is upheld for some, but not all of us.

Here at TU Dance, we are asking ourselves: What more can we do?

We ask that you join us in the pursuit of justice for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor and countless others black, brown and trans people whose names are not forgotten.

Many Twin Cities businesses have been burned down, constricting and in some cases eliminating families’ access to food and essential household items. Here is a resource sheet connecting you to places that are providing help in the Twin Cities. Taking a more long-term approach to the systemic issues we face, consider joining and supporting Campaign Zero. From their website, “Funds donated to Campaign Zero support the analysis of policing practices across the country, research to identify effective solutions to end police violence, technical assistance to organizers leading police accountability campaigns and the development of model legislation and advocacy to end police violence nationwide.”

Within the TU Dance community, we continue to offer dance classes keeping in mind those who need to connect with others and find healing through making art. We are Taking time and space to reset with elder community member, Ms. Mary K. Boyd. We plan to create a Facebook group as a network, support system and resource sharing platform for our families, teachers, accompanists and staff during this time. Our students will also be reflecting on written prompts and collaborating with artists from the graffiti community to create a mural on the plywood boards that are currently protecting TU Dance Center. The intention is that this artwork will stand as a reminder of this time and part of the landscape once our doors are open again.

We are here to remind you that dance will always matter to us and that you matter to us. Continue to take care of yourselves during this time, and as you have the ability to do so, please lend a hand. The social and political framework that condones systemic white violence against black and brown bodies in this country must come to an end. The time is now.

From all of us at TU Dance