The Mississippi/Volga IV Dance Festival

Link Vostok presents the fourth Mississippi/Volga Dance Festival October 30 - November 12.

The Mississippi/Volga IV Dance Festival will bring four international performers together with local artists to the Twin Cities. This festival includes a two-week residency period featuring artists from Britain, Hungary, Russia, Spain and Minnesota that culminates in three evenings of performance. Mississippi/Volga IV brings some of the most exciting dance collaborations from Link Vostok’s ninth international dance festival in Yaroslavl, Russia to Minneapolis and includes visiting and local artists.

The festival opens at the Cowles Center with a talk by former Merce Cunningham dancer and New York based performer Valda Setterfield. Valda will teach a Cunningham technique class as well as reflect on her time dancing with Merce in a discussion moderated by Sage Cowles. These two special events are copresented with the Walker Art Center and the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts.

The festival continues with an intensive five-day workshop for professionals taught by world-renowned European artist Julyen Hamilton. Those who cannot commit to the workshop may participate in masterclasses that will offered by Ferenc Feher, Julyen Hamilton and Valda Setterfield. Classroom learning will be augmented by talks, panels, and roundtable discussions open to all.

The festival closes with three nights of different performance at the Southern Theater. The bill includes the U.S. premieres of Julyen Hamilton’s solos ”How it was Made” on Thursday, November 10 and “The Immaterial World” on Friday, November 11. “Stix 66” by award-winning Hungarian choreographer and dancer Ferenc Feher will be presented on Saturday, November 12, as well as a newly developed collaborative work by Julyen Hamilton and selected Twin Cities artists. A post-show discussion with the festival artists will be offered Saturday evening.

THE MISSISSIPPI/VOLGA IV DANCE FESTIVAL is produced by Link Vostok and made possible in part by funds from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council through an appropriation by the Minnesota Legislature, and the McKnight Foundation. The Russian and Hungarian artists’ participation in Mississippi/Volga IV is sponsored, in part, by Link Vostok. Julyen Hamilton’s participation is funded, in part, by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, and by the Performing Arts Fund, a program of Arts Midwest, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional contributions from the Minnesota State Arts Board, General Mills Foundation, and Land O’Lakes Foundation.