About the ARTISTS:

Leslie Parker is a dance artist, director, improviser, and performer born in the traditional homeland of Indigenous people, mostly the Dakhóta and Ojibwe people, also known as the Twin Cities, Minnesota. She has home art bases in both Brooklyn, NY(traditional homeland of Lenapehoking people) and in St. Paul, MN. Her deep roots in the territory also known as  the St. Paul, Rondo community led her to a dance practice that emphasizes an organic aesthetic in experimental movement derived from the Black and African diaspora. Growing up in the Rondo community inspired her towards socially engaged art. Parker’s informal training began with marching in rhythm drill team competitions in the Rondo neighborhood learning from local organizers and activists. Parker holds a BFA from Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance, a MFA in Dance from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and the Dresden Frankfurt Company in Frankfurt, Germany. She studied Senegalese dance forms at the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor de Dakar in Senegal, West Africa.

As a dance creative, she highlights unique individual contributions, digs into collective memory to engage with the world more imaginatively and embodies an aesthetic that encompasses an organic physical/movement that includes: Traditional W. African, Black/African American vernacular/social dance, Improvisation, and Contemporary/Modern technique derived from and exchanged across multiple continents. She has received a 2022 McKnight Fellowship for Choreographers, A Nefa/NDP award 2021 and was a Jerome Artist Fellow 2019 – 2021, 2017 Bessie award for Outstanding performer.

Christian Jensen is a Minneapolis-based filmmaker with two decades of experience creating art and collaborating with other artists to bring their vision to life on screen. He is a movie aficionado, father to a teen and a toddler, and husband to his producing partner at Kylee and Christian Creative.