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Storydance is about Your Story and Our Story
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Storydance Theatre’s mission is to entertain, educate, and inspire through enacted story and dance. Founded by Cia Sautter in 2012, presentations creatively combine acting, storytelling, and dance to produce works that retell old tales in new ways.
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The purpose of retelling old stories is to inspire you to share your story - where you came from, what is important to you, your struggles and your experience. Why? Because storytelling and listening to stories is a great way to learn empathy, and empathy is a great motivator to take action. Storydance presentations do share conflict, some based on actual history , and many relevant for current times. Yet we always ask you what you think. Sometime this is done directly in a performance, other times it is worked in to a script, and most often with time to talk before and after performances.
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Storydance is also about Community. By hosting Gathering events, we offer a curated Open Stage for those who might not have an opportunity to perform otherwise. All are welcome, and Cia reaches out to local performers to let them know of this opportunity. During Gathering events and performances, there is also space for the audience to participate in gestures, dances, and even writing and drawing.
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Storydance is also about our great community of Nature. Each event has a Creation-to- Creation them, meaning we recognize mother earth as the source of all life and art.
Artistic Director
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Cia Sautter, Artistic Director began Storydance Theatre after her years of studying dance and Theatre
Cia has extensive training in the performing arts. As a young choreographer, she received her first grant for Sparking Justice through the arts with a piece on “Trash.” Highly influenced by the work of Jewish thinker Martin Buber the piece dealt with the trashing of the environment as a symbol of human disregard for others. Trained first in modern dance and ballet, her academic study in religion led her to study ecstatic and world dance traditions, including flamenco. Always interested in acting, she also studied acting and performed in college. Through workshops at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California she was able to study methods for combining acting and dance, while also learning from notable instructors, including Inbal dancer Margalit Oved, and Judith Rock of Body and Soul dance.
Cia went on to earn a doctorate in Religion and the Arts at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley for intensive training in both performance and academics. Her dissertation of Sephardic Jewish women’s music and dance traditions resulted in the book The Miriam Tradition. In 2017 she published The Performance of Religion: Seeing the Sacred in the Theatre (Routledge), which draws on her experience as a performer as well as scholar. She has received Rimon Jewish Arts council awards, and MRAC and Brin foundation funding for Storydance productions.​​​​​​
Our Team
STORYDANCE is a collective of artists, and we often welcome new performers to each produciton. Besides Cia, our CORE ARTISTS include:
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Vicki Joan Keck - A superb actor and storyteller with many years experience performing in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area. You can see some of her work at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzWkhIVgyLZ7wZmxF42apbw
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Emily Jarrett Hughes - A dancer and teacher of Women's Ritual Dance traditions, she offers beautiful songs and dances that help us connect with the earth and ourselves for healing and joy. Find out more about Emily at https://www.wisdomdances.com/
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Dagmara Gutman - A dancer and poet, she offers heart and humor to all her performances.