Studio Stories: CANDY BOX Dance Festival special with Tristan Koepke + Benny Olk - Season 13, Episode 150 Artwork

STUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY

Stories are among our most potent tools. We need to unearth old stories that live in a place and begin to create new ones. We are story makers, not just storytellers. All stories are connected, new ones woven from threads of the old. (Paraphrased- Robin Wall Kimmerer) Join ARENA DANCES every Thursday at noon for Studio Stories, a podcast reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance history. Hosted by Mathew Janczewski, each week will feature a new renowned dance artist who has made an impact on the dance landscape in this big dance town. Know of someone whose connections should be shared? Let us know! Email us at arenadances@gmail.com

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STUDIO STORIES: REMINISCING ON TWIN CITIES DANCE HISTORY

Studio Stories: CANDY BOX Dance Festival special with Tristan Koepke + Benny Olk - Season 13, Episode 150

April 04, 2024 • ARENA DANCES

Tristan Koepke (he/him) is a dancer, choreographer, and educator based in Portland, ME. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is currently Assistant Professor at Bates College and Associate Director of the Young Dancers Intensive at the Bates Dance Festival.

Benny Olk (he/him) is a performing artist based in Minneapolis with an interest in contemporizing and contextualizing American modern and post-modern dance. As a member of Lucinda Childs Dance Company, he performed reconstructions of pieces such as Dance and Available Light. He performed in reconstructions of works by Merce Cunningham, and has premiered works by Moriah Evans and Anthea Hamilton. He is part of the Isolated Acts 2024 cohort at Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis. Benny holds a BFA in Dance from NYU and an MA in New Performative Practices from Stockholm University of the Arts.

There’s More Than One Bed is the second collaboration between Tristan Koepke and Benny Olk. Inspired by the creative and amorous relationship between Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Instagram thirst traps, speculative masculinities, and romance novel tropes, Koepke, Olk, and their collaborators interrogate what devotion and commitment to love, longing, and process can look like when you make room for more than two.