TU Dance

Give TU The Max!

"TU Dance draws from diverse dance expressions to connect communities with transformational possibilities that bring to life our shared humanity." (TU Dance's Mission Statement)

Giving to TU Dance
Through performance, community engagement and education, TU Dance celebrates the connective power of dance for audiences, students and performing artists. Since its founding, generous gifts from individual donors have made TU Dance's work possible. In fact, Minnpost cited TU Dance among the 18 highest impact nonprofits in providing access to the arts. With your donation, you are supporting the connective power of dance in local and touring performances, community engagement, and training for students at TU Dance Center in Saint Paul.  

A TU Dance board member has generously offered a match of $3,000 for all new sustaining donors that schedule their gifts during the Give To The Max campaign. A sustaining donor is an individual that schedules a monthly donation of any amount to TU Dance.

About TU Dance
Founded in 2004, TU Dance has garnered audience and critical acclaim for its diverse repertory, versatile artists, and for performances that are engaging, dynamic and generous. Modern dance, classical ballet, African based and urban vernacular movements are combined in inventive and unpredictable ways to provide opportunities to experience the connective power of dance.  

TU Dance Center opened in 2011 to establish a welcoming hub for rehearsals, dance education and training in Saint Paul.  Today, The School at TU Dance Center offers year-round educational programming for dance students of all ages and levels.  TU Dance and TU Dance Center have also enjoyed local and national recognition, including Star Tribune 2005  Artists of the Year and 2016 Best Dance Company, the inaugural Princess Grace Award in Choreography, DANCE Magazine 25 to Watch, City Pages 2011 Artists of the Year and Best Dance Company (2017 & 2019), the 2011 Sally Ordway Irvine Award for Initiative and the Minnesota Monthly's 2014 Best Dance Company.  TU Dance founder Toni Pierce-Sands was named 2015 USA Fellows. 

CULTIVATE, A Trainee Program 

Inspired by the next generation of dance artists, CUL·TI·VATE is a program designed as a bridge for dancers with advanced training between their educational perspective and envisioning themselves in the professional field. Through classes, workshops, choreographic processes, mentorship, community engagement, teaching, performance and more, dancers will connect and share experiences as a collective as well as expressing and gaining momentum towards their individual interests and goals beyond their time in the program. CUL·TI·VATE will embrace and support each dancer while fostering their unique artistic path centered in TU Dance’s values of excellence, belonging, creativity and transformation.   

THREAT

THREAT is a concert dance theater work that aims to provoke an interrogation of the roles we play as individuals and community in hierarchies.  The work posits that hierarchies have the power to control our behavior and infiltrate our thoughts, even when no authority is present to enforce the rules.  Using a physical language and soundscape that fuses multicultural traditions and styles of the West and the African Diaspora, this social exploration invites audiences into a modern narrative that speaks to the universal experience of authority, obedience, and rebellion.  As a performance THREAT employs multifaceted contemporary movement and theatricality that is bathed in an eclectic and evocative original score and set design.  It is a work where orchestral strings, djembe drum, and spoken word bump into soundbites of Malcolm X, Jamaica Kincaid, Donald Trump and Fidel Castro. 

The School at TU Dance Center

The school offers year-round programs and activities that include open dance classes and workshops for all ages and experience levels, a pre-professional dance training program from beginning through advanced, a children & teen program that introduces the joy of dance, and master classes and workshops by guest artists and on specialized techniques. Since The School inception, TU Dance has dedicated almost $750,000 from its operational budget to The TU Dance Access Fund which supports student enrollment. 

Community Engagement and Education

TU Dance partners with Twin Cities schools and other community partners to conduct classes, workshops, and links to Center activities, and to expand and broaden service to an inclusive population across all ages from young children through older adults. Community engagement activities include open rehearsals, student showings and performances, collaborative events, and more. We provide economic access to programs and events.

The School at TU Dance Center edited by Kari Mosel.

The School at TU Dance Center, Former Student and CULTIVATE Dancer Feature, Sa'Nah Britt.