2025 MINNESOTA DANCE SUMMIT
February 1 @ 8:30 am - 3:00 pm
Free
Welcome to the 2025 Minnesota Dance Summit hosted by Perpich Center for Arts Education!
REGISTRATION LINK
Registration Due by January 20, 2025
Big Ideas through Big Art
Facilitated by Cleo Mack
DATE AND TIME:
Saturday, February 1st from 8:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
*Please note that we will provide participants with lunch. We ask that you list your dietary restrictions in the registration form. Thank you!
ABOUT THE SUMMIT: How do we encourage young dancers to engage in intellectual and artistic pursuit? How do you access students’ unique creative voices? How do you build students’ confidence as learners? How do we encourage artistic ambition? How do we create spaces that value the contributions of each and every student?
This workshop offers a clear approach for exploring complex concepts through art by creating large scale work on students in both the private and K-12 sectors of education through a student centered and cross-curricular perspective. Shifting our perspective to creating large scale work allows for more investigative time for complicated subject matter, idea formation, creative process, and technical mastery. Through a student centered model, our students are the innovators of concept, choreography, and progression of the presentation/performance. This format enables the learner to tackle big concepts through the vehicle of art. Approaching dance performances with a cross-curricular mindset allows students to research historical perspectives, scientific phenomena, literature and current societal paradigms through mind and body learning which, in turn, develops a deeper understanding of the topic.
Participants will explore different examples of these curriculum ideas, learn a format for big ideas/big art, explore and conceive their own curriculum idea that works in their setting, learn culturally responsive strategies that value each student, see the strengths of this form for both student buy in and advocacy for dance and cross curricular collaborations.
LEARNING GOALS:
By the end of the this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Articulate multiple ideas, definitions and purposes of “Big Idea” work.
- Develop methods to allow students to be integral in the development of the concept from the infancy of the project, to create the movement language, develop characters, and help organize the overarching structure of the work.
- Establish/map out at least one Big Idea to take to the students, fellow teachers and administration to support student agency, student buy in and advocacy for your program.
LOCATION:
Perpich Center for Arts Education – Dance Studio
6125 Olson Memorial Hwy, Golden Valley, MN 55422
REGISTRATION FEE: FREE
CLOCK HOURS
You will receive 6 Professional Development clock hours for attending the entire Summit. If you cannot attend the entire Summit, you will receive clock hours for the portions of the workshop you attend.
Questions or comments? Email mary.harding@pcae.k12.mn.us
Cleo Mack is an award winning choreographer and educator. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Wilson College and a BFA in Dance from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Her work has been described as “a collision of quirky sophistication and unmeasured recklessness.” She has been commissioned by the Outlet Dance Project at Grounds for Sculpture, 10 Hairy Legs, DeSales University, and Quad City Ballet. Ms. Mack has been honored to receive two Individual Artists Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, in recognition of her high artistic merit. Ms. Mack has been selected by Dance Magazine as one of the “25 to Watch.” She has enjoyed support from the Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and has also received space grants from The Field, DTW, and Lincoln Center.
Ms. Mack’s performance work has been presented at Joyce Soho, Dance Theater Workshop’s Fresh Tracks, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., WAX, P.S. 1 Moma, the Hungarian American Dance Festival in Hungary, and at NJPAC as part of Jersey Moves. 2016 marks the inception of Mack’s newest project, Rock Dance Collective (RDC) is focused on creating interdisciplinary work in traditional and non-traditional environments. Ms. Mack’s sculptural work was on view as part of the NJ Arts Annual “Dissonance” at the Morris Museum and the Olympia Project. She has served on the boards of DanceNJ, CoLAB Arts, and the Montclair Dance Festival.
Ms. Mack is the Director of Dance at the Middlesex County Magnet Schools and co-owner of Washington Rock Dance. She has been a lecturer at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts and a teaching artist for the American Repertory Ballet Institute, DeSales University, Muhlenberg University and the University of Iowa. Ms. Mack has served on the writing team of the 2020 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards for Visual and Performing Arts Standards and as well as the New Jersey ELA Standards Review Committee in 2015. She has been selected to present her educational philosophies at the National Dance Education Organization National Conferences in Arizona, Washington, D.C., and Florida. She was honored to be the recipient of the 2017 Hollins University Teaching Award.
