CANDY BOX Dance Festival

APRIL 21-26, 2025
THE SOUTHERN THEATER

The CANDY BOX Dance Festival is a week-long dynamic sampling of featured performances, masterclasses, and in-progress showings, hosted by ARENA DANCES and presented April 21-26, 2025 at The Southern Theater. The CANDY BOX Dance Festival features both emerging and established choreographers, Happy Hour work-in-progress performances, and master class offerings.

Artist Announcement

Doma Dance Theater
Flying Foot Forum
Cheng Xiong

Selected Happy Hour Artists

Nieya Amezquita & Kaitlyn Hawkins
NERVOUS THEATER
Yukina Sato

Meet the Panelists

Alexandra Bodnarchuk is a Carpatho-Rusyn American dance artist and cultural activist based in Minneapolis, MN.  As the Artistic Director and choreographer for Doma Dance Theater, Bodnarchuk creates original works for the stage and screen that draw together her ethnic heritage with contemporary movement practices. Centering the body as a tangible site of culture, Bodnarchuk explores questions of self-expression, community, dispossession, and cross-cultural identity through solo pieces to ensemble works. Her choreography has been commissioned by The Russia Museum of Art, Threads Dance Project, and the Alternative Motion Project. She is a 2021 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow at Jacob’s Pillow and a 2022 & 2020 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow Finalist.

Mathew Janczewski, ARENA DANCES Artistic Director. ARENA serves as the vehicle for his body of work and provides young, aging and underserved segments of the Twin Cities community with opportunities to experience the transformative power of dance. His work has garnered praise in the Twin Cities and beyond. He has created commissioned works for repertory companies and many colleges/universities. He was the Bates Festival choreographer (2001), received the Sage Award for Outstanding Performance (2005) and won the McKnight Choreographers Fellowship (2005). In 2008, Dance Magazine named him as one of their “25 to Watch.”

Carlo Antonio Villanueva is a Filipino American dance artist and scholar specializing in choreographic process, studio practices, performance coaching, and improvisation. He is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and continues to tour performance projects with choreographer Faye Driscoll. Visit carloantoniovillanueva.com for more information and media.

Happy Hour Guests

Eva Mohn
Shannon Hummel of Cora Dance

A Very Special Thanks To Our Sponsors