KNOWN / UNKNOWN
Placing new choreography alongside established works, KNOWN | UNKNOWN brings together dances still taking shape and repertory revisited for a new moment.
Highlights include the Minneapolis premiere of Zach Manske’s DEEP CAVE—presented in full following its June preview—along with premieres by Remi Blakesley, Emily Pitts, and Levi Sherman. The performance also features works by Loyce Houlton and Lise Houlton, transformed for today’s dancers.
ARTISTS OF KNOWN / UNKNOWN
REMI BLAKESLEY
REMI BLAKESLEY (DANCER / CHOREOGRAPHER) is a dancer and choreographer based in the Twin Cities. Most recently, she has danced with companies including TU Dance, Hatch Dance, and Ballet Co.Laboratory. Recently graduated from the Alonzo King Lines Ballet Training Program in San Francisco, she collaborated with renowned artists including Maurya Kerr, Moscelyne Parke Harrison, Brett Conway, Alejandro Perez, and Natasha Adorlee. During her time in San Francisco, Remi danced with Decentered Arts, blending improvisational movement with spoken word poetry. Also, her choreography was featured in Mark Foehringer’s emerging choreographers forum, performing at Joe Goode Annex and Dancing in the Park SF. Each opportunity deepened Remi’s love of dance and taught her to approach movement with joy and empathy, striving to build community through dance.
PETER HOFFMAN
PETER HOFFMAN (DANCER) is a Minnesota native who loves writing/producing music, singing, dancing and all-around performing. He began his dance training with Curio Dance in 2021. Peter has been trained in a variety of dance including African, ballet, contemporary, hip-hop, jazz, and tap. He has performed original works by Loyce Houlton, Lise Houlton, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Dario Mejia, Giselle Mejia Alexander Hille, Yuki Tokuda, and many more. Peter has also performed for numerous local companies such as: A Dancers Place, Minnesota Dance Theater, Curio Dance, Collide Theatrical, Concerto Dance, Continental Ballet, and other companies in the Twin Cities. He recently made his musical theatre debut performing in A Chorus Line at Park Square Theater. Outside of performing, Peter is currently a teacher at Curio dance.
GRACE LENNON
GRACE LENNON (DANCER) is from Rochester, Minnesota and began her training at Janet Lang Dance Studio and The Dance Lab. After graduating in 2020, she spent one year in Chicago as a member of A&A Ballet's Youth Company, performing The Art Deco Nutcracker by Alexei Kremnev and Rhapsody in Blue by Alexei Kremnev and Braeden Barnes. She returned to Minnesota to dance with Ballet Co.Laboratory, her first two seasons as Trainee/Apprentice and two seasons as a Company Member. She has performed classical and contemporary works by Andrea Mislan, Christian Warner, Genevieve Waterbury, Joseph Morrissey, Peter Davison, and Zoé Emilie Henrot. She most recently performed in Loyce Houlton's Nutcracker Fantasy as the Snow Queen. Grace is currently a ballet and an Acrobatic Arts Certified Instructor at Platinum Dance.
EMILY PITTS (DANCER/CHOREOGRAPHER) is a freelance dancer in the MSP area, recently working with local companies such as Continental Ballet, DanceCo, and A Dancer’s Place. She has also recently guested with Mannakin Theatre and Dance in San Francisco, CA, performing in their 2025 Spring Show and their 2024 International Choreographer’s Festival in San Francisco, collaborating to present an original work by Traci Finch (of Mannakin Theatre and Dance) and performing well-known duets by Miro Magloire (of New Chamber Ballet). Previously, she danced professionally with the Minnesota Dance Theatre company from 2019-2024, performing works by Lise and Loyce Houlton, Elayna Waxse, Zach Manske, Alanna Morris-Van Tassel, Alexander Hille, Javan Mngrezzo, and Nia-Amina Minor. Emily also is a local choreographer who has created contemporary and neoclassical works for professional companies and local students. Emily holds a B.S. in Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development from the University of Minnesota. She currently is on ballet faculty at Summit Dance Shoppe.
EMILY PITTS
LEVI SHERMAN
LEVI SHERMAN (DANCER/CHOREOGRAPHER) is a 21 year old dancer who grew up in the Midwest. Being born in Chicago and raised in the twin cities of Minneapolis he has explored the possibilities and opportunities of the Midwest and has taken advantage of the many blessings within the movement community. As a former competitive gymnast, at 14 years old Levi spontaneously stumbled upon his dance journey and he has ventured off training with Teddy Forance at CLI Conservatory, performed overseas with Royal Caribbean Cruises, and signed to MSA Agency on both coasts New York City and Los Angeles. Now making the big move to LA, Levi has found interest in the concert theatre industry and has been taking the art of contemporary movement and freedom of expression and has been molding his craft into his own personal fantasy. The concept of breaking the rules intrigues him, leading by example, not being afraid to say what everyone else is thinking.
CONNOR SIMONE
CONNOR SIMONE (DANCER) is a Twin Cities dancer, performing artist, and teacher. He received training at Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, the TU Dance School, and the University of Minnesota. Connor has previously danced with TU Dance, HoneyWorks, Hatch Dance, and Threads Dance Project and most recently spent four seasons with James Sewell Ballet in Minneapolis. Connor has performed works by artists such as Marcus Willis, Kjara Wurst, Gregory Dolbashian, Berit Ahlgren, Gregory Vuyani Maqoma, Will Couture, Carl Flink, Sidra Bell, and Maurya Kerr among others. Alongside performing, he also teaches at Elevé Performing Arts and Ashley Ballet Arts Center.
REED TANKERSLEY
REED TANKERSLEY (GUEST DANCER) is from Northern California, and earned his BFA from the Juilliard School. Shortly after, Reed joined Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour and has continued to perform with the company. Reed has performed in numerous Tharp works including “In the Upper Room”, “Nine Sinatra Songs”, “The Fugue”, “Brahms Paganini”, “Ocean’s Motion”, “Eight Jelly Rolls”, and “How Long Blues”. He has also worked as a répétiteur for Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen” on Alabama Ballet. In 2019, Reed ran away to the circus and toured the country as the lead performer in Cirque Du Soleil’s, “Volta”. Reed is a YoungArts Winner and one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”. Reed has performed in Minnesota many times in Loyce Houlton’s “Nutcracker Fantasy” and “Carmina Burana” and is excited to be a part of this new venture with A Dancer’s Place.
EMILY TRAPNELL
EMILY TRAPNELL (DANCER) graduated with her BFA in Dance at University of Iowa, earning Honors, Distinction, and Phi Beta Kappa prestige. She was a Company Artist with James Sewell Ballet, Inaside Chicago Dance, and a trainee with Visceral Dance Chicago. Emily’s freelance performances include Hatch Dance, Minnesota Opera’s, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Cinderella” at the Phipps Center, Fairy Doll” in the “Fairy Doll Ballet”, Minneapolis Ballet Dancers, Curio Dance Company, opera “Karkinos”, and touring as a soloist to Trinidad. Emily has performed works by Juliano Nunes, FLOCK, Danielle Agami, along with many other local and international artists.
KATELYN YANKOVICH
KATELYN YANKOVICH (DANCER) is a freelance dancer in the Twin Cities area. Originally from West Point, NY, she trained at the Dance Design School in the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus. She earned a BFA in Dance-Performance and Statistics at Butler University, where she performed in The Nutcracker, Giselle, Swan Lake and contemporary ballet pieces choreographed by Derek Reid, Marek Cholewa and student choreographers. She performed the role of Odette in an abridged Swan Lake with Ballet West Academy, where she was coached by Allison Debona and Rex Tilton. Most recently, she has been a dancer with the Twin Cities Ballet for the past 3 seasons, where she performed in works such as A Minnesota Nutcracker, Narnia: The Ballet and Loyce Houlton’s Carmina Burana.
AUBURN BUSSELBERG
AUBURN BUSSELBERG (DANCER) is a freshman at Minnetonka High School and dances at Concept Pavielle. She has performed First Divertissement, snow corps/soloist, and flowers corps/soloist in Loyce Houlton’s Nutcracker Fantasy with A Dancer’s Place Productions. She has attended summer programs at SAB, Chautauqua, Philadelphia Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Houston Ballet, and The Washington Ballet. This past summer she attended intensives at Kaatsbaan, Boston Ballet, and the Royal Ballet School.
EDEN MARIE HARDY
EDEN MARIE HARDY (DANCER) is a talented dancer and model and has danced for 13 years. Eden trains at Concept Pavielle in Minneapolis and has also trained at the renowned Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet in Carlisle, PA, in their summer intensive program in 2022. She trained at the Ballet Academy of the East in the summer of 2023, Pacific Northwest Ballet, in the summer of 2024 and at Complexions in NYC in 2025. She attended the Julliard summer intensive in 2026 as well as Elite Classical Coaching. Eden has been recognized as an outstanding dancer by NYCDA, Radix, NUVO, JUMP, 24seven and The Dance Awards. Eden has performed in Loyce Houlton’s Nutcracker Fantasy for the past two years. She attends 10th grade at East Ridge High School in Woodbury, MN.
JADE STANAWAY
JADE STANAWAY (DANCER) is a 10th grader at Jefferson High School in Bloomington and a student at Concept Pavielle. A dancer since the age of three, Jade has continued to grow through opportunities to train alongside talented dancers and teachers, recently earning placements at respected competitions, including NYCDA and UBC. Most recently, Jade was honored with a scholarship to train at the Joffrey Ballet, an experience that has been an important part of her continued development as a dancer.
LOYCE HOULTON
LOYCE HOULTON (CHOREOGRAPHER), one of the first American women to gain international recognition as a choreographer, teacher and producer, founded Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1962. Her Nutcracker Fantasy premiered in 1964. With more than 90 original ballets to her credit, she brought significant national attention to the artistic richness of the state. As a teacher, she developed an original training technique, the Houlton Contemporary Technique, a symbiosis of the formal classical ballet and more “modern” styles of dance. Bruce Marks, Artistic Director for Boston Ballet, stated at the time of her death in 1995: “She belongs to that group of tenacious American women artists that includes Martha Graham and [Agnes] DeMille.”
LISE HOULTON
LISE HOULTON (CHOREOGRAPHER/REHEARSAL DIRECTOR), best known for her effortless, fluid style and dramatic sensibility, began her dance career with Minnesota Dance Theatre then moved at the age of 19 to the world renowned Stuttgart Ballet under the leadership of Glen Tetley. After two years in Germany, she joined American Ballet Theatre where she danced principal roles and worked closely with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Gelsey Kirkland, Kevin McKenzie and others. She has danced principal roles for some of the greatest ballet choreographers of the last half-century, among them George Balanchine, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Antony Tudor, Glen Tetley, Paul Taylor and Jerome Robbins. Lise served as Minnesota Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director from 1995 to 2023 and choreographed several works including Sidetracks, House on Fire, Bred in the Bone, Alchemical Wedding, A Piece A Chord, Rumblings, The Enchantment, Edifice Wrecks, Point of Departure, Point of Reference, and Fallings.
ZACH MANSKE
ZACH MANSKE (CHOREOGRAPHER) grew up in Woodbury, Minnesota training at Woodbury Dance Center in various styles and competing in local and national competitions. He played the role of “Billy Elliot” in the Broadway national tour of Billy Elliot the Musical. Manske also attended Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists where he trained in ballet, modern, jazz, composition, and other forms. He guested with Minnesota Dance Theatre in many performances, including Loyce Houlton’s Nutcracker Fantasy and Carmina Burana from 2014 to 2017. Manske graduated with a BFA in Dance from the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance under the direction of Jodie Gates in 2021. He performed works by masters such as William Forsythe, George Balanchine, Paul Taylor, and more. During his time at USC, Manske had the opportunity to guest with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in The Nutcracker. After graduation, Manske joined the Grand Rapids Ballet as a company dancer for their 2021-2022 season. Shortly after, Zach joined The Joffrey Ballet and has performed numerous roles in ballets by Christo pher Wheeldon, Yuri Possokhov, Cathy Marston and more. He also enjoys choreographing and most recently debuted Pecado at the Northern Michigan Dance Festival in 2025.
TOM LINKER
TOM LINKER (COMPOSER/MUSICIAN) Tom Linker is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Eastman School of Music. He has been a pianist and music director with Guthrie Theater, Minnesota Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, Minnesota Dance Theater, Nautilus New Music, Zeitgeist new music ensemble and many others. He’s toured the US and Europe extensively as a soloist and collaborator with other performers as well as a soloist aboard Crystal Cruises. He’s composed many works for dance and plays for professional dance classes when he can.
SEYLON VERSALLES-SHIGGS
SEYLON VERSALLES-SHIGGS (VIDEOGRAPHY) is a Minnesota-based photographer, videographer, and creative director whose connection to dance began at an early age. Growing up with a sister who trained and performed with Minnesota Dance Theatre and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Seylon spent much of her childhood attending performances and rehearsals, where she developed an appreciation for dance and the artistry behind it. Over time, that appreciation grew alongside a passion for photography, filmmaking, and visual storytelling. Her work has since brought those interests together, documenting dancers and performances throughout the Twin Cities, including productions with Concept Pavielle, Loyce Houlton’s Nutcracker Fantasy, and A Dancer’s Place Productions. In 2025, Seylon formalized her creative practice as Tingz Creative Agency, where she leads a small creative team producing photography, video, and social media content for local businesses, artists, and organizations.
JESSE COGSWELL
JESSE COGSWELL (LIGHTING DESIGN) is a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities with an MFA in lighting design and technology. He has designed for the university as well as The Moving Company, PlayMakers Repertory Company, The Minnesota Opera Company, Bas Bleu Theatre Company, OpenStage Theatre Company, Opera Fort Collins, and Colorado State University. He has worked as an electrician throughout the Twin Cities for companies such as The Jungle Theater and The Guthrie Theater. He has worked as master electrician for the Great River Shakespeare Company for the 2012 and 2013 seasons as well as being the resident master electrician at Colorado State University from 2007 to 2010.
KAITLYN GILLILAND
KAITLYN GILLILAND (DIRECTOR) trained with Loyce and Lise Houlton and at the School of American Ballet (SAB) in New York City, where she earned the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise in 2004. She danced with the New York City Ballet (NYCB) from 2006 to 2011 and was named the company’s 2010 Janice Levin Dancer. After leaving NYCB, Kaitlyn became a sought-after freelance artist and began working with Twyla Tharp Dance in 2014. She has since created and performed leading roles in numerous Tharp works, appearing most recently in the 2022 Bessie Award-winning revival of In The Upper Room at New York City Center. Upon returning to Minneapolis, Kaitlyn founded A Dancer’s Place Productions to create meaningful performing opportunities for local dancers. She also continues to stage Tharp repertory around the world and teach at several dance schools in the Twin Cities area. Kaitlyn has previously served on the faculty of the School of American Ballet and as New York City Ballet’s Assistant Children’s Rehearsal Director. She holds a BA summa cum laude from Columbia University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management
KNOWN / UNKNOWN
Program Script
OPENING
Energy is something that I think about a lot.
I think it’s so special how you can take one action or feeling or movement and give it to someone else and watch it grow.
Specifically when I’m working on a piece where it’s being choreographed on me - it’s nice that they give me somewhere to start and then I can kind of build off of it.
I want to have fun doing it instead of feeling like I have to be exactly how the choreographer wants me to be.
Keep the focus on fun. That is my goal for life (laugh). It can be crazy when you spend so much time working on a project with just a small group of people and then it really hits you when you’re like, oh other people are going to see this and they have opinions on it. I still don’t understand why we as artists put ourselves through this.
This really feels like - almost like a friendship and more of like a playful creative opportunity because we all do dance together and we’re supporting our fellow dancers by letting them create on us and being open for them.
I think it’s been interesting working with different choreographers, especially younger choreographers, to see what direction they want to take and be a part of that first process.
Diving into what’s going on in the current moment. I feel like that’s really valuable to me. Finding that sense of curiosity.
Even though you may feel like you're falling–half of it is the fall.
The new creation process reminds me of a narrative or a novel. When I start a novel I immediately want to know how it ends. But much like reading a book there’s a lot of transition. There’s a lot of finding the difference between where you are now and where the choreographer wants you to be.
There is this trust that happens.
I feel like we really gained a bond that we really didn’t have before.
You never know what’s to come and it’s really fun to take on, kind of, a sponge attitude and absorb anything that is thrown your way.
It kind of reminds me why I keep dancing so that’s been nice.
And that’s kind of what makes creating so wonderful and beautiful is you don’t know where you’re going to end up.
SECTION 1: ZACH MANSKE
I think for me, dancing and choreography always were put together, in a sense. I grew up wanting to create dances at home. My experience at SPCPA - downtown St. Paul - allowed me to start choreographing in high school, which was really exciting. I had very extravagant ideas and had no sense of artist voice. It was kind of whatever I was feeling in the moment at the age of 16. And then I was lucky enough to start choreographing in college at USC under the direction of Jodie Gates and William Forsythe, too, which was obviously a huge inspiration to me – and still is. I had such a freedom and ability to do what I wanted without a ton of judgement. A lot of my colleagues and classmates in school were able to get into choreography because we had that, sort of, gateway into the academic side of choreography. In ballet we’re trying to choreograph that grew up in the ballet sphere - it’s a lot of times about the product and it’s not necessarily about the process. Most of the time music comes first. I’m a very musically-driven choreographer. A lot of times I’ll start by improving in the studio with that kind of gut intention and feeling. At times I try to push myself to do the opposite, too, because I think it’s easy to fall into a pattern. Sometimes it’s actually more exciting to let go of what I think it could look like and see how it’s going to look on other bodies. Each dancer brings a different energy into the studio and energy into your work. So I try my best in the studio to go into a choreographic process with a super open mind and start at my wildest end and see how it can become contained, slowly. It’s a vulnerable place to be but also a bit healing. There’s this possibility to, kind of, retell your own story.
SECTION 2: LEVI SHERMAN
In June I started a piece with these dancers and it was kind of an unfinished project - it was kind of like a thing where I was creating just to see what I wanted to create. It was my first piece ever and it kind of folded into what I created now. And I feel like my first impulse was to keep going - to keep finding - keep experiencing - keep, um, just keep existing. It really helps building with people you’ve already built something with. It’s very comforting working with other artists who are okay with expanding on stories that aren’t necessarily their own. I feel like me with the dancers, we’ve kind of been creating the story along the way.
SECTION 3: EMILY PITTS
My intention with this commission was to challenge myself creatively and choreograph material for dancers on pointe, as that’s something I haven’t done before. We all had three weeks to create these works. Logistically my time ended up being a bit shorter. I think we used a little over three hours to create the piece in full. What the limited time kind of led to was creating a lot of things in the moment and not necessarily having time to plan for every single variable. There was a lot of ambiguity initially when we finished the piece but I think that that led the dancers to have a lot more room to interpret things. It’s not MY work anymore - it’s the dancers’ work because they had to take a lot of the responsibility for what the choreography became.
SECTION 4: REMI BLAKESLEY
This is my first time working with, like, a large group of dancers. It’s always been myself or a duet or like something very contained. I had to come into the studio with what I had and see how it looks with such a large group of people because it’s so different, like, energetically. Just the whole, the full picture, is so different when it’s so many people. I’ve just been - like I’ve been experiencing a lot of joy in my life lately. I just moved back to Minneapolis and I’m close to my family and I have all of my community and all of my circles and I feel like I’m succeeding doing the thing that I love. It is such a privilege to move. I’m always going to celebrate the joy. It brings strength.
SECTION 5: KAITLYN GILLILAND
When I first started A Dancer’s Place I knew that I wanted to create a space for experimentation and play. When I came back to Minneapolis I was interested in seeing which of the pieces of my grandmother’s, that my mother and I had inherited, could serve today’s dancers. Most of the works my grandmother choreographed were lost over the years. So when in my research I came across a clip of choreography from a duet she made in 1969 I felt like I had found treasure. And as this was one of the only videos I’d found I thought ‘okay, let’s try this. Let’s see what happens.’ So Emily Pitts was really one of the first dancers to join A Dancer’s Place and it was just the two of us for a while with my mom. So we went into the studio, with my mom, who had also learned the piece as a young dancer and we got to work on it. It was originally choreographed for a male and female dancer so we kept as much as we could and adjusted as we needed to. We were also missing part of the choreography but most obviously we were missing the music. I knew the composer was Earl Brown so we picked a few recordings of pieces we thought might be right and set the duet to them. And a few weeks before we first performed the duet we met with one of the original dancers - Frances Machala Cerro. She didn’t remember so many of the steps but she remembered the feeling and the intensity of the duet and she knew that the music we had chosen was wrong. But she also seemed excited that we were bringing it back and, effectively, we received her blessing to run with it. I also wanted to take it another step forward and I came to learn that Brown worked with open form composition, which gave musicians license to interpret the score in such a way that was always played differently. So I reached out to Tom Linker and asked him to compose something. And, of course, he had a better idea and proposed improvisation. So this duet now becomes a trio. It is a bit unsettling to walk into this piece each time we do it with so many unknowns but it also gives us so much more to discover and, each time we perform it, it really becomes something very new.