Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Georgia Stephens - Season 7, Episode 93

Georgia Stephens was active as a Dance Theater choreographer,
director, writer and
sound designer from 1975 through 2009. She moved to the Twin
Cities in 1980 to
participate in the newly formed Independent Choreographer’s
Alliance (MICA). Through
this organization, she received numerous performance
opportunities and financial
support for her work from the McKnight, Jerome and Northwest Area
Foundations, two
awards from the National Endowment for The Arts, Metropolitan
Council for the Arts and
the Minnesota State Arts Board. Georgia was commissioned in 1993
to create an
original piece for the New Dance Ensemble and in 1986 for the
Zenon Dance Company.
She was one of five choreographers invited to create an original
dance/video piece with
videographer James Byrne, in his project SOLO!.

Although Georgia delighted in the process of interweaving
original text and sound
scores into her work, she also frequently collaborated with
musician David Means.
In 1986, Georgia was awarded a Bush Foundation Fellowship for
Choreography. With
these funds, she prepared an evening of new and old work titled
Crosstalk, presented at
Dance Theater Workshop (NYC) in 1987. Performers included Laurie
Van Wieren, Tom
Carlson, Alan Lindblad, Mary Beth Elchert and Mary Abrams. After
a brief hiatus to
assimilate her journey, she immerged with several evening-length
Dance Theater
creations: World Without End Amen, produced by the MN Dance
Alliance with Jerome
Foundation funds in Extended Play; Omoomofamaliamenia, a
collaboration
commissioned by The Southern Theater with the music group
Zeitgeist; and several
self-produced theater events for a variety of venues.

In 1990, Georgia incorporated as Georgia Stephens Contemporary
Dance Theater. This
gathering of dance performers included John Munger, Wendy Ansley,
Diane Aldis,
Ethan Emanual Balcos, Jill Haeberlin, and many other guest
appearances (Mary Easter,
Linda Shapiro, Lisa Carlson, Marilyn Habermas-Scher, Wendy
Morris, Marty Winkler,
Rebecca Katz). Around this same time, she joined with fellow
dance artists Paula Mann
and Shawn McConneloug to create SpaceSpace, an informal rehearsal
and
performance studio. Georgia created work for this venue almost
exclusively until its end
in 1999. 

Georgia then began creating original work for David Means’ Nobels
eXperimental interMedia Group. They presented several full-length
pieces between 1999 and 2005 at Metro State University’s Nobels
Performance Space, Intermedia Arts, The Walker choreographers’
Evening, Patrick’s Cabaret, Bryant Lake Bowl Theater and Edison
Theater in St. Lous MO. Between 2005 and 2008, Georgia created a
series of showings at Bryant Lake Bowl Theater. Georgia’s final
premiere, Alibi Simile, featuring Jon Spayde, was created for Red
Eye Collaboration’s 2008 New Work series.

During her career she taught classes and workshops at Webster
College and
Washington University of St. Louis, Ozone Dance, Carlton and St.
Olaf Colleges.
Georgia still pops up now and again to participate in various
ways, as a participant in
David Means’ performances, as a stage arts consultant, and as an
advocate for up-and-
coming performing artists who push boundaries and challenge
perceptual norms. Her
work was always based on the adage, “I move when I speak. I speak
when I move.”
This realization came to life out of the physical frustration of
growing up as a stutterer. It
produced a fascinating lifetime of liberating words “stuck
inside” via breath and
kinesthetic release. This, and her background of figure skating,
provided Georgia with a
foundation for her technique and unique movement style.

And finally… THANK YOU
A quick read of this biography caused me to realize that a mere
mention of who did
what and when, seems profoundly inadequate. I could not have
brought to life my