Arts Education

Dhana Branton: Branton is an award winning playwright and essayist. Her plays have been produced in Chicago and New York. The author of eight plays and two screenplays, Howl and The Original Girls, she has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Branton has been a fellow at the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and attended artistic residences at Vermont Studio Center and Bread Loaf. Her plays have received staged readings at New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre and Hartford Stage. She is the creative director of Brainboat Literary and Film, and As You Were, a writing collective of military veterans. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota.; Kelsey Dagen: Dagen is a registered art therapist contracted in the schools for Northern Pines Mental Health Center, serving children and families in Aitkin. Dagen received her master's degree in marriage and family therapy and has her bachelor's degree in studio art and psychology.; Susana di Palma: Di Palma is a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater. After living and working in Spain as a flamenco dancer, she returned to found Zorongo in 1992 in Minneapolis with the mission to create innovative theater works that expand on traditional flamenco to reflect universal concerns. Recently, she choreographed "Conference of the Birds," presented in the Cowles Center's final season, and "Reunion Decameron" at O'Shaughnessy in June 2024, thanks to funding from the Arts Board. Di Palma continues to teach all levels of flamenco dance at the Zorongo school. She was a teaching artist through the Cowles Center for twelve years. As an individual artist, she has received grants and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and Bush Foundation. In 2017, she was awarded a McKnight Fellowship for Choreography and a Minnesota Arts Board Artist Initiative grant.; Scott Gilbert: Gilbert is the founder of Segue Productions and a longtime volunteer with Theatre in the Round. He is a former manager of operations for Six Points Theater (formerly Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company) and production manager at Theatre L'Homme Dieu, and is a longtime attendee (sometimes artist) with the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Hailing from Arizona, he has a BFA in theater production and a MA in educational leadership.; Jennifer Heglund: Heglund holds a BS in biology from the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks, ND). Throughout her 34-year career as program manager with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), she has been a leader of conservation grants at local, state, and national levels. Heglund's work led to allocating multimillion dollar grants on the state and federal level. Although not an artist herself, Heglund's retirement is marked by advancing the arts, fostering community engagement, and championing charitable causes. She actively volunteers for Habitat for Humanity and various civic groups.; Kristina Tiedje: Tiedje is a German native and dual citizen residing in Rochester. She is a cultural anthropologist with a specialization in the Americas. Tiedje did a postdoctoral fellowship at the College de France in Paris (2005), and a fellowship in bioethics at the Mayo Clinic (2007-2010). She has done work with the Oregon Historical Society working with folk and traditional artists. In her research with indigenous peoples in rural Mexico, she has studied the oral traditions related to sacred music and ritual dance. She speaks, lectures, and publishes in four languages (German, French, Spanish, and English). She served as a board member and president of the Rochester Dance Company, a youth dance nonprofit organization, for eight years (2016-2023). Currently, she serves on the board of the Minnesota Opera.; Shelly Till: Till has spent decades contributing to nonprofit groups of different forms. Twenty of those years were spent singing for and being a financial resources officer on the board of The Elizabethan Syngers. Her published written work has won awards, and she holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Minnesota and a master's degree in grant writing, management, and evaluation from Concordia University, Chicago. She recently was a grant advisor for the Minnesota State Arts Board.