Keeper Awards: Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands
Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands are the co-founders and artistic directors of TU Dance, a Twin Cities-based non-profit dance organization.
Image credit: Marshall Franklin Long
At first glance, this year’s Keepers are a ragtag bunch. Their mediums run the gamut from good old-fashioned pen and paper to the human body; their habitats are classrooms, venerable theater stages and rock clubs. But here’s where this diverse group converges: Each Keeper has talent to spare, and is an indispensible cog in the wheel of Twin Cities culture. For that, we hereby present them with fancy words, pretty pictures -- and an illustration by fellow keeper Robert Algeo -- in an attempt to flatter them into never leaving town.
There are plenty of artists who consider the task of building a supporting organization an afterthought to their creative vision, but Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands are not among them. The co-founders and artistic directors of TU Dance, a Twin Cities-based non-profit dance organization, view it as key to their artistic mission as the craft itself.
Minnesota native Pierce-Sands and Miami-raised Sands are longtime members of Twin Cities dance scene. They specialize in blending modern dance, ballet and classical disciplines, with Pierce-Sands’s mastery of the Horton technique—the legendary choreographer’s method of enabling unrestricted, dramatic expression—landing her dance-instructor jobs around the world. After touring internationally and working with notable companies (including locals James Sewell Ballet and Shapiro & Smith Dance), the couple started to notice dance was not making a reach beyond the Twin Cities’ already established scene. Partially as a response, they formed TU Dance, a company with the goal of bringing the art to a wide spectrum of audiences through community outreach, performances and accessible classes.
Since its inception in 2004, TU Dance has primarily performed works created by Sands, with Pierce-Sands serving as instructor and developer—most recently the acclaimed A Subconscious Plastic Nowhere. Both dancers are quick to note, however, that TU Dance aims to serve the local dance community not just through the couple’s work but, as Sands describes, “providing opportunity—not only for audiences, but also for artists.”
One of the ways Pierce-Sands and Sands provide these opportunities is through the TU Dance Center in St. Paul, which they opened in 2011. The center serves as a base of operations for TU Dance and offers everything from basic movement classes for kindergarteners to professional-level comprehensive courses and open-to-all sessions featuring modern dance, ballet and West African styles—all in the name of continuing the organization’s community-focused approach to fostering the arts.
“The reward is when we’re in a place of creating,” says Pierce-Sands. “Not when we accomplish, but when we’re in the midst.”
Illustration by Robert Algeo. Download a high-res version here.
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