HIJACK

HIJACK is the Minneapolis-based choreographic collaboration of Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. HIJACK is the confluence and clash of two independent compositional/kinesthetic impulses. Their dances embrace juxtaposition. Their dances house unlikely intimates and question “who is the enemy?”

Over the last 29 years they have created over 100 dances and performed in venues ranging from proscenium to barely-legal. HIJACK has performed in New York (at DTW, PS122, HERE ArtCenter, Catch/Movement Research Festival, La Mama, Dixon Place, Chocolate Factory, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 9 Herkimer), Japan, Russia, Ottawa, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, at Fuse Box Festival in Austin Texas, and Bates Dance Festival in Maine and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.

HIJACK has enjoyed long relationships with Bryant Lake Bowl Theater (where their 1996 Take Me To Cuba was the theater’s first ever dance concert), Zenon Dance School (where they have taught every Wednesday morning for 22 years), and Walker Art Center (which commissioned “redundant, ready, reading, radish, Red Eye” to celebrate twenty years of HIJACK). In 2014, Contact Quarterly published the chapbook “Passing for Dance: A HIJACK Reader”, edited and instigated by Lisa Nelson. Jealousy (HIJACK’s 2019 installation/performance collaboration with Ryan Fontaine and Heidi Eckwall) was selected as one of the “Best of 2019” shows by the Star Tribune.

Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder of HIJACK (2020 McKnight Choreography Fellows) were in residence at NCCAkron in August 2022. The artists developed their new work SWAY, a collaboration with dancer Jules G. Bither and visual artist Rachel Youn. In Daum Theater, they explored self-directed light and interacted with 24 animated artificial plant sculptures. They dedicated a day to documenting the work with video artist Kevin Obsatz. At the close of the residency, they shared excerpts of SWAY in a public work-in-process showing followed by an ice cream social at Chill Artisan Ice Cream with their very own flavor – HIJACK’s Honey Sway featured vanilla ice cream with a lemon pansy puree and local Akron honey.