A little more from Kayla on her practice:
 
Screendance is a hybrid artform using dance and film to invent movement language that only exists on and for the screen. My practice is rooted in my experience leaving the cities and returning to rural Minnesota after ten years away upon realizing I was guided by the detrimental narrative that I would be more valuable if I shed my ruralness and acclimated to urban values and participation. In documenting and embodying my rural experience I disrupt this harmful narrative placed upon generations of rural people and elevate the rich reality of rural life. As an abiding rural identity, living in Two Harbors, a community of 3,500 people on Minnesota's North Shore, the unceded land of the Anishinabewaki, my daily life teaches me about interacting with my surroundings in delicate, intuitive, and intentional ways which saturates my artistic practice with this kind of attentiveness. As we currently experience an environmental crisis, my work focuses on connection with the land, a defining characteristic of ruralness. With planet as my collaborator, I ask the viewer to consider this relationship in turn cultivating community with, compassion for, and conservation of the planet that inspires a more active role in our own existence and that of future generations.

Kayla Schiltgen is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersections of dance and film to create screendance that celebrates rural identity. In 2010 Kayla graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in Dance and has worked professionally in her field for 16 years. Before moving to Two Harbors, Minnesota in 2018, where Kayla currently practices, she worked in the Twin Cities as a dancer and choreographer performing with Paula Mann, Eclectic Edge Ensemble, Alternative Motion Project, Erinn Liebhard, Becca Cerra, and Kinetic Evolutions. Kayla’s live choreographic work has been presented at the Walker Art Center, the Southern Theater, Tek Box, Teatro Zuccone, several Minnesota Fringe Festivals, Dances on the Lakewalk, and Dances at the Lake Festival among others and her screendance work has been presented at festivals locally, nationally and internationally. Presently Kayla is in the midst of a project supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board exploring screendance in the landscape as a catalyst for compassion and environmental conservation and creating a new work titled object permanence which is funded by the generous patrons of her CSA (Community Supported Art). Along with her partner, Kayla also owns and operates Wildhaven, a sustainable lodging retreat dedicated to connecting people and planet through rest and creativity on Minnesota’s North Shore.

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curriculum vitae