Brian Evans
Company Co-Associate Director, 2025-26 Company Guest Artist & Teaching Artist
He/Him
Brian J. Evans is a dynamic professional performer, Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Saint Olaf College, and a celebrated Citizen Artist. With a career rooted in his passion for dance and social engagement, Evans blends artistic excellence with proactive community involvement.
Hailing from Gaylord, Minnesota, Evans’ journey into dance began unexpectedly, discovering dance in college between choir, football, and social justice theater practices, leading to a distinguished career with Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater as a principal dancer and Music Director. As a freelancer, he has collaborated with the Flying Foot Forum, Shapiro and Smith Dance, Black Label Movement, Eclectic Edge Ensemble, and numerous other notable colleagues and friends. He has been honored with a Sage Award for Outstanding Dancer, a McKnight Dance Fellowship, and countless opportunities to perform and direct worldwide.
Evans holds a BA in the Liberal Arts from Gustavus Adolphus College and an MFA in Dance from the University of Washington, where he was honored with the Howard P. Dallas Endowed Fellowship for his contributions to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access within the arts. He began his academic career at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, as a Mellon Foundation Fellow, later transitioning into a tenure-track role as Assistant Professor. His teaching centered on the “embodied arts,” examining how the body shapes cognition, generates meaning, and deepens creative inquiry.
As a Citizen Artist, Evans is dedicated to fostering connections through courageous vulnerability and intentional equity, underscoring his belief in the transformative power of the arts to inspire resilience and societal change.
2025/26 Session Teaching Roster: Modern 4, Choreography & Company
Guest Artist Statement: Body As Voice: How Embodied Confidence Informs Your World
I use the embodied arts to help us hear, name, and organize care. This year, we’ll explore how dance grows agency and helps each of us find and use our voice—for ourselves and for others—treating the studio as rehearsal for advocacy where we practice consent, name needs, and choreograph community with courageous vulnerability and intentional equity. The confidence we build through breath, balance, and presence travels beyond class—into classrooms, homes, and streets—equipping us to show up, collaborate, and lead. My work blends movement, music, and story as an action of love, inviting serious play and audacious empathy so that “you and I” can become “we.” Together, we make the invisible felt, the unsaid heard, and move toward a more humane world.
Photo by Kari Mosel Photography