CIRCULATION DESK: On Migration | Kayla Schiltgen

CIRCULATION DESK was born out of the need to reimagine dance criticism. Many iconic artists have circulated through Salt Lake City. They leave to live in other places across the nation, but sometimes they also return. The goal is to have conversations across the nation that connect different geographical hubs for experimental dance. This programming is designed to get at the heart of the complex realities that have inspired and questioned artists across the nation.

On Migration

This season we are thinking about migration in its multiplicity of meaning in hopes to honor the complex way artists migrate today. 

• geographically, the mobility of an artist today and the need to travel to work in various places to make a living in dance. 

• thematically over time, how artists’ ideas migrate over a longer span of time.

• even in how artists migrate through different mediums and career paths and how that impacts the field and cultural landscapes.

Each event date will be an hour long, live, virtual conversation with Halie Bahr (editor of loveDANCEmore) and guest artist/s. We look forward to these personal conversations between artists made public. Please tune in to this pilot program of arts journalism.

Kayla Schiltgen (Two Harbors, Minnesota)

Aug. 5, 2026 @ 12:00pm MST

Tickets, suggested $15 with sliding scale/pay what you can options!

Online event is held via Zoom Webinars. Access link will be delivered via email the day before the event.

Kayla Schiltgen is an interdisciplinary artist based in Two Harbors, MN blending dance and film to unsettle the conditioned autopilot of everyday life through intimately sharing her neurodivergent lived experience. Shaped by rural life and collaboration with nature, she creates sensory-rich screendance, installation, and live performance encounters, often weaving forms through practices of deep listening, noticing, and response.

She has received the McKnight Choreographer Fellowship, Upstream Artist Fellowship, multiple Minnesota State Arts Board and Arrowhead Regional Arts Council awards; Finalist for the Jerome Film, Video & Digital Artist Development award; and recognized as a Creative Rural Leader in the Upper Midwest by Springboard for the Arts.

Her work has been presented at Walker Art Center, The Southern Theater, Gibney (NY), CANDY BOX, Midwest Regional Alt. Dance Festival (MI), The Lab at NorShor Theatre, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Grand Marais Art Colony, International Mtg. on Video-Dance and Video-Performance (Spain & France), North Dakota Environmental Rights Film Festival, InShadow Screendance Festival (Portugal), Duluth Superior Film Festival, DanceBARN Screendance Festival, and Wolf Tree Film Festival (MI), among others. Schiltgen recently completed a tour of her evening-length work, is this magic?.

Photos by Roosevelt Mansfield, CeCe Boyle, Andrea Miller