When the Body Becomes Film: Kayla Schiltgen’s is this magic?
- Ian Francis Lah
- Oct 9, 2025
- 3 min read
In a small Midwestern town where the moody skies often mirror private weather, a dance arrives. It does not demand spectacle. It whispers a question: is this magic?
I. The rural as crucible
Kayla Schiltgen is not the kind of artist who slips into cities and performs. She moves the other way, toward light and silence. Based in Two Harbors, Minnesota, she describes her work as emerging from “rural lineage,” from trees, from the lake’s edge, from the quiet places among the quiet. Her medium is hybrid: dance, film, live projection, editing, sound. Her method is improvisation and deep listening.
In is this magic?, that rural grounding is not backdrop. It is gravity. She chose to tour this work across rural Minnesota, reaching Grand Marais, Detroit Lakes, Fergus Falls, and finally Ely. The piece lives in places where people crave art that feels like it belongs to them. It is an exchange among neighbors, an invitation to slow down and lean in.
II. The poem of body and screen
At its core, is this magic? is a solo performance that merges live dance with screendance projections. The work unfolds through an improvisational movement score built on intuition, desire, resourcefulness, and play. Each performance is singular. You might see the same gesture twice, but the meaning shifts.
The projected film sometimes echoes and sometimes contradicts the live body. The tension between presence and image becomes a question: where is the “real” self? What is performative, what is interior, what is mediated?
Schiltgen credits Minneapolis musician Dean Sibinski with the sound design. She handles choreography, editing, video, and movement herself. Her control over the visual and sonic threads allows her to weave micro-decisions in real time: what to reveal, when, and how much. The audience does not just watch. In that split between image and body, we become co-witnesses.
A Minnesota dance educator called the piece “beautifully intentional.” Another viewer wrote, “It felt so human, like the serene happiness I can only hold when I am alone, not under observation.” Many come for the movement but stay for the communion.
III. The lived story behind the work
Schiltgen’s trajectory matters. She began in tap, jazz, and ballet, but on weekends she watched her family dance disco and swing. That mix of tradition and freeform play shaped her voice. After earning a degree in dance from the University of Minnesota, she performed with Twin Cities companies. Then something shifted.
The big-city environment began to feel limiting. Too many voices. Too much rush. Too little space to listen. She moved north and began filming movement outdoors, folding those images into live performance. She wrote her own grants and built her own framework.
Is this magic? is not a sudden leap. It is the result of years of layering gesture, image, sound, and patience. It asks how a movement can persist across time, across a screen, and across the fragile border of selfhood.
Her work has appeared in Minneapolis, Duluth, and Two Harbors. In 2024, the project reached more than a hundred people through performances, talks, and workshops. Schiltgen is now a 2025 McKnight Choreographer Fellow, an honor that amplifies her practice without softening it. Her work also receives support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.
IV. What it asks of you
In the hush before movement, you realize is this magic? is not spectacle. Its alchemy lives in quiet attention, in fragility, in the recognition that when you truly look, something opens.
It asks: When do you stop curating yourself? When do you let the shadow breathe beside you? When does the body resist narrative and become image? The experience is still, but sharp. It offers no answer, only an invitation to dwell inside the question.
V. For Ely, this night
When: Saturday, October 11, 2025
Where: Minnesota North College, Vermilion Campus, Ely
Schedule:
Creative Movement Workshop 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM (all levels)
Performance and Artist Chat 7:00 PM
Admission: Suggested donation $10–$20. No one turned away.
Accessibility: ASL interpretation, sensory supports, and quiet zones available whenever possible.
Presented by: Northern Lakes Arts Association in partnership with the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council. Part of Kayla Schiltgen’s 2025 Rural Minnesota Tour.
