MOVE MORE | UNDERSTAND MORE


Black Label is a Minnesota dance company that makes wildly physical, naturally virtuosic, intellectually and emotionally engaging movement driven art and embodied activities that examine and engage the human condition to inspire vivid lives.


Our Vision

Movement is a fundamental language through which humans understand and know the world and themselves.

Our Primary Work

Creating intensely physical,
socially critical contemporary dance

Developing movement-centered
presentations on "Big Ideas" 

Collaborations with unusual partners
within the artistic community and beyond 

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Our Mission

Work

Work Hard.
Creating challenging, physical movement theater requires hard work.

Risk

Embrace Risk.
Too much caution and control rarely leads to powerful art.

Challenge

Challenge Always.
Make art that pushes personal and societal boundaries.

Make

Make Art.
Make your own art, its good for you and your local community.

Engage

Engage Everyone.
Engage everyone you can, it is through connections you evolve and learn.

Our History

Choreographer Carl Flink founded Black Label Movement in the fall of 2005 as a creative laboratory and performance platform for his unique brand of athletic contemporary dance and to develop performers hungry to take it on. Our name comes from the original generic foods of the late 1970s and early 1980s that simply bore white or yellow labels with bold black lettering declaring each product’s contents, e.g. Fruit Cocktail, Peas, etc. Flink and his friends called these “black label foods.” The no frills simplicity of these products fit Flink’s aesthetic perfectly. The addition of movement to the company name captures Black Label’s dynamic physical vocabulary and its goal to be a socially conscious community of artists.

Featured in the January 2014 issue of Dance Magazine, Black Label is recognized as one of Minnesota’s leading and most innovative contemporary dance companies. Black Label’s numerous awards and honors include a 2014 Minnesota Dance Community Sage Award for Outstanding Ensemble, The 2015 Twin Cities Star Tribune Best of MN List, A 2016 Sage Award Nomination for Outstanding Performance and Two 2016 Upper Midwest Regional Emmy Award Nominations, among others.  Artistic Director Carl Flink was featured in the June 2016 Issue of Dance Teacher.  We have moved well beyond Minnesota with performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Florence Gould Hall, Bangalore, India, New York City, Brussels, Belgium, Texas, Massachusetts, California and Florida.