Margaret Ogas is a choreographer, performer, teaching artist, and arts administrator based in the Twin Cities. Her choreography explores identity, politics, and the caverns of human emotion through a collage of dance, text, and sound.
Ogas is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and was a 2021 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House + Theatre. Her work has been presented by the Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Candy Box Dance Festival, Minnesota International Dance Festival, Center for Performing Arts, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio, and others. Her projects have received grant support from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2024) and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (2022, 2023, 2024). She recently established Margaret Ogas Performance Project, a dance company emphasizing artistic experimentation with a commitment to highlighting artists of color and queer artists.
Margaret has been a core collaborator and performer with the Taja Will Ensemble since 2018. She has performed in works by Pramila Vasudevan, Morgan Thorson, José A. Luis, Laurie Van Wieren, Chris Schlichting and others. She is a teaching artist and associate company director at Young Dance, a dance education nonprofit based in Saint Paul. Outside of her performance work, Margaret is an arts administrator specializing in fundraising. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.
Photo by Elise Radspinner
Photo by Drew Arrieta
ARTIST STATEMENT
Working at the confluence of dance, storytelling, and experimental performance, my works tell surreal, everyday narratives through a collage of movement, text, sound, and object. The theoretical foundations of my practice draw from Chicanx studies, queer theory, and diasporic futurisms. Referring to my own experience as a Chicana, I weave personal narrative with deliberate aesthetic choices to foster meaningful connections with my collaborators and audiences. My choreography has explored the symbolism of dreams, ancestral heartbreak, feminine rage, and the role of desire in late-stage capitalism. I am interested in tackling complex themes through hyper-personal storytelling, leading to performances that are confrontational, humorous, and unapologetically heartfelt. In my approach to worldbuilding, I embrace a dreamlike style that harkens to magical realism, blending the everyday with the surreal. My work remains rooted in dance because I believe embodied experiences are a pathway to self-understanding and intimate connection with others. In a world that feels increasingly isolated, movement expression is a distinctly visceral medium for seeing and being seen.