Kansas City-based Owen/Cox Dance Group is all about collaboration. Working with both professional dancers and musicians from across the country, the company performs original productions around the metro and also has an education program in local schools.
Founded by husband-wife duo Brad Cox and Jennifer Owen in 2007, the dance company has grown from a twinkling idea to a company that regularly performs at venues such as The Folly Theater and Yardley Hall and teaches classes in several elementary schools.
Owen—a classically trained ballet dancer and former member of the Russian State Ballet, Moscow Renaissance Ballet and Hong Kong Ballet—is the company’s choreographer. Cox, who studied at UMKC’s Conservatory and has been heavily influenced by genres ranging from early Renaissance to modern jazz, is the composer behind many of the company’s unique renditions of classical sounds.
Kansas City magazine spoke with Owen about the company’s dedication to artistic collaboration, its role in the Kansas City community and the upcoming performance of Skin on April 12, a story that spotlights the quiet strength of vulnerability and connection.
Can you share a little about your company for people who haven’t heard of it? Owen/Cox Dance Group is committed to creating and presenting new music and dance collaborations with live music. Our works are very collaborative in nature, and we enjoy working with the dancers, musicians, composers, designers and other organizations in the community. We’ve been doing this for 18 years. In addition to our performances, we have an educational outreach program called “Take the Stage,” and we’re currently in seven schools in the Kansas City area. It’s a weekly class that takes place with live music for all of the students in an elementary school class, and this culminates in a year-end performance. This year, it’ll be at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. So we have two different parts to our organization: the more performance, professional side, and then the educational outreach side.
When it comes to dancers at your company, do you think their varying backgrounds and approaches affect how a performance unfolds on stage? I feel that having dancers with diverse backgrounds, ways of moving and experiences really lends itself to a rich artistic product and output because I think there’s an authenticity that comes when people feel like they can bring themselves to the work and feel open to express themselves. I think this creates something really special and beautiful. I feel like I can trust the people I’m working with to help guide how a piece develops and unfolds. So that’s really nice. It opens everyone up to more possibilities—and to trusting when things are going the way that we want them to.
Can you share a little bit about Skin? We premiered the work in 2022, and it’s in collaboration with Helen Gillet, a cellist based in New Orleans. She’s Belgian-born, so she sings in French and English. A lot of the music is her original compositions and songs that she wrote, but she also sings some pieces by other artists. The music is selected in a way that has a beautiful arc to it, with some very poignant moments in the work. One of the songs is [titled] “Skin,” and a lot of the piece is about how we connect with others, how we support each other and how we work together as a community—the beauty in that.
What are you most proud of about the company? What I’m most proud of is the body of work that we’ve created and are creating. I feel that it’s of very strong and high artistic output and really highlights some of the incredible artists that we get to work with. And there’s also a lot of community building that we do with our work, whether it’s bringing artists together from a lot of different genres, backgrounds and organizations within the community or the non-arts groups that we engage with, like Gilda’s Club, which is a cancer support provider. I think bringing people together is really important to me and our organization, and uplifting people through the arts. That’s our goal.
GO: Skin. April 12. 8 pm. Folly Theater.
