Podcast Episodes

Episode 115: Jeremiah & Mona Enna [Global Impact – Part Five]

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by Rachel Caldwell

What is the impact of the arts around the world? During this mini-series, we are diving into conversations focused on the global impact of the arts. It is an honor to connect with Jeremiah and Mona Enna for part five of this series!

Jeremiah and Mona Enna are the Co-Founders of The Culture House in Kansas City. The Culture House is an award winning community arts organization succeeding in excellence, education, and social engagement. The Culture House includes The Culture House Academy of the Performing Arts with over 700 students, world-class dance company Störling Dance Theater is in residency at TCH, and their social outreach program, The STAR Program serves hundreds of incarcerated and at-risk children and youth each year. Störling Conservatory of the Arts, an accredited, college conservatory offering degrees in dance launched in 2021 with a vision to expand to theatre, music and visual art.

In our conversation, Jeremiah and Mona share some incredible stories from their journeys! We chat about how the arts have the ability to reach past language barriers, connect people, and create space for deeper conversations and relationships. I am so inspired by their heart for “people before projects” and how they foster a thriving community within The Culture House. Towards the end of the episode, we dive into the topics of leadership, mentorship, and lessons they have learned through the years. Fellow artists, may you be encouraged through this conversation and remember, as Mona says, “be not afraid!”

You can listen to the show HERE, and you can be sure not to miss a Creative Impact conversation by subscribing through your favorite podcast app (ie. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher). We are so grateful to have you as a part of the Creative Impact community and would love it if you would share the show with your friends!

About Jeremiah:

Jeremiah Enna is the Founder and Executive Director of The Culture House in Kansas City. The Culture House is an award winning community arts organization succeeding in excellence, education, and social engagement. The Culture House includes The Culture House Academy of the Performing Arts with over 700 students, world-class dance company Störling Dance Theater is in residency at TCH, and their social outreach program, The STAR Program serves hundreds of incarcerated and at-risk children and youth each year. Storling Conservatory of the Arts, an accredited, college conservatory offering degrees in dance launched in 2021 with a vision to expand to theatre, music and visual art.

Storling Dance Theater and The Culture House are responsible for the theatrical production, Underground, now in its 16th annual season. Go Underground, the small group discussion program has been a significant motivation for the formation of UniteKC, an organization bringing people of all races together over productive and uplifting discussions about race, racial healing and the place we can take in building a unified community. Jeremiah is the Vice-Chairman of the Kansas Arts & Creative Industries Commision for the state of Kansas. He is also is a founding board member of UniteKC and serves on the board of rawKC.

Mr. Enna is passionate about the building of life giving, spirited, and generous communities and a student of the socio-economic, religious, and cultural components that interplay to create either a thriving environment or an impoverished one. The Culture House in Kansas City is the successful pilot project of creating an arts organization with the opportunity to tangibly and positively affect a community. It is intended to be a model for other communities to draw from and emulate in order to infuse and make popular again, healthy morals and ethics.

Jeremiah Enna received his BFA in Theater from UCLA, was the Carol Burnett Award winner for his work in Musical Theater, and received the Los Angeles Young Leader’s Award from Mayor Tom Bradley for his work with inner city gang leaders and members. He went on to become soloist and Assistant Director for Eternia Dans Teater in Sweden where he won accolades for his work from the French Institute, was, with Eternia, cultural ambassadors to the Baltic States after the fall of the Soviet Union, and traveled extensively performing and speaking throughout Europe, Eastern Europe and Israel. Jeremiah is currently working with his wife on a new production, The Cost of Living, about the beauty, challenge and fragility of the family.

About Mona:

As Co-founder of The Culture House and Artistic Director for Störling Dance Theater, Mona Enna has choreographed such productions as “Between Earth & Sky”, “Sower”, “Parables & Prayers”, and, “The Prodigal Daughter”. “The Prodigal Daughter” was chosen by the Kansas City Star as one of the top 15 performances for 2003. Of Mona the K.C.Star wrote, “Mona Störling-Enna’s choreographic invention seems to have no limit.” Mrs. Enna has gone on to choreograph and design new work including “butterfly”, “Suspended Grace”, “The Little Match Girl” and the latest, “Underground” a powerful telling of the history and heroics of the Underground Railroad. “Underground” was Mona’s first major collaboration together with choreographer, Tobin James and was touted by the critic Paul Horsley as one of the Top 10 Performances of the Decade (2000-2009)”. “Underground” continues strong entering its 17th Annual performances and has become one of Kansas City’s most relevant and meaningful traditions. As America grapples with the effects of racism in its past and present, Störling Dance Theater has played its role in inspiring the community to care about each other in the Spirit of the Underground Railroad. What a powerful story for our time that reminds us that it isn’t black vs. white, but good vs. evil.

Mona has been featured in Dance Studio Life’s magazine as one of America’s up and coming new choreographers as well as a guest teacher and choreographer for national dance conferences. She is most honored to have worked with Kathleen Schuler and Christiane Lisabe on a training program for dancers that has developed into the Störling Conservatory of Dance which offers an accredited Bachelors Degree in Dance. In 2000, Mona and her husband established The Culture House Conservatory of Dance that has over 50 of the finest teaching artists in Kansas City and over 700 students studying dance, theater, music and art.

Mona Enna began her classical dance training at the Ostrobotningen Dance Academy in Kokkola, Finland and went on to train under Jill Miller at Dansivintti in Helsinki. She supplemented her training under the Paris Opera and Finnish National Ballet as she formed her first dance company in Helsinki, “Kadosh” together with Titta Tunkkari and Yara Kupper.

Mona received the Finnish Young Choreographers award in Helsinki for her work “In The Storm”. Mrs. Enna toured with Kadosh throughout Europe until she joined Eternia Dance Theater in 1992 as a soloist. She became ballet mistress as well as costume designer for Eternia’s production “Sacrifice”. Mona’s choreography for “A Prayer For Bosnia” was requested for the vigil concert in the Blue Hall in Stockholm (where the Nobel Peace Prize is given), to perform together with the top upcoming conductors and orchestra musicians in honor of the needs in Bosnia at the time. Mona is married to American, Jeremiah Enna, and together they have four children.