Chill at St. Paul’s Amsterdam Bar & Hall

Get down to the sounds of Charlie Brown’s Christmas

People jumping and dancing.

Photo by Jillian Bell, graphic design by Jaime Willems


12/9, 16

In the early ’90s, Erinn Liebhard was the little girl from Prior Lake dancing with the adults at the bar while her dad played in the rock band onstage. Today, she’s the choreographer behind a new holiday show returning jazz dance to its communal place of origin. Liebhard, among a handful of dancers, will improvise vernacular moves to the lilting music of Charlie Brown’s Christmas at St. Paul’s Amsterdam Bar & Hall, drawing from the classic scene of the Peanuts kids getting jiggy in endearingly weird ways. (She says she’s the character dressed in purple, tossing her hair side to side.) The soundtrack has inspired ballet but never social dance, better fitting the music’s surf-jazz feel—why the show’s titled Chill, along with the wintry air and, of course, you, nursing a beer.