Walker Art Center and the Southern Theater Present Skill and Passion of Twin Cities' Dancemakers in Momentum: New Dance Works
The Walker Art Center and Southern Theater present the annual
Momentum: New Dance Works
series, two weekends of premieres by the freshest talents in Minnesota dance, on Thursday–Saturday, July 16–18 and 23–25, at 7:30 pm on Thursday and 8 pm on Friday and Saturday, at the Southern Theater. Providing a snapshot of Minnesota’s dance landscape, Momentum illuminates the skill and passion of the next generation’s most promising artists. Featuring two companies each evening, the series showcases new voices and ideas that articulate the latest combinations in dance while solidifying the Twin Cities as a hotbed of fresh, experimental, and often under-the-radar talent. Momentum 2009 features performances by Vanessa Voskuil, Sachiko Nishiuchi, Sally Rousse, and Megan Mayer. These new works are commissioned by the Walker and the Southern with the support of the Jerome Foundation. The Southern Theater is located at 1420 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis. A postshow discussion follows each Friday performance.
Momentum: New Dance Works
July 16–18
Thursday, 7:30 pm; Friday and Saturday, 8 pm
$20 ($16 Southern and Walker members)
Postshow discussion on Friday
Vanessa Voskuil: en masse
Performed by a cast of 80, en masse grapples with the collective animal power of the masses working in perpetual conflict against itself toward an elusive, undiscovered harmony. Vanessa Voskuil, a cofounder of Live Action Set, brings together a physical style of storytelling with a surrealist sensibility, translating simple movements into an impressionistic texture of human experience.
With an approach that is both visceral and interdisciplinary, Voskuil says her aim is to create work that speaks in a unique language, one whose “essence exists not in the movement, sound, image, or lighting within a piece, but in the spaces between those elements.”
Sachiko Nishiuchi: The Apple Tree
A member of Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre and Ananya Dance Theater, Sachiko Nishiuchi has created a new dance theater work that employs the riotous lens of flamenco to evoke the illusive “springtime of life,” as well as the tragic classifications people use to alienate themselves from one another. Loosely based on John Galsworthy’s 1916 romance novel The Apple Tree, as well as personal experiences, she mines flamenco’s various expressions of emotionality to tell the characters’ stories and chart the paths of their sentiments.
A longtime practitioner of flamenco, Nishiuchi has also trained in ballet, Indian classical odissi, and Japanese butoh. “I try to make dances I love and to be honest in their creation,” she says. The multimedia elements of this evocative performance are highlighted by local guitarist Ben Abrahamson’s original score, with vocals by celebrated flamenco performer La Conja.
July 23–25
Thursday, 7:30 pm; Friday and Saturday, 8 pm
$20 ($16 Southern and Walker members)
Postshow discussion on Friday
Sally Rousse: Paramount to My Footage
Drawing from a wide palette of movement and an appetite for extreme theatrical moods, Paramount to My Footage dives into historical fiction and the worlds of celebrity and privacy, grappling with what it is to be known and to know others—over time and distance, through love, fame, death, and rivalry.
In creating the piece, Sally Rousse looked to “the inner cartoon balloon commentaries” that run through her head to reinvent herstory, appropriate that of others, and turn an optimistic eye to the future. “After a 25-year career dancing other peoples’ visions, I am figuring out my own,” says the 2001 McKnight Dancer Fellow, who performed with the Royal Ballet of Flanders and Ballet Chicago before cofounding Minneapolis’ James Sewell Ballet in 1990. “This piece goes beyond the agreed-upon limits of ballet, beauty, and biography.” It features such varied artists as poet and writer Heid Erdrich, filmmaker Alek Keshishian, and a cast of distinguished local performers. Rousse hopes to give something indelible to them: perhaps “their own new way of moving or thinking or loving or observing.”
Megan Mayer: I Could Not Stand Close Enough to You
In Megan Mayer’s I Could Not Stand Close Enough to You, the bold beauty of childhood fantasy collides with the self-conscious trappings of adulthood. Awkwardly humorous in a manner reminiscent of the Smothers Brothers, this piece pits familial/group mentality against individual attempts at autonomy and personal success. “I’m curious about the risks we take when we are alone as opposed to those we are willing to take when we are part of a group,” says Mayer. “My work is also about trying to find a comfortable place, both physical and emotional, with often fruitless results.”
From her curious site-specific bathroom choreography to prestigious commissions and performances around the Twin Cities and beyond, Mayer’s recent work combines her dry wit with the nuance of gesture. For this piece she has created solos for all five performers, and backs the action with a soundtrack of nostalgic, bittersweet 1960s songs that have personal meaning.
Tickets to Momentum: New Dance Works are available at walkerart.org/tickets, southerntheater.org, or by calling 612.375.7600.