July 21, 2011, Thursday - Momentum: New Dance Works at the Southern Theater (3 nights)

Times:
Thursday at 7:30pm
Friday 8:00pm
Saturday at 8:00pm

Location: Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Avenue South

Momentum: New Dance Works

Co-commissions by the Southern Theater and
Walker Art Center with support from the Jerome Foundation

“A remarkable platform for presenting local artists here but also nationally and internationally.” – Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

Featuring two ensembles each evening, Momentum illuminates the skill and passion of the next generation’s most promising choreographers, providing a snapshot of Minnesota’s dance landscape. This biennial showcase of new voices and ideas confirms the Twin Cities as a hotbed of fresh, experimental talent.

Chris Yon
Exploring the world of backup dancers without their leading stars, Chris Yon presents ECHO PARK Dream Ballet Essay:Les Sylphides without Margot Fonteyn v. The Pips without Gladys Knight. Set to an original mashup soundscape of classical and R&B music, the six dancers traverse a kinetically quotable movement landscape based on variations of familiar ‘step-touch’ routines and other standard chorus vocabulary.

Kenna Cottman
Kenna Cottman (aka Sarge) is widely known for her West African and hip-hop fusion techniques. With Shared Language, Cottman explores the conflict in her own cultural identity, collaborating with Senegalese griot (storyteller/musician) Backa Niang to combine oral language traditions with a new movement vocabulary derived from Senegalese sabar dance, Guinee djembe dance and a more contemporary take on her own style.

Kaleena Miller
Inspired by her father’s journey into the depths of Alzheimer’s, Kaleena Miller’s Fleet explores the aural and visual interpretation of the disease as a percussive dance piece set to live music. Utilizing a more modern, urban sensibility on the traditional views of tap dance, Miller’s variance of sound and visual aesthetics creates a dense and dark percussive sound that leaves the audience affected, yet hopeful.

Mad King Thomas – Tara King, Theresa Madhaus, Monica Thomas
Bouncing between a multitude of potential titles including If We Just Put Sparkles On It, All Our Troubles Will Go Away and Glitter Tits and the Glitteration Band, movement trio Mad King Thomas presents a new piece for “more than 3, and probably less than 25” people about agency and power in a culture of spectacle. Known for their sense of humor and delight in irreverence, Mad King Thomas is invested in the possibilities of live performance opening up discussion, igniting revolution and subverting the status quo, as well as expanding what the definitions of dance, performance, or art might be. This new work draws its inspiration from a love of bicycles, sparkles, and women and finds its influence in the past 100 years of culture including suffragettes, Eleanor Roosevelt, Guy Dubord, Ziegfield Follies, and female movie stars.