Now in its tenth edition, Momentum offers a snapshot of Minnesota’s dance landscape, illuminating the skill and passion of the next generation’s most promising choreographers.

Featuring two companies each evening, Momentum showcases new voices and ideas that speak to the latest combinations in dance while solidifying the Twin Cities as a hotbed of fresh, experimental, and sought-after talent. Each company will present work commissioned by the Walker and presented in association with the Southern Theater.

SuperGroup with Rachel Jendrzejewski & Leslie O’Neill

July 11–13

SuperGroup

SuperGroup is an artistic collaboration between Jeffrey Wells, Sam Johnson, and Erin Search-Wells. Combining text with movement, their works challenge audiences to “dream, imagine new realities, think inventively, and make connections between broadly disparate ideas.”

For Momentum 2013, SuperGroup presents a new dance-theater piece exploring human stasis and change, created in collaboration with Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow Rachel Jendrzejewski. The work examines “an individual’s interest in ritualistic repetition set against the desire for change and the reconciliation that occurs in order to satisfy these paradoxical needs.” In keeping with SuperGroup’s interdisciplinary approach, the piece incorporates movement structures, music, and text.

Leslie O’Neill

An accomplished performer and a 2010 recipient of a McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, Leslie O’Neill captivates audiences with astounding grace and a commanding stage presence. As a choreographer, she has been working primarily in solo form, creating such pieces as Trigger, which was mentioned in the Star Tribune’s “Top 5 Dance Events of 2009.” O’Neill received her BFA in dance from the University of Minnesota and is currently a member of Zenon Dance Company. She was nominated for a 2009 Sage Award for her performances with Black Label Movement and Zenon Dance Company.

O’Neill’s work for Momentum serves as the next stage in her exploration as a choreographer, investigating the relationships developed between children and ways that they teach each other. She presents a duet with local performers Laura Selle-Virtucio and Erika Hansen that offers “insights into childhood roles and identities, and the ways in which traumatic experiences in our adolescence can form our adult selves and world views.”

Pramila Vasudevan/Aniccha Arts & Jennifer Arave

July 18–21

Pramila Vasudevan

Pramila Vasudevan has had training in interactive media, Bharatanatyam, and contemporary Indian dance and has performed with Minneapolis-based companies Ananya Dance Theatre and Ragamala Dance. Since 2003, her choreographic work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and others. With her company Aniccha Arts, she recently presented In Habit: Living Patterns—a nine-hour, site-specific installation comprised of 16 dance vignettes—at the 2012 Northern Spark Festival.

For Momentum, Vasudevan presents three pieces. The first explores the audience-performer dynamic, placing the audience onstage and the performers in the seats. “I create kinetic paths that interrupt the public,” she says. “The space between my dance and the viewer is both beautiful and dangerous.” The second is an attempt to create “the perfect dance,” drawing movements from previous Momentum choreographers into a single work. The third, a solo for dancer Kenna Cottman, investigates ways that their unique backgrounds and dance training manifest through this choreographic collaboration.

Jennifer Arave

Trained as a director in traditional theater, Jennifer Arave began to explore more experimental forms, which led to integrating movement and dance into her work.

For this series, Arave presents Canon, a 30-minute solo for dancer Mary Ann Bradley with drummer Charles Gehr. The piece explores the canon of punk rock and uses a physical language arising from the counter-culture of disenfranchised youth to tell a feminist narrative set within the punk rock experience—one that embraces Iggy Pop and Wendy O. Williams as the “Merce and Martha of Punk.” Described by Arave, the piece “will run much like a performance set list, traveling through an imbedded performance narrative unfolding through a range of rhythms (harmonious, discordant, seedy, ecstatic) and the camaraderie between drummer and performer.”