Building Momentum: behind the scenes at the photo shoot

Each summer the Walker teams up with the Southern Theater to showcase four fresh voices in Twin Cities dance with Momentum: New Dance Works. Photographing the selected choreographers, along with their performers, is a favorite project for the Walker’s performing arts program manager Michèle Steinwald and staff photographer Cameron Wittig. Last year, the pair collaborated with the performers and ultimately did photo shoots at four sites around town, from a raw loft space to a domestic bathroom.

This year they set themselves the challenge of finding one streamlined concept that would still show the divergent visions of Sally Rousse, Megan Mayer, Vanessa Voskuil, and Sachiko Nishiuchi (all of whose work was still very much in-progress at the time of the shoot). It involved calling on a sizable group of Walker performing arts fans/volunteers to come to the McGuire Theater for a four-hour shoot one evening; more than a dozen obliged, bringing along their own wardrobe items to boot. The assembled group walked through the each shot, creating a blur of human action as a backdrop to the dancers, who struck stock-still poses.

Here are outtakes from Nishiuchi’s shoot, taken by by performing arts assistant Emily Taylor. You can see Wittig’s final shots with all four choreographers in the July/August issue of Walker magazine, which will land in members’ mailboxes in mid-June (otherwise, pick up a copy at the Walker or at sites all around the Cities).