Momentum 2008: Eddie Oroyan; Anna Marie Shogren
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Momentum 2008: Eddie Oroyan; Anna Marie Shogren

Eddie Oroyan: Brown Rocket

Among his recent artistic collaborators, Eddie Oroyan can count Craig’s List. His relationship with a woman he met through the online classified ads centers the narrative of his new dance work, and he used it to assemble the band providing live music for his Momentum performances. Brown Rocket, Oroyan’s duet with Minneapolis dance veteran Laura Selle-Virtucio, traces what the choreographer describes as “this crazy, volatile relationship that went up and down all the time.”

Born in Hawaii and raised in Wisconsin, Oroyan is a common presence in Twin Cities dance, performing with the companies of Mathew Janczewski, Carl Flink, and Shapiro & Smith. He apprenticed with Zenon Dance and cites Bruce Lee, Gene Kelly, and comic book icon Flash as direct influences. “I like to have stuff that’s pretty intense,” he says. “There’s just this forward movement, this steamroller aspect, and [Lee, Kelly, and Flash] leave this trail behind them—an image of where you’ve been but also being present—and that really affects how I approach movement.”

Anna Marie Shogren: I’m a jerk

Anna Marie Shogren grew up in Eagan, came to dance through “the typical suburban dance studio,” and made it into the University of Minnesota’s dance program only after several unsuccessful auditions. Even then, she didn’t feel connected to a community of dancers until she began working off-campus with Shawn McConneloug, Morgan Thorson, Karen Sherman, Laurie van Wieren, and the improvisational group the BodyCartography Project—all purveyors of more raw, physical movement. “I’ve never been a very technical dancer, and [during college] I felt really sheltered in the work I was seeing,” she says. “Then I started going to see a lot of things, and I was like ‘Why haven’t I been going to Bryant-Lake Bowl every night?’ I was so much more interested in and felt very welcomed into that dance community.”

Shogren sees “over-the-top, cartoonish death imagery” creeping into her new work, which jumps from detailed, minimal movements to something “much nearer to camp, more jazz, but hopefully not obnoxious,” she says. “I tend to thrive in a solo situation, or I separate myself in group situations by hogging attention. I don’t know how to play the middle ground, and this piece is a comment on that.”

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