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.

Walker Commission

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.”

it’s [all] highly personal, SuperGroup’s latest interdisciplinary work in collaboration with playwright Rachel Jendrzejewski, explores the subtle changes that shape us and the contradictory human need for ritual and risk. Combining text and movement, the performance layers abstract and symbolic gestures with weaving narratives, multiplying patterns, and elusive signals to tell the complex story of everyday life.

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 is currently a member of Zenon Dance Company and was nominated for a 2009 Sage Award for her performances with Black Label Movement and Zenon.

Fortress is a duet featuring Laura Selle Virtucio and Erika Hansen in which private histories take the form of a third character in their relationship. The players hold onto secrets that are transparent to the audience, while the setting and their interactions establish motivations and divisions that influence each of their moments together.

Pramila Vasudevan/Aniccha Arts & Jennifer Arave

July 18–20

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 composed of 16 dance vignettes—at the 2012 Northern Spark Festival.

F6, named after the “best” seat in the house, is an episodic series of movement-based installations in which the relationship between artists and audience is reversed. The group choreography, solo, and video homage create a space between the dancers and the viewers that is political as well as poetic, while their magnetic actions both attract and evade.

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.

Canon, a movement solo for dancer Mary Ann Bradley with drummer Charles Gehr, mines the legacy of punk rock gestures and aggressive expression. The physical language arising from the counter-culture of disenfranchised youth is used to illustrate a feminist perspective within a historically male-driven experience. The piece equates punk rock’s Iggy and Wendy O. to modern dance’s Merce and Martha.