Four Artists Announced for the 2015 Momentum: New Dance Works Festival

Minneapolis, MN (June, 2015) The Cowles Center, the Southern Theater, and the Walker Art Center have announced the four artists commissioned to create new works as part of the 11^th Momentum: New Dance Works Festival in 2015. This years winning submissions offer an exciting look into the next generation of promising choreographers in Minnesota. The awardees are: Angharad Davies, Hiponymous, Nic Lincoln, and Luke Olson-Elm.

Artists were selected by a panel comprised of Momentum partners: Michèle Steinwald (Program Director and Producer, Momentum), Philip Bither (Performing Arts Senior Curator, Walker Art Center), Damon Runnals (Executive Director, Southern Theater), Lynn Von Eschen (Executive Director, The Cowles Center), and 2015 ad hoc panelist, choreographer Kenna-Camara Cottman.

About The Selected Artists

Angharad Davies makes new dance works that embrace emotionality and straddle the line between the sincere and the synthetic. To create her dances, she gleans from a diverse set of tools including movement, improvisational scores, text, video, and music, and she collaborates with both professional and non-professional performers. She is pro-narrative, influenced by the fragmentation of collage and mash-ups, and captivated by the hard jump cuts of film, television, and comic book art. Davies choreography has been presented at venues throughout the U.S. and Germany, including Danspace Project & Joyce SoHo (NYC), Ballhaus Naunynstrasse & Radialsystem (Berlin), Bryant Lake Bowl, Patricks Cabaret, Ritz Theater, & Ted Mann Concert Hall (MPLS), Cleveland Museum of Art (OH), ODC (San Francisco) and Yale.

New piece for Momentum: Davies proposes a new dance quartet, filled with abandoned choreography, derived from a feeling that surfaced after the birth of her daughter: all at once, there existed no past or future, only a present and falling through it. This new project explores identity as memories fade, change, or disappear altogether.

Hiponymous is a newly founded crew of two, comprised of Renée Copeland and
Evy Muench. The duo has created seven original works since June 2012. They have had the pleasure of performing in recent events such as Choreographers Evening at the Ritz, Pleasure Rebel at Bryant Lake Bowl, the Trash/Vogue Benefit Show, and Elements in Translation at Patricks Cabaret. With dynamic grit and an ever-evolving aesthetic, Hiponymous is committed to making work that values community, social justice, and queer/feminist representations.

New piece for Momentum: Their new work for Momentum, State of the Moon Address will be a visually and sonically textured movement experience offering glimpses of stories that only women can tell.

Nic Lincoln is an instinctive seeker of beauty who takes inspiration from pop culture and visual art to voice his activism through dance. For nine years James Sewell Ballet has acted as a creative incubator for Lincoln. He has danced with Dayton Ballet, Cleveland San Jose Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet and performed as a guest artist for Corbin Dances, National Choreographers Initiative and Shapiro & Smith, among others. He is a proud recipient of a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dance and has been named Best Dancer by the City Pages as well as one of three Artists Who We Love by MN Monthly magazine.

New piece for Momentum: Lincolns proposed new work for Momentum is an all-male quintet that explores societies primal tendencies, examining group behaviors in animals and hyper-sexualized individuals in order to encircle around subjects of gender and power.

Luke Olson-Elm style is influenced by many techniques ranging from classical ballet to hip hop, as he specializes on a movement vocabulary that creates a unique vocabulary. Olson-Elm has performed works by Ji?í Kylián, Crystal Pite, Paul Lightfoot, José Limón, Anna Sokolow, Mathew Janczewski, Shapiro & Smith Dance and was a soloist for Netherlands Dans Theater resident choreographer Natalia Hore?nas work The Night and Spat Upon. Olson-Elm choreographs for the Summit Dance Shoppe while he also runs his own project-to-project company, the Lucas Daniel Dance Company, which has performed at CARNIVAL in Chicago, the Varsity Theater, Bryant Lake Bowl, and in New York City where he presented work in the 2012 REVERB festival.

New piece for Momentum: Olson-Elms new piece for Momentum, Broken, is an ensemble choreography that explores group dynamics leading to alienation, vulnerability, and doubt using his fluid signature movement style and an original sound score of his creation.

About Momentum

Momentum was launched in 2001 as a partnership between The Walker Art Center, the Southern Theater, and the now defunct Dance Today (formerly Minnesota Dance Alliance) to commission and present new works from promising and innovative Minnesota dance-makers. The Jerome Foundation has generously supported this series from its inception. With the Foundations support, the series has become one of the most important programs for emerging dance artists in Minnesota.

Since 2001, Momentum has enabled the creation and presentation of new work by artistically and culturally diverse emerging artists that have continued to make significant contributions to the local and national arts scene, including Mathew Janczewski (2001), Emily Johnson (2002), Aparna Ramaswamy (2004), Jason Noer (2004), Morgan Thorson (2005), BodyCartography Project (2006), Karen Sherman (2006), Chris Schlichting (2008), Maia Maiden/Ellena Schoop (2008), and SuperGroup (2013), among others. The original impetus for creating Momentum continues to drive the series today. The Twin Cities remain a home for a generation of emerging dance and dance-theater creators. These artists have honed their choreographic skills and made Minnesota a national hub for contemporary dance.

Momentum: New Dance Works Festival

July 9 18, 2015

Southern Theater
1420 South Washington Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55454

Each artist will perform a new half-evening length work (30-40 minutes) over three nights. The series is presented by the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, in partnership with the Walker Art Center and the Southern Theater with support from the Jerome Foundation.

July, 9 11, 2015 (Meet the Artists: July 10)

State of the Moon Address choreographed by Hiponymous, Broken choreographed by Luke Olson-Elm

July, 16 18, 2015 (Meet the Artists: July 17)

A new dance quartet choreographed by Angharad Davies, An all-male quintet choreographed by Nic Lincoln

Tickets go on sale Monday, July 21, 2014 for $20 general admission. Call or click: 612.206.3600//www.thecowlescenter.org