by Camille LeFevre
Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 18th, 2004
In the first double bill of this year's Momentum series, which features emerging Twin Cities dancemakers, one choreographer's ambitions far outmatch her abilities, while the other undertakes a choreographic challenge that tests her just enough and produces lovely results.
Penelope Freeh, a dancer with the James Sewell Ballet, takes on the legendary Joan of Arc in her new work, "Telephone Joan." St. Joan, the timeless child/woman warrior, is a formidable subject for any artist. To her credit, Freeh ambitiously structures her nine-part dance on Joan's iconic story. To her detriment, she shrouds the narrative in oblique references, a tone of delicacy and solemnity, and a choreography of arrested action.
Freeh's Joan is three women (Freeh, Christine Maginnis and Stephanie Fellner), all terrific dancers whose roles are unclear except that Maginnis, at one point, represents Joan before she cuts her hair and Freeh after. Then there are the props, which are either incomprehensible--the ladder on which the three women link through simple touch, the telephone ringing between sections--or underutilized, like the sword that's lowered to the floor, then raised to the ceiling.
Two men in gladiator-style skirts (Robert Haarman and Benjamin Johnson) tumble and twirl like characters on a Greco-Roman frieze. Are they members of Joan's family? Soldiers in her army? When they manhandle Freeh, it's clear they're her prison guards.
And where is Joan's fortitude, resoluteness and spirit? These Joans stare dreamily into space, move from pose to pose.
The second half of the Momentum program, "Sangam/Convergence," is a three-part work by Aparna Ramaswamy, co-artistic director of Ragamala Music and Dance Theater. In this choreographic study, Ramaswamy synthesizes and contrasts the coded, poetic gestures of the classical Indian dance form, Bharatanatyam, with fluid, open modern dance.
In part one, she slows down and lengthens Bharatanatyam movements--the splayed fingers, lunging leaps, arcing arms, wide legs, rhythmic feet--to emphasize their form and grace. In part two (co-choreographed with Matthew Janszewski) and part three (a collaboration with dancers Amy Behm, Mary Ann Bradley and Dana Holstad), she pairs the two dance forms in a study in comparative elegance.
Bharatanatyam is cast as the more grounded, articulate form. At times, its practitioners even support the seemingly airborne modern dancers. It's also clear where the movement vocabularies overlap and that they're equally evocative.
Set to live music by the group Speaking in Tongues, "Sangam/Convergence" is a joyous cross-cultural work that shows Ramaswamy firmly in charge of her capabilities, while hinting that she is capable of much more.
