Minneapolis New Breed

This month, The Southern Theater features three up-and-coming dance-theater groups that it’s calling Minneapolis New Breed. Dance-theater is not new, of course. Dancers who act and dance around set pieces—we’ve seen that. This new dance-theater is the other half of the hybrid—a tiglon, not a liger.

Mad King Thomas, the trio of Theresa Madaus, Tara King, and Monica Thomas, is the best known of Minneapolis New Breed’s three performance groups. The Macalester grads have been ripping up audiences with their irreverent yet layered work since 2004. (Sample moments: One dancer spins in a circle shouting, “I have sparkles in my underpants,” while another dancer sticks her hand into a bowl of ice water, over and over, a sickly smile spreading across her face.)

Dylan Skybrook, who programmed the concert along with Jon Ferguson, notes that MKT combines the “extremely silly” with “a dark center.” “That juxtaposition is very compelling,” he adds.

Lamb Lays with Lion falls more onto the theater side. For this show, LLwL is tackling Chekhov’s The Seagull, but according to artistic director Jeremey Catterton, “There’s always an element of dance or choreography in our work.” Like SuperGroup, the third company in Minneapolis New Breed, LLwL is “striving to invent the next chapter of performance.” Feb. 25–28. The Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Mpls., 612-340-1725, southerntheater.org