Artistic Alchemy

“I feel free to think about a lot of things,” muses Justin Jones, during a discussion of upcoming work for Momentum: New Dance Works, a joint program of the Walker and the Southern Theater that features four premieres from local choreographers. Jones isn’t kidding about the range of his inspirations; his “the Screen/the Thing (working title)” draws from string theory, quantum physics, Carl Sagan, mirror neurons, and the Voyager mission. Jones sees intriguing similarities between dance and physics—both can seem inscrutable and complex from the outside, but also deal with basic questions of space and time. But Jones says he isn’t making a dance about physics. “I’m thinking about those things, and I’m making a dance at the same time,” he explains, trusting that the ideas influence the dance.

All four Momentum commissions begin with amorphous ideas, but where they go from there is what makes them unique. For husband and wife Paul Herwig and Jennifer Ilse, collaboration with performers is an important step in the creative process. In a typical rehearsal for “Our Perfectly Wonderful Lives,” inspired by the career of Andy Warhol, the performers create their own improvised gestures and movements from set characters and situations. It’s a time-consuming process. A five-minute section of finished work might represent an hour of suggestions and countersuggestions. It’s a process that could easily get contentious, but Ilse and Herwig maintain control. “It’s never a free-for-all,” says Ilse. “We’re not married to any given idea. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”

Not all the choreographers are so democratic, but all collaborate with designers, particularly musicians, costumers, and set builders. Maggie Bergeron works with all three on “House/ Home,” a piece inspired by her early desire to get away from her small-town home (Argyle, Minnesota) and her subsequent affection for it. With each of her collaborators, Bergeron stays flexible and open. “Basically, I know how I want the piece to feel,” she says, but she lets the designers contribute their own ideas. At one rehearsal, when musician Chris Thompson shows her some new work—moody repetitions interlaced with bell-like tones—she says, “This is really beautiful, Chris,” and starts rehearsal to the new music. Bergeron doesn’t want to control all the elements herself; rather, she wants the collaboration to fill out and extend her vision. “The piece is making its own world,” she says.

How does dance emerge from these varied ideas and modes of collaboration? Cathy Wright, who’s working on an exploration of gender roles, culture, and nature in “Return,” has multiple sources for her fleshy, raw movement. She writes in a journal, then uses the release of feeling as a springboard for dance improvisation. Unlike some artists, Wright doesn’t draw on a set vocabulary (such as the vocabulary of ballet), her movement “comes completely from within me—from my heart, and my core, and my brain, and my body.” She also likes to work from characters, mythology, and animals. But Wright isn’t trying to make her influences visible, she wants to take her initial idea and “branch it out so far that it transcends to something else for the viewer.”

She’s not the only one. These artists don’t want you to see the hundreds of hours of research, creation, collaboration, and rehearsal they put into their pieces. They have much higher ambitions. Justin Jones, for example, wants to “engage people on an imaginative journey.” If he and the other Momentum artists are successful, their work will be much more than the sum of its many parts. July 12–14, 19–21. Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Mpls., 612-340-1725

Reach Lightsey Darst at Lightseyd@msn.com.