Tramp: Dances from Minneapolis

Curated by the Minneapolis-based, Chicago-bred, choreographic duo HIJACK
Co-presented with the Dance Center, Columbia College Chicago

Morgan Thorson – Faker
Faker is a dance performance piece that celebrates the world of celebrity image, simulation, and obsession. Clashing twin narratives (a defunct Elvis impersonator and an obsessive compulsive yearning for a cure) are mixed with impersonation, stealing, flattery, repetition and ritual. Blurring the lines of behavior and dance, the body and image, Faker creates a fragmented world of posture, attitude and gesture, which is part rehearsal, performance, story, and song. Commissioned by the Walker Art Center and The Southern Theater for the Momentum Series, 2005.
      Morgan Thorson, a self–taught choreographer, has created her own dance and movement-based projects since 1996 with a fluid group of collaborating artists (dancers, theater artists, designers). Dodging a trademark style, her ensemble and solo works defy categorization, created from a steady flow of spontaneous ideas regarding dance history, representation and meaning, identity and sexuality, space, energy, movement codification, and performance conventions. At the center of her multifarious projects is an interest in the tension between the physical limitations of the body and the expansive nature of the willful, yet fanciful imagination. Developed and edited through a rigorous physical methodology, her works are amassed in full-evening works or shorter pieces, and the audience’s complicit gaze is a paramount consideration in their structure, presentation and performance. Within constellations of detail, humor, and formal concerns, her works broadcast a social commentary beyond the work itself and the world of dance.
      Thorson has received notable accolades for her work including the 2006 Sage Award for Outstanding Performance for her production of Faker, commissions from the Walker Art Center and Carleton College, fellowships from the McKnight and Bush Foundations, and grants from the Jerome Foundation. In 2004 she received the Bessie Schonberg Memorial Fellowship for her research at the Djerassi Artist Residency Program and in May of 2006 her commission for James Sewell Ballet received critical acclaim.
      Thorson is a passionate performer in her own right and a devout practitioner and teacher of Skinner Releasing Technique and other movement forms. She has collaborated with choreographers Jennifer Monson, Karen Sherman, Ann Carlson, The Body Cartography Project, and HIJACK, among others. She teaches dance at the University of Minnesota and Ballare Teatro in Minneapolis, and as a guest artist nationally and internationally. Thorson is originally from Connecticut and New York.


Photo by Sean Smuda

“… [Thorson is] an artist at the top of her game… funny and poignant and outrageous – a perfect embodiment of Faker’s rambunctious charm.” – Linda Shapiro, Pioneer Press

Morgan Thorson and Molly Shanahan - Worse Case Scenario
Thorson and Shanahan create dynamic physical conditions that elicit accidents and coincidence. These startling and dramatic circumstances force the dancers to cope, adapt, or mutate, as they perform under the influence of surprise and shock. This sometimes underhanded process will reveal their weaknesses and strengths as human beings, collaborators and decision-makers. The dancers—as well as the audience—should be prepared for anything. This exploration is part of a larger project by Thorson entitled The Generator.
      Molly Shanahan is a Canadian-born choreographer working in Chicago, who leads Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak dance company, which she founded in 1994 as the organizational home for her choreographic projects after completing her Masters of Arts in Dance/Choreography at The Ohio State University. Mad Shak has premiered over 45 original works by Shanahan, ranging from solo movement studies to large ensemble works involving multiple collaborators in both conventional theaters and alternative venues throughout Chicago, as well as in New York, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, and Canada.
      Shanahan’s creative achievements have been increasingly recognized across the field of contemporary dance, evidenced both by critical and audience response and by organizations like Links Hall (Chicago) and the National Performance Network, among others, that have endorsed and supported her work. Shanahan’s work has performed in Chicago at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Links Hall, Storefront Theater, and others. Outside Chicago, Mad Shak has performed at Dance Theater Workshop, Tangente (Montreal), and as a featured artist at the National Performance Network Annual Meeting in 2005, among others. In 2004 Mad Shak was the recipient of the Chicago Dance and Music Alliance’s Elizabeth F. Cheney Dance Achievement Award, citing Shanahan’s evening-length projects So-Called Repetition, The Poems of Replaceable Kings, and Eye Cycle as exemplary instances of the company’s impact on the field and promise for continued innovation. Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak’s new performance, My Name is a Blackbird, premiers in April 2007. www.madshak.com


Karen Sherman - Systematic Spontaneity
(see workshops)