American Midwest Ballet’s ‘Momentum‘ is an all-contemporary program — every work on the bill was created by a living choreographer in mid-career. Seeing contemporary ballet is an exciting experience, showing the viewer a cross-section of works that reflect current trends and the choreographers’ interests.
And for dancers, learning contemporary ballets is exciting. While most classic 19th-century ballets use a graceful, highly-codified style, the movements of a contemporary work can be as abstract or as daringly athletic as the choreographer can conceive. You might say that whether classical or contemporary, all ballet choreographers speak the same “language”… but each contemporary choreographer uses that language to evolve his or her own distinctive “vocabulary.”
In this picture feature, we show you American Midwest Ballet dancers at work in the studio, perfecting the movement vocabularies of works you’ll see on the Momentum program. It’s a wide range, from the intense, risk-taking athleticism of Natasha Overturff’s Scattered Memories to the stylized Japanese aesthetic of Matthew Carter’s Sadako. It’s a challenge… but as you’ll see in the pictures, American Midwest Ballet’s dancers love challenges!
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