The Twin Cities has one less dance company after James Sewell Ballet’s final performances at St. Paul’s O’Shaughnessy. The closing celebration for the company showcased its history and beloved pieces from its repertoire for its final two performances Friday and Saturday.
JSB’s final bow, following the pause of Minnesota Dance Theatre’s performance company last spring and the shuttering of the still-dark Cowles Center in Minneapolis last year, continues a worrying trend in Twin Cities dancescape, but it’s not all bleak. As the 35-year-old JSB bid adieu, a busy month for dance demonstrated the community still holds promise for a vibrant future. Theaters and gallery spaces have been bursting with performances, exhibiting talents of local artists and visiting dancers.
Among the bright spots were luminous performances by the brand new Elayna Waxse Movement Project at the Southern Theater, a site-specific gallery performance at Mirror Lab by April Sellers Dance Collective and a scintillating engagement by Shamel Pitts’ group Tribe at the Northrop in co-presentation with the Walker Art Center.
In recent years, artistic director James Sewell has infrequently performed with his company except a cameo here and there. The “35th Anniversary Retrospective & Farewell” reversed that trend. Sewell performed in six works, including two solos. Among them was “Prestidigitations: Rings” a circus piece that highlighted the dancer’s sleight of hand with a series of trick rings, choreographed in 1991. He also performed “Body Puzzle,” (2011) that featured a style of movement he developed called Coordi, focusing on different parts of the body coordinating at different rhythms.
Sewell spoke a number of times throughout the performance, thanking the many people who were a part of JSB’s success.
“A violinist might have to spend a half million dollars to buy their violin that they have for their career, for their lifetime,” he said. “For me as a choreographer, my instrument is a ballet company. It’s a group of dancers that I work with everyday, and I have to buy my instrument every year, and I don’t do it alone.”
He also thanked the audience saying, “ultimately, it’s about all of you out there, giving us reason to be here.”
JSB co-founder Sally Rousse, who left in 2014, also gave a presentation, sharing some of the company’s scrappy beginnings. “We were a pickup company for our first three years in New York, pulling dancers who were on break from other big companies,” Rousse said. “We needed and got a lot of things for free.”