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Minnesotan To Meet: Contempo Physical Dance Founders

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Most everyone has heard of love at first sight, but what about love at first dance?

Though they grew up continents apart, Jenny Pennaz and Marciano Silva dos Santos' love blossomed in Brazil when they were studying dance.

What the couple is doing for the Twin Cities dance scene now is what makes them Minnesotans to Meet.

For Pennaz and Silva dos Santos, their love story began to the rhythm of the music.

"He demonstrated the movement of Oshun, the goddess of freshwater, which means he had to shimmy. And if anyone has seen Marciano do his shimmy before, they know it's very beautiful," Pennaz said.

A student at the University of Minnesota, Pennaz was studying abroad in 2003 in Victoria, Brazil, Silva dos Santos' hometown. Though a continent away, it was a place very similar in layout to the Twin Cities.

During her class one day, her teacher asked one simple question.

"And she said, 'Is anyone here a dancer?'" Pennaz said. "I got really excited and I said, 'Yeah, I'm a dancer! I'm a dancer!"

"I looked at her and thought, 'Wow, there's something else.' Something behind her. Something that followed her. It was beautiful. I would look at her and she would shine. And I think it was that connection that happened right away, right there," Silva dos Santos said.

"I wanted to say something so badly to him. And I remember, he just walked down the hall and I turned and I looked at him and he smiled back and me and I just went 'Oh!'," Pennaz said.

Pennaz, who was scheduled to leave not long after they met, decided she had to stay.

The two began their courtship, very innocently at first they said.

"We tried to translate by ourselves using a dictionary to communicate with each other," Silva dos Santos said.

Three years later she was able to get Silva dos Santos to Minnesota on a culturally diverse artist of exceptional merit VISA and they founded Contempo Physical Dance.

"It's a new company, with new, fresh movement. I think people were very excited to see what it is," Silva dos Santos said.

Stepping inside rehearsal for the upcoming show Balacobaco at The Cowles Center, it's easy to see why he was named "Best Dancer" by City Pages in 2009 and "The Hottest Choreographer in Town" in Minnesota Monthly's Fashionable Fall Arts Preview in 2012.

Silva Dos Santos' Afro-Brazilian dance is unique, fresh and physical.

Pennaz, now a middle school dance teacher, his wife and mother of the couple's two children, said his work is exceptional.

"He doesn't present Brazilian dance in a traditional way on stage. He researches movement and makes it more contemporary. But it still captures that high energy and the Brazilian spirit. And that's what we want to capture with the work here at the Cowles Center," she said.

"The way they use the physicality of the body in terms of the fun moments in the movement is very interesting," Silva dos Santos said. "Each piece that we do we do a lot of research based on the movements. That helps create the production. That's why each production has a different theme and music."

That includes this latest production, in which they hope to capture the spirts of Carnival one step at a time.

"Dancers coming and going to a different party, and we want the audience to feel that as well. We hope they get out of their chairs and dance along," Pennaz said.

Now Pennaz hopes the audience falls in love with Contempo Physical Dance just like she did with Silva dos Santos, fourteen years ago.

Balacoobacoo, the celebration of Brazilian Carnival, takes place this weekend at the Cowles Dance Center. For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit Cowles online.

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