Welcome, MN ACDA! Thanks for taking a look at Unfashioned Creature.
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“Unfashioned Creature takes inspiration from Mary Shelley's timeless 1818 novel Frankenstein. Weaving together contemporary social themes: rejection, self-discovery, and love, both works forward a complex character who seeks to find belonging and equality. Just as each of us holds multitudes inside ourselves, the Creature in this production is cast as three dancers working together, showing many facets of one being.

Sharing a passion for creating unconventional and thought-provoking work, together we question what is considered beautiful and inspire respect for identities that are different from our own. Unfashioned Creature is a poignant reminder of the importance of accepting and embracing difference in all its forms.”

- Timothy C. Takach and Penelope Freeh

Contemporary ballet practitioner Penelope Freeh thoughtfully transforms how ballet is transmitted and embodied. Sitting in the question of how aesthetics shape content and meaning, she makes new dance performance. She is a McKnight Fellow for Choreographers, Sage awardee for Outstanding Performer, and her work is in the repertoires of many Twin Cities companies and groups.

Inextricably linked collaborations include works developed with composer Jocelyn Hagen. Their dance opera Test Pilot premiered and won a Sage Award for Outstanding Design in 2014 and toured Minnesota in 2016. Freeh was on the design team for Minnesota Opera’s The Song Poet (libretto by Kao Kalia Yang, score by Jocelyn Hagen, stage direction by Rick Shiomi, conducted by Tiffany Chang) and recently created choral ballet Unfashioned Creature with composer Timothy C. Takach, named a Top Ten Most Memorable Dance Event of 2023.

Freeh danced with James Sewell Ballet for seventeen years, serving as Artistic Associate from 2007-11. She is an affiliate Lecturer at the University of Minnesota and adjunct Assistant Professor at St. Olaf College. She holds a Dance MFA from Hollins University where she met colleagues Elizabeth Corbett and Brynne Billingsley, with whom she co-founded the long-distance performance collective TINATA.