"Trickpony," a new piece by Sally Rousse and Chelsea Bacon, is the most innovative, captivating and mysterious dance work to appear on a Twin Cities stage in a long time. The 70-minute piece seamlessly blends classical ballet and aerial movement, introducing an exciting new genre, aerial dance theater. Rousse and Bacon use this movement vocabulary to re-create the enclosed, quiet, self-referential, intense world of the autistic brain -- an extraordinary achievement.

As a member of the James Sewell Ballet, Rousse is well-known for her exquisite interpretations of classical and contemporary ballets. Bacon is a New York aerialist and veteran of Three Legged Race's "Summer Blizzard" series in Minneapolis.

In creating "Trickpony," the collaborators were inspired by the work of Temple Grandin, a "high-functioning autistic." She has written about how human autistic minds and the brains of horses exist in heightened states of attention and anxiety.

The horse metaphor is woven throughout the piece, which largely takes place on three rectangular trapezelike apparatus that represent the confines of the human skull. The performers' movements represent the workings of the brain.

In the opening, Rousse and Bacon, entwined on the highest rectangle like the two halves of the brain, unfold their bodies to create the shape of a horse whose legs gently gallop through space. Later, Rousse becomes a pony, cantering around the stage in her pointe shoes.

In an astonishing sequence, Rousse pokes her head through fabric stretched over a rectangle, then dances wearing the setup like a giant tutu.

Meanwhile, Bacon performs high above the stage, twisting herself over and through another rectangle. She slips and slides from the bar, hooks a crooked arm or foot as her body morphs into various shapes, spins like a wheel and dangles serenely. When she and Rousse are both performing, they're like two sides of a brain creating a hieroglyphics of the body that attempts to communicate the unknowable complexities of the mind.

The entire work has an inward, meditative and gentle feel, yet is rife with tension: between delight and desolation, entrapment and liberation, clenched fists and splayed fingers.

It's a wholly inventive look at the wild, mute and imagistic confines of the autistic mind.

-- Camille LeFevre is a St. Paul writer.