This weekend Penelope Freeh, who dances with the James Sewell Ballet, is reprising a work she premiered at the 2007 Fringe Festival: A work that generated both puzzlement and astonishment. Set in the Grain Belt Bottling House, “We’ll Survive if We Don’t Protect Ourselves” used both the cavernous space and the balcony surrounding it as the dancers performed a rigorous choreography of drastic physicality in the overheated room. That’s the astonishment part. The puzzlement? The gorilla masks. Still puzzled.

Freeh has reimagined the work for the Southern Theater performance this weekend.  She’ll be also joined in the work by Twin Cities powerhouses Christine Maginnis, Eddie Oroyan and Stephen Schroeder (all formerly or currently with Zenon Dance Company).

Megan Mayer joins Freeh on the double bill. More of a post-post-modern movement person than Freeh (which means unlike Freeh, who was trained in and performs ballet, Mayer works with more pedestrian and vernacular movement), Mayer is premiering “We Tried to Throw the Light,” which the press material describes as “electric moments from ‘60s foreign films by way of The Lawrence Welk Show.”

Both women were recently awarded the 2010 McKnight Fellowships in Choreography.

Penelope Freeh and Megan Mayer. 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Southern Theater, Minneapolis. Tickets $18. 612-340-1725.