Karen Krolak & Jason Ries - dance and spoken word May 25 2009

May 25, 2009 - Improvisation #1












May 25, 2009 - Improvisation #2






photo: Bob Raymond (MAG)

Karen Krolak & Jason Ries
“a series of dance improvisations using shoes”
Mon May 25 - dance performance (Piece #1 and Piece #2)


Videos:

Video of Improvisation #1, Part A:


Video of Improvisation #1, Part B:


Video of Improvisation #2, Part A:


Video of Improvisation #2, Part B:

Using a character by the author, in 1999, named Princess Pamplemousse, Karen plays with how shoes make us move and how they make us feel. As part of the performance she initially planned to record people's shoe stories or encourage the audience to write their stories down.

Karen Krolak is choreographer, performer, costume designer, teacher, and writer. Since 2000, she has been the Founder/Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse (www.monkeyhouselovesme.com) , an award winning nonprofit that connects communities to choreography. Through Monkeyhouse, her work has been presented at First Night 2009, the Cool NewYork Dance Festival 2009, Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, Mobius, and fringe festivals in New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Winnipeg.

She recently traveled to Italy for a workshop and performance and danced in David Parker and the Bang Group’s Nut/cracked, was invited to the Jacob’s Pillow Choreographers’ Lab, and became the Artistic Director for the BoomTown Festival.

She is a professional shoe blogger and was quickly dubbed Fitness Footwear Guru for Shoetube.tv (http://shoetube.wordpress.com/).

Karen choreographed Coriolanus for Actors’ Shakespeare Project. For the last 13 years, she has been a faculty member at Impulse Dance Center in Natick, MA where she developed the Modern Dance curriculum. In 2005, she co-taught two workshops on movement and technical design at Theater Methods 05 in Malpils, Latvia with her favorite collaborator Jason Ries.

http://conversingwithchoreographers.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/monkeyhouselovesme
www.monkeyhouselovesme.com

Notes from the Curator:

1. Due to a last minute variation in the program, I asked Karen Krolak if she would be willing to do two improvisations instead of one (her proposal suggested the possibility of more than one performance). Fortunately, she was willing and able. The start of the program for the Monday May 25 2009 set of performances was:

i. Improvisation #1: Karen Krolak & Jason Ries
ii: Moving Sound Meditation on Sam Tan's "63 in '08": Jane Wang
iii: Improvisation #2: Karen Krolak & Jason Ries

2. A technical note: Charles Daniels and the curator had to swap out ultraflip video cameras between Parts A and B of Improvisation Piece #2 (hence the jittery camera work and loud sound of a screw turning).

3. The "true" endings of both pieces were almost sabotaged unintentionally. As Karen Krolak and Jason Ries' Improvisation #1 was ending, I started the next piece too early because I had misunderstood my start cue - thus not giving the audience a chance to give Karen and Jason much well-deserved applause. For Improvisation #2, David Chin was trying to wait until both dancers relaxed into "we're finished" body language but since that didn't happen, Jason got up and ran to pick up all the shoes which I actually thought added a nice tag to the ending.