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.

Notes from the Curator #2 - Thanks to ...

THANK YOU

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank those artists and people behind the scenes (including ones not in the show) who gave their extra help to make this exhibition and set of performances happen and basically helped me keep from collapsing in a heap many many times. Hopefully I didn't forget someone - please forgive me if I do forget.

First though, an explanation of why this show was thrown together so quickly:

I had been thinking about putting together an exhibition with related site-specific performances at some point on The Politics of Shoes since December 2008. As many of you may know, Mobius the space has been up in the air for some time due to a huge property tax bill, the troubled economy and discussions of whether to stay or not, or buy or not. Basically we the Mobius Artists Group have been operating by the skin of our teeth for some time, not knowing if we will have to move within a week or stay for an extra month. We have thus been under the unfortunate burden of having to book month to month since we had no idea if we'd even be in the space the following month.

At one of our meetings late in April 2009, we decided we would stay through May 2009. We all felt that given that circumstance, we needed to book May as much a possible and try to fill every weekend with events.

Since none of the other artists were available to book something for Memorial Day weekend, I decided to finally put together The Politics of Shoes that long weekend even though I'd already planned to be in Italy from May 11-22nd. The fallout from that was that I needed a LOT of help to make this thing happen.

Therefore - Extra Special Thanks to:

1. Ian Colon: Ian gamely agreed to co-curate the performance art part of the show even though he was about to graduate and had twenty zillion things he had to do simultaneously. He was fine with just trying to work around whatever I booked for the three nights and fill in where he could.
Before I left for Italy, Ian said he had two proposals and hoped to get some more while I was gone. We agreed to meet and so on when I got back and he was willing to MC all three evenings.
When I got back from Italy, I saw an email from Ian saying that the two artists who had submitted proposals didn't work out and no one else had submitted proposals. I immediately called Ian on the phone and asked what happened with the two artists? Ian said that what they proposed would be destructive to the installations. I said, I could work around that by giving them more gallery space and moving the installation to the sides of the gallery, and what is it that they proposed? Ian replied that one artist wanted to flog himself with paint and walk all over the gallery - I replied ok, you're right, that won't work - what about the other artist? Ian said that artist wanted to get the entire audience to PEE ON THE FLOOR OF THE GALLERY...

Needless to say, at that point I had to agree with Ian that those two performing artists would not be appropriate for this site-specific installation led set of performances.

2. Jennifer Hicks: for throwing together a poster and some PR last minute and putting me in contact with an Italian Online Magazine all while she was driving across the country (?!) and for bringing in additional performers to the mix.

3. Sandy Huckleberry (MAG) for checking the politicsshoes@gmail.com and answering questions from artists while I was away, handling any late proposals and offering to let one of the out of town artists stay in her house.

4. Cathy Nolan (MAG) for trying to organize the mass (mess) of emails which were in random order into something that made sense for this blog, for artist profiles and for keeping up with the mobius facebook related information.

5. David Chin (honorary MAG and miracle worker and all around great person) for taking wonderful photographs for the SOWA Art Walk, posting a facebook page for this event and for taking on MC duties last minute all three nights (which included being a stage manager/ tech/
and putting the program order together the last night) and for helping with putting artists bios and statements together to be printed for the exhibit.

6. Bob Raymond (MAG) for his awesome photos of all the performers and the installations.

7. Margaret Bellafiore (MAG) for her considerable help both mentally and physically in putting up the installations.

8. Kate Hanrahan (one of the guest installation artists) who drove in from Brooklyn, NY with her beautiful installation and asked "how can I help" - she also worked on the artist profiles and dressed two stacked speaker cabinets in white craft paper to display another artist's installation.

9. Marilyn Arsem (MAG) for patiently making the program for the last evening of performances.

10. Joanne Rice (MAG) for moral support and enthusiasm when it was most needed.

11. Matt Samolis for performing with three very different choreographers/performers and for taking on extra tech support at the last minute.

12. Charles Daniels for running my ultra-flip cameras for me the last evening and for also taking some fantastic photos with his own camera - simultaneously...
www.charlesdaniels.us

13. Liz Roncka and El Putnam for surviving all three evenings intact and for tackling some last minute mayhem and whackiness.

14. G, S & J...

and finally Milan Kohout (MAG) without whom this show would not have even been conceived.