ChoreoFest Interview: Kimberleigh A Holman!

by Nicole Harris

photo credits available at http://kaholman.com/about/

ChoreoFest ends TODAY!! We are mere hours away from the first of this years ChoreoFest performances, and we're rounding out our final choreographer interviews. Our penultimate interview slot goes to our friend, collaborator, ChoreoFest organizer and one third of this year's choreographic super group, Paranarium House, Kimberleigh A Holman of the incomparable Luminarium!

Nicole Harris: What made you want to make the move from being a dancer to a choreographer?
Kim Holman: I've sort of always been a creator (as opposed to a dancer, though I enjoy moving), as I love cause and effect and watching the outcome of various experiments. The joy in a performance for me is not performing for an audience but watching something from the depths of my mind exist by itself on stage at the same time as an audience.

Nicole: What are you most nervous about regarding ChoreoFest?
Kim: At present I don't feel nervous about ChoreoFest, but last weekend I woke up in a panic and cold sweat at 4:30am worrying that I'd let everyone down by not making anything at all. That was the first time I've ever had such an anxious dream! I think since we are merging companies this year (Luminarium, Monkeyhouse, Paradise Lost), I'm slightly nervous at the idea of having so many bodies in one room with a finite amount of work time. Sure, I know most of the others in the room, but we've never worked together. There's something exciting, worrisome and beautiful about that.

Nicole: Have you participated in ChoreoFest before? If so, what is your favorite memory of that experience? What advice do you have for new ChoreoFest choreographers? Are there things you hope to do differently this time?
Kim: Of course, I'm 4 for 4! There are too many favorite moments for me to pinpoint one - if I had to it might be the singing coffee pot - but I will say that the best stuff happens in the common spaces (around food, in tech, in discussion). My advice to newbies would be to embrace opportunities outside of the workspace/studio. You might be feeling stressed, but take time to chat with others, share your concerns, let others into your studio to help. I'm changing my mind. My favorite memory is the failure that was the Year One ChoreoLympics. Never again will we ask a room full of exhausted frustrated creators to participate in organized games at 4am.

Nicole: Since this is a very controlled creative space (in terms of time and topic) where do you see yourself starting when you get in the space?
Kim: This year we have controlled time and topic, and the new experience that is Paranarium House! Tyler, Nicole and I met to talk about how we would approach making a new piece in a very collaborative new manner, and created a game plan. We will be using a lot of experimentation, sharing, writing and noisemaking with the three of us acting as facilitators. This might be the first time in my life where I have no idea what will happen and what the product might look like. Exciting!


Nicole: In creating a new work, what in the relationship between you and your dancers? Do they participate in the creative process? If so, how?
Kim: In past years of this festival my dancers have been integral to the creative process and I'd imagine it would be the same this year, just in a larger context. I enjoy starting a new ChoreoFest piece by working through concepts with experimentation and improv to see what might happen. Each new experiment is a refinement of what came before. I work similarly outside of ChoreoFest, though I tend to bring more specific ideas or choreographic material to try out.

Nicole: Knowing that Karen Krolak will be on hand as "choreographic guru", what things do you hope she can help with in the overnight process?
Kim: It will be amazing to have an outside set of eyes (clad in brand new ChoreoFest glasses, no less) to step in when we get deep in the process. Because the timeline is so condensed at ChoreoFest, it's so easy to get buried by ideas and lose sight of your initial impulses. Having someone around to ask questions and share what they are seeing will be so helpful.

Nicole: Who are some of your favorite choreographers?
Kim: I'm going to try to keep this random list somewhat concise: Andrea Miller, David Parsons, Bob Fosse, Mark Morris, Akram Kahn, Gene Kelly, Lloyd Newson/DV8 Physical Theatre... really anyone that makes dance with some driving force/passion behind it.

Nicole: Who are your mentors? How are you paying forward the things your mentor gave you?
Kim: As far as making dance and living life as a creator go, the wonderfully giving Karen Krolak has been invaluable to me in recent years and I certainly consider her a mentor (gosh, hopefully she accepts!). I think one of the sticking themes that I carry away from conversations with Karen is to not be limited by practicality in the face of a great idea, a sort of wild spin off on where there's a will, there's a way.

Nicole: Where can people learn more about you and your work?
Kim: LuminariumDance.org, or my brand new site kaholman.com. The best idea would be to come check out a Luminarium show, however, and there are lots of chances to do just that this fall.

Spring Good Things!

So many good things have been happening of late! We are so happy to share all these wonderful things with you! Be sure to send your love to all these folks!

• Congratulations to one of our newest board members, Andrew Fine and his newly minted fiance, Debi Ou-Yang! Welcome to the Monkeyhouse family, Debi!
• Congratulations Josh Bergasse on your TONY nomination for Best Choreography for your work on On The Town!
• Congratulations to our interns, Connor, Isabella, Emma and Jacob, who recently performed in Our Town at Natick High School!
• Congratulations to Brianna Unsworth on her new job with Zehren & Associates in Colorado! We are so excited for you and we will miss you at our weekly Musings!
• Congratulations Michael Krolak on your acceptance to the Master's program in Software Engineering at Oxford University!
• Congratulations to our friends at the American Tap Dance Foundation on a beautiful performance at Rhythm in Motion. A giant shout out to our friends Felipe Galganni, Lynn Schwab, Michelle Dorrance, Jason Samuels Smith, Derick K. Grant and of course, Tony Waag for their work! 
• Congratulations to Sarah Feinberg who will be studying with Pilobolus this summer!
• Congratulations Kim Holman on your acceptance to the Master's program at Goddard College!
• Board Member Margaret Hagemeister published her first review with Events Insider!  Huzzah!
• Former Board Member Jon Schaffrath and his wife Kristin are expecting!
• Super woman supporter Heather Gant just finished her MBA in healthcare management! Hooray!
• Congratulations to Jim Peerless for completing Boost VC's incubator, Tribe 5!

Luminarium meets Time Lapse Dance

Jody Sperling 

Monkeyhouse loves connecting people within the dance community as well as to the art of choreography. As some of you may remember, Monkeyhouse helped host Jody Sperling of New York based TIme Lapse Dance when she performed at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge several years ago. In addition to leading a talkback after her concert, we helped publicize the event, opened the show, arranged transportation for her in the city and invited her to stay with Jason and I. It was a wonderful opportunity to be a bridge between the NYC and Boston dance communities. I was thrilled when I heard that UMASS Amherst is presenting Time Lapse Dance from and Boston's Luminarium together this week. When I spoke to Merli and Kim from Luminarium about the project, they said that they were eager to meet Jody. So I jumped at the chance to introduce them via email and suggested that they share their conversation with our blog. Enjoy! - karen 

Kimberleigh Holman & Merli Guerra: What was your first experience with Loie Fuller's style?  
Jody Sperling: In 1997, the Library of Congress celebrated the centennial of its Jefferson Building with an evening of dances reminiscent of the 1890s. Elizabeth Aldrich, the choreographer of that event, decided to make a “Butterfly Dance” à la Loïe for me. She fashioned a costume with huge pink silk wings, a black dress and a green skull cap with antennae. I had such fun sweeping, with my 14-feet wingspan, into the Library's rotunda to the tune of Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries” played by a live 18-piece brass band. It was a blast! Up until that solo I was pretty much a post-modern, contact-y, roll-on-the floor kind of dancer.

K&M: What drew you Fuller's work, and how did you decide to base your own work on interpreting, reconstructing and exploring those iconic visual elements?

JS: The experience of doing the “Butterfly” was so great that I wanted to try it again. The thing that has kept me interested all these years is the kinesthetic thrill of extending so far into space. You are larger than life and that is powerful, intoxicating. When I'm performing, I have the very clear sensation of being connected to forces outside myself and of making moving 3D sculptures that relate to these forces, i.e. the architectural space, the music, the rotation of the earth and heavenly bodies.

With the fabric you can really create a strong visual impact. When I was a kid, people thought that I would be a visual artist, not a dancer. And in a way, this medium fulfills my need to make visual patterns as much as my desire to move.  There are so many possibilities for working with moving fabric, light, shadow and projections that I've never gotten bored and I feel there is so much more to explore.

K&M: We read about the Principles of Time Lapse Dance on your website; fractal pathways, whirling, using fabric.  What is the most difficult aspect of the company's technique to master, and how long does it generally take to learn how to work with the fabric?

JS: Over the years I developed a very specific personal movement practice to help keep me fit and able to do this work. One challenge has been adapting this practice for the company and boiling it down to the essentials for students.

When you work with the Loie capes, you have to think of the costume as a prosthesis, as an extension of your own body. You have to expand your awareness and understand your movement pathways very clearly. An imprecise thought will lead to a tangled action.
The experience accumulates over time and the dancers become more adept at handling the silk in unpredictable situations, i.e. wind. The silk is like an animal, you have to tame it, drive it, but you also have to give it freedom to move. If you force it too hard it can rebel or be mischievous.

The hardest thing we do as a company is sustained patterned spinning. It takes a while to build a tolerance for spinning so you don't get dizzy or nauseated. And it takes extreme precision for the dancers to able to make group patterns in specific rhythms while they whirl. A further challenge is keeping your bearings under the glare of stage lights. Our newest piece has an 8 minute section that is almost continuous whirling and it is really hard! 

K&M: Both your company and ours have a focus on utilizing lighting to creatively accentuate the work onstage. Can you speak to your artistic choices through lighting?

JS: I work very closely with David Ferri, my lighting designer. We are lucky that he runs the Frances Daly Fergusson Theater at Vassar so we can often develop new work there with lighting as an integral part of the choreography.

For me, the music inspires the lighting. I've been inspired by the synaesthetic concepts of Kandinsky, and also Loie of course, who sensed correspondences between sound and color. For ''Debussy Soirée," one of my signature Loie-style solos David and I went into a studio with 6 color scrollers and “choreographed” the lights to the music before I even made the dance. 

Fuller has this theory of “color harmony” that she spells out in her memoirs. Basically, the way an orchestra might have a single instrument carry a melody and use other instruments to harmonize with that melody, so could a single thematic color (say green), be harmonized by supporting hues (say pink, orange, blue, etc.). I always try to construct the lighting in this way, thinking about harmonizing the colors with each other as well as the music, dance and costuming. 

K&M: Does your company have a favorite piece to perform? What makes it special/more enjoyable for you all to present?

JS: I'm most proud of "Turbulence" (2011) which is danced by the full company of six women. With this piece I wanted to take the Loie idiom and make something fresh out of it, something with big full-bodied dancing. The score by Quentin Chiappetta is very complicated rhythmically with shifting meters and layers of percussion mixed with electronics. I feel like “Turbulence” gives Loie a nod, but truly comes from me, the dancers and our time.

Thursday, October 3 at 7:30pm 

University of Massachusetts, Amherst; The Fine Arts Concert Hall

151 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA 01003

https://fac.umass.edu/Online/TimeLapseDance

General Admission $35, $30 and $15

Five College/GCC/STCC Students/Youth 17 & under $10

*On-site preconcert talk at 6:45pm