Work in Progress: A Simple Form of Matter
Preview video of work developed at Summer Stages Dance, performed at ICA Boston... Help support the continuation of this project.
Active Repertory
Expert Witness (2011)
9 min, quartet
Music: Albert Mathias (original score)
Expert Witness eclipses narrative but invites you into a world with a sense of intrigue, mystery, and memory. With movement structures borrowed from probability theories, social psychology, and the legal system, Kloppenberg plays with perception, revealing incomplete information, the act of bearing witness to and recreating events, and how unrelated occurrences becoming linked in the memory of an event. The act of decoding, or solving, is passed over to you, the audience.
The development of Expert Witness was supported by residencies at DTW Outer/Space; Boston Center for the Arts, and Colby College. The full piece premiered at Colby College on April 15 & 16, 2011, and a 9 minute quartet version is now in working repertory. WATCH VIDEO
9 min, quartet
Music: Albert Mathias (original score)
Expert Witness eclipses narrative but invites you into a world with a sense of intrigue, mystery, and memory. With movement structures borrowed from probability theories, social psychology, and the legal system, Kloppenberg plays with perception, revealing incomplete information, the act of bearing witness to and recreating events, and how unrelated occurrences becoming linked in the memory of an event. The act of decoding, or solving, is passed over to you, the audience.
The development of Expert Witness was supported by residencies at DTW Outer/Space; Boston Center for the Arts, and Colby College. The full piece premiered at Colby College on April 15 & 16, 2011, and a 9 minute quartet version is now in working repertory. WATCH VIDEO
The Waters at Whose Edge We Stand (2005)
14 min, trio
Music: The Sound Effects Company, Lorenza Ponce & Ben Zebelman, Rachel Portman, Cyndi Lauper singing Etta James
The Waters at Whose Edge We Stand distills what was originally a much longer piece for six women, into a 14 minute trio, which slides from episode to episode, retaining a sense of mystery that is, nevertheless, quickly subsumed by lush, circular movement offset by odd rhythmic specificity, rolling galvanized pails that seem to transform in function and image, and flowers that are flung. The women fall, cradle, and support one another in a final flourish of interaction that winds both into itself and spins away from gestural details.
*"My Perfect One," "My Beloved Is," and "Devouring Flame" composed and arranged by Lorenza Ponce (http://www.lorenzaponce.com/) and Ben Zebelman (www.benzebelman.com), Copyright 2001 Otter Simplicity Songs (BMI), and ZenBen Music/Cyclops Music (ASCAP) adm. by BMG Chrysalis. From the album "Song of Songs" available from Spring Hill Music (http://www.springhillmedia.com/b.php?a=LPONCE), Copyright 2002 Fish Music Group. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
WATCH VIDEO
14 min, trio
Music: The Sound Effects Company, Lorenza Ponce & Ben Zebelman, Rachel Portman, Cyndi Lauper singing Etta James
The Waters at Whose Edge We Stand distills what was originally a much longer piece for six women, into a 14 minute trio, which slides from episode to episode, retaining a sense of mystery that is, nevertheless, quickly subsumed by lush, circular movement offset by odd rhythmic specificity, rolling galvanized pails that seem to transform in function and image, and flowers that are flung. The women fall, cradle, and support one another in a final flourish of interaction that winds both into itself and spins away from gestural details.
*"My Perfect One," "My Beloved Is," and "Devouring Flame" composed and arranged by Lorenza Ponce (http://www.lorenzaponce.com/) and Ben Zebelman (www.benzebelman.com), Copyright 2001 Otter Simplicity Songs (BMI), and ZenBen Music/Cyclops Music (ASCAP) adm. by BMG Chrysalis. From the album "Song of Songs" available from Spring Hill Music (http://www.springhillmedia.com/b.php?a=LPONCE), Copyright 2002 Fish Music Group. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
WATCH VIDEO
This Dance Needs a New Title—choose your own… (2007)
18 min. Sextet
Music: Thomas Newman, Merilee Rush & The Turnabouts, Stone Temple Pilots, Suzanne Vega, Margaret Cho, Josu Gallastegui
Retitled and reworked from its original form, this piece invokes irony and sarcasm; plays with conventions of the theater and of postmodern dance; and pokes fun of the fear of not “getting it” with projected text of literal titles and in casual conversations with the audience both spoken and projected. Simple and precise, the episodes unfold in an ever-unpredictable way. It’s funny, but uncomfortably so. The performers judge an empty chair, describe a prom dress with blue plastic plates, admonish the audience for potentially having missed a beautiful part of the dance, explain what happens psychologically “sometimes” when they fall, help “prepare” a colleague with many scarves, and dance with shiny spoons.
WATCH VIDEO
18 min. Sextet
Music: Thomas Newman, Merilee Rush & The Turnabouts, Stone Temple Pilots, Suzanne Vega, Margaret Cho, Josu Gallastegui
Retitled and reworked from its original form, this piece invokes irony and sarcasm; plays with conventions of the theater and of postmodern dance; and pokes fun of the fear of not “getting it” with projected text of literal titles and in casual conversations with the audience both spoken and projected. Simple and precise, the episodes unfold in an ever-unpredictable way. It’s funny, but uncomfortably so. The performers judge an empty chair, describe a prom dress with blue plastic plates, admonish the audience for potentially having missed a beautiful part of the dance, explain what happens psychologically “sometimes” when they fall, help “prepare” a colleague with many scarves, and dance with shiny spoons.
WATCH VIDEO
Indelible Marks (2009)
8 min, trio
Music: MIchael Wall (original score), Andrew Bird, Tortoise
Visuals: Nicole Gibbs, Lily Skove
Landscape Architects call paths that people wear away on the land “Desire Paths” or “Desire Lines.” Sometimes, instead of pre-determining paths, these worn away paths are later paved and become permanent parts of that landscape. Using the idea of “desire paths” as a springboard, Indelible Marks transposes ideas about body, desire, and landscape, and explores the rich emotional and theoretical territory of what or where our paths lead us to—the object of desire as an end point—and notions of how desire connects with fear, fantasy, hope, hopelessness, disappointment, or satisfaction. The visceral movement language, is punctuated by unfamiliarity and oddity, and coupled with circular winding and unfinished gestures and paths through space.
This project was supported by The Ohio State University’s Alumni Grants for Research and Scholarship, The Helen Alkire Fund, the OSU Department of Dance Special Project Funding, Movement Research(MRX), and the guidance of Bebe Miller and Norah Zuniga, among others. This project figured prominently in Ashley Thorndike-Youssef’s dissertation research about epistemic construction in the creative process. The full evening length version premiered on February 12-14, 2009 at The Ohio State University. An abridged version is now in active repertory.
WATCH VIDEO
8 min, trio
Music: MIchael Wall (original score), Andrew Bird, Tortoise
Visuals: Nicole Gibbs, Lily Skove
Landscape Architects call paths that people wear away on the land “Desire Paths” or “Desire Lines.” Sometimes, instead of pre-determining paths, these worn away paths are later paved and become permanent parts of that landscape. Using the idea of “desire paths” as a springboard, Indelible Marks transposes ideas about body, desire, and landscape, and explores the rich emotional and theoretical territory of what or where our paths lead us to—the object of desire as an end point—and notions of how desire connects with fear, fantasy, hope, hopelessness, disappointment, or satisfaction. The visceral movement language, is punctuated by unfamiliarity and oddity, and coupled with circular winding and unfinished gestures and paths through space.
This project was supported by The Ohio State University’s Alumni Grants for Research and Scholarship, The Helen Alkire Fund, the OSU Department of Dance Special Project Funding, Movement Research(MRX), and the guidance of Bebe Miller and Norah Zuniga, among others. This project figured prominently in Ashley Thorndike-Youssef’s dissertation research about epistemic construction in the creative process. The full evening length version premiered on February 12-14, 2009 at The Ohio State University. An abridged version is now in active repertory.
WATCH VIDEO
This Terrain: traveled, traced, trampled underfoot (2008)
12 min, quartet
Music: Michael Wall
A precursor to Indelible Marks, in this piece dancers navigate contours real and imagined as they suggest moving through shifting landscapes, engaging with image and with each other. The precision of the execution of the highly physical movement language is generated the precision of the imagery the dancers respond to, the spaces they describe and transcribe. We witness effort, action, persistence, and curiosity as the dancers vividly guide us through imagined rough, rolling, jagged, and irregular landscapes.
WATCH VIDEO
12 min, quartet
Music: Michael Wall
A precursor to Indelible Marks, in this piece dancers navigate contours real and imagined as they suggest moving through shifting landscapes, engaging with image and with each other. The precision of the execution of the highly physical movement language is generated the precision of the imagery the dancers respond to, the spaces they describe and transcribe. We witness effort, action, persistence, and curiosity as the dancers vividly guide us through imagined rough, rolling, jagged, and irregular landscapes.
WATCH VIDEO
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Photo credits, top to bottom: Melissa Blackall, Purple Ganesh Photography, Sallee Slagle, Kate Enright, TJ Hellmuth, Kate Enright, Janet Cooper