From Blog Director Jill Randall:
Please join us for several posts with choreographer Kristin Damrow throughout the 3 weeks leading up to the premiere of Impact at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum in San Francisco, January 31-February 2, 2019. Purchase your tickets here.
For the second post, I asked Kristin about the idea of transformation...about how a piece and project, with its specific cast, shapes and changes you, your ideas, and your process.
Photo: Austin Tovar
Impact has been the riskiest piece I’ve ever made. But I guess that's what art is to me, challenging myself to have new approaches, stretching the limits of my capabilities as a choreographer/director, allowing myself to be risky, and being candid about those risks when they are triumphant or when they don’t turn out so well as I anticipated.
Choreographically, I wanted to create a unique world, a movement language that was true to the the characters that exist in Impact. Rather than taking my own movement studies, the dancers and I collaboratively dove into how their character would react in this world, how they would interact with other characters, and how their character's movement changed based on different relationships or events that happened in their individual storylines. In the beginning, we played with superhero-like abilities: flying, seeing the past, moving the earth, and controlling people's minds. This opened up new possibilities of ways to generate movement with the dancers and also began to unlock some ideas that felt fresh and new and true to Impact.
As a director, Impact has had the most moving parts I have ever had to juggle. I am working with 15 dancers in rehearsal, and collaborating with a scenic designer, composer, lighting designer, and costume designer. Plus, realizing the financial risk of presenting at YBCA, while spending just about as much time fundraising as choreographing. It’s all very REAL in this production. It has made me step up as a director and understand all of the different hats that need to be worn, and sometimes at the same time. No one can write a handbook for running a dance company. The process is so unique to each person and show. And as always, the best guidance came from asking questions of friends, colleagues, and people I look up to. The process of this work in production and creation has reminded me how valuable community can be.
Please join us January 31-February 2 in San Francisco. Purchase your tickets here.
Photo: RJ Muna
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Related posts:
Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing: 3 Weeks until Impact, with Kristin Damrow & Company
Artist Profile: Kristin Damrow
Reflection + Response: EAMES by Kristin Damrow & Company
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