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2023 LA MAMA MOVES! DANCE FESTIVAL WILL OPEN WITH "SHADOWLAND" BY
KARI HOAAS APRIL 6 TO 8
WHERE AND WHEN:
APRIL 6-8, 2023
La MaMa E.T.C. (Ellen Stewart Theatre), 66 East Fourth Street
Presented by La MaMa E.T.C.
Thursday through Saturday at 7:00 PM
Tickets: $30 gen. adm., $25 seniors & students
The first ten tickets for every performance are available for only $10 each
(limit 2 per patron, advance sale necessary).
Box office: 646-430-5374, www.lamama.org/
Photos are available at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Nmwj9YAxjior3rps7
Runs: 60 min. Reviewers are invited to all performances.
NEW YORK, February 28 -- Choreographer Kari Hoaas from Oslo, Norway will open the La MaMa Moves! dance festival April 6-8, 2023 with the world premiere of "Shadowland," a work of musicality and grace that contemplates the world's pandemic-imposed state of liminality. The performance will employ Norwegian dancers Ida Haugen, Matias Rønningen and Christine Kjellberg and a short appearance by Kari Hoaas herself.
Hoaas' award-winning work has been co-produced and presented in over 20 countries on four continents. Postmodern, abstract and contemporary, her artistry invites comparison with Germany's Sasha Waltz, Belgium's Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Britain's Russell Maliphant. During the period 1993-2006 she lived and worked in New York City and regards her return with this presentation of "Shadowland" as a sort of joyous homecoming.
A choreographic response to our increasingly unstable post-pandemic world, "Shadowland" is visually and conceptually inspired by the work of Norwegian visual artist Jan Groth. It is built on physical solo dance practice, aiming at an expression which is both abstract and poetic.
In explaining the piece, Hoaas refers to the concept of liminal space. The term, she notes, originated in architecture for spaces you move through, like in an airport. "They are places of transition--unsettling because we know something has passed and we don't know what's next." Psychologically, it's applied to the feeling of being overwhelmed and confused when going through a major life change--raw, vulnerable and uncertain. Puberty has been called the liminal space of adolescents. "The pandemic has put us in this kind of space," she says.
In "Shadowland," distinct solos created with each dancer are scored together in different constellations, forming choreographic bricolages and larger performance events. The resulting performance becomes a web of various assemblages and shifting formats, constructing a multiple of group dances, quartets, trios, duets, and solos, each engaging with the presence (or absence) of live music and film projections. A trailer for the evening, featuring two of its solos, is available at: https://vimeo.com/778826507.
Two versions of these solos have also been produced in 2022 as dance films.
The first, "Shadowland I", features dancer Ida Haugen and is set to
"Amanecer Loretano" composed by Italo Arbulu. It has won seven awards:
• Best Dance Film Short at Mannheim Arts and Film Festival, Germany, Sep.
2022.
• Best Dance Film Short at Cine Paris Dance Festival, France, Sep. 2022
• Semi Finalist at FIVC International Screendance Festival of Chile, Sep.
2022
• Finalist at Immagina Film Festival, Italy, Oct. 2022
• Official Selection Athens International Digital Film Festival, Dec.
2022
• Official Selection of Dance Camera West Festival, Los Angeles, January
2023.
• Official Selection Festival Video (An)Danza Internacional, Puerto Rico,
March 2023
On March 8, this film will be screened in Oslo at Kristiania University College's Seminar with Women in Academia marking the International Women’s Day and Hoaas will be featured speaker. The film will be screened at the Martha´s Vineyard Film Festival March 22-26. On March 24, it will be screened in the Dance on Film program of Austin Film Festival.
The second short film, "Shadowland II," is performed by Matias Rønningen and is set to "Vocalise" by Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is not released yet.
The "Shadowland" project is conceived, directed and choreographed by Kari Hoaas. Cellist and composer is Fil Uno. Stage and light design are by Gard Gitlestad. Costume design is by Zofia Jakubiec. Film and editing are by Kari Hoaas and Alexander Kayiambakis.
La MaMa figured prominently in Hoaas' artistic evolution in the 1990's and early 2000's before she relocated back to Norway. As a dancer, she appeared at La MaMa with Maureen Fleming in "After Eros" and was painted in gold for her appearance with Poppo and the Go Go Boys in "Universe." In that period, she lived in the East Village and worked with various independent choreographers including Sarah Skaggs, Susan Rethorst, Seán Curran Company, and the Merce Cunningham Understudy Repertory Group under the direction of Chris Komar, among others. She curated PS 122's "New Stuff" series from 1998 to 2003. Hoaas moved back to Oslo in 2005 but continued traveling back and forth to New York and working in two continents until 2007. "Since then," she writes, "I have dreamed of returning to the US to present my own choreographic work on one of New York's downtown stages, the community where I feel I grew up in as an artist." Her stage work "Be Like Water" was scheduled to make its US premiere at the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. She recontextualized this live performance material in 2021 into a series of filmed "dance haikus" for Café La MaMa Live, a series that provided performing artists an opportunity to re-imagine their stage work for an online platform.
ABOUT KARI HOAAS
Kari Hoaas was educated as a ballet dancer from an early age at the Norwegian
National Ballet School and spent one year at the Los Angeles County High School
for the Arts. Upon graduating from the National Ballet ´s High School
Elite Program, she furthered her studies in modern dance at the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Center and on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio. She
began her professional career as a dancer and choreographer in New York, where
she lived and worked from 1993-2006 performing with various independent choreographers,
including Michel Laub, Sarah Skaggs, Maureen Fleming, Susan Rethorst, and the
Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy group, among many others. She started
creating her own work early on, and presented her first solo in 1996. Her second
evening length work was co-produced by PS122 in 2003 and later toured to Norway.
In 2005, she established Kari Hoaas Productions (KHP) in Oslo. Today, she has
created around fifty choreographic works, including eleven evening length productions,
several dance films and site-specific works, and numerous commissions for various
institutions, companies, and colleges. Her work with KHP has received regular
support from Arts Council Norway, and she was the recipient of the Norwegian
State Artist Grant from 2014-2016. KHP has toured extensively all over the world,
and received several international awards and prizes. Ms Hoaas is also a teaching
artist who serves as Professor of Dance at Kristiania University College in
Oslo, where she is central in the development of their dance programs. She has
also taught at University of Stavanger, KHiO- Oslo National Academy of the Arts
dance and theater programs, PRODA – professional training for dancers
in Norway, Dancentrum professional dance training in Sweden, Anton Bruckner
Privatuniversitat, Austria, Accademia Nazzionale di Danza, Rome, and at numerous
dance festivals internationally. She has served and led many different committees
and juries considering candidates for various positions and grants, including
three years as expert reviewer in dance and choreography for candidates to the
National PhD Program for Artistic Research in Norway.
Creation of "Shadowland" is supported by: Arts Council Norway and the Norwegian Fund for Sound and Image. Travel funds for this US premiere are supported by The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Norwegian Consulate in New York and Norwegian Performing Arts Hub. Choreographic residencies and development were provided by DansiT – Norwegian Regional Choreographic Center in Trondheim, NORA – Norwegian National and Regional Center for Dance in Telemark, and DAVVI Regional Center for Performing Arts in Northern Norway. Hoaas' dance films "Shadowland I" and "Shadowland II" were produced with the support of Artistic Research Funds from Kristiania University College, School for Arts Design and Media, in Norway.
ABOUT LA MAMA
La MaMa is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theater. La MaMa’s
61st "Remake A World" Season believes in the power of art to bring
sustainable change over time and transform our cultural narrative. At La MaMa,
new work is created from a multiplicity of perspectives, experiences, and disciplines,
influencing how we think about and experience art. The flexibility of its spaces,
specifically the newly reimagined building at 74 East 4th Street (La MaMa's
original permanent home), gives local and remote communities access to expanded
daytime programming. The digital tools embedded in the space allow artists to
collaborate remotely, and audiences worldwide to participate in La MaMa’s
programming.
A recipient of the 2018 Regional Theater Tony Award, more than 30 Obie Awards and dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards, La MaMa has been a creative home for thousands of artists and resident companies, many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ed Bullins, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Harvey Fierstein, Andrei Serban, Elizabeth Swados, Diane Lane, Playhouse of the Ridiculous, Tom Eyen, Pan Asian Rep, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Mabou Mines, Meredith Monk, Peter Brook, David and Amy Sedaris, Tom O'Horgan, and Andy Warhol.
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Reviewers are invited to all performances.
Photos are available at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Nmwj9YAxjior3rps7