Karen Nelson & K.J. Holmes

at EDAM & Western Front

June 20 - 26, 2022

Karen Nelson and K.J. Holmes’ residency at Western Front and EDAM is part of Redux Forward, a tour and sharing of workshops and performances that Holmes and Nelson will take from Vashon Island, WA; to Vancouver, BC; to Oberlin, OH; throughout summer 2022.

Join us, register in advance!

Price scale available. More information bellow

History with Western Front and EDAM

In 1979, Karen Nelson participated in Current Exchange, hosted by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson, at Western Front. She returned to Vancouver in 1988 and performed Forced Issues at EDAM in 1988 with Alito Alessi, Jaci Metivier and Peter Bingham. In 1994, Karen and K.J. traveled to Western Front to participate in a multi-week gathering, Improvisation Symposium, hosted by Peter Bingham with a number of dance and Contact Improvisation practitioners including Nancy Stark Smith, Simone Forti, Scott Smith, Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Coat Cooke, Julie Carr, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Jeff Bliss, and Nora Hojos.

Photos above (L-R): Ray Chung

Karen + KJ collaboration bio

As pioneers of the art of improvisation, K.J. and Karen internationally performed their Swim/ Sea/ No See in 1991-93 +2004, deeply embodying the principles of dancing Contact Improvisation (CI) + Tuning Scores introduced by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson respectively. Without sacrificing the primal power and reflexive responses of CI’s play with gravity, momentum and trust, they create a cinema of the body using editing principals they gleaned from Tuning Scores as well as through constant questionings about musicality and the theater of dance. Karen and K.J. are holders of the legacies of their teachers and mentors and have become that to many others who follow them. They now return to following themselves, jump cuts back to 1991 and fast forwards to Oberlin 2022 (one of the many global CI@50 birthday celebrations in 2022.)

Karen Nelson continues to inhabit a crossroad of dance improvisation in the US’ Pacific Northwest and abroad. A longtime dance explorer, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to Dancing with Dharmaand Contact Quarterly, she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation (CI) since 1977. She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and integrates Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (Lisa Nelson) into her practice along with interrogating whiteness and intersectionality within her own embodiment and larger community.

K.J. Holmes, a Brooklyn based danceartist/actor/singer/writer, travels nationally and internationally teaching/performing/creating. K.J. has been exploring improvisation as process and performance since 1981. She has collaborated extensively with Julie Carr, Simone Forti, Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson and Image Lab, Steve Paxton; has performed in the work of Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Xavier Le Roy, Lance Gries, Mark Dendy, Melinda Ring, Karinne Keithley Syers, among many others; Assisted Simone Forti in the re-performance of her Dance Constructions at MoMA in NYC, as well as leading public workshops in embodiment titled Art as Physical Practice 2019-20; Performed in Matthew Barney’s film Redoubt 2017 and choreographed Catasterism in 3 Movements directed by Barney at the Schaulager Museum as part of Art Basel September 2021; collaborates with drummer Jeremy Carlstedt in L.I.P. (Love Is Power, MLK Jr.); teaches at NYU/ETW, Movement Research and remotely with the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought; attended the certification program of School for Body Mind Centering(r) 1995-99, is a graduate of the William Esper Studio (Meisner acting with master teacher Terry Knickerbocker), Satya Yoga (with Sondra Loring) and Ayurveda’s World (certified Ayurvedic practitioner). K.J. is re-devising her piece titled 900 Bees are Humming , a multi disciplinary work exploring death, life and transformation. Her dance/theater work has been presented by many venues nationally and internationally.

More information here: https://explomov.weebly.com/redux-fwd-bios.html

Performance

SWIM/SEA/NO-SEE + ARTIST TALK

Fri, June 24 // 7:30 PM
at Western Front

Tickets: $10

Karen Nelson (Vashon Island, WA) and K.J. Holmes (Brooklyn, NY) return to Western Front with the reprisal of their 1991 duet Swim/Sea/No See. What does a redux of an improvisation become after 30 years? Without sacrificing the primal power and reflexive responses of Contact Improvisation’s* play with gravity, momentum and trust, they create a cinema of the body; using editing principles gleaned from Tuning Scores**, as well as through constant questionings about musicality and the theater of dance.

Following the performance, Nelson and Holmes will share early video renditions of Contact Improvisation and earlier clips from Swim/Sea/No-See; and engage in an artist talk-back. As lifetime practitioners of Contact Improvisation, Holmes and Nelson are holders of the legacies of their teachers and mentor, and have become teachers and mentors to the many others who follow them. Nelson and Holmes bring the context of Contact Improvisation’s 50 year history to light.

Swim/Sea/No See toured the United States and internationally from 1991 - 1993. Holmes and Nelson reprise their duet for celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Contact Improv, including  Critical Mass CI@50 at Oberlin College, OH this summer.

*Contact Improvisation (CI), is a duet dance form based on physical touch, momentum, listening, trust and athleticism. A post-modern dance project that emerged in 1972, it was seeded by the work of numerous artists including Steve Paxton and his teachers — Cunningham, Cage, Raushenberg, Limon, Graham, as well as his peers and students — Simone Forti, Yvonne Ranier, Nancy Stark Smith, Mary Fulkerson, Lisa Nelson, Daniel Lepkoff, Barbara Dilley, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Fred Holland, Karen Nelson, K.J. Holmes, Emery Blackwell, Neil Marcus, Peter Bingham and many others. 2022 is the 50th anniversary of Contact improvisation‘s inception, and this residency at Western Front is part of the celebration of the form and its continuing evolution.

**Tuning Scores, an improvisation + composition practice, was introduced Lisa Nelson as early at 1980 and developed throughout the 90’s by the performance group Image Lab including K.J. Holmes, Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson and Scott Smith, and eventually picked-up by many others world-wide. The work involves exposing choreographic opinions through calls and actions as the dancers communicate meaning within the improvisation as it is unfolding. Underpinnings include deep processes of tracking sensation and perception whereby agreements or choices or manifold experiences can be tuned into a common sense.

Workshops & Community Engagement Opportunities

COMPOSITIONAL IMPROVISATIONS: WORKSHOP

June 21, 22, 23 // 1 - 3:30 PM
(Tues, Wed, Thurs)
at EDAM

Open level. Pre-registration required.

Drawing from their duet Swim/Sea/No See*, Karen and K.J. will explore and share their compositional process in this three-day workshop. We’ll tune and practice seeing with our senses to compose and edit in “real” time. Using measures and cinematic plays, we’ll work with mashing timings, replicating unisions, replaying snapshots, and flashing forward into our imagined nexts. We’ll also take moments to sink into deep warm-up and somatic resonance. Elements from Contact Improvisation and Tuning Scores**.

*Holmes and Nelson have reprised their duet for the 50th anniversary celebrations of Contact Improvisation this summer, and will perform Swim/Sea/No See and engage in an artist talk-back at Western Front on June 24, 2022.

**Tuning Scores, an improvisation + composition practice, was introduced Lisa Nelson as early at 1980 and developed throughout the 90’s by the performance group Image Lab including K.J. Holmes, Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson and Scott Smith, and eventually picked-up by many others world-wide. The work involves exposing choreographic opinions through calls and actions as the dancers communicate meaning within the improvisation as it is unfolding. Underpinnings include deep processes of tracking sensation and perception whereby agreements or choices or manifold experiences can be tuned into a common sense.

COST

Please note that spaces are limited to 20. Register in advance to save your spot.

$130 if you are economically constrained, students and underemployed
$150 if you are economically balanced, artists, farmers etc.
$170 if you are economically abundant, happily sustained, supports the arts

CI INTERROGATES AND TUNES ITSELF: WORKSHOP

Sun, June 26 // 4 - 8 PM
at EDAM

Open level. Pre-registration required.

Nelson and Holmes will facilitate a lecture-demonstration, participatory JAM, multimedia gathering, community ritual. This 4 hour workshop will engage dancers and observers to consider the history, currency and futurity of Contact Improvisation. Nelson and Holmes invite each dancer to claim, share and dance their own origin and identity story of the form.

While diversity, inclusivity and democracy have been felt experiences reported in the form of Contact Improvisation; the population of white, hetero-sexual, cis gendered, able bodied folk have dominated the practice. Still at the margins, artists of all identities have continued their research and development of the work. We meet, recall and learn from some of those artists in the lecture-demonstration workshop, and we venture into present-time dialogue.

As we emerge from lockdown and social distancing, we each bring our varied and diverse experience to social engagement. In the genre of Contact Improvisation, a form based in physical touch and athleticism, this has never been more true in the sense that lifting the prohibition to touch offers a chance to reinvent, to queer, and to mutate this form as it never has been consciously entered into before.

Nelson and Holmes will share archival video footage from Diverse Dance Research Retreat, an initiatory program held on Vashon Island from 1993-2000 that brought people with disabilities and non-disabled dancers together to live and dance as peers. This footage includes work by Ishmael Houston Jones, mayfield brooks, and the late Fred Holland and Nancy Stark Smith. These clips will lead us into dance improvisation, practices of replay, ensemble dancing, and observing from an audience perspective. The interrogation's objective is for practitioners to gain felt-experience of the past, open to the present, and dream into the future.

Nelson’s reflections have been published in Contact Quarterly’s Winter/Spring 2018 Issue. Read her writing here: CI (embodied) interrogates its own history.

COST

Please note that spaces are limited to 20. Register in advance to save your spot.

$60 if you are economically constrained, students and underemployed
$80 if you are economically balanced, artists, farmers etc.
$100 if you are economically abundant, happily sustained, supports the arts