The naked STark
A West Philly Modern Dance Company
Photo: JH Kertis, featuring Chloe Marie, Sean Thomas Boyt, Marisa
Illingworth, Brionna Williams, Melissa Chisena in Visible Structures
A West Philly Modern Dance Company
Photo: JH Kertis, featuring Chloe Marie, Sean Thomas Boyt, Marisa
Illingworth, Brionna Williams, Melissa Chisena in Visible Structures
Founded in 2009, The Naked Stark is a West Philly modern dance company rooted in an intergenerational community. Guided by artistic director Katherine Kiefer Stark, The Naked Stark brings together Philadelphia movement artists and musicians to collaborate on live dance projects. Our collaborative process engages artists committed to the investigation of social consciousness through movement and sound.
Our work is made possible by funds from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and donations of money and time from individuals.
The Naked Stark is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit arts service organization.
The Naked Stark creates modern dance works, facilitates workshops, and engages in weekly movement practices that ask complex questions and spark imagination and discussion. Socially conscious, socially engaged, and socially critical, we strive to center how movement, community, and change are intimately interconnected. Our work is honest, human, and vulnerable; it engages folks through participation, physicality, and design.
Center our work in movement, community, and change
Anti-Oppressive Framework
Self-care & Community Care
Continually Evolving Collaborative Structures
Financial Transparency
Image above freeze frame from a Zoom recording. Top left to bottom right: Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Sean Thomas Boyt, Andy Thierauf, Marisa Illingworth, Chloe Marie
The Falling Up zine (mini-DIY magazine) offers a deeper dive into the layers underneath our new performance work, more opportunities to imagine with us, and seeds for where we might take this work next.
Available for purchase now!
WITH KATHERINE KIEFER STARK
Thursdays, 2/29, 3/7, 3/14, 3/121
7-8:30pm
Mascher Space
1170 S Broad Street
Drop-in: $12-$18**
Class card: $40 for 4 classes
Katherine is excited to offer this Movement Practice series exploring arrivals. We’ll move with and through momentum, spirals, and circles to arrive at predetermined and surprising destinations. Join for an imaginative, sensation-propelled movement experience.
Learn more about movement practice
**No one turned away for lack of funds, reach out to offer an exchange or pay what you can.
Accessibility info: There are three steps into the building. Non-gendered bathrooms are located down a flight of stairs in the basement.
Please email info.thenakedstark@gmail.com with access needs or questions.
WITH AUBREY DONISCH + KATHERINE KIEFER STARK
Sundays, October 15th, 22nd, & 29th
11:15am - 12:30pm
The Cedar Works
4919 Pentridge Street
Sliding Scale $30-$60 for 3 class series
A 3 class series for those looking to rekindle their love of dance and movement. We will work as a community to build our movement skills, find greater ease in our bodies, take healthy risks, and learn new, creative ways to move.
This workshop is open to those with any amount of dance experience and those with and without disabilities.
**No one turned away for lack of funds, reach out to offer an exchange or pay what you can.
ADA Accessibile
Please email info.thenakedstark@gmail.com with access needs or questions.
Katherine is a Philadelphia-based teaching artist and artistic director of The Naked Stark. She has been teaching modern dance for close to twenty years, working primarily with adults and teens. Katherine has been a teaching artist with a variety of organizations and institutions including, Bryn Mawr College, Stockton University, Cultivate Dance Festival, American College Dance Association, Durham Juvenile Detention Center, and Enloe High School. Currently she is adjunct faculty at Widener University and offers a weekly drop-in release-based movement practice at Mascher Space. Katherine loves to facilitate dance as a community practice and creative space, deepening awareness, exploring how one’s own body moves within the movement, and finding joy and power in our creative bodies.
Aubrey is a teaching artist from Minneapolis, MN where she grew up dancing in a company for youth with and without disabilities. With ten years of teaching experience, Aubrey has taught modern dance to all ages, folks across the spectrum of disability, and those with varying relationships to dance and movement. She currently teaches at The Creative Living Room and has been a teaching artist with Allens Lane Art Center, the Park Avenue Community Center, Bryn Mawr College, University City Arts League, Young Dance, Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts, and the Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts. Aubrey loves to facilitate dance as a creative process and space for discovery, fostering positive body awareness and celebrating personal expression and collaboration.
PRACTICE
Blending Kline Technique, Safety Release Technique, and release technique, my class is an energetic exploration of movement from the inside out. Emphasis is placed on the initiation of the movement and the path the various body parts take in space to discover how one's own body moves with/in the movement. We embrace the space through phrases that move in and out of the floor and carry us in and out of balance. I bring all of these ideas together through material that is infused with what I am researching, passionate about, and is foundational to the aesthetics I love. Class begins quietly and gradually builds in complexity, culminating in a dynamic phrase. Sleeves and knee-pads or long pants are recommended.
PHILOSOPHY AND ROOTS
Movement practice is a space for taking risks, making mistakes, and honing craft. My teaching approaches aim to create a holistic study of release-based techniques that explores movement as culturally informed, politically charged, and aesthetically particular. This philosophy is deeply informed by theories from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, Dr. Ann Dils, and Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild. My physicality is strongly influenced by the studio practices of BJ Sullivan and Jeremy Nelson.
Among the movement/dance techniques I have studied, release techniques and Safety Release Technique fit best with how I like to move and with my values. These techniques appreciate and make space for the uniqueness of each mover’s body. Movement is learned through understanding the initiation of the movement, the path the various body parts take in space, and in discovering how one’s own body moves with/in the movement. This approach to movement values, develops, and supports self-awareness. My language around movement is continuously evolving as I search for words and imagery that resonate with the folks who are in the room.
In semester long courses, I explore postmodern movement aesthetics in relationship to the principles of Africanist aesthetic - Polycentrism/Polyrhythm, Embracing the Conflict, High-Affect Juxtaposition - and European aesthetic - Monocentrism, Resolving the Conflict, Arch Between Ideas - as outlined by Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, as well the qualities - indirect/direct, heavy/light, quick/sustained, bound/unbound - from Laban. I weave these in more sporadically during weekly drop-in movement practice.
Excited to donate right now?!
Your Contribution is Tax Deductible!
The Naked Stark is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of The Naked Stark must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Prefer the postal service? Send a donation via Mail. Please make checks payable to Fractured Atlas and write The Naked Stark on the memo line and mail them to:
The Naked Stark
P.O. Box 30794
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Not interested in a tax deduction? Please makes checks payable to The Naked Stark