Falling Up

A celebration of play, possibility, and the tenderness of being human. Six dance artists displace gravity to co-create new worlds with fantastical possibilities. Step into Falling Up and immerse yourself in the imaginative effort of turning the world anew, again and again and again.

In Falling Up creators / performers Amalia Colón-Nava, Chloe Marie, Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Marcie Mamura, and Meredith Stapleton vision alternate realities and arrive at mutual agreements for existing inside of them. We disorient and reorient ourselves and the audience through a unique and shiftable set, costume changes and projection. 

Watch us bound into the air, float and crash off a wall that has become the floor. Witness worlds melt as tender embraces and the weighted struggle of transposing gravity loop into joyful giggles of 6 bodies intertwined sinking up a wall. 

These whimsical, beautiful, and bizarre illusions invite performers and audience alike to adjust what is possible and collectively imagine each new reality as it emerges.
Can we hold a different reality together?
Can we say yes to impossible ideas and unknowable outcomes?
Can we take the time to try and fail and try and fail and try and fail?
Can the effort of change be as beautiful and joyful as it is challenging and overwhelming? 

This work emerged through our practice of collective imagination - creating new realities that we can all inhabit, that offer each of us belonging, moving through discomfort, making mistakes, embracing effort. Falling Up is a process, the Falling UP Zine offers a deeper dive into our practice, more opportunities to imagine with us, and seeds for where we might take this work next - available for purchase now!

collaboration & multimedia adventures

This spring we began visioning Falling Up at Icebox Project Space. Exploring how to translate our up close intimacy to a proscenium stage, we began to envision a multimedia experience with projection, interactive set-pieces, and a Zine to capture our process and continue the works journey.

Simultaneously, to deepen our collaborative process we decided to each take the lead on a different production element. This is a new collaborative process for The Naked Stark and we are each bold in our visions. 

Amalia, projection designer and videographer
Amalia is creating a series of short films that are woven throughout the work. As director and videographer, Amalia’s projections offer moments of magic through shifted perspectives and larger than life images.

Chloe, costume designer
Chloe is envisioning our costumes as story telling elements and as part of the kinesthetic experience for us as performers. With an interest in repurposing, inviting the past as we imagine new possibilities, Chloe is pulling items from The Naked Stark’s costume closet, collaborator’s wardrobes, thrift stores, and a few new pieces.

Harlee and Katherine, set designers
Harlee and Katherine are creating set pieces that allow us to build functional architectural landscapes. Cross-disciplinary artist Evan Dawson is collaborating with Harlee and Katherine on two set pieces we have named chairsteps. To create the chairsteps, Harlee and Katherine collected 48 used milk crates.

Marcie, sound director
Marice is collecting music and thinking thematically about sound. Marcie DJs our rehearsals offering music ideas as we build our relationship with rhythm, mood, and lyrics. Music artist and producer Lee Clarke is collaborating with Marice and mixing the tracks for our sound score.

Meredith, Zine designer
Meredith is visioning and creating our Zine. Meredith is working to capture our collaborative process, the layers of our stories, memories and thoughts and the shared verbal, visual and kinesthetic languages we created. Meredith is archiving our notes, inviting us to collage and draw, and surfacing the web of stories, memories, and connections that emerge as we work. Falling Up is a process, the Falling UP Zine offers a deeper dive into our practice, more opportunities to imagine with us, and seeds for where we might take this work next.

ALONG THE WAY, the work evolves

Here we are on June 23, sharing sections of the work with an audience at Meet The Naked Stark

Here is a highlights reel from our December 18, 2022 showing of in-process material from two creative processes, a 10 week collaborative process with 6 artists and a 12 hour workshop intensive with 10 artists.