Photo: Jen Kertis, What’s in a name?
Katherine Kiefer Stark
I am a Philadelphia-based dance-artist, educator and founder of The Naked Stark. As a white, cis-woman, middle-class, heterosexual, Jewish, married, mother-of-two, many of my identities are privileged. I have questions and hurts from the current societal oppressive structure(s). Modern dance is how I make sense of the world and the medium through which I process and share my experiences. My dance works emerge from my questions, concerns, and discomforts. The folks that I collaborate with join in the questioning, add new perspectives and challenges, and help shape the work. I am continually working towards a process that truly embodies my values and pushes forward the questions and concepts I am investigating.
I received my MFA in choreography from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and my BA in dance from Connecticut College. I approach dance holistically, exploring 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 as well as the studio practices of BJ Sullivan and Jeremy Nelson.
I work with release-based movement techniques, partnering, and improvisation. I love embracing weight, being propelled through space, and moving with necessary effort. I am mesmerized by how this approach to physicality is dependent on the physical and intellectual processing of individual dancers, creating unison that is never unison. And I am exploring humanness, identity, and drama inside of these postmodern movement aesthetics.
My dance works do not offer answers; I grapple with structures, patterns, and conflicts and I pose possibilities for change. I believe the way to finding answers is through emergent strategy (thank you adrienne maree brown!) and radical imagination primarily led by folks who are the most marginalized today and historically. I want my work to engage our incredible metaphorical minds, to inspire, to nurture our imaginations, to give hope. I want my dances to open us up towards those radical imaginings, new visions, and collective work that will ultimately move us forward together.
