Image Description: Text reads, "the NAKED STARK presents COLLABORATORS SIDE-BY-SIDE, APRIL 18, 7PM, MASCHER SPACE, FREE, amalia colón-nava, marcie mamura, aubrey donisch & shana crawford. The photo behind the text is of a person reaching out over a dusty-orange-y brown ground. Their shadow extends away from them. On the shadow, drawn lines of pink and green outline the shadow body, blue squiggles and stars fill in the shadow body. The Naked Stark logo is a print of a foot at the top of the image. End image description.

a special evening of performance

Collaborators Side-By-Side incubates new creativity and individual projects from Collaborators (past and present) of The Naked Stark. Each collaborator receives an honorarium for sharing. All donations go to the pool to support the honorarium fund.

Accessibility: The entrance to Mascher Space Cooperative is up 3 steps. There is no ramp. Two non-gendered bathrooms are located in the basement down a flight of stairs. There is no elevator.

Please wear a mask!

COMING SOON:

Click on the artists’ names below to read their bios.

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.

tonight

which is last night

tomorrow

or

the time we make

Sunday June 5, 4:30pm
@ University City Arts League, Backyard
4226 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA

The performance will be followed by our annual friendraiser/fundraiser, Meet The Naked Stark
The performance is FREE!
You’re welcome to head out afterwards or buy a ticket and join us for Meet The Naked Stark.

tonight / which is last night / tomorrow / or / the time we make is a dance and music quartet for public space: examining time as a blueprint for experience, a construct, the distance between moments, a way to perceive change. Collaborators and performers, Ajibola Rivers (cello), Andy Thierauf (percussion), Harlee Trautman (dance), and Katherine Kiefer Stark (dance), invite the audience to witness up-close as music and movement spill across a 12’x16’ rug. Shifting between established structures and the unchartedness of spontaneity, we propel each other through the performance. 

The work emerges from our desire to hold time qualitatively while living inside a dominant culture that quantifies and monetizes it. We notice the ways this capitalist lens asks us to perceive time as steady, logical, and regular.  As we wonder how to transcend these constructs, our work is an effort to capture the less rigid sensations of presence and memory.  Overlapping, looping, disrupting, supporting: we navigate and surface our individual emotional experiences of time through our mediums and in our relationships with each other.

the time in between

Dance Performance & Installation Experience

the time in between emerged from our desire to find new ways to share space and experiences. When you reserve your ticket, you will receive a link for watching the complete performance, a guide for an at home experience, and an instruction video to make an origami butterfly with us.  

Your video link will work as soon as you reserve your ticket.  Watch it once or everyday until July 16!

However you engage with the project, we hope you will feel the past and future echoes of all of us participating in this together.

about the project:

the time in between is a celebration of the spiral of time, our ability to be new to ourselves, and the beauty of reconnecting, remaking, redancing.  

This performance work and installation experience, is offered by The Naked Stark artistic collaborators, Chloe Marie, Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, and Marisa Illingworth. We are joined by percussionist Andy Thierauf in performance.

the time in between emerged from our desire to find new ways to share space and experiences. We invite you to join us through words, movements, folds, drawings, and performance.

The University City Arts League backyard has become our outdoor studio. We have been moving and creating in the backyard since March, dancing and creating the installation. Michelle Bloodwell collaborated on the design and incredible construction of the hanging garden. Lucile Stark-Jordan contributed the fabric chain. We are joined by percussionist Andy Thierauf in performance, who also contributed wind chimes to the installation.  

INSTALLATION
We created an installation in the University City Arts League’s backyard. The installation was open to the public April 16 - May 23. The installation included visual art, a hanging garden, things to do that were accessible to all ages, and ways to contribute to the installation itself. We also created an experience guide for interacting with our installation or at a location of your choosing.

PERFORMANCE
the time in between culminated in a livestream performance via zoom May 15 and 16. It was wonderful to perform and feel a sense of community with all the folks who were able to login. We realized that we could offer a similar experience to more folks.

Actor & The Leading Lady: Falling Up

Actor & The Leading Lady: Falling Up is a dance piece for public space examining how we embody, perceive, and perform power dynamics in real and theatrical relationships. The audience made up of intentional participants and passersby begin by joining the performers on an interactive journey that creates an ensemble of the entire group. The work continues to unfold as the performers bring out five tiny plywood stages (three 2x6 and two 2x4). The audience witnesses up close as the dancers slide, spiral, jump and fall along the narrow stages accompanied by cello. The work moves inside for a short epilogue that turns the dance literally on it’s side, visually displacing gravity, to imagine the world a new.

CREDITS

Choreography: Katherine Kiefer Stark
Collaborators & Performers: Chloe Marie Newton, Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Marisa Illingworth, Sean Thomas Boyt
Composer & Performer: Ajibola Rivers
Epilogue Musicians: Angel Brice, Konnie Stark

LIFE OF THE WORK

2019 Clark Park with Epilogue at West Philadelphia Ballroom and Latin Dance with collaborators Ajibola Rivers (cello), Angel Brice (Epilogue, vocals), Chloe Marie Newton, Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Konnie Stark (Epilogue, piano), Marisa Illingworth & Sean Thomas Boyt

2019 Rehearsing in Public Space, Traveling Residency across Western, PA with collaborators Ajibola Rivers (cello), Chloe Marie Newton, Harlee Trautman, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Marisa Illingworth & Sean Thomas Boyt

2018 short trio as part of Ten Tiny Dances presented by Mascher Space Cooperative with Ajibola Rivers, Katherine Kiefer Stark, & Marisa Illingworth

What’s in a name? / Free to be

What’s in a name? / Free to be
”The underlying question of this solo work, is how do I show up in the world. Pushing the boundaries of memoir and documentary art, the work is a revolving door of personas. I’m experimenting with how to layer persona into release-based movement, how to perform vulnerability, and to blend and sometimes bury my truth within a larger societal truth. It’s the many stories that shape me as a person, the ones that are true and the ones that could be true. It’s vulnerable and unfamiliar to take responsibility for and live inside a plurality of identities. I am striving to share what I am noticing, how I am challenged by what I notice, and a piece of the journey I am on.” — Katherine Kiefer Stark

LIFE OF THE WORK

2019 Free to be, March Inhale performance Series   

2018 Free to be, December First Friday Arts Takeover at SawTown Tavern

2018 What’s in a name? part of 664 Miles presented by Salty Lark Dance

2018 What’s in a name? work-in-progress in A Series of Informal Events

Visible Structures

THOUGHTS FROM THE PRESS

Jonathan Stein, thINKingDANCE, “We are left stimulated, provoked, and yet numbed by an experience that suggests we live within a swirl of power disparities where hard-wired aggressiveness asserts itself through social conventions of play and war. Does the hero’s journey, however edifying to our psyches, simply embody this human condition? Time to bring in the anti-heroes.”
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Olivia Wood, The Dance Journal, “For a few moments, only feet were visible. They appeared to be floating as the dancers kicked and stepped, accompanied by calm, instrumental music, while performing similar phrases and following similar spatial patterns. Then, there appeared two crossing channels of light on the floor and the rest of the performers, wearing shirts with blue flowers on the back, began to slide between them, slipping gracefully in their stockinged feet.”
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Visible Structures, a dance trilogy, examines the age-old story of the hero’s journey as a historical construction and pop-culture phenomenon.  Drawing from research into heroic and emergent leader narrative films (like “Ender’s Game” and “The Matrix”), personal experiences, and Joseph Campbell’s book “Hero with a Thousand Faces”, the work presents the status quo of the story and deconstructs the conceptual frameworks within it.  

Dynamic momentum-based phrasing propels dancers through narrative structures, power struggles, and oppressive systems.  Shifting between choreographically predetermined outcomes and actual free-for-all competition, dancers struggle with each other and vie for attention from the audience.  

Katherine Kiefer Stark's choreography is complemented with unique lighting and environmental design along with a sound score of movie soundtracks and original music composed by Andy Thierauf.

Featuring eight dancers and three unique Episodes, Visible Structures takes the audience on a journey and begs the question: Is this the story we want to keep telling?

LIFE OF THE WORK

2018 Visible Structures, a dance trilogy at Mascher Space performed by Brionna Williams, Chloe Marie Newton, Harlee Trautman, Leanne Grieger, Marisa Illingworth, Melissa Chisena, Peaches Jones, & Sean Thomas Boyt 

2018 Power Suite (Episode III) preview excerpt in Scratch Night performed by Chloe Marie Newton, Harlee Trautman, Marisa Illingworth, & Sean Thomas Boyt

2017 Encounters & Choices (Episode I) in A Series of Informal Events performed by Beau Hancock, Brionna Williams, Chloe Marie Newton, Harlee Trautman, Leanne Grieger, Marisa Illingworth, Melissa Chisena, Peaches Jones, & Sean Thomas Boyt 

2017 Power Suite in 664 Miles at Links Hall in Chicago and McClure Elementary School performed by Harlee Trautman, Leanne Grieger, Marisa Illingworth, & Sean Thomas Boyt

2017 Power Suite in A Series of Informal Events performed by Katherine Kiefer Stark, Marisa Illingworth, Meredith Stapleton, & Sean Thomas Boyt

2017 Encounters and Choices March & April Workshops & Showings featuring Antonia Z Brown, Amelia Walters, Celine McBride, Leanne Grieger, Margot Steinberg, Marisa Illingworth, Meredith Stapleton, & Sean Thomas Boyt 

2016 The One, The Other One, & The Many (Episode II) in FringeArts Festival performed by Jennifer Yackel, Jenny Sawyer, Jodi Obeid, Leanne Grieger, Loren Groenendaal, Mira Treatman, Megan Wilson, Meredith Stapleton, Patrica Dominguez, & Sean Thomas Boyt

2016 Concept Investigation March Workshop & Showing featuring Chris Deephouse, Christine Morano, Grace Stern, Harlee Trautman, Jenna Bryant, Jennifer Yackel, Jenny Sawyer, Jodi Obeid, Kat Sullivan, Leanne Grieger, Loren Groenendaal, Mariadela Belle Alvarez, Megan Wilson, Meredith Stapleton, Mira Treatman, Patrica Dominguez, Peaches Jones, Sarah Galdwin-Camp, Sean Thomas Boyt, Susannah Hubb

2016 Encounters in the Bryn Mawr Faculty Concert and Nice & Fresh Series performed by Leanne Grieger & Sean Thomas Boyt

2015 Concept investigation, June Showing featuring Leanne Grieger, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Megan Wilson, Meredith Stapleton, & Sean Thomas Boyt

The Importance of Normal
or Falling into Here

THOUGHTS FROM THE PRESS

Kat Richter, The Dance Journal, "It’s definitely not art for art’s sake: its art with a purpose and Stark makes no apology for this fact, nor should she.  Deceptively simple, Goodnight War provided a complex meditation on the culture of war and our addiction to it and I, for one, hope that there’s much more to come."
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Megan Bridge, preview interview for thINKingDANCE, "Much of the movement for Goodnight War is task-based. Dancers build and knock down towers of cups. Stark learns to ride a bicycle in real-time  (she used to ride as a kid, but hasn’t much since and has purposely avoided brushing up on her skills for this production)."
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GOODNIGHT WAR

Goodnight War examines how and why we support war in our everyday lives, through the framework of a funeral.  Goodnight War invites participants into an intimate, communal space where they join the performers in reflecting on war and asking “If war was gone, what would I miss?”  Through movement we embody the nuances and complications around this subject; construct and deconstruct, make messes, eulogize war, and delve into or witness intense physicality.  

Continually wrapping her mind around these themes, Stark weaves personal narrative in movement and story into Goodnight War performances and workshops.  Turning her focus inward, she reflects on how motherhood has shaped the way she thinks about war, examines her own shortcomings, and asks herself, thereby prompting others to ask themselves, “What can I do to make peace?”

Framing the events as a funeral for war is a useful tool for examining ourselves and our culture, and it brings audiences and performer facilitators together into a powerful symbolic ceremony.  Though the work deals in nuance and doubt, Goodnight War ultimately creates a space where we must at least pretend that it is possible for war to end.  By living in this reality, audiences and performers are offered the opportunity and the challenge to come together and lay war to rest for good.

LIFE OF THE WORK

2017 Goodnight War Workshop collaborative investigation with Ajibola Rivers, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Mariadela Belle Alvarez, & Sean Thomas Boyt

2015 Goodnight War Workshop in COLLAGE Festival performed/facilitated by Katherine Kiefer Stark, Megan Wislon, Paul Stern (harp), & Sean Thomas Boyt

2015 Goodnight War movement workshop at Abington Friends School facilitated by Katherine Kiefer Stark

2012 Goodnight War at Broad Street Ministry performed by Saroya Corbett, Loren Groenendaal, Erin Shanti Desmond, Jodi Obeid, Chana Rothman (composer & guitarist), Katherine Kiefer Stark, Paul Stern (composer, pianist, harpist, & vocal leader), Barbara Tait, & Megan Wilson joined by ensemble members Alan Baldridge, Caitlin Hellerer, Lily Hughes, Affiong Inyans, Kelly Turner, Kris Young

2012 Goodnight War movement workshops at Studio 34 and Broad Street Ministry facilitated by Katherine Kiefer Stark

2010 Goodnight War in the Wilmington Delaware Fringe Festival performed by Barbara Tait, Eliza Zeevalk, Mary O'Brien, & Nicole Christman joined by ensemble members 

CONNECTED WORKS:

Eulogy for War (2011)

TAKIng up space

THOUGHTS FROM THE PRESS

Lisa Bardarson, thINKing DANCE, “I was captivated by the entrance of the five dancers... Clad in simple jumpsuits they burst onto the stage like red Ninjas.”

Jonathan Stein, thINKingDANCE, “Stark may have as a youngster been instructed to confine herself to a genteel, respectful kinesphere but this work definitely exploded that legacy.”

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TAKING UP SPACE

Five women command the space, pouring on and off the stage in a never ending stream of movement.  Their encounters with space destabilize gender norms and prompt audience members to question how we move our bodies through the world.

On stage, the effort is always visible as a back lit scrim highlights the dancers racing through backstage to re-enter the performance. Outside at 30th Street Station, a new layer of the work emerges as the continuous motion of commuting merges with human connection and interaction.  

The work emerged from a personal excavation into my, Katherine Kiefer Stark, personal experiences as a girl/woman (margin identity) and the ways I was taught to occupy space - confining my body to a small space, being gentle with other people, being conscious of others’ perceptions - and a desire to experience and present a contrasting (mainstream) experience.  

Reflecting on this work several years later, I also recognize the ways I am mainstream as a cis-genered white person.  It’s amazing to flip that switch on myself and this dance and to really consider what it means that I also embody the mainstream and why it often doesn’t feel that way.  

In addition, my girl/woman experience is not universal. I am a white, heterosexual, cis-woman, raised predominately in Protestant culture, all of which directly informs how I was taught to occupy space.  Taking Up Space was performed 5 times between 2008 and 2016: each time, the cast exclusively consisted of white, cis-women, with experience in heterosexual relationships, and easily related to the gender norms I was exploring.  It was an awesome experience to explode out of our boundaries. 

LIFE OF THE WORK

2016 Pieces of the structure on a sidewalk in West Philly as part of Meet The Naked Stark performed by Amy Lynne Barr, Leanne Grieger, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Megan Wilson, & Meredith Stapleton, 

2014 Expanded for Programming at The Porch performed by Becca Webber, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Kelly Turner, Leanne Grieger, & Megan Wilson

2013 FringeArts Festival Philly performed by Amy Lynne Barr, Colleen Hooper,  Kelly Turner, Leanne Grieger, & Megan Wilson

2010 Goose Route Dance Festival performed by Amy Love Beasley, Erin Casanega, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Margaret Moncure, & Megan Wilson 

2008 UNCG performed by Alegria Rodriguez, Barbara Tait, Erin Casanega, Maria Maggi, & Tamera Hatley

About Time

About Time, created and performed by Katherine Kiefer Stark and Sean Thomas Boyt. Physical, fun, and thought provoking the dance engages the performers and audience in many different ways to experience and consider time. Part of our interest in time is also about resistance, about the ways time impacts us, and we impact time. We explore the way we all have experienced the pandemic and how incredibly different our experiences were inside of that. Katherine and Sean are looking forward to talking about the dance and creative process after performing.

We performed at the Poor People’s Army Garden Party, June 24. We loved being part of this awesome community event.