The Importance of Normal
or Falling into Here
photo: JH Kertis, Katherine Kiefer Stark & Megan Wilson in The Importance of Normal 12013
"I found the dance a most intriguing way to express the arc of a life." -- Audience member, FPAF RAW 2013
THOUGHTS FROM THE PRESS
John Bavoso, DC Theatre Scene, "...quietly powerful performance...The Naked Stark does a brilliant job of transforming the cavernous Sprenger into an intimate venue. Paul Stern’s sound design is unsettling at times in the best way and Leigh A Mumford’s lighting gracefully highlights the work without ever distracting from it. The piece feels weird and experimental but also relatable and beautiful..."
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Allison Frisch, DC Metro Theatre Arts, "Balance is pivotal to the movements that Katherine Kiefer Stark has choreographed. The dancers play with shared weight, using each other and the set pieces to propel their motion. Body lines are often intentionally broken – feet are flexed, knees are bent. This piece is not a piece to showcase high kicks and pretty turns. Rather Stark uses weight distribution to demonstrate reliance, burden, and the struggle to stand up straight in a world that has become askew."
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Jonathan Stein, thINKingDANCE, "It is the dance’s richest metaphor: of a divided self, of the barriers that prevent us from feeling and communicating, and, as the unstable plywood continually falls between the two, the fragility of coping with life and relating to others. In its laconic poetry this brief segment becomes a distillation of the entire work."
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Becca Weber, thINKingDANCE, "The dancers swept, spun, settled, and collapsed. One dancer jutted her flexed foot out, which became a platform for a bicep. ...they were never on the same plane--one sat, the other lay down. The other lay down, one stood."
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The Importance of Normal or Falling into Here is an autobiographical/biographical work that explores self and sanity. This haunting dance narrative follows the life of a girl-woman. She struggles to separate self and sanity in a complex of ever-shifting floors and walls. As gravity is displaced or perhaps misplaced, what is real and what is imagined blur.
Choreography / Direction / Set Design
Katherine Kiefer Stark
Composition / Sound Design
Paul Stern
LIFE OF THE WORK
2016 Capital Fringe performed by Ajibola Rivers (cello), Beau Hancock, Grace Stern, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Konnie Stark (piano), Meredith Stapleton
2013 First Person Arts RAW performed by Bethany Brooks (piano), Beau Hancock, Dan Kassel (cello), Eleanor Goudie-Averill, Katherine Kiefer Stark, & Megan Stern
2013 Scratch Night & May Showing performed by Beau Hancock, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Kristen Bailey (text), Megan Mazarick, Megan Wilson, Paul Stern (piano), Tasha Milkman (text)
CONNECTED WORKS:
Rounds (2010)
Looking for Judy (2012)
