KSD & Kin | January 2024

KSD & Kin

A Small Space of Wildness

Choreography: Karin Stevens

Dancers: Sara Caplan and Anja Kellner-Rogers

Costume: Sarah Mosher

Lighting: Locke Landis

Remember River

Choreography and Dancer: Karin Stevens

Lighting: Locke Landis

Parts of the Whole

Choreography: Karin Stevens

Dancers: Sara Caplan and Anja Kellner-Rogers

Costume: Sarah Mosher

Lighting: Locke Landis

Photography by Michelle Smith-Lewis, video by Ian Lucero

KSD & Kin performed January 13th and 14th, 2024, at NOD Theater in Seattle, Washington. It included three works choreographed by Karin Stevens, two of which were performed by company dancers Sara Caplan and Anja Kellner-Rogers. The other was a solo which Karin also performed.

Parts of the Whole (World Premiere: Seattle International Dance Festival, as a James Ray Residency and Touring recipient, June 15, 2023), with music by John Luther Adams, explores the internal parts within us that make or divide the whole of ourselves and our relationships; the waves and undercurrents of our emotions upon and under the surface of our lives, and the spiritual concept of individuation and wholeness.

A Small Space of Wildness, featuring original music by Seattle composer Heather Bentley, was choreographed from Stevens’ improvisational practice with her backyard landscape in winter and summer. This work is an extension of Stevens’ ongoing interest in the human body in relationship with the greater ecology. Stevens’ breadth of work moves within the stream of philosopher Dr. Bayo Akomolafe: “Decoloniality if it means anything, it must mean coming down to earth. It must mean returning to a body. Not to the bodies of the Euro-American Enlightenment; not that body. But to a body that is now dancing, always performatively entangled with the world around it.”

Remember River is a solo choreographed and performed by Karin Stevens. The solo is an embodied empathic and spiritual response to a line from the poet Mary Oliver: “Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity.” The electro-acoustic music, by Jeff Greinke, from his album A Thousand Year Flood, is composed with one instrumentalist—cellist/violinist Heather Bentley.