Seattle International Dance Festival 2021

"A Pearl In Sorrows Hand" (line by Rumi)
Seattle International Dance Festival June 17, 2021
Choreography by Karin Stevens
Dancer: Mary Sigward
Music: Beth Fleenor aka Crystal Beth
Lighting Design: Kenrick Fischer

"Hi Karin and Mary, I was very taken by the solo on Saturday's SIDF concert, so serene, reverent, searching and yet also, so viscerally charged and embodied . . . really beautiful! Mary, I was especially moved by your performance, so calm and subtle, but with a compelling undercurrent of ferocity . . . always so fully inhabited physically, driven by some other-worldly yearning." -Photographer Jim Coleman

All of the movement for this choreographed solo came from Karin's body in 2020 and 2021 while exploring grief and sorrow and... what is possible on the other side?

A bulk of the movement used to choreograph the June 2021 solo for Mary came from an improvised (and recorded) online performance Karin did for a June 13, 2020 event, The Golden Thread: Womxn's Work.
The original June 13th, 2020 improvisation/performance was dedicated to KSD board member James Leonard and the anniversary of the death of his beloved son.

FIND the solo at 37:15 in the festival video below

Photos: Jim Coleman