From Blog Director Jill Randall:

Please join us for several posts with choreographer Kristin Damrow throughout the next 3 weeks, leading up to the premiere of Impact at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum in San Francisco, January 31-February 2, 2019. Purchase your tickets here.

For the first post, I asked Kristin about celebrating and sharing details about the production elements.

The cast: For Impact I am working with the largest cast I have ever had, 15 dancers. It's invigorating to see that many bodies moving though space. Each and every dancer is contributing something special to bring the work to life. I have been creating with 5 core dancers since April: Anna Greenberg (who is a founding member of the company), Heather Arnett (this is her fourth season), Allegra Bautista (who joined us last year for EAMES), and new dancers Hien Huynh and Shareen DeRyan. In October we brought on the ensemble cast of 10: Alexa Manalansan, Brianna Torres, Dalmacio Payomo, Emily Hansel, Kyle Limin, Liselle Yap, Lydia Clinton, Marlene Garcia, Nell Suttles, and Oona Wong-Danders. It has been exciting to dive in with this group to add elements of brutalist architecture translated through movement into the piece. Some elements of brutalist architecture include: repeating modular patterns, revealing the basic nature of structure, and offering an unforgiving monolithic feel. 

The space: We are presenting Impact at the YBCA Forum. I want the audience to feel like they are in the belly of a building, and the Forum offers that vast feeling inside brutalist architecture. The audience will be seated on three sides in the Forum, representing the purpose of most brutalist buildings to serve the public:  a place where communities come together. Suspended from the ceiling will be an original scenic design by Alice Malia. Alice is creating four faux-concrete shapes that give ode to brutalism and brutalist architecture. These shapes also give the space a dystopian feel, which is the setting for Impact. 

The costumes: I collaborated with Rita Parks to incorporate into the costume design texture and structure that resembles brutalism. We also wanted to tie in the dystopian feel. Once the costumes were completed we distressed them by rubbing sandpaper to the edges, painting the creases, even applying glue then dusting with flour to give them a worn-in feel. It makes the dancers/characters in the piece feel like they have history. 

Lighting design: Allen Willner and I have been dreaming up lighting the piece as if it were the inside structure of a brutalist building. How the light would shine though cracks, windows, or entry ways. We are aiming for grays, blues, and stark white to highlight a cool concrete feel. 

Original sound score: Aaron Gold has been KDC’s resident composer for almost 6 years now. Aaron grew up in post-Soviet Prague, around many brutalist buildings, so Impact is a project near to his heart. He spent a lot of time playing inside Prague’s Strahov Stadium, which was then just a massive relic of crumbling concrete with moss clinging at the edges. Aaron’s music has a way of leading you though the story lines of Impact and sculpts the space with brutalist sound.

Please join us Jan 31 and February 1 and 2! Purchase your tickets here.

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Related posts:

Artist Profile: Kristin Damrow

Reflection + Response: EAMES by Kristin Damrow & Company

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