independentdancemaker/Kara Tatelbaum

independentdancemaker/Kara Tatelbaum is a powerful group of all-star modern dancers known for their collaborations with live musicians and video. Led by Artistic Director and Choreographer Kara Tatelbaum, the company deals with the small details of everyday human experiences, such as a devastating apartment fire, witnessing a child with Tourettes Syndrome on a subway, experiences from travel, or even the music of rapper Jay-Z, to generate new movement. Utilizing the everyday, independentdancemaker/Kara Tatelbaum lets audiences into a new and unique world of personal experience.

“Accomplishing quite a lot in concise character sketches filled with rising and falling emotional temperatures…” – New York Times

Touring Programs
Tours with 5-7 dancers

Cata
Inspired by Composer Woljciech Kilar’s “Requiem Father Kolbe,” a dedication to the life of priest and Auschwitz casualty Maximilien Kolbe, this piece is performed in two sections. The first, Grieving, is intense and frenetic and follows three imagined widows of Father Kolbe. The second is more folk-inspired and celebrates life. The dancers move through moments of blessed altruism and beautiful humanity amidst an abstract, confusing, and sometimes-violent world. Set to orchestral string music.

Desiderata
This is Tatelbaum’s signature solo, commissioned by Danspace Project. She performs in a red dress using paper as a prop. The piece has religious and spiritual undertones. It is introverted but builds into a huge scene using faces and wild humor. The dancer explores the line between things wanted and things needed as the movement mirrors the stream-of-consciousness style of the music.

Evident Pulse of Recognition
This piece, the company’s newest, features wild, crazy music by musician-turned-composer Ole Schmidt. It highlights different characters in a moment in time – blue-collar workers are shoved together with a school principal, an at-home mom, and a nurse. The piece is very compositional and brainier. It uses extreme lighting and reads more like a visual art piece or spectacle.

This Moment of Clarity
This high-energy work demonstrates the bizarre intensity created using Jay-Z’s music with Tatelbaum’s quirky dance style. It features a weird woman in a crazy prom dress trying to adapt to her surrounding. It is very theatrical and fun, as she talks to herself in a private moment that the audience is allowed to see.

Optional Programs:

Inferno
This piece employs the use of projection and was inspired by an apartment fire. The projection features a 1950s fire safety video with bleach on the film. The dance is gestural and flailing. The dancer’s legs are tied up. The trio features 9 chairs, among which the dancers move around.

Grounded
Performed on AstroTurf, the dancer does not move at all. The piece is about getting drunk, having fun, and being wild.