KSD & Kin Program
KSD & Kin
JANUARY 13 & 14, 2024
NOD THEATER
Measured Reflections 2023 (12’30”)
Choreographer - Sara Caplan in collaboration with the dancers
Dancers - Anja Kellner-Rogers, Ellie van Bever, Michael Walton
Music - Babe Rainbow, Dub Music and Celebrate
Solitary Rhythms 2023 (14’)
Choreographer - Anja Kellner-Rogers
Dancer - Sara Caplan
Music - The Black Dog, BCN 4 (Part 1) [Mixed] and Sleep Deprivation 1
A solo that explores themes of aloneness, touch, repetition, and ritual. The choreography weaves together a tapestry of soft, smooth, rigid, and sharp touches, evoking a symphony of sensations that explore the spectrum of human emotion. Patterns of frustration and relief, softness and strain, compulsion and release interplay throughout, revealing a deeper look into the intimacy and intricacy of being in relationship with oneself.
Intermission 15’
A Small Space of Wildness 2020 & 2023 (20’)
Choreographer - Karin Stevens
Dancers - Sara Caplan, Anja Kellner-Rogers
Music - Heather Bentley, Rewilding, with Gregg Miller *
Text by Enheduanna
Costumes - Sarah Mosher
Created and presented in 2019/2020, A Small Space of Wildness, featuring original music by Heather Bentley of Kin of the Moon, was choreographed from Steven’s improvisational practice with her backyard landscape in winter and summer. This work is an extension of Steven’s 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 2023 (12’)
“Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?” - Mary Oliver
Choreographer - Karin Stevens
Dancer - Karin Stevens
Music - Jeff Greinke, Upon a River that Still Flows *
A solo, that 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 Grienke, from his 2023 album A Thousand Year Flood, is composed with the sounds of cellist/violinist Heather Bentley.
Parts of the Whole 2023 (12’30”)
Choreographer - Karin Stevens
Dancers - Sara Caplan, Anja Kellner-Rogers
Music - John Luther Adams, Dark Waves *
Costumes - Sarah Mosher
The dance 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.
*Permission granted by the composer.
Lighting Design & Stage Manager - Locke Landis
Technical Director & Sound - Rose Amlin
House manager - Jay Shepard
KSD Production & Promotional Assistant - Taylor Abbay
Concession & Costume Support - Aidan Stevens
Special thanks to:
KSD Dancers, Technical and Collaborating Artists
KSD Board Members
KSD Joy Train, Monthly, One-Time Supporters, and Volunteers
Christin Olyano, Nod/Exit Space Theater & Rentals Manager
Glenn Kawasaki Foundation
SIDF/James Ray Residency + Touring Grant
Timber City Ginger Beer
Stevens 5
This organization is supported in part by 4Culture Sustained Support
Karin Stevens is a Seattle based choreographer, writer, and facilitator in The Art & Practice of Movement. Through her dance company, Karin Stevens Dance (2009-present), she creates at the interchange of movement, art, ecology, spirit and humanity. She believes we must commune, collaborate and converse through movement, sound and ideas for worlding radical, un/imagined visionary relationships beyond our current crises, as sanctuary-making spaces performatively entangled in a transformational process with the world around us. Since 1999, Karin has created over ninety professional concert dance, theater, and education-based movement-art works, and produced twenty evening-length concerts, including Record of the Anthropocene Movement (2017), named a ‘must see performance’ by City Arts Magazine.
Photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis
Sara Caplan (she/her) is a contemporary dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist originally from Dedham, MA. She received her BA Theatre: Dance Performance and her BS in Biology from The Pennsylvania State University in 2013 and her MFA in Dance from the College at Brockport in 2017. She has performed in works choreographed by Kendra Portier, Laura Petersen (NY), Maura Keefe, Sherone Price and Beth Gill. Since moving to Seattle Sara has performed in works by Elise Beers AachixQaaduug, Lucille Jun, Bri Wilson, and Shenandoah Harris and currently performs with Coriolis under the direction of Madeleine Gregor. She has presented works in various theatres and urban venues in Pennsylvania and New York and has presented works in Seattle in Soft Concrete III and the Fremont Fringe Festival. She teaches at Creative Dance Center and Rainier Dance center. She is excited to start her second season with Karin Stevens Dance.
Photos by Elise Beers and Jim Coleman
Anja Kellner-Rogers is a freelance dance artist and yoga teacher who was raised on the East Coast but now calls Seattle home. Since moving to Seattle in 2013, she has had the opportunity to dance works by KT Niehoff, Alyza Delpan-Monley, Shannon Stewart, Noelle Chun, Kimberly Holloway, Alice Gosti, Sarah Seder and Adriana Hernandez, among others. Anja has been collaborating and performing with Karin Stevens Dance since 2015.
Second photo by Devin Muñoz, @munozmotions
Ellie van Bever is originally from Portland, OR and graduated from American University with a B.S. in Political Science. After graduation she joined Christopher K. Morgan & Artists in Washington D.C. While dancing with CKM&A she had the privilege of performing at the Kennedy Center, The American Dance Institute, and in the Velocity Dance Festival. In New York she has worked with Jillian Peña, AnA Collaborations, The Equus Projects, Thea Little, Undertow Dance, among others. In 2018 she returned to Portland to join Katie Scherman + Artists for the world premiere of “To Have it All” at Bodyvox Dance Center, where her performance was noted as “strong and mysterious” (Oregon ArtsWatch). Since moving to Seattle, she has worked with Beth Twigs of The Gray and is delighted to join Karin Stevens Dance this season.
Michael began his performance career at the age of six performing in musicals with Christian Arts and Theater (CAT) of Corona. His “classical” dance training began at Fullerton City College, where he was introduced to ballet and modern. Michael finished his associates coursework at Riverside City College, where he performed with touring performance groups, participated in “Trolley Dances”, as well as choreographed concert dance works in their annual student showcases. He moved to Seattle in 2017 to pursue at BFA in Dance at Cornish College of the Arts where he graduated from in December of 2022. Since moving to Seattle, he has performed at Broadway Performance Hall and the Moore Theater with Men in Dance, Fisher’s Pavilion Seattle Center, and the Cornish Playhouse, to name a few. Michael has gotten the opportunity to work with Wade Madsen, Deb Wolf, Lucie Baker, Keyes Wiley, Anouk Van Djik, and Charlie Slender-White in the past few years. Some of his stage credits also include Link Larkin in Hairspray at the Redlands Bowl, CA, Flat Stanley in the Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley, and the Bullfrog in Honk! The Musical. When not on stage or in the studio, Michael teaches fitness at retirement communities. He believes that dance as a medium, serves as a great equalizer and is for any body and everybody.
Photos by Joe Lambert/Jazzy Photo and Maximillian Monson
Seattle-based violist, cellist, and composer Heather Bentley has trailblazed a career as one of the West Coast’s most visible improvisatory musicians, specializing in creating evocative atmospheres and textures. Classically trained, she has shifted to an unabashedly experimental artistic output: As a performer, she can be seen performing on instruments like her electric seven string and five string violins or her electronic pedal board in numerous chamber ensembles that utilize improvisation, electronics, and often both. As a composer, her work for chamber ensembles and orchestras has been performed by organizations across the US. Relentless in her pursuit of creativity, she continues this work as co-founder of Kin of the Moon, a 501(c)3 organization which fosters collaboration between artists in service of creating unique art.
Jeff Greinke is a renowned composer of ambient, electroacoustic, and experimental music. Having a degree in meteorology, weather has remained a central theme of his heavily atmospheric work, which blends electronic and acoustic instruments and textures to produce multi-layered soundscapes that are at once haunting and inviting.
For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth.
Living for almost 40 years in northern Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970s and into the ’80s, he worked full time as an environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made this choice with the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world. Since that time, he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and many other honors.
In works such as Become Ocean, In the White Silence, and Canticles of the Holy Wind, Adams brings the sense of wonder that we feel outdoors into the concert hall. And in outdoor works such as Inuksuit and Sila: The Breath of the World, he employs music as a way to reclaim our connections with place, wherever we may be.
A deep concern for the state of the earth and the future of humanity drives Adams to continue composing. As he puts it: “If we can imagine a culture and a society in which we each feel more deeply responsible for our own place in the world, then we just may be able to bring that culture and that society into being.”
Since leaving Alaska, JLA and his wife Cynthia have made their home in the deserts of Mexico, Chile, and the southwestern United States.
Sarah Mosher is a designer for performing arts, primarily focused on costuming the performer with attention to the somatic relationship between the garment and the wearer, and the aesthetic resonance potential in that relationship. Sarah is grateful to be working with Karin on this important and moving dance piece. Her past work with Karin includes Saci & The Greater Trumps, Atmokinesis, and Sea Change Within Us among others. Sarah is currently an assistant professor at Baylor University where her research focuses on questions of sustainability in performing arts.
Locke Landis is a lighting designer and dance performance artist. Locke studied dance at Cornish College of the Arts, and obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance in 2023. As a lifelong dancer himself, Locke is passionate about the connection between movement and lighting. He aims to work with choreographers to create a fully-immersive artistic experience.
Founded in 2009, Seattle-based Karin Stevens Dance has produced over twenty concerts, toured inter/nationally and collaborated with award winning composers and music groups. KSD captures the breadth of the moving human experience through the creation of diverse performance works. Collaborating with music, theater, and visual artists, KSD investigates the complex layers of our cultural spaces, time, and relationship to Earth and the spiritual. Striving to make beauty out of the human transformational process, KSD celebrates the power of movement to help us evolve and connect more deeply to ourselves, each other, and to the inner/outer landscapes of our interdependent existence.
Karin Stevens Dance believes that dance is a radical, vital art key to our future in this 21st Century. Through performance works and dance-activism community events, KSD creates space for building connections. We commune, collaborate and converse through dance to remember that to be fully human we must move and create.
Prioritizing live and original sound, KSD has collaborated with Kin of the Moon, Sam Boshnack Quintet, Crystal Beth, Common Tone Arts, Glacier Symphony and Chorale, String Orchestra of the Rockies, Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Simple Measures, UW Chamber Singers, Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble and many Seattle composers, visual artists and designers.
KSD has received support from the Office of Arts and Culture | Seattle, 4-Culture, Seattle International Dance Festival James Ray Residency, WA Commerce Covid recovery, Glenn H. Kawasaki Foundation, Case van Rij, and through Velocity’s Creative Residency Program.