Chronology of Concert Dance Works — kimberleigh a holman

2017

fernweh

Commissioned by Boston New Music Initiative, Fernweh is a collaboration with composer Hakki Cengiz Eren’s piece of the same name, exploring escapism, stress, and internal landscape. Set on six performers and three ropes.

Debut: April 22, 2017 - (Boston New Music Initiative's Ars Nexus Tempora), Center for Arts at the Armory, Somerville, MA

clay (installation)

This installation piece

Debut: April 18-23, 2017 - Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA

2016

rabbit hole cycles

rabbit hole cycles originally debuted in 2015 as a 23-minute dance theatre work investigating the absurdity of groupthink in space - a closed experiment of sorts - while exploring the wacky artificiality found in both performance and day-to-day life. The dancers perform amidst an ever-changing visual, light-filled and sonic environment. For 2016 the piece was revised and expanded to start during intermission or pre-show (45 minutes, including intermission time), challenging the idea of performance and tradition.

New Version Debut: November 9-10, 2017 - Luminarium Dance's Portal, Boston University Dance Theatre (Boston, MA)

between words & space

Between Words and Space is a contemporary duet built somatically on finding risk and authenticity in the present tense, and thematically on the trials and tribulations of communication. The work features bold physical decision making, communicative ulterior motive, manipulation in communication and as a device, and fluidity in self and relationship.

Debut: November 9-10, 2017, Boston University Dance Theatre (Boston, MA)

Additional Showings: January 2017, APAP Conference, Gibney Dance (NY, NY)

Roadtrip Dances

This research and performance project navigated 1500 miles of the East Coast, with a performance in every state. The project explores solo performance, audience, participation, and examines how performance fits into community. Roadtrip Dances also served as an observational quest to see how sociocultural landscape changes in gradients through slow travel.

Project Duration: August 11-15 2016

Garden (music video)

I was asked to direct and choreograph a dance for camera that would serve as a music video for local avant-pop band Jaggery’s song Garden. Layers of falling leaves, the humanistic grasp of vines, Garden takes imagery and patterns from nature and places them inside an unlikely habitat, an abandoned cabaret space. Dancers explore their presence and intentionality, merging natural action with the artificiality of performance, to discover a new existence inside the theatre.

Debut: Org: Black and White Ball (OBERON, Harvard Square) on July 29, 2016, and is now viewable on YouTube and Vimeo.

TEDx Cambridge Commission

Luminarium was asked to create work for TEDx Cambridge's event at the Boston Opera House on June 9, 2016 - the largest TED event in the world. Merli and I had the privilege of collaborating with one another and our brilliant team of dancers, in addition to digital artist Samo, who added large-scale projected animation to the piece, and composer Christos Zevos who made our fantastic score.

Debut: June 9, 2017, TEDx Cambridge at the Boston Opera House (Boston, MA)

On June 9, 2016, Luminarium Dance Company opened for TEDxCambridge's TED Talks at the famous Boston Opera House. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of the piece, the experience of performing at this prestigious venue, and the company's reaction to opening for the single largest TED event in the world.

Luminarium is an award-winning modern and contemporary dance company that is regularly hailed for its unique combination of dance and light. It was born as a new outlet for performing arts. It is a think tank, a museum, a gallery for contemporary dance and for contemporary ideas.

The Last Days of Summer: A Collaboration with Wolf Luman

After meeting Wolf Luman at Goddard College in summer of 2015, I was struck visually by one of his many stunning photographic works, and viscerally upon hearing his work in sound. We decided our visual, audio and intellectual desires as artists would make for a deep collaborative experience and between August and December we communicated regularly through out respective mediums. The process and communication through creation culminated in an hour-long performance piece set to a new album of music.

Debut: January 31, 2016 (Goddard College, Plainfield, VT)

2015

rabbit hole cycles (initial showing)

Surreal, dynamic, full of shadows and light, and yet totally familiar. rabbit hole cycles is an exploration of the many worlds found in one stage space, the idea of performance, and the effects of building energy and individualism on group dynamic.

Debut: October 27-31, 2015, Luminarium Dance's Spektrel, Multicultural Arts Center (Cambridge, MA)

Getting There is Half the Battle

We joke about life getting in the way, but with infinite amounts of distraction and waning self discipline it's a wonder we can get anywhere. Set to a variety of Bach #2s (Well Tempered Clavier Book 1: Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor, English Suite No. 2 in A minor), the performers undergo situations beyond their control, being underfoot, and letting themselves be distracted and frustrated by technology, themselves and each other. The composition of each movement is inspired by the compositional structure of the music.

Debut: October 27-31, 2015, Luminarium Dance's Spektrel, Multicultural Arts Center (Cambridge, MA)

Additional Performances: Massachusetts State House (Boston, MA), If Not You, Then Who? (Cambridge, MA), Dance for World Community Festival (Harvard Sq, Cambridge, MA), Luminarium's 2016 Gala & Showcase (Somerville, MA), Cambridge Arts Council's Summer in the City (Cambridge, MA), ORG: Black and White Ball at OBERON (Cambridge, MA).

Jaggery/Leonardo da Vinci Collaboration

Presented at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), May 2015

Jaggery Studio Collaboration

Collaboration on two Jaggery songs, Icy and Rare Earth Element. Choreography created in part with the performers (Rose Abramoff, Merli Guerra, Katie McGrail) and Jaggery leader, Mali Sastri. Intended performance at OBERON (Cambridge, MA) was snowed out.

2014

Highest Moon

The finale to The Sleeprunner, this scene exists as an unexplainable lucid dream; a rowdy happening under the moon as it treks through the night sky. Set to an Ella Fitzgerald tune full of modern-day mischievous modifications, the dancers scheme, frolic and hoist each other skywards in attempts to conquer the moon.

Sound: Ella Fitzgerald, remixed by Christos Zevos - Costume Design: Sueann Leung

Debut: Luminarium's The Sleeprunner, Multicultural Arts Center (Cambridge, MA)

Additional Showings: Luminarium's Filament, American Repertory Theater's OBERON (Cambridge, MA).

To Sleep!

The Sleeprunner opens briefly with the sensation of drifting off to sleep and quickly explodes into a vibrant and free dream world. With flying sheets and fleeting absurd moments, the dancers welcome the audience into their anything-goes evening while foreshadowing things to come.

Sound: Flying Lotus Costume Design: Sueann Leung

Debut: Luminarium's The Sleeprunner, Multicultural Arts Center (Cambridge, MA)

An Obscure Journey (Luminarium's The Sleeprunner)

The dancers are thrown into the midst of a dark journey masterminded by an obscured manipulator. They must trust in their trek, each other and their ultimate destination. Upon arrival they're required to address the idea "what comes next," as a group at odds with their former controller.

Sound: DJ Spooky, Steve Reich, arr. K Holman - Costume Design: Sueann Leung

Debut: Luminarium's The Sleeprunner, Multicultural Arts Center (Cambridge, MA)

2014 24-Hour ChoreoFest Piece (logical fallacies)

Choreography in collaboration with the performers: Rose Abramoff, Nikki Girroir, Katie McGrail

Debut: September 2014 - Luminarium's 24-Hour ChoreoFest, The Dance Complex (Cambridge, MA)

Off the Wall

Sound: DJ Spooky

Debut: September 2014 - Luminarium's Night at the Tower, Arlington Reservoir, Arlington, MA

2013

A Secret in Three Phases

i. It's Not What it Looks Like ii. Choosing Sides iii. Revenge?

A Secret is a narrative piece, set to a Mozart piano sonata, which provides a purposefully ambiguous response to the quote “three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Though viewers are never privy to the secret, if one does in fact even exist, the performers utilize their modern and ballet techniques with the influences of American jazz dance, vaudeville and playful comedy to express plot in a darkly humorous scenario.

Music: Mozart (Sonata K. 333 in B flat major)

Debut: Luminarium's Secrets & Motion, Center for Arts at the Armory (Somerville, MA)

Additional Showings: Boston University Dance Theatre (Boston, MA), Luminarium's Filament (Cambridge, MA).

For You, I

A tensile duet depicting a complex relationship which is further mangled by a shared confidence. The work explores what is and should be ‘common knowledge’; for what benefit, and at what cost.

Music: The Flashbulb

Debut: Luminarium's Secrets & Motion, Center for Arts at the Armory (Somerville, MA)

Additional Showings: Boston University Dance Theatre (Boston, MA), Green Street Studios (Cambridge, MA), Third Life Studios (Somerville, MA), Luminarium's Filament (Cambridge, MA), Cambridge Arts Council's Summer in the City (Cambridge, MA).

whisper, rumor, rot.

A highly physical sextet that traces a secret as it spreads through the dancers, from a glamorous entity to something that festers in the minds of the group.

Debut: Luminarium's Secrets & Motion, Center for Arts at the Armory (Somerville, MA)

Additional Showings: Boston University Dance Theatre (Boston, MA), UMASS Amherst's Fine Arts Center (Amherst, MA)

Neck Deep (and then some)

A performer’s exploration of being suffocated by unspoken words, using text created live in two ways; chalk words scribbled on the floor by the dancer, and words projected on top of the performer from above.

Debut: Luminarium's Secrets & Motion, Center for Arts at the Armory (Somerville, MA)

Additional Showings: Boston University Dance Theatre (Boston, MA)

2013 24-Hour ChoreoFest Piece

Choreography in collaboration with the performers: Rose Abramoff, Leslie Armstrong, Katie McGrail

Debut: Luminarium's 24-Hour ChoreoFest 2013, The Dance Complex (Cambridge, MA)

Collaboration with Forbes Graham

Hyde Park Library (Boston, MA) for Jazz Week Boston

Unravel/Threading Motion Project (Live)

A work exploring the act of creation, in three phases, as it applies universally from textiles to choreography. The work utilized a 60 foot aerial silk, an impressionist take on a long piece of thread.

Live music: Jenn Allen (trumpet) & Christos Zevos (bass) / Poetry: Christos Zevos

Debut: New England Quilt Museum (Lowell, MA)

Additional Showings: Mobius (Cambridge, MA)

Spring Garden Festival

Collaborative performance with the dancers and musicians (J. Allen & C. Zevos).

Venue: COGdesign Nursery Garden (Waltham, MA)

2012

Prometheus

Prometheus is loosely based on the myth of Prometheus sharing a spark with mortals, providing knowledge and illumination, while utilizing a handheld ball of light.