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| New Dance Alliance 182 Duane Street New York, NY 10013 (212) 226-7624 newdancealliance@nyc.rr.com |
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| New Dance Alliance 182 Duane Street New York, NY 10013 (212) 226-7624 newdancealliance@nyc.rr.com |
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Karen Bernard /Solo
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Schedule 2008Performances January 8 | Movement Research Open Performance | Dance Theater Workshop | 7:30pm Residencies (artist and facilitator) January 31 - February 4 | Earthdance, Plainfield (MA) Artistic StatementKaren Bernard has a history of creating solo dances that challenge audiences to engage in a specific reality of everyday life issues contextualized into heightened performative experience. Bernard has a life long ambition of making “smart art with unpredictable choices” and in the process she works to keep people on the edge of their expectations. Paramount in Bernard’s creation of dance-work is the erasure of the “forth wall” between performer and spectator. Bernard sees her audience as an active participant beyond the fact that they have chosen to place themselves in the seats they sit in. Aware of her audience as active witnesses influences the content and delivery of Bernard’s work in a way that highlights the subtle proximity defining a public and private moment. Bernard anticipates that her audience walks away from her work sourcing pleasure in a common and shared experience. Bernard’s work contributes to an active contemporary dialogue of the dichotomy of high art and marginalized art polarizing the modern American experience of the non-institutionalized, under-appreciated performance artist. Her work also contributes to the continuing dialogue of socially accepted ideas of beauty and age and its relevance to performing live dance works.
Reviews
Biography
KAREN BERNARD began studying dance at age three with her father, Steven Bernard, a company member with Charles Weidman. Following studies at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and London School of Contemporary Dance, she began to perform and create work. At the Tate Gallery in London she was the muse for an installation and live performance based on tap dancing 101 by conceptual artist David Tremlett. She choreographed and performed a satirical variation of Les Sylphides for Captain Beefheart’s 1973 British tour beginning at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1974 she moved to New York City and began to create group and solo work in collaboration with her husband, visual artist, Scott Wixon and experimental composers through the support of Meet The Composer. As Karen Bernard/Solo she produced several full-length concerts of her work between 1986-98 at Dia Center for Arts. In 1993 Bernard received The Field’s Independent Artist Challenge Program Grant and was a 1997-98 Movement Research Resident Artist. In addition, her work has received support from the Experimental Television Center, The Puffin Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Meet The Composer. Karen Bernard/Solo has been presented by The Kitchen curated by Tere O’Connor, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dance Theater Workshop, “Fresh Tracks”, Danspace, Dixon Place, Here Arts Center; Larry Keigwin’s Kabaret at Symphony Space, Movement Research at Judson Church, Performance Space 122 and PS1 Contemporary Arts Center. She has performed, taught and lectured in Canada, United States and abroad through “Her Position In Transition”, a women’s festival, (Vienna), Studio 303 (Montréal), Hysteria at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto), Festival of New Dance at Neighbourhood Dance Works (St. John’s Newfoundland), La Rotonde (Quebec City), School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam) Tangente (Berlin), Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Bernard was a delegate to the 2006 Performance Creation Canada conference in Whitehorse, Yukon and recently a guest speaker at the Festival of New Dance in St. John’s Newfoundland. She has been featured on public television through New Arts Alive, Pennsylvania, BCTV; EGG, Channel 13, Who’s the Art Boss?; and Eye On Dance, Dance And The Plastic Arts: The Visual Impulse In Dance. She is a guest artist/teacher at Trinity College’s LaMama program and facilitates Fieldwork. Bernard is a 2006 BAX10 award recipient for the founding and development of New Dance Alliance and its services to the field through the Performance Mix Festival. Publication
A 101 limited edition, handmade book Removed Exposure was published in 2005 and distributed by Printed Matter. Six black and white photographs are cut down the middle and bound at either end, allowing for strange pairings between the halves of the noir-ish cropped portraits. A tiny manila envelope rests in a felt compartment in the back of the book and holds textual clues to the identity of the woman obliquely pictured in the previous pages. The book is based on a performance of the same name by Karen Bernard and was produced in collaboration with productiongray and Alexandra Wixon. Photography is by Newfoundland photograph, Sheilagh O’Leary. To order book mail check in the amount of $27.00 made payable to New Dance Alliance.
Works To Go2006 Surfing the shadow (15 min) Link to Video
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