KINODANCE COMPANY An interdisciplinary artist collective making stage performances, installations and film
Kinodance Company is an artist collaborative founded in Boston in 1999 by choreographer/dancer Alissa Cardone, filmmaker Alla Kovgan and visual artist Dedalus Wainwright out of passion for the kinetic arts, experimentation and a strong belief in the power of interdisciplinary collaborations. Since 2004, core members include choreographer/dancer Ingrid Schatz and lighting designer Kathy Couch. Among Kinodance’s creations are intermedia and expanded cinema stage performances, installations and films. Choreography of elements is the term that Kinodance invented to formally describe their art making process. In Kinodance performances, each element (dance, cinema, set, sound) is a strong, fully developed score that compliments the others — sometimes soloing, sometimes partnering, sometimes driving a tight ensemble. The outcome is multi-sensory, immersive experiences that rejuvenate the eye and perception.
Kinodance selected one of Dance Magazine's "25 to watch" in 2008...CLICK HERE
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"FUSE" choreography/performance: alissa cardone & ingrid schatz performance: stephanie lanckton & deanna pellecchia film: alla kovgan set design: dedalus wainwright music/composition: performed live by roger miller lighting design: kathy couch costume design: laura coulter
Light, alive in its many forms, the Film Frame, the Lumia Box, Silent Cinema with live accompaniment, and the film Blade Runner are the inspirations for "FUSE". In the 1920s and 30s, Thomas Wilfred, a Dutch-born American light artist, invented the "lumia box" - a self-contained unit with a screen that looked like a television set. This apparatus could play programmed, colorful, and dynamic light shows for days or months without repeating the same imagery. Devising compositions for his "lumia" boxes, Wilfred was able to choreograph color, volume, shape and movement trajectories of the luminescent strokes to mesmerize viewers with elegant and spectacular dances of light. The lumia box used on stage in "FUSE" is also a reference to film frame and early cinema. To structure the happenings in "the frame" (of the set, the piece, the stage) a film script was used as a starting point and a human drama was choreographed to a transformation of light and sound.
Kinodance's "clanging multi-sensory collaborations...jangle like a sock to the jaw" and have "the power to rock a bit of your world". -The Boston Globe
"At times the dancers look imprisoned; at other times they're empowered, as they effortlessly swing up, catch hold of the ceiling, flip upside down, and hang like bats. It all adds to a state of beautiful unreality...elements have been so carefully blended that what happens is mesmeric." -The Boston Globe "Before the artistic collaboration of Kinodance, who knew dance, film, and the arts could be blended in such a way that the original boundaries between each medium ultimately seem to have never existed at all. In their mission to fuse the various arts, Kinodance succeeds." - Big Red and Shiny Magazine
"Denizen" choreography/performance: alissa cardone & ingrid schatz performance: ruth bronwen, pape n'diaye & deanna pellecchia film: alla kovgan set design: dedalus wainwright lighting design: kathy couch costume design laura coulter
The performance "Denizen" is inspired by Armenian Cinema masterworks by Sergei Parajanov and Artavazd Peleshian, specifically by Peleshian's film "Seasons" (1975). It is homage to Armenia, one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Choreography in "Denizen" was developed based on gestures and feelings evoked in "Seasons" by Peleshian and films by Parajanov. In October 2006, Kinodance Company went to Armenia to some of the exact locations where the inspirational films had been shot. Choreography was adapted to the sites and filmed. New images, sounds of the spaces, set and lighting ideas were generated. Peleshian's writings on creating cyclical structures on film by re-contextualizing repeated images and actions guided the process of integrating all the elements into an expanded cinema stage performance.
During the 60-minute performance, the five dancers (Ruth Bronwen, Alissa Cardone, DeAnna Pellecchia, Ingrid Schatz and Pape N'Diaye) each inhabiting a distinct personality as denizens - mold movement, light, images, sets and sounds to orchestrate a cycle of poetic haikus to transmit the mythical and ritualistic qualities of a land and its people. "A breathtaking synthesis of live and filmed dance." - The Boston Globe
“The layering of emotionally potent choreography, exotic imagery, sounds, and staging add up to a daring and dramatically theatrical experience.” – The Boston Globe
“Denizen is lush and sensual, mysterious and vivid, formally sophisticated and painterly…” - Ted Bale of the Boston Herald
“…Idiosyncratic half-folk, half-alien…transforming the potentially alienating language of postmodern dance into a hauntingly familiar experience…” – The Weekly Dig
