KNOWN ONCE
Premiere: May 2017
Z Space, San Francisco
Known Once is about personal stories, memory and perception. The project began with intensive workshops with students at 826 Valencia and seniors in their nineties at The Redwoods, telling and writing personal stories and creating movement. The piece is in part choreographed directly to these stories and movement, and in part working with broader concepts of memory—what remains important to us over time and how these deep undercurrents and fragments of images shape the trajectory of our lives. The installation for Known Once, with a wall behind and a moving wall in front, represents a life expanding and contracting. The choreography reaches into the past and enfolds the range of emotions and experiences we carry forwards. Known Once developed through a deeply collaborative process with the dancers, in which they individualized phrases and created movement from prompts that are designed to be interpreted liberally and personally. Through the movement, the dancers brought their own memories into the piece.
VIDEO TRAILER:
Choreography: Liss Fain
Music: Dan Wool, Johann Sebastian Bach, Sarah Dionne Woods-LaDue & Robert Woods-LaDue
Set and Lighting Design: Matthew Antaky
Costume Design: Mary Domenico
Original cast:
Sonja Dale, Katharine Hawthorne, Megan Kurashige, Shannon Kurashige, Sarah Dionne Woods-LaDue
Photos: Benjamin Hersh