Kristen Smiarowski :: Choreographer / Dancer

ATTEMPTS

“Other spoken headlines punctuated ‘Attempts,’ in which Smiarowski and Tom Young performed a postmodern movement cycle, repeated it while describing grim milestones in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and then silently performed it again with those milestones resonating in everyone’s minds at each step. ‘The situation compelled us to make a dance,’ they told us, and even though they judged themselves to be merely ‘faking it,’ the chilling result did represent, in their words, ‘a dance of death for Israelis and Arabs.’” – The Los Angeles Times, 2002

“In ‘Attempts,’ choreographed by Smiarowski and Tom Young and performed by Smiarowski and Nugent, two choreographers struggle to make a dance about political events. The dancers punctuated the combative duet with dialogue and news headlines as their conflict grew increasingly violent….When the dancers began to expose the motivations behind their movements as they danced….the impact was as solid as any image on the five o’clock news.” – The Santa Barbara Independent, 2003

“…this is what art is supposed to do—to sock us in the stomach with emotional truths in a way the paper’s headlines rarely can, and to leave us with a little more hope.” – The Santa Barbara Independent, 2003

BUS

“Smiarowski depicted just one victim in just one terrorist bombing, reliving in her own body and consciousness the moments before and after an incident that killed six people. Bracing against a chair, climbing on it, sinking in it, she achieved a remarkable meditative identification with dying on a bus.” – The Los Angeles Times, 2002

“[‘Bus’ is]…a meditative and raw memorial….Smiarowski’s monologue gave a childlike account of these deaths, chilling in its unflinching simplicity.” – The Santa Barbara Independent, 2003

GROUNDSWELL, a site-specific dance at the Ballona Freshwater Marsh

“[In ‘GROUNDSWELL’] dancers…began…falling on the ground, rolling, throwing handfuls of dirt, running hundreds of yards out of sight and back again, twisting, turning, gracefully blending humans into nature, running again and finally slowly disappearing in a magical way into the reeds by the lake, an effect that can usually only be done on film. Kristen Smiarowski was the choreographer and driving force behind this enormous project. This was the culmination of months and months of work, coordinating a myriad different elements into a deeply spiritual experience that connected people and nature.” – Impressions, 2006

THANKS TO, BECAUSE, AND YET, IN SPITE OF

“In the hilarious solo ‘thanks to, because, and yet, in spite of,’…[Carmela] Hermann delivered a monologue about her personal life shot through with anxiety about current world events, while concurrently announcing the provenance of her every gesture. ‘It takes time to heel, figure things out, elbow, hip,’ she explained, bent sideways with her elbows pointing skyward.” – Santa Barbara Independent, 2006