STRANGE NATURE
WITH HANA VAN DER KOLK AND LEA KIEFFER
NOVEMBER 15 - 22
Calling all dancers, artists, writers, schemers, activists, healers, and other freaks for a week-long dive into world-building, material intimacies/object oriented disorientation, monstrous becoming, temple configuring, psycho-physical interruptions/expansions, gentle and excessive adornment, and celebration.
Through body/flesh, attention, and imagination-centering practices, work with textiles, objects, space, and costume, and group ritual we will “dialogue” with ourselves, one another, and everything to ask: how and why might we become more tender, more monstrous, more clairvoyant, more fluid; recognizing/uncovering our already multiple, hybrid, contradictory, messy, monstrous selves, groupings, world in the process. While our collective intention will be with experience for experience’s sake, individuals may find themselves drawn to thread aspects of our work together into independent projects within and/or after the workshop in the form of costumes, performance, writing, socio-political proposals, pedagogy and more.
Convening shortly after the presidential election, Strange Nature 2024 will gather in particular around the invitation of staying with—the ugly, the trash, the horrific, the confusing, the incongruous, the boring…We wonder what becomes in the ferment, the rot, the decay, the composted? What alchemizes, transforms, surprises, fools, delights? In this asking, we call in the cave, the swamp, the cocoon, as well as the chrysalis, the doorway, and the threshold. We beg for complexity and are on our knees at the feet of multiplicity, listening for…
Guided by dancers, makers, researchers, facilitators Lea Kieffer and Hana van der Kolk, Strange Nature began at the Field Center in 2022 with the curatorial and match making vision of Jared Williams and gathered again at the Field Center in 2023. Will you join us for our 2024 constellation?
SCHOLARSHIP + WORK TRADE
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We offer 3 full scholarships for Black, Indigenous and People of Color [BIPOC] folks in each session. As well as 3 Work Trade spots in each session. If interested please select 'BIPOC Scholarship' OR 'Work Trade' when registering via the link below. For more information about the work trade exchange, go to the Work Exchange page.
CLICK HERE to register with a Payment Plan.
REFUND POLICY: Full refunds or workshop credit available up to 10 days prior to the event. Please inform us if you cannot attend an event up to 10 days prior [including Scholars and Work Traders]! Refunds/credit within the 10 days prior to the event may be available on a case-by case basis, please reach out to communications@thefieldcenter.com
ABOUT THE FACILITATORS
Lea Kieffer is a French, Berlin based performer, dance artist, and costume/clothing maker. Her work explores processes of transformation and the dialogue between imagination and physicality through dance, bodywork and craftsmanship in hybrid and transdisciplinary formats. Her dance is influenced by a background in sports and crafts and a postmodern dance education based on improvisation, especially contact improvisation and somatic practices. From this collection of knowledge, she has built a practice of performing for others, performing improvisation, building her own performances, teaching and research through somatic practices and through making clothes and costumes for the stage. All of her practices are rooted in developing new narratives for the body and for movement with specific inspiration from science fiction, action movies and B-rated movies. Her current research « Sci fi anatomy » is a hybrid performance-workshop that creates dialogue between the matter of the body and the sea of our thoughts. Since 2012, she has created with partner of crimes Rocio Marano, under the identity of Los(t) Ninjas, multimedia performances ( “Matter of Blood”,” Blind Date (Literally)”, workshops “Los(t) Ninjas Practice” and shares the adventure of life. In the last year, she worked as performer and costume maker for Frida Giulia Franceschini “Tricks for gold”, Yuko Kaseki & Teo Vlad in “ CUNTethiques & SQUATconstellations”, Lee Meir & André Lewski in “von Hier nach Dort”. As a performer, she worked with Jared Gradinger & Angela Schubot, Jeremy Shaw, Isabel Lewis, K.A.U. & Wdovick among others. She also sometimes embraces focusing on costumes and scenographies like for “Storlaut” and “Menstrual Metal” by Jule Flierl, “Caring Banquise” by Mathilde Monfreux and “Salutations Mistinguette”by Stephanie Auberville.
Hana van der Kolk is a queer dancer, artist, and facilitator of ritual, embodied learning, and celebration living on unceded Mohican, Mohawk, and Haudenosaunee lands, colonially known as the Hudson Valley, New York. Hana is provoked by their interest in eros, care, contradiction, complexity/simplicity, joy/grief, reckoning, and humans’ porous, interconnected, and messy natures. Hana spends time looking for and creating bridges through pedagogy, performance, language, celebration, and personal and collective restoration and transformation. In this process, they create performances, organize events, design and lead workshops, offer counseling & sex and gender expansion work, write, and make videos, gifts, talismans, and environments for (re)enchantment. Hana sees their work—which is always collaborative—as a conduit for knowing/unknowing what is here and now, for remembering and practicing intimacy at many proximities.
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Hana has worked internationally as a teacher and facilitator, performer, and artist. They have a background in Euro-American contemporary dance, somatic practices, and performance art, and are further influenced by Min Tanaka’s experimental dance practices, Black & queer social dance, and Buddhist thought and practice. Hana completed an MFA in Dance from UCLA in 2008 and a practice-based PhD in Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2022. Their dissertation focused on queer friendship and embodied technologies for re-enchantment and recovery from the delusion of separateness. Hana was based in Troy, NY for almost a decade and is indebted to the city where they learned to coalition build; to be messy, joyful, resistant, together and separate, with and through our bodies, with and through parties, protests, potlucks, city council meetings, dance class, open hours at the community bike shop, and more.
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Hana currently collaborates with Angela Beallor and Elizabeth Press on FlagSSS Day and other public processions and rituals, Erica Dawn Lyle on The Stamina of Utopia, Sondra Loring on We Already Are, Lea Keiffer on Strange Nature, and Adam Tinkle and others on Club SPA spa. Dori Midnight, Tomislav Feller, Erin Sickler, Eli Nixon, margit galanter, Julia Handschuh, and Lailye Weidman are also frequent collaborators and thought partners. Among Hana’s teachers are Deborah Hay, Debra Bluth, Ashon Crawley, Jennifer Monson, Simone Forti, Barbara Carrellas, d. Sabela grimes, Sara Jane Stoner, Mala Kline, Richard Schwartz, Thanissara and Kittisaro, and Pascal Auclair. They also wish to acknowledge teachers they have never met in person including Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Bayo Akomolafe, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Min Tanaka, Paul Preciado, Pauline Oliveros, Silvia Federici, Karen Barad, and many others.
