Kari Hoaas: Shadowland
Kari Hoaas Productions
Norwegian choreographer Kari Hoaas’ latest project Shadowland responds to an increasingly unstable post-pandemic world. It is a poetic investigation of a continuum, as well as the body moving through loss. Visually and conceptually inspired by the work of Norwegian visual artist Jan Groth, Shadowland centers around a series of solo dance practices, aiming toward an expression that is both abstract and poetic, and emphasizing the affective and energetic power of movement. The distinct solos Hoaas has created with each dancer in Shadowland appear in fluctuating constellations, forming choreographic bricolages and larger kinetic events. The resulting dance performance becomes a web of various assemblages and shifting formats. Shadowland is performed by three dancers along with choreographer Hoaas.
Creation support from Arts Council Norway, Fund for Sound and Image Norway, Performing Arts Hub Norway, The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Consulate General of New York. Shadowland was partly created in residency at DansiT - Regional Center for Dance in Trondheim, Norway and Davvi - Regional center for dance in Northern Norway.
Photo of Matias Rønningen by Jens Ramborg
Choreography : Kari Hoaas
Dancers: Ida Haugen, Christine Kjellberg, Mattias Rønningen, and Kari Hoaas
Light and Stage Design & Touring Technician: Gard Gitlestad
Composer and musician: Fil Uno
Sound Design: Erling Bergby
Costume Design: Zofia Jakubiec
Producer in New York : Brendan McCall
Publicist: Jonathan Slaff & Associates
Born in Oslo, Kari Hoaas was educated as a ballet dancer from an early age at the Norwegian National Ballet School, and spent one year at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Upon graduating from the National Ballet High School Elite Program, she furthered her studies in modern dance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, and was on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio. She began her career as a professional dancer and choreographer in New York, where she lived and worked from 1993 to 2006, performing with various independent artists including Michel Laub, Sarah Skaggs, Maureen Fleming, Susan Rethorst, and the Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy group, among many others. She started creating her own work early on, presenting her first solo in 1996. In 2003, her second evening-length work was co-produced by Performance Space 122, which she then toured to Norway. Since establishing Kari Hoaas Productions (KHP) in Oslo in 2005, Hoaas has created around 50 shorter and longer choreographic works, from a dozen evening-length contemporary dances, to several dance films, site-specific works, and numerous commissions for various companies, colleges, and institutions. Her work with KHP has received consistent support from the Norwegian Arts Council, and she was the recipient of the Norwegian State Artist Grant for three years (2014-2016). KHP has toured extensively all over Europe and Africa, and received numerous awards and prizes, including: Best Performance of Program Prize for On the Desperate Edge of Now at the Tbilisi International Festival of Theater (2015) and the Audience Favorite Award for HEAT at the Zeylonka Contemporary Dance Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine (2019). Hoaas is also an experienced teaching artist, serving as the Professor of Dance at Kristiania University College in Oslo, Norway, where she is central to the development of the university's contemporary dance program.
Shadowland is made possible by the Norwegian Consulate.
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.