The Glass Magazine
byChris McGovern
COCOKAROL
NY-based arts dancerCoco Karolhad a few minutes to chat with me. Having recently seen an amazing and rather harrowing set of interpretive dances of hers at theEar To Mindconcert(Read a review of it here)at New YorkasSymphony Space, Iam basically speechless, but outside of this, Iam very taken by the ever-present, yet all-too-neglected art-form of dancing that has existed probably as long as we have had music, but my love for dance has been nursed considerably, thanks to one of my other loves,Maya Deren, and how sheas woven her love of dance and body movement into her works.
Coco is a working dancer that not only freelances and does these fascinating projects with Ear To Mind, but is also a member ofMisnomer Dance Theater, and got a gig withBjorkof all people (Sheas the blue girl strapped to Bjorkas back in the aWanderlusta video). She also teaches yoga. Yes, sheas just one of the crowd, but she is so much more than a face in it.
CM: Can I just say that what you do looks really uncomfortable? I mean, obviously youare not doing this because itas comfortable.
Coco: It doesnat hurt, I can assure you! [laughs] But there is something you are tapping into about the nature of struggle or trying to process something. In a lot of my work, I love to create these physical problems, which demand physical solutions, and then the solution is, at the same time, the next problem, so when it feels like Iam getting stuck in something, itas actually something that is creating the next problem, like if I were a mountain climber, you kind of go up, and you find the next ring, and that brings you up, but then itas the next problem to solve.
CM: I think I know what youare saying, obviously you like that itas a challenge through and through. Itas also like writing music, especially when you want to make something original and not something youave heard a million times, trying to find a new path.
Coco: Sure, absolutely! Music and mountain climbing! [laughs]
CM: How did you get started and when did you get involved with the more artistic forms of dancing?
Coco: I was trained classically at first, atBoston Ballet, and I actually danced professionally with them as an apprenticeathe bottom of the rungawhen I was a student there. While I was there, I met someone I consider to be my mentor,Marcus Schulkind, and he would introduce me to modern dance, freed-up my movement, and gave me a lot to spiritually live off of as an artist. Then, because of him, I went to Juilliard for one of those pre-college Summer semester things, and then being in New York, going to Juilliard opened my eyes a lot! As someone who was already dancing for a ballet company and thought that I would stay in that sort of vein, I suddenly realized I could go to school for dance, so I went toConservatory at Tisch, and I still did a lot of work with a professional point company (contemporary ballet), sort of like the way classical musicians do sort of contemporary things, but itas still very classical. Then, I joined a company calledMisnomer Dance Theater, which is very modern contemporary dance.
[Pictured right,Eve Bailey's installation titled "Intuit" at the DUMBO Arts Festival in 2011, featuring Coco and Nora Herting; photo courtesy of Mai Endo] With my own work, whatas really always interested me is installation work, and creating those physical problems I was talking about, with an installation of some kind, like I used cast-iron claw-foot bathtubs on a street in DUMBO, or I built a swing set in a loft in Brooklyn. I just recently finished a whole installation project with an architect in fabric (Iam negotiating through this fabric in a really crazy way).
I got into that, and then I started to get really influenced by butA, which is the Japanese transcendental dance, and thatas where the white body paint came in. But the body paint happened after the BjArk music video, and for that I was spray-painted all in purple and I had a prosthetic on, and it did something to me, in terms ofaI donat know exactly what, but it gives you something. Right after that experience I went to do a piece with actors atStella AdleraI decided I wanted body paint, and I went and did some digging, and came through this white body paint, and itas really kind of a magical thing that happens. Iam also super-interested in visual artsaPainting and photography, and so, what I found with the white body paint is that to create more of like a painting, like with the streams coming out of the mouth, I think that thereas a way to affect space, not just with a flailing arm-movement, but actually with color, and color has its own time signature, if that makes sense.
CM: Does the white body paint also give you a sort of tunnel vision?
Coco: Itas more like it clearly defines a space. Like in a photograph. I did a piece with frames, and when you put your arm through a frame, your limb gets decontextualized, and I really like the decontextualization of body parts.
CM: With the body paint, itas kind of like an extended art-form on top of the art-form youare already doing.
Coco: I think for musicians, itas harder to understand, maybe, maybe not, but in dance, there can be a lot of gratuitous movement, thatas not really necessary, or movement that doesnat have a purpose, and I think that when you put a note on a score, it becomes really defined. Iam really interested in that definition in movement, and getting rid of the gratuitous stuff, and just show that every movement means something, which is a lot of pressure, but it doesnat have to be.
CM:Inhyun Kimas music in these Ear To Mind shows has been wonderful to see you work with. Can you talk about this process, and were you working with a click track?
Coco: We did use a click track, but what was more interesting was we actually sat down with the score and we colored it. We did all these visual things to the score, but at first when she gave me the click track, I didnat really understand that a click doesnat necessarily signify a note. [laughs] So I felt this extremely spasmodic, almost hip-hop break dancing thing, and she watched it and thought aThatas not the Coco I know!a [laughs] I didnat really understand because she made it really clear that what she was really interested in is that my movement would be an embodiment of her music, and so, I thought I needed to embody every click on the track! After we sat down and colored it, it actually became a very interesting part of the process. Now I have the score for the piece we just did, and I look at it very differently!
CM: That was aThis Is Just To Saya with Luke Gutsgell, Megan Schubert and Lisa Dowling?
Coco: Yes!
CM: Is stream coil something you have used often in these pieces?
Coco: Itas something Iave used a few times. The first time Inhyun saw me dance, I used it, and then when we talked about the last project we did, I didnat think it was quite right, she didnat think it was quite right, and I wanted to do something new, and I had an amazing carpenter build that box for me, and that used color, too, like the red that comes out at the end. Then when Inhyun said she was doing a concert with a vocal performer, I said aOk, this is when Iad like to develop this!a, and when I was developing material, I was thinking about the initiation of where the voice comes from, and almost like my mediation was pulling a voice out of my body, even though it was completely silent, the visual sort of voice. I had just sort of experimented with it, but I hadnat fully developed it until this piece.
CM: Can you talk about your experience working with Bjork?
Coco: It was a joy! The producer of the Bjork music video called me personally (I almost didnat return the calla Life!) I was in residency on Marthaas vineyard with Misnomer Dance Theater at the time, and the producer, the director, and a prosthetic mask maker drove from new York to Boston, and took a ferry to Marthaas vineyard to spend less then 24 hours watching me and a beautiful dancer, Brynne Billingsley, whom the cast as the body double (also a member of misnomer at the time). They then made plaster casts of our faces and left! Thatas how it happened
Bjork is amazing, every bit as smart and inpsired and magic as you would think. And Encyclopedia Pictura, the collective of directors who made it happen, changed my life! Read More.
