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Dance Up Close to Jon Kinzel Creating "Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man" for The Chocolate Factory

Pared Down Poignancy

Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man

at the Chocolate Factory Theater ( click Chocolate Factory for tickets + info)
5-49 49th Avenue, Queens, NY
December 4-7, 2013 @ 8pm

Performers: Simon Courchel, Jon Kinzel, Stuart Shugg

Music: Jim Dawson
Lighting: Kathy Kaufmann

Jon Kinzel brings his newest work, Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man, to the Chocolate Factory Theater next week. A choreographer with an extensive background in visual art and music, Kinzel was first exposed to dance as a student of eurhythmy, an expressive movement practice, at the Steiner School in his native New York City. Kinzel cites this as an early dance influence but finds his current interests in line, shape, and form have come more from his work as a visual artist and composer.

Jon Kinzel Talks About His Work

“As a visual artist, it is kind of a solo act in some ways and [you get] to know what all your materials are,” Kinzel explains at a recent rehearsal  in Long Island City. “From my own work, what I glean about formal concerns, like line and shape or how to read a symbol, [is how to look] at the body and all of its signifiers just by standing still.”

Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man is a thorough and thoughtful investigation into Kinzel’s brand of formalism and its development through movement, sound, light, and space. Helping him in his explorations are lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann; composer Jim Dawson; and dancers Stuart Shugg and Simon Courchel. Kinzel is explicit about their contributions and stresses the positive impact of “many voices” on the work. Rooted in a clearly defined, yet unaffected movement sensibility, Kinzel completes the trio of sleek movers, who delve into basic interaction and how an audience affects this. The artist describes his  interest in a pared down approach to movement as “dance performance where the movement can have clarity and poignancy in just the execution.”

Through the process of creating Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man, a piece that has been in development for most of this year, Kinzel has further honed his understanding that “the execution of… shape and effort in a very articulate way [can be without] a superimposed layer of…expressionism or psychology.”

Kinzel crafts his choreography to live in its barest form, allowing his audience to decide what to take in and what to leave behind. “[I am] a part of the discourse of being involved in how people look at work, how [they] experience work,” Kinzel said.

To really know, we must experience it ourselves.