PROJECT // I Want to be Alone but We’re in This Together
I Want to be Alone but We’re in This Together is an experimental solo performance that employs the use of contemporary dance, text, chosen objects, and emotionally-charged music to communicate its ideas. Questioning conventional notions of identity, authenticity, and relationships, creator/performer Karen Fennell seduces us with a multifaceted work that comes directly from her experience of the world, but relates also to universal, contemporary challenges of being human. Playing with performance codes and challenging audience expectations, she takes us on a queer, non-linear journey where vulnerability and absurdity unabashedly take centre stage, and the flawed notion of individualism is exposed.
BIO // Karen Fennell is a queer contemporary dance artist originally from the island of Newfoundland. Based in Montreal since 2004, she holds a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University. As a dancer and choreographer she works on a diversity of projects for stage, video, installation, and site-specific performance. She has performed in the work of choreographers Martin Messier, Tedd Robinson, Dana Gingras, Sasha Kleinplatz, Sarah Wendt, Erin Flynn and Maria Kefirova (among others). She also collaborates frequently with visual artists Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau. Her most recent choreographic projects have been interdisciplinary co-creations – CLOSER (2017, with video artist Nik Forrest), and the trouble with reality (2015, with musician Jackie Gallant). Karen is currently pursuing the creation of her first self-solo work, the seeds of which were planted during a three-week residency with master artist Deborah Hay at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida in 2019. She also produces and hosts the annual performance event, ‘So You Think That Was Dance?’, and is a certified instructor of the GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® Methods.
DETAILS // This work has been developed with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, and residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), Dansverkstæðið (Iceland), CCOV (Montreal), and Studio 303 (Montreal).
Photo credit: Karen Fennell