Invertigo’s The Kitchen Table Project: So many stories to tell!

Laura Karlin is, among other things, a dancer, choreographer, director, humanitarian, activist, mother and wife who has created programs within her dance company that endeavor to heal as well as entertain.  She is the Artistic Director and Choreographer for Invertigo Dance Theatre, founded in 2007, and under the company’s name Karlin has created numerous evening-length dance theater works and outreach programs Invert/ED Education, Dancing Through Parkinson’s, Community In/Motion, and Walk the Walk.

As I write, Covid has taken the lives of 25,630 people in Los Angeles County, 67,220 statewide, 661,000 throughout the United States, and 4.55 million worldwide.  During these months of isolation, millions of people went long periods of not seeing or hugging loved ones. While continuing to create dances, and work as an activist during 2020, Karlin saw and felt the loss of these in-person connections.  As is her nature, she and her company launched Nights of Care Package Cinema sending out notices asking for people to commission a dancer to make a short video to be sent to a friend or loved one of their choosing. It was a highly successful and moving project.  You can read my article about it HERE.

Invertigo Dance Theatre’s most resent project is a new multidisciplinary dance collaboration called The Kitchen Table Project designed to help activate “communal healing through a web of interconnected dance films”. Most people can relate to how the kitchen table functions as a place for families to gather, to cook, eat, discuss plans, or to share feelings of loss and joy.  To date, Invertigo Dance Theatre has shared several kitchen table dance films that incorporated “poetry, ancestry, food, inner child spirit, and a sense of home”. All created following Health Department Covid related rules.

As part of the fundraising to help support The Kitchen Table Project, Invertigo recently launched a crowdfunding campaign. Their goal is to raise $20,000 from now through the 13^th of September.   Those who donate will receive personal invitations to Invertigo’s free virtual Fall Soiree on October 21, which will include the premiere of the latest film in The Kitchen Table Project series. These funds will also help to continue the project’s development and a 2022 premiere.

The latest film produced by The Kitchen Table Project will premiere at  this October 21 Fall soiree. The film features an intergenerational cast of artists which includes Cody Brunelle-Potter, Haylee Nichele, Diana Lynn Wallace, Chelsea Roquero, Jeannette Bland, and Spencer Jensen. “The film honors the memories of eight community members who were lost during the pandemic. Alongside Karlin, who directs and choreographs, the film was developed with Glyn Gray (Director of Photography), Chris Stokes (Lighting Designer), Rebecca Baillie Stumme (Production Manager), and Invertigo Dance Theatre staff support. Karlin is now challenging her community to utilize the kitchen table idea to reflect, to mourn or to dream.” Invertigo press release.

I contacted Karlin with several questions regarding The Kitchen Table Project:

JS: From the beginning of Kitchen Table Project until today, how many films has Invertigo produced?

LK: For The Kitchen Table Project, we have made 6 solo dance films and 1 holiday film called Illuminate in 2020, and we are in are in post-production with our newest dance film now.

This was the first round of films, created remotely and filmed at our kitchen tables.  Not currently available publicly but wanted you our dear Jeff to have a sense of our work and approach.

• Cheusok – a woman gathers with her ancestors at the kitchen table in a merging of traditional and contemporary rituals for the Korean festival of Cheusok (created by Hyosun Choi and Laura Karlin)
• Loneliness, it comes in waves – scrolling at the table, longing for an escape (created by Jessica Dunn and Laura Karlin, with original music by Diana Lynn)
• With, Without, Within – what having a kitchen table means to our dancer who has experienced homelessness (created by Cody Brunelle-Potter and Laura Karlin)
• A Day at the Table – our Dancing Through Parkinson’s dancer Jeanie interprets her day at the kitchen table (created by DTP Dancer Jeanie McNamara and DTP Teacher Rachel Whiting, with original music by Mike Mac, Jeanie’s son)
• In a Jam – did you fidget at the table as a child? (created by Corina Kinnear and Laura Karlin, with original music by Diana Lynn)
• Sense Memory – when life hands me lemons, I remember lemonade. (created by Chelsea Roquero and Laura Karlin, with original music by Najeeb Sabour)

Publicly available on Vimeo:  Illuminate – how do we share light in dark times? how do we create community and connection when we must stay physically distanced?  Commissioned by Culver City Arts Commission for their annual Holiday Celebration in 2020.

JS: Approximately how many viewers has this project drawn?

LK: Last year, The Kitchen Table Project films brought in about 100 viewers in real time through a virtual platform on our Fall Soirée. We have not distributed these films elsewhere since, as they are part of a collection that is being explored and morphed into a community collaborative showcase for 2022. There are many eyes on this project, but the short films featuring solo performers do not live on a public forum.

JS: Do all the films actually involve a kitchen table? What are a few of the venues in which the tables appear?

LK: In the various films, the tables appear in dancers’ kitchens, a black box studio, a space along the LA river, and a beach at dawn.  In Illuminate, dancers and community members were filmed at their kitchen tables for the first section of the film.

This year’s The Kitchen Table Project 2021 film features one table and six dancers Cody Brunelle-Potter, Haylee Nichele, Jeannette Bland, Diana Lynn Wallace, Spencer Jensen, and Chelsea Roquero. We have yet to take this large new table to a new venue.

JS: Who are the other community members being honored in the film that premieres on October 21 that are not mentioned in the press release? Are they connected to the performers in the film?  If so, how?

LK: The 8 people whose memories we are tracing in the 2021 film are 5 family members of Invertigo staff and artists, and 3 the other community members on who are honored at the table are community we met through my work with Auntie Sewing Squad, including the brother of one of the Aunties, an elder from the Standing Rock tribe, and a farmworker.

Each person is remembered through a place setting at the table and poetic tracings of a memory or memories of their loved one.  Eccentric and tender hearts like a cowboy-hat-wearing gentleman, a pastor and a musician, a water protector, a woman who tended her potted plants even in the midst of loss.

• Luis Alberto Navarrete – a pastor with a mission in Mexicali Mexico, father to Invertigo’s Community Engagement Manager, Rosa Navarrete.
• Marion Womble – a card-playing, fast-talking, whip-smart woman with the spirit of a trickster, grandmother to Invertigo’s Development Manager, Chelsea Sutton.
• Ann Purvis – the one who always remembered to call on my birthday and who kept her world beautiful even when it got smaller, surrogate grandmother of Invertigo’s Artistic Director, Laura Karlin.
• Stephen Wong Lao – a software engineer and volunteer community peace officer who loved movies and his black cowboy hat, brother to Auntie Sewing Squad member Kathy Wong Lao.
• Diane Grindstone Brown Otter (Grandma Diane) – water protector and beloved member of the Standing Rock Tribe, remembered by Jennifer Weston and connected through the Auntie Sewing Squad’s pandemic partnership with the Standing Rock tribe.
• Anita Roquero-Giuntini (Mantiz) – the family florist and the one who brought the family together, aunt to Invertigo dancer Chelsea Roquero.
• Doña Lidia – a farmworker who liked the flower nursery best because she could talk freely with the women there, who loved mariachi and her family, remembered by her daughter Sonia and connected through the Auntie Sewing Squad’s pandemic partnership with the farm working community in Guadalupe, CA.
• Alberto Nichele (Zioberto) – a shoe-maker in Italy in one of the first areas decimated by Covid, a dapper man who loved family gatherings (salut!), great-uncle to Invertigo dancer Haylee Nichele.

JS: In what specific ways has The Kitchen Table Project expanded?

LK: This began as an experiment during the early days of the pandemic and has grown into a multi-dimensional exploration of the kitchen table, as well as our current ability to process the collective trauma of the pandemic.

Our table is bigger and now the films have turned from solos into multiple dancers on the screen. For a moment there in July we were able to see each other and took proper health precautions to dance together.

JS: Though it is virtual, will the company perform at the soirée on October 21?

LK: We are currently researching ways in which our artists can interact with the community via our virtual event. So the hope is yes! It’s a work in progress.

JS: Are there other films in progress? If so, who is the choreographer and cast?

LK: The company will feature two beautiful films at our Fall Soirée – The Kitchen Table Project and Brian’s Song Project a documentary fearing our Dancing Through Parkinson’s dancer – Brian Tagomori.

JS: What sort of questions do you receive from viewers and has the project inspired some of these viewers to create their own films?

LK: When we talk about The Kitchen Table Project, the question we usually get is how did we find these community members to participate in the project? Especially with such tender themes as remembering folks who have departed during this pandemic. It takes a lot of work to build these relationships and also the project grew. We had original thoughts, and in these phone calls and conversations is when we discovered the themes together as participant and artist. Our dancers also brought people to the table, whether they had a place setting or were simply thought about. The project became layered. I feel that in 2020 the films were very much about exploring our relationship to our personal space, or our desire to escape and be back in the world…and then as I dove into the interview process it was clear that after the peak of the pandemic in December 2020, the conversations were shifting from isolation is hard to I have had to say goodbye to so many people in my life…and some of them were alone when it happened. It’s a very tender container of stories we are holding. It’s delicate and precious.

JS: Will it extend past the pandemic?

LK: Our hope is to continue to make The Kitchen Table Project a multidisciplinary web of films, live performances with community collaborators, and immersive experiences.

We also want to create community workshops that bring people to the table to tell stories and dance through intergenerational connections, cross-cultural conversations, and food supply chains.

JS: Has it inspired viewers to make their own films and remember?

LK: I don’t know how to answer that. If it has, I think that’s beautiful. There are many videos and images right now on many platforms who are remembering their people in their own unique ways. But if it speaks to anything – I’d say that it unites community. Loss, much like a beautiful piece of art, has the ability to bridge people together and assists in disengaging us from US versus THEM. Everyone has been affected by this pandemic.

JS: Is there anything else that Laura would like readers to know about The Kitchen Table Project?

LK: May we all be grateful for our tables and those at them.

“Invertigo is looking at this expanse of connections, and we are hoping to create space for people to tell their stories, to mourn together for all we have lost,” says Karlin. “To share recipes for food and movement (choreography is just a recipe for dance). To move together, to stretch and unfurl. To ache and to laugh, and process trauma, and hold space for one another, and begin, bit by bit, to heal.”

Those interested in contributing to the future development of The Kitchen Table Project can visit https://chuffed.org/project/kitchen-table-project; donation perks include Virtual Fall Soiree tickets, an original recipe book, and homemade jam. Audiences can catch a peek at some of the project’s dance films on Invertigo’s Vimeo page at https://vimeo.com/478260678 and https://vimeo.com/582284928.

Karlin is a storyteller and uses her work to relate those stories. The Kitchen Table Project is a vehicle for artists to share their experiences during and after the pandemic. Everyone around the world has been affected by this virus in one way or another.  As Karlin says, “The kitchen table is full of memories and symbolism, intercultural exchange and intergenerational connections…there are so many stories to tell.”

More Information  on the Invertigo Dance Theatre website.

Invertigo Facebook

Invertigo Instagram

Invertigo Twitter

 

KTP 2020 Short Film Trailers

 

Kitchen Table Project, 2021 Film – Behind the Scenes

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Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle.

Featured image:  Invertigo Dance Theatre – Diana Lynn Wallace, Spencer Jensen, Chelsea Roquero, Jeannette Bland, Haylee Nichele, Cody Brunelle-Potte – The Kitchen Table Project- Photo courtesy of Invertigo Dance Theatre