Bob Morrison/Karlovsky & Company Dance
A still from "Interwoven"
More than a year in the making, Karlovksy & Company Dance’s new piece, Interwoven, is inspired by Peter Wohlleben’s acclaimed book, The Hidden Life of Trees. Little did artistic director and choreographer Dawn Karlovsky know when she decided to make a piece about trees that she’d be dancing among them last summer.
“It’s been an interesting journey with lots of twists and turns along the way,” says Karlovsky, who is gearing up for Interwoven’s digital release Friday. Audiences can access the performance online through April 11.
The process of creating Interwoven began in February 2020. As the pandemic surged in Missouri, Karlovsky & Company pushed pause on the project, then resumed rehearsals outdoors until their studio space at the Grandel became available again in September.
“That experience working outside, listening to the trees, wind, birds, and noises around us fueled the inspiration for this work,” says Karlovsky. “We spent all summer outside, taking in the big skies.”
Karlovsky and her family are drawn to the outdoors and seek opportunities to mountain bike and rock climb. She finds St. Louis to be filled with nature. “The experience I have with nature within St. Louis is this joining of an urban environment and natural forest such as Forest Park or Castlewood," she says. "I find it really inspiring to blend these worlds. When I’m in nature, I can still hear the traffic and industrial sounds.”
Interwoven’s stage design, created by St. Louisan Bill Russell, reflects this idea by using a combination of natural elements with pieces from the built environment.
Trees have been a recurring theme for Karlovsky and Russell, who worked together a few years after Karlovsky, a Chicagoland native, settled in St. Louis more than two decades ago. Russell collected twisted tree branches that form a backdrop for Interwoven. Others are tied together with mylar strings and multicolored plastic zip ties to form wearable sculptures that appear midway through the hour-long performance.
Local musicians Kalo Hoyle and Tory Starbuck play a majority of their sound score live through a combination of guitar, bass, keyboard, and computer-generated sounds, with a few pre-recorded segments. While there are some melodic moments, Hoyle and Starbuck aimed to create a more atmospheric score to accompany the dance.
“We intentionally are trying to not be overly harmonic or consonant,” says Hoyle. “We’re trying to emulate environments more than we’re trying to play songs.”
“But when it does get musical,” Starbuck chimes in, “it’s mainly lush chords and then [Hoyle] improvises over that. Or he’ll play a composed baseline, and I’ll play sound effects. We feed off each other.”
Each section of Interwoven looks to different elements of the forest—branches, roots, and fungi, for example— as sources of inspiration. Leaves strewn about the stage intermingle with Hoyle and Starbucks’ music as the dancers make crunching sounds skating and rolling across the space. The sounds that their bodies and breath make hint at the human impact—that people are merely visitors in the rugged wild that has a life all its own.
“It’s not literal,” says Karlovsky. “We’re not imitating nature. We’re pulling out the human side of what’s happening in nature: the nurturing and communication we experience in it.”
It can be difficult for artists to stay motivated under the circumstances. Karlovsky intentionally choreographed her piece with masked dancers physically distanced from one another and the performance was filmed in the empty Grandel Theatre. Everyone agrees, however, that the process of making Interwoven has kept them motivated during the pandemic.
“I never considered this group of people to be just my coworkers,” says dancer Abigail Hinrichs. “It’s been a little dance family.”
The group expressed collective gratitude that they’ve been able to find creative ways to continue working and share their artistry with the public.
“One of the joys of having this group during a time of so much social isolation was finding ways to meet in person,” says dancer Elise Marie Ringenberg. “Without this, it’s hard to keep going. This has been a way to keep us moving forward.”
Karlovsky & Company Dance’s “Interwoven” streams March 26–April 11 online. Tickets are $10–$15. For tickets and more information, visit karlovskydance.org.
