Kristin Damrow & Company Announces the World Premiere of IMPACT

Kristin Damrow & Company (KDC) is proud to announce the world premiere of IMPACT, January 31 - February 2, 2019at Yerba Buena for the Arts in San Francisco. With a cast of 15 dancers inhabiting a dystopian world in the near future, Impact is the company's most ambitious work to date. Tickets, $25 - $60, will go on sale November 6 at kristindamrow.com/Impact.

Impact is the third evening-length work by choreographer Kristin Damrow, whose most recent dance, EAMES, based on the lives of iconic furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames, earned critical raves and a sold-out run at ODC Theater this past January.

Like EAMES, Impact delves into the world of 20th-century modernism for inspiration. This time, to evoke the barren landscape of a future Earth ravaged by tribal divisions, Damrow turned to the Brutalist movement in architecture. Defined by its use of exposed concrete construction in often massive, hulking structures, Brutalism flourished for a period of about two decades from the 1950s through the early 1970s.

"I was really drawn to the epic nature of this architecture," said Damrow. "It's almost in awe of its own magnitude. But I was equally drawn to the rawness and honesty of its surfaces. These buildings came to be quickly associated with a set of egalitarian and socialist ideas that resonate with the world I'm trying to conjure in Impact."

"Over the last couple of years, especially, I've been inspired by movements for collective change to address a myriad of injustices, and in Impact we're exploring this dynamic through the abstraction of contemporary dance."

Impact features five principal dancers - Heather Arnett, Allegra Bautista, ShareenDeRyan, Anna Greenberg and Hien Huynh - together with 10 additional performers.

Damrow commissioned a musical score from her company's resident composer AaronM. Gold. Layers of found sounds, recorded from inside such exemplars of Brutalism in the Bay Area as the Glen Park Bart Station, the Oakland Museum of California and the original Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, lend authenticity to Gold's original composition.

"As a kid who grew up in post-Soviet Prague, Impact is a project near to my heart," said Gold. "I spent a lot of time playing inside Prague's Strahov Stadium, which was then just a massive relic of crumbling concrete with moss clinging at the edges."

Like Gold, scenic designer Alice Malia spent her formative years immersed in Brutalist environments, in her case that of London. "For Europeans, Brutalist buildings exert an especially powerful force on our memories and imagination," added Malia.

Also joining the project is costume designer Rita Parks and lighting designer AllenWillner.

For more information about Impact, visit kristindamrow.com/Impact.

ABOUT KRISTIN DAMROW & COMPANY

Since 2010, Kristin Damrow & Company (KDC) has showcased 15 original works including three evening-length dances. The company's work intertwines the worlds of dance and design. In January 2018, KDC premiered EAMES, based on the lives of iconic furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames. The company's next dance, Impact, explores Brutalism in architecture. KDC has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the Center for Cultural Innovation. The company has also earned notices in Fast Company, Backstage and Disegno magazines, among others.

Artistic Director Kristin Damrow grew up on a rural farm in Wisconsin before studying in Chicago where she earned a B.A. in Dance from Columbia College. Since moving to San Francisco in 2010, she has been commissioned by SAFEhouse Arts' Summer Performance Festival and the DIRT Festival in San Francisco. She is also a resident artist at Iowa State University, and has taught master classes in dance at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia College Chicago, Gibney Dance and the University of San Francisco.

Photo: Hien Huynh and Allegra Bautista photographed by RJ Muna.

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