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3. Stephan Koplowitz
- University Press of Florida
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 Stephan Koplowitz Stephan Koplowitz is a director/choreographer who has developed a reputation for creating site-specific multimedia works in architecturally significant urban sites. Since receiving one of the first commissions by Dancing in the Streets in 1987 for Fenestrations in Grand Central Terminal in New York, Koplowitz has gone on to make over 28 site works in such varied venues as Manhattan's Bryant Park (as part of webbedfeats.org), the State of Illinois Building, the Natural History Museum in London, and the British Library. He was awarded a 2004 Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2000 Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for Sustained Achievement in Choreography along with six NEA choreography fellowships. He is the producer/director of TaskForce, an international site-specific touring company, and as dean, teaches for and directs the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts. The following is a dialogue that took place between Kloetzel and Koplowitz in a series of phone conversations between 2005 and 2007. An Interview with Stephan Koplowitz MK: Could you talk about your first forays into site work? SK: My first inkling that the proscenium stage would not accommodate all my goals came early. At Wesleyan University, as part of my 1979 honors thesis in music, I created an interactive dance, light, video, and sound work called Click Tracks. It was installed and performed in an old gymnasium. I chose that unconventional space for its size and its ability to allow the audience to experience a multisensory work in a new way. The audience for Click Tracks was divided into two groups. The first group saw the live performance inside the gymnasium, sitting on bleachers. The second group viewed the work in a large hallway adjacent to the performance space through the “eyes” of four video cameras. The cameras were transmitting live images of the performances to four video monitors. There was interdependence among the elements in this work. The sound influenced 65 An Interview/Still Learning, Doing, and Relearning the lights through sensors; the video could only be seen if a light was on. The dancers reacted to the lights, sound, etc. At intermission, the two groups switched places, thus giving each audience member a different perception of the work. Click Tracks was my first attempt at working in an alternative space, and it evoked both opportunities and challenges that would continue to interest and stimulate me as my choreographic career continued. Then, in 1980, between college and graduate school, I was part of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Ensemble. This group performed in something like 14 different places over the course of six weeks. We performed everywhere from the street to nursing homes to shopping centers to people’s lawns to . . . you name it, but we did the same pieces over and over again. It opened my eyes to getting out of the studio and bringing art to the people. Oddly enough, Elise Bernhardt was having the same experience that I was at the very same time. Elise and I met in 1980 at Jacob’s Pillow. Elise, Victoria Marks, and I were all just out of college, and Liz Thompson, the Pillow director, got us involved with the touring ensemble. Elise took on more of a director/managerial role (which makes sense when you look into the future), and I provided some of my choreography to the ensemble and got to perform. Elise was involved in it for the first summer, and I ended up being involved for three summers. Elise claims that was one of her first inspirations to start Dancing in the Streets. Later, our paths crossed again because she commissioned me to do the piece Fenestrations in the windows at Grand Central Terminal; that started my career as a professional site artist. MK: Why does site-specific work interest you? SK: I love the challenges; I love having to make art completely within the confines of the public sector; I love not being sequestered behind the cloak of the concert hall (although the stage does still hold my interest). Site work also inspires me in that most sites chosen provide a “canvas” never before used as a performance space, a tabula rasa. Going into unexplored territory is always exciting. Transforming a popular public space or a unique private space into a performance space for the first time is a thrill. My goal is to convey that feeling to the audience when they anticipate...