Dance against war

The audiences at the Fringe Wilmington Festival can watch the dancers of The Naked Stark say goodnight to war, all the while waking up to an air of social change.  

Created in 2009, director and dancer Katherine Stark says the contemporary dance company is committed to the philosophy that works of art can create social change. Now the company based in Philadelphia is working to create a name for itself by entering the performing arts scene—the group's first big effort being the performance of "Goodnight War" at the Fringe Wilmington Festival.  

The Fringe Festival is a five-day experimental performing arts event held yearly in Wilmington.  This year the festival runs from Wednesday until Oct. 3, with the dancers of "Goodnight War" performing throughout the weekend.

Stark's show is an interpretative dance where four dancers try to break through sheets of cardboard, symbolizing struggling through war.

Stark says she has been working on the idea for "Goodnight War" for over a year, fine tuning it and analyzing her previous works on social change. She says this one has a distinct personal element.

"I had a baby, and I was reading story books to her and I was thinking about the world I want for her," Stark says. "I had the realization that the next generation was not the world that I wanted for her, and that's a little bit scary for me."

Stark had created works about social change in the past, but this time she ultimately wanted to challenge herself.

"[The work] is a combination of two things—I had made a work about the idea of collective responsibility," she says. "I realized there was more behind it about why we feel this collective responsibility, why we make peace or war."

Stark says she wants the audience and her dancers to acknowledge and feel that responsibility in our everyday lives. Given those expectations, dancer Nicole Christman says the dance has been a challenge both physically and mentally.  However, seeing the dance evolve has been a collaborative process.

"I really like Katherine's movement a lot, she's very modern- based," Christman says. "There's a slow relaxation and it's very intelligent movement; you have to think about the choreography."

The choreography represents the emotional and physical struggles individuals face when war is upon them, and it's not performed by professional dancers alone. Stark also enlisted the talents of community members from Philadelphia and Wilmington—a task which proved to be a difficult and risky endeavor.

"It's been challenging and it's raised a lot of questions to me and the relationships between the work I'm making at the community," she says. "I think in the future it would be interesting to get involved with a group, at a community center and work with them, more interested in what the piece was about rather than being on the stage."

During the performance, the community members create a cardboard wall covered with fabric. They hold the wall up, which Stark says symbolizes the resiliency of war.

"They hold the walls and the dancers are kicking them, putting them down," Christman says. "[War] is represented through movement."

The 50 minute long dance shows the performers breaking down the wall. Stark says the dancers move in relation to barrier and play off of the dancers gliding across the stage.

"The choreography came from how we occupy the space and I wanted this section in particular to have a lot of movement trying to be ahead of each other," she says. "And the lack of space is causing them to be in conflict with each other."

It is crucial for the dancers to be in tune with each other, dancer Eliza Panzella says, there are so many intricate moments in the dance.

"It has a lot to it," Panzella says. "She came in with movements she wanted us to use and we have taken it and she has manipulated the movement. We've retrograded it, and we've changed the dynamics."

Stark wants her piece to make her audience ponder the effects of war and in essence what it would be like to say goodbye to yourself in the process. Stark chose to use letters from soldiers and their family members to tug at the audience's heartstrings.

"She wants her piece to leave it all naked on stage, to leave it bare," Panzella says.