INTERVIEW: Katelyn Halpern brings her multidisciplinary art to Jersey New Moves
Photo: The Jersey New Moves festival will feature the work of multidisciplinary artist Katelyn Halpern. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by AMT Public Relations with permission.
On Friday, June 10, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center will host the annual Jersey New Moves festival, a celebration of five female choreographers and dance artists. On the bill are Hillary-Marie, tap dance artist and founder of Jersey Tap Fest; Sameena Mitta, artistic director of MeenMoves; multidisciplinary artist Katelyn Halpern; Kristilee Maiella, an alumna of Montclair State University; and Kiana Rosa Fischer, an instructor at Mason Gross School of the Arts, according to press notes.
These five dance artists were selected, in association with Dance New Jersey, to work in a year-long fellowship with choreographers Carolyn Dorfman, Sam Pott and Andy Chiang. The NJPAC performance serves as a culmination of their journey.
Halpern is an artist originally from Austin, Texas, and now based in Jersey City, New Jersey, according to her official biography. She definitely puts the multidisciplinary in multidisciplinary artist, with her résumé featuring everything from life-sized installations to cut-and-tape zines to concert dance. Her previous dance credits include JUICE and Loose Heart. She also serves as co-artistic director of the SMUSH Gallery in Jersey City.
Hollywood Soapbox recently exchanged emails with Halpern about her contribution to the Jersey New Moves festival. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audiences expect from your contribution at this performance in New Jersey?
They can expect some emotional nakedness, a status report in the form of words and movement, and vanilla apology cupcakes. My piece, “Being Here Is What We Are Doing,” addresses the difficulty of making, in June 2022, a dance that was originally supposed to premiere in June 2020, and all that has happened in between that brings us to the present moment. Despite my best efforts, I’m not sure that I’ll have a “good” dance to present, but at least I can say, with baked goods, I’m sorry and thank you for being here.
Your work frequently centers on interiority/intimacy/reflection and strangeness/humor/freedom. What interests you about these topics?
These are the essential ingredients of my life as well as my priorities. When I envision a better world, these idea clusters point the way. It just makes sense to me to elevate them in any way I can.
Could you further explain how you create works about the “lived experience of moving through the world in a feminine body”?
Sure! So gender is a construct, and having been told that I am female and a woman, and having lived largely according to the attendant precepts, I’ve noticed that some things are off … most notably that we live under patriarchy, and it sucks, and it’s enmeshed with many other oppressive dominant systems of belief like racism, ableism, capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy and so on. As I am conscious of living under these conditions in a body called feminine, and while also embracing the feminine and feminism, I make work that reflects and contends with the complexities of going through life this way. I have the feminie coexist onstage with lots of other things, and the juxtaposition often illuminates some nuance of experience that I want to convey.
How would you define being a “multidisciplinary” artist?
I work in a lot of different media — movement, performance, creative writing (mostly poetry), installation, fiber, visual media and intersections of these — and use all of them as a means of expression. Although my home discipline is dance and choreography, at this point in my artmaking I move through these various forms pretty fluidly and let them combine, or not, as the project or piece requires. Ultimately, though, naming myself as a multidisciplinary artist is a way to signal to others that whatever they are seeing is a facet, not a whole.
When did you first get interested in dance?
Dance really became interesting to me in high school, when I realized that it could be a vehicle for ideas. By happenstance, I attended a visual and performing arts magnet school in my hometown of Austin, Texas, and the dance program there (which I only attended, by the way, because I was not allowed to do cheerleading my freshman year) showed me that dance could be a lot more than a series of movements set to songs on the radio. It’s where I first saw Fosse and “weird” looking dance, and where I got exposed to modern and contemporary traditions. When I then learned that I had a knack for it and that I could make dance myself — forget it! I was hooked.
What’s the future hold for you as an artist?
Leaning into what feels good, which I think means doing little experiments and enjoying my multidisciplinarity. In early August my new installation piece “disaster [place]” is going up at Deep Space Gallery in Jersey City, and before that I’ll have a couple of weeks of open-ended residency in Upstate New York to relax, move through ideas and hopefully bring some order to my Google Drive. If you’re curious, you can find me at katelynhalpern.com and on IG at @katelynhalperndotcom.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Jersey New Moves festival, featuring the work of Katelyn Halpern, will take place Friday, June 10 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
