In 2008, kloetzel&co. collaborated with Knowhere Productions, Inc. for a three-hour site-specific performance celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the small French-speaking town of Ponteix in Saskatchewan. Set in various sites around Ponteix including the Notre Dame Auvergne Cathedral.
Presented by the Dancers’ Studio West Artist in Residence series, kloetzel&co.performed the chilling work From Terezin to M31 that uses as a springboard the relationship between Alice Liddell (upon whom Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is based) and Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). With support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Dancers’ Studio West.
In 2007, kloetzel&co. and the ISU Dance Program presented an evening of site-specific performance as part of First Friday ArtWalk. With movement, music, spoken word, and film, the performances uncovered the intimate connections between Pocatello’s history and the railroad. The piece included an installation in the Pocatello railroad depot as well as an interactive tour of the depot and one of Pocatello’s oldest hotels, the Hotel Yellowstone. With support from the Pocatello Arts Council.
In 2007, Poet Bethany Schultz and Kloetzel joined for a duet of poignant interaction, awkward lap play, and dozens of brassieres in the foyer of the Old Town Pocatello Building. Presented as part of First Friday ArtWalk, a celebration of Pocatello’s historic district.
For In Place, kloetzel&co. took audiences on an informative and destabilizing tour through downtown Riverside, CA and the California Museum of Photography. The evening’s five parts explored Riverside’s political, social, and architectural past and present through a tour of the Riverside promenade and the California Museum of Photography. As the audience rambled through the score of live music and dance, they experienced performers scampering up trees and spinning under the audience’s feet, the dark side of homelessness in the land of suburbia, a witty critique on art and architectural history, and an uproarious auction of questionable art. Live music was provided by Jay Ammon and the Dumpster Orchestra.
Presented by the Dance@Night series, Icarus Fried joined kloetzel&co. and clarinetist John Masserini in an evening-length work of wit, irony, and surprising beauty. Kloetzel’s choreography of desperate extensions, flippant gestures, and impatient waiting joins with Jeff Curtis’ tongue-in-cheek film collage, Kristin Smith’s delicate sculptural creations, Derek Beaulieu’s visual poetry, and Masserini’s athletic clarinetistry for a fresh look at gender roles, representation, and social expectations.
The signature work of the evening, Icarus Fried, also enjoyed performances at On the Boards as part of the Northwest New Works Festival, as well as at the Collision Symposium at the University of Victoria. The work offers a postmodern take on the modern obsession with climax, joining live clarinet and movement to toy with the influence of the aural over the visual aesthetic.
Rock was a free site-specific performance of live music and dance on the historic Carroll Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY. With kloetzel&co.’s robust, athletic movement as well as live music provided by the company’s interactive, five-piece band, Rock acted as a community performance and celebration for the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Pre- and post-performance activities highlighted the community’s efforts to clean up the canal and the performance concluded with the audience dancing to live music on the historic bridge. Rock was chosen as a “Today’s Pick” in the New York Daily News. With support from a Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grant.
Presented at the Auburn Bar as part of the Fluid Festival and recapped at the TransAlta Barn for the Feats Festival, Smile Capital USA toys with the paradoxes of small-town life in the United States. Combining pop music, recorded text, lots of physical and facial tension, and sardonic film work, Kloetzel digs into the (more and less) amusing hypocritical stances in the land of the “free.” It takes as its basis the 1948 ordinance by the Mayor of the City of Pocatello, ID, George Phillips, making it illegal not to smile in Pocatello.
kloetzel&co. presented Caper at the Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards in Seattle. Chalie Livingston and Jeff Curtis joined kloetzel&co. and John Masserini in a joyous romp with gumballs, splintering tables, witty film work, and Eric Mandat’s resolutely non-climactic score. Caper flirts with competition and perspective on a grand scale as music, dance, and film all combine in a bizarrely sexy circus world.
In 2006, kloetzel&co. in collaboration with clarinetist John Masserini, pianist Mark Neiwirth, tenor Geoffrey Friedley, poet Greg Nicholl, and filmmaker Jeff Curtis presented an evening-length gambol through multiple disciplines at the Bistline Theatre at the brand new ISU Performing Arts Center. Pairing kloetzel&co. with live avant garde twentieth century music, textual collage, and film work, It’s OK, no one’s looking tested the boundaries of collaboration and convention: dancers careened off 50s-style tables, singers flew through the air while vocalizing in varied tongues, and a clarinetist discovered pelvic flare as he worked through frantic trilling. Included live performances of John Cage’s chance creation “Aria”, Eric Mandat’s dramatic “Tricolor Capers,” Emma Lou Diemer’s “Tocata,” and Joan Tower’s “Wings”. Pieces from It’s OK, no one’s looking went on to performances in Seattle, Victoria, Flagstaff, and Calgary.