ASHES/ASHES is pleasure to present DəBYSI by Kira Blazek, a dance installation for four players specifically made for the non-traditional stage.
The work’s title is the phonetic spelling of Claude Debussy, whose philosophical writings inspired Blazek to make something that existed ‘between nature and mystery’. The delicacy of the French language has long escaped her pronunciations, and so parallels her capability to stick with such idealism. The performers go through a gauntlet of schoolyard behaviors and abstracted rites of passage, in their attempt to find beauty. In her attempt to make something Debussy would be proud of, she bumps up against her obsession with the opposite end of the spectrum. This project was underwritten by the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance and the CalArts Interdisciplinary Grant Award.
Kira Blazek is a dance artist originally from Houston, TX. In this age of information and globalization, Blazek takes a warm but dry perspective on our sense of environment, nature, and ethnicity. Growing up in the diversity of Houston influenced Blazek’s view on the melding and appropriation of cultures. Ten years of classical training at Houston Ballet Academy informed her early ideas of structure and form in the body, but the wildness of club culture was equally enchanting. With a BFA from the University of Oklahoma, she launched her professional career in Chicago, dancing for Hubbard Street 2. Later, she relocated to New York and worked with various companies including Douglas Dunn & Dancers, Christopher Williams Dance, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Susan Marshall & Co, and Pilobolus amongst others. She has collaborated with contemporary artists Jason Akira-Sommi, Jack Ferver, and Ryan McNamara in various non-traditional performances. She was featured in the music video for Beach House’s Lazuli, and joined Douglas Dunn as an Artist in Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency in 2013.
The wide range of work demanded a cohesive training method, which she found in Anouk van Dijk’s Countertechnique®. Blazek studied periodically with van Dijk from 2005-2012, and danced in SHOT(anoukvandijkdc) in 2009. Blazek has since become a certified Countertechnique teacher, and has led classes around the country. Countertechnique brought a language with which Blazek could translate the wilder moments in her choreography to other dancers.
Her choreography has been presented in New York City venues such as Dixon Place, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Location One, and Danspace at St. Mark’s Church. She has created commissions for eMerge Dance Festival in Tulsa, and Fuzion Dance Artists of Sarasota. She continues to participate in social dance trends (club vernacular), which greatly informs her choreography. She has a passion to get people out of seclusion and onto the dance floor. She promotes meditation and acupuncture as healthcare. She currently pursues her graduate studies at California Institute of the Arts.