TINY Dances
Created and performed by Nathan Hall and Laura Ann Samuelson. Commissioned by the Denver Art Museum as part of Untitled Final Fridays: Creative Take Over. 2018
practicing.
solo work. 2017
Boulder Premiere: Boulder Creative Collective
Denver Premiere: Buntport Theater
Presented in rep with square product theatre's production of Damaris Webb's The Box Marked Black.
Denver's Westword Interview about Practicing
This Aunt is Not A Cockroach
created and performed by Emily K Harrison & Laura Ann Samuelson.
co-produced with square product theatre. 2016
Twelve legs and a cactus living next door to each other in a crevice of the coastline (or perhaps it's the Grand Canyon) eat, sleep, and work at regular intervals (or at least: they try). Two neighbors who barely know each other shift their gaze back and forth from the opening of a cozy desert cave to the unknown wilds of the unpredictable seas (or perhaps its just a sheer drop). They are trying to be decisive. They are trying to figure it out. They ask each other - who is in charge, here? Is this our home? What does any of it mean?
Performed at The Wesley Chapel (Boulder) & Buntport Theater (Denver)
Read about this production in the Boulder Daily Camera
Goodnight, Courtney Love
created and performed by Joanna Rotkin & Laura Ann Samuelson
co-produced with Joanna & The Agitators in partnership with the North Boulder Recreation Center. 2016
GOODNIGHT, COURTNEY LOVE is a site-specific dance created by Joanna Rotkin and Laura Ann Samuelson that takes place in the NBRC's pool. GOODNIGHT, COURTNEY LOVE is an examination of women in public space.
“It was surprising, humorous and so evocative of sea and river creatures even though you were costumed in human street clothes. Like 70’s era airline stewardesses during an emergency water landing, who emerged as mermaids, and other mer-beings. It made us smile throughout the entire performance. Thank you for displaying the bravery of artistry, vision and enjoyment of body wisdom. BRAVO, BRAVO, BRAVO.” -Agness A, Audience Member
“[Goodnight, Courtney Love] is about an individual in an environment, and how she copes, how she finds beauty in that constricted environment, how she endures, how she does not give up, how she insists upon her self, her own integrity, what SHE likes, what feels good to HER body, and how she keeps going. [It's about] ultimately staying intact. Viscerally. Emotionally. Without destroying anything or lessening her own integrity. Not an easy task. Not often seen in this world.” - Carol Le, Audience Member
DO NOT FEAR IDEAS DO NOT FEAR DO NOT DO IDEAS
Solo performance work commissioned by Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art to accompany the visual exhibition Wild Women Never Get The Blues. 2015
Dramaturgy: Ethan Cowan
DO NOT FEAR IDEAS, DO NOT FEAR, DO NOT DO IDEAS, created and performed by Laura Ann Samuelson, is an original dance work taking place within artist Susan Wick’s exhibition at BMoCA, Wild Women Never Get The Blues. This work, inspired by Wick’s visual landscape, is an exploration of how performance, with its time-based nature, might influence how we experience space. DO NOT FEAR IDEAS, DO NOT FEAR, DO NOT DO IDEAS investigates the relationship between action and image, seeing and being seen, and what it means for one artist to place themselves on the edge of another artist’s world.
ReTriplicate
Produced/Presented by Buntport Theater & Clyfford Still Museum . Created by Buntport Theater, Laura Ann Samuelson/Hoarded Stuff, Screw Tooth and Teacup Gorilla. 2015
Read Kristin Feldcamp's (Clyfford Still Museum) review here.
Kitsch
Premiered at 2014 Boulder International Fringe Festival with additional performances hosted by Naropa University, Bill Starr (Colorado Springs), and Paloma Street Studio (Los Angeles)
Winner of 2014 Encore! Festival Award Winner
Received Bhanu Kapil's Most Feral Performance Award - 2014
Audience Review- Angel Dominguez:
“Samuelson’s use of body, paper and voice bring forth a viscerally captivating performance that moves through more emotions than I was aware I could experience in one performance. KITSCH is an experience of humanity. I don’t know how else to put that. Samuelson inflates/infiltrates our hearts with the sublime and brings us from floating laughter to the verge of tears in a heartbreak that blooms a beautiful sense of being alive in the world as a human being. Going back through my notes of the performance, I find only scrawls: attempts to capture that which cannot be communicated outside of the performance.”
Taming the Apology
created and performed with Li Molnar Kronlid in residence at Skogen. 2014. (Gothenburg, Sweden).
Everything is in.
Performed in Boulder (Community Dance Collective) and Berlin (Tatwerk). 2014
EVERYTHING IS IN is an unwieldy ritual assembled from warm, stale, sour, convoluted, sweet, and strange moments--moments that rebel against themselves, that wait for their place in the queue, moments whose dirty fingernails are a dead giveaway away every time. EVERYTHING IS IN tests how much we can hold, how hard we try, and when we know that it's time to let go
Il Pleut.
Created by Laura Ann Samuelson & Adam Stone
Sound design by Adam Stone
Performed by Laura Ann Samuelson
Performed at Buntport Theater, Denver, CO as part of Three Things
Some Kind of Fun
Concept, Direction & Design by Adam Stone
Co-Created by Adam Stone, Erin Rollman & Laura Ann Samuelson w/the cast
Writing by Adam Stone and Erin Rollman
Choreography by Laura Ann Samuelson
A Screw Tooth Production at Buntport Theater. 2013.
Performed by:
Adderly White Bigelow, Ali Janes-Paulsen, Charlie Dando, Chris Kendall, Claire Patton, Drew Horwitz, Edith Weiss, Emily K. Harrison, Joanna Rotkin, Jonathan Edward Brown, Joseph Wolff Phillips, Kaelee Hart, Laura Ann Samuelson, Mary Grace Legg, Nathan Blackwell, Rachel Graham, Skye Hughes
Tiny Gods: More
Performed as part of Tiny Gods: Shuffling Home to See the Queen - A collaboration with Joanna & The Agitators. The Wesley Chapel - Boulder. 2013.
Let Them Eat Cake
Created and Performed by Laura Ann Samuelson and Joanna Rotkin in collaboration with Margaret Harris & Johannah Franke. [2012]
Premiered as part of 2012 Boulder Fringe Festival.
An illogical sojourn into the life of an ant family through the efforts and hard work of a gold medal winning (and wearing) post-post-modern dance team. The ants move their furniture as they have done for thousands of years, but when they abandon everything to eat cake, one has to ask: who are the ants that love you and who are the ants that don’t?
Winner of the 2012 Boulder International Fringe Festival Encore Award.
