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At ChaShaMa

Lakeside at Obras, photo by Sherry Wiggins

* The space is located at 141 Bridge Park Dr., Brooklyn, NY 11201, on the waterfront side of the building next to Kaigo Coffee Room.

Karen Bernard explores the memory of trauma in a new work called LAKESIDE. Using video, and snippets of found audio woven together into an original score, Bernard layers minimalistic movements with an emotionally fraught sensitivity to draw her audience into a conceptually complex visual field. Bernard plays the roles of victim, witness and murderer, shifting between these roles with subtlety and intentionality to investigate how violence done to women affects us collectively—as a spectacle, an idea, and an experience lived and re-lived in the body. Central in the scene is a costume from her past, a bright yellow and black body suit. The costume is more than an object in the crime scene. It has a personality that has experienced physical terror.

Bernard will use her residency at ChaShaMa to further develop an active relationship with her audience, where like the performer who changes roles, their perception will shift between judge, jury and accomplice.

Original material developed with Lisa Parra, dramaturg Andi Villa Stover and digital composer Boris Billier with support from residencies L’Annexe-A and Obras Foundation. Karen Bernard is a project of New Dance Alliance.

The development of Lakeside is made possible through Foundation Obras and a Chashama Place to Present.