East Coast Artist Katherine Adamenko. First in a series of interviews with OtE: 2ND Int. Latinx Performance Art Festival Performers.
Katherine Adamenko in performance of "Red."
2012. Alex Colby, photographer.
This is the first in a series of interviews with the
artists/performance artists who will be performing in October 5th-7th's On the
Edge: The 2nd International Latinx Performance Art Festival. I have known
Katherine ever since we first met at UCDavis, where we created
"Putoh" together. Putoh is a cross between Japanese Butoh crossed with a a
pre-Latinx attitude, something which we will have to talk about in a future interview, but let me give Katherine a chance to introduce herself!
Xavier: Please take a
moment to introduce yourself and describe your artwork for us. Are you
primarily a performance artist? If not, what other forms of artwork do
you do?
Katherine: I'm Katherine
Adamenko, a performance artist and Butoh dancer. I was a dancer,
actress, and singer before crossing over into performance art. My performance
artwork is influenced by dance and my theatre background and comes out of that
cannon, as opposed to coming from a fine arts or contemporary art background.
Xavier: How long have you
been working as a performance artist? How did you start? Do you have any
formal training, or do you have connections to a specific school or theory/ies
of performance?
Katherine: I officially began
to work as a performance artist in 1995, when I was in graduate school at the
University of Essex in England. I didn't necessarily set out to become a
performance artist per se, I was studying contemporary theatre practice. We had
a module with performance artist Bobby Baker, and I created my first
performance with liquid icing and a birthday cake wearing a unitard left over
from the mime classes I had taken in NYC that I happened to pack. I
recall, though, that I saw Karen Finley perform just before I left the country,
which must have planted a seed. I already had some performance ideas and former
songs I wrote, I put them together for my final thesis show to create my first
one-woman show - it was highly theatrical, with vignettes performed promenade-style in a gallery. I have a great deal of formal training in ballet, modern
dance, singing, and acting. I use all of that training in my performance art.
While in college in the late 80s, I saw a video performance of Pina Bausch, and
my mind was blown. It was so different from the post-modern dance I was
learning as a dance major. My love of physical theatre was born! About 23
years ago, I was also introduced to Japanese Butoh dance and fell in love with
the slow, meditative approach to dance theatre.
I started my Ph.D. in
performance studies in 2000 when we (Xavier and Katherine) met. I held a series
of performance salons in which I explored site-specific performance and
encouraged others to do so. I did some pretty racy stuff based on some of the
fantastic feminist performance/theatre theory while studying for my Master's in
England, which also informed my work. Brecht and Artaud also influenced me. I
am also passionate about physical theatre.
Xavier: How
would you describe your own performative work? What is performance art to you
and what about it motivates you to be a part of its rich history?
Katherine: Much
of my past work is radical feminist performance art, where I use my body
as the main tool of expression and explore the female lived experience, usually
personally. My solo show work is created in somewhat unrelated vignettes that
piece together to make a whole. For me, performance art is alternative story-telling
in one way or another. I tend to be character-driven (part of the theatrical
background). The body is such a powerful tool for expression. Also, mainstream
performance didn't resonate with me as I developed as an artist. I knew that I
had to make my mark and create original work. The more alternative performances
I saw, the more I knew I belonged in that left-of-center crowd.
My
interdisciplinary body-based practice aims to break down barriers between
cultural norms and existing performance practices. Three significant elements
thread through my work, often overlapping: Embodiment, Audience/Spectator
Relationships, and Sexuality/Cultural Representations. First, my teaching and
performance practice is grounded in embodied awareness, movement theories, Butoh,
and its sister Putoh. Second, I am fascinated with the expected and unexpected
roles of the performer and spectator. I have created several private and public
performances and installations that challenge traditional notions of viewing by
aiming to displace them. Third, I have been working with both the iconic and
spectacular notions of gender with specific regard to sexuality in performance.
I deliberately straddle the borders between high and low art, subverting
notions of "female" and "femininity" to challenge her
various cultural representations.
I generate
work that is a pastiche of artistic styles from Cabaret to Butoh with a
colorful blend of radical feminism, burlesque, audience interaction, and
subversive theatre tactics, often using a wide range of musical pastiche,
recorded and live monologues, physical theatre, original choreography, musical
theatre, character satire, and the occasional food item.
Xavier: Awesome! Can
you describe the performances that you will be doing with us? How do they fit
into the bigger picture of your work?
Katherine: I
am so excited to be bringing the Beauty Borg back to life for this
festival in an extended performance. Tres Chic: The Beauty Borg Full
Circle is an inspired Putoh, dance-theatre work
that examines and questions the forms and norms of (often oppressive/sometimes
self-repressive) ritualized feminine beauty worldwide. This Beauty Borg (think Metropolis meets Real
Housewives meets Real Doll) transforms from a
multiculti cyborgian goddess to a lustful animal-borg-human hybrid to her human
beginnings—a humble striptease.
SHOCKED is a “Putoh” movement-inspired work that explores the advent of electro-shock therapy in the 1940s as a treatment for madness and mental disorders. It is a vignette from my one-woman, multi-media passion project For Her Own Good: Chronicles of Women and Madness. The show explores the misguided history of female sexuality and gendered madness. It draws from historical accounts and fictional imaginings spanning over 150 years, written by and about women deemed mad and, for some, incarcerated in asylums against their will. Each vignette focuses on a different historical period corresponding with a specific and often-times barbarous psychiatric ‘cure du jour.’ I aim to bring the voices of these women back to life - each in a unique way through different performance mediums.
Xavier: Going
back to childhood--what is your earliest memory of making something
artistic--do you think there is any connection to what you do now? I find
that for performers that this can often refer to an external event that began
everything. Tell us a story!
Katherine: I
have a couple of stories. The first one I love to tell is that my mother took
me to see The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center in NYC when I was three years old.
When it ended, as the story goes, I turned to her and said "I want to do
that." My mom enrolled me in my first ballet class shortly after. One of
my actual first memories, is being in that ballet class skipping over album
jackets with a scarf in my hand!
Xavier: That’s
amazing, the Nutcracker and going to see the Russian Ballet also fits deeply in
my own performance biography!
Katherine: Growing
up, I put on dance and costume shows with my cousins whenever they came over to
visit. I also loved to make school decorations, one of my favorites was a giant-sized
Frankenstein for the school's Halloween Party. When I wasn't putting on shows,
I was always making something from intricate school projects to Barbie Doll
clothes and costumes from my grandmother’s curtains.
I also
owe my mother everything. She was a great patron of the arts and took my
brother and me to every cultural show you could imagine. I saw original
Balanchine and Jerome Robbins ballets, Meryl Streep in Alice in Wonderland
early in her career, Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou in Sweeny Todd, the
Paper Bag Players, and many trips to the Met. She and my dad fully supported my
ballet obsession, and in my tweens schlepped me into the city after school two
to three times a week to study at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), and then
summers of schlepping to train at the Joffrey Ballet school.
Xavier: I
didn’t know any of that! That is amazing! What things do you keep coming back
to in your work--what are your greatest obsessions?
Katherine: I
keep coming back to female sexuality and the obsession with beauty, and the
lived experience as a woman - and how women are complicit in their captivity of
sorts. I am a half-biological essentialist. I am fascinated with how biology
plays out in society regarding gender.
Xavier: I too find gender to be fascinating and consider myself to be a pro-feminist male. What do you consider your greatest achievement and what are your goals for the future?
Katherine: My greatest achievement is still being in the game after all of these years. Just when you think your best work is behind you, you create something that really resonates! This happened with The Beauty Borg. I am looking forward to what I'll be creating next! I have a new solo show that I conceived of to develop for 2024. It's called "Shame on Me" and explores aging (specifically my aging) and the feminist (or antifeminist) implications that occur.
Xavier: That
sounds fascinating, are there any artists/performers who have inspired your
work?
Katherine: The list is long! I have a few I can say here:
Jerome Robbins, Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous), Gilda Radner, Carol Burnett, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Bobby Baker, Karen Finley, Annie Sprinkle, Tim Miller, Eric Bogosian, DV8 Physical Theatre/Lloyd Newson, and Pina Bausch.
Xavier: That’s a very nice list! What projects do you have lined up for the future?
Xavier: Now I want to throw out some random questions based on the old questions that Marcel Proust used to use. Do you believe in love? What is your definition of magic?
Katherine: I
do believe in love in its various expressions and depths. I am celebrating my
11th year anniversary with my partner in December, and have never experienced
the deep love of a long relationship before - it's quite astounding building
your life with someone you cherish and have fun with.
Magic
occurs when precious, serendipitous moments happen. When things fall into place
or you find yourself in a moment of bliss or a moment of true connection.
Xavier: As an artist, what is your greatest fear?
Katherine: Being
irrelevant and not finding a digital home for my work after I am gone. I have
to figure that part out. I'd love to leave a performance legacy for future
generations.
Xavier: What is your greatest hope?
Katherine: Less
divisiveness in the world.
Xavier: Do you have a website/s where people can learn more about you and your work?
Xavier: Any
last things that you would like to talk about--anything?
THANK
YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for having me and for the tremendous amount of work
that went into putting the festival together.
Xavier: Thank
you!
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