Alumni/ae Profile
PDS Dancer Following her Dream:
Kara Tatelbaum '96
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When Kara Tatelbaum ’96 was only 10, she choreographed her first piece, set to Paul Simon’s “Homeless.” And she hasn’t stopped doing what she loves since. In fact, she just choreographed her first show, “The World is Not a Solo,” at Manhattan’s renowned Merce Cunningham Studio in the West Village. In a review of her opening night performance on November 16, 2000, entitled “Small World, Big Emotions,” the New York Times said, “That world’s few inhabitants theatrically accomplished quite a lot [tonight] in concise character sketches filled with movements suggesting rising and falling emotional temperatures.” |
An honors graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Kara established her own production company, independentdancemaker, ltd., this year. The name of the company reflects Kara’s creative approach to dance production: it allows her to hire dancers for particular pieces rather than requiring her to own and operate an in-residence troupe. This energetic and talented twenty-two year-old has also created work for and performed with The Second Avenue Dance Company, Uptown Performance Series, Downtown Arts Festival, Skip Costa/Coremovement and the Dutchess Ballet Company. While at Tisch, Kara was one of five students chosen to study for a semester at the Salzburg Experimental Dance Exchange in Austria. She also was selected as a choreographer for Sony Corporation’s 50th anniversary party at SONYWONDER in New York.
| Kara began her dance training with the late Tom Adair and his Poughkeepsie Ballet Theater. She then spent several years studying with Valerie Feit at Ballet Arts Studio in Beacon. Feit, says Kara, was the first to encourage her to create her own unique movement style and the two have stayed in touch over the years. Indeed, in reference to Kara’s first piece, which was choreographed while she was Feit’s student, Feit recently allowed: “She did [a] solo that I would have been happy to have danced myself.” Kara came to PDS in the tenth grade from public school and, not surprisingly, helped choreograph the annual original musicals here. |  |
And what is her style? As the Poughkeepsie Journal reporter who interviewed Kara this fall said, don’t let the term modern dance scare you; Kara is “all about accessibility.” Kara concurs: “Sometimes [modern dance] can be intimidating for an audience, because they don’t know what’s going on. But I want you to get it; I want my mom to get it. Intellectualize it all you want—sometimes it’s just nice to see a body moving around.”
With over 20 pieces of choreography already under her belt and a brand-new production company to boot, Kara also teaches dance to kindergarteners and first graders at the the School of Blessed Sacrament in New York through the urban outreach program Education Through Music. And if you missed her recent performances in the city, take heart. She will be returning to Poughkeepsie in June to present a new work at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House, where she performed so often as a child and teenager.
For more information about Kara’s work, contact her at Independentdancemaker@yahoo.com.
Sandra M. Moore/12-2000
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