2026 PERFORMANCE SALONS
@ Berkeley Finnish Hall
Auditorium
3-6PM
May 17- Practicing It
***September 6 - Wrecking It
December 5 - Working On it
ABOUT WRECKING
Wrecking was originally developed by Susan Rethorst in 1995 in New York City.
Susan Rethorst's first wrecked piece was “Little by Little She showed up,” and the first wrecker was Tere O’Connor. Rethorst wrote: “He [Tere O’Connor] entered into the rehearsal process and looked at the piece as though it was to become his from that moment forward, changing it to his liking, imposing his own aesthetic with complete disregard for my intentions. The very things that I would never have imagined being different were the ones that he changed; the experience was akin to culture shock; disorienting, the center of gravity shifted. I then took back the rehearsals, with the same attitude toward his changes." (“Stealing, Influence and Identity,” Contact Quarterly, Winter/Spring 2012, Vol. 36, No. 1)
Wrecking was first done in Rethorst's NYC studio on Vandam Street. It has since been done at Danspace St Mark's, Fidget space in Philadelphia (under the name Remix Festival), Bryn Mawr, College, independently in Chicago and San Francisco, and has included such dance notables as Annie B. Parsons, Paul Lazar, David Gordon, John Jesrun and Jen Rosenblit.
Wrecking “Rules”:
1. Wreckers may not create new material, but may rearrange any of the existing material as much as they want. It’s okay to add text/sound/other containers for the material.
2. Wreckers do not have to use all of the material provided.
3. All resulting material must be repeatable, rather than improvisational, with a strong directorial voice.
4. No new cast members may be added, but existing members may be recast.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Kim Ip
Kim Ip/KRIMM’S DANCE PARTY/Slim Jim Pickins’ is a New Zealand born, Queer femme,
Chinese American choreographer and movement artist who resides on the traditional lands of
the Huichin (Oakland), California. Kim graduated from Mills College with a BA in Dance in
2014 and evolved her dance practice to include site-specific choreographies, teaching dance
class and leading tea time with elders, doing drag in nightlife venues, and devising
solo work about her relationship to her mother. She is researching the poetic phenomena and
painful relationship-building between first generation immigrant parents and second
generation immigrant children. She uses dance performance to hypothesise with an audience
“Is there more to our parent-child relationship? Can we deepen our attachment from a place
of pain?” She is deeply humbled and honoured to be engaging in a wrecking process with emma quan dewey--it truly is a full circle moment!
Find her @krimmip
Touch the Art: www.krimmip.com
photo credit: Robbie Sweeny
emma quan dewey
emma quan dewey is a Bay Area-raised dancer, choreographer, and educator rooting in Huchiun, Lisjan Ohlone territory (Oakland). emma believes in dance-making as a devotional, worldbuilding act, where ancestral/future ways of being that re~member our relationships to ourselves, land, and spirit can be practiced. A descendant of both upwardly mobile Chinese immigrants and early British settlers of Turtle Island, this worldbuilding work is a prayer to be in responsibility and refusal of emma’s lineages’ entanglements with US empire.
emma’s current creative research dances with how stories of change she carries in her lineages, like Dragon龍 and the 5 Phases 五行, come alive in cycles of change in the lands they’re on now. This research grounds in studies of improvisation, dance ethnography, qigong & taiji, Daoist philosophy, Chinese astrology & astronomy, and ecological attunement, with teachers including work with Dancing Earth Creations, Wudang White Horse, Weaving Earth, and a BA in Dance & Anthropology from Bowdoin College, among others. emma has shown work at Mendocino Arts Center, ROT Festival, D.I.R.T. Festival, Shawl-Anderson, and the School for Contemporary Dance & Thought. You can also find emma getting humbled by their students or the immensity of the ocean.
Karla Quintero
About the Work
Star Light is an improvised solo exploring my complicated relationship with pop music. Through dance, voice, text, costume, and music, I explore pop influences as both seduction and trap, entering its fantasy in an attempt to reclaim desire, agency, and personal expression from within the spectacle itself. This excerpt will feature tracks developed for the work by experimental musician Diego Munguia.
Karla Quintero is a dance artist based in Huichin/Oakland. Her cross-genre improvisation practice is grounded in contemporary, club, and partner dance lineages and somatic practices, and shaped through years of practicing, researching, and collaborating in interdisciplinary contexts. Grounded in listening and persistence, her work invites meaning to emerge through the act of dancing together. She investigates the conditions that make it possible to persist in dance—joyously and rigorously—over a lifetime, from movement practices and artistic collaboration to expanding ideas of what dance is and can be.
photo credit: Jim Watkins
Karla works nationally as a performer and has appeared in works by choreographers Cauveri Suresh, Gerald Casel, Hope Mohr, Robert Moses, Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Aura Fischbeck, Risa Jaroslow, and Jo Kreiter, among others. Her performance work has been recognized with an Isadora Duncan Dance Award.
Collaboration is central to Karla's practice. Over the past five years, she has co-led ALLOYED METTLES, a dance practice with movement artist Belinda He; GRUMN with Shareen DeRyan, producing dance horror media and film; interdisciplinary improvisation research with musician Lewis Jordan; and I, HOUDINI, an evening-length dance theater work being developed with choreographer Catherine Galasso and sound artist Dave Cerf, inspired by the meeting point between Harry Houdini's legacy and the collaborators' artistic practices. These projects have been supported through residencies at Dance Nucleus (Singapore), Loghaven (Knoxville), Temescal Arts Center (Oakland), and Finnish Hall (Berkeley, courtesy of senseobject).
Alongside these collaborations, Karla is developing STAR LIGHT, a solo performance project exploring pop music as both seduction and trap.
Wendy Rogers
I have choreographed and performed contemporary dances for over fifty years, residing in the East Bay Area, New York City and Riverside (University of California dance faculty, 1996-2016). I am grounded in the radical pedagogy of Ruth Hatfield begun in childhood, Berkeley, 1957. Movement exploration is primary. Years of study and/or performance with Modern/postmodern artists (e.g. David Wood, Margaret Jenkins, Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brown, Sara Rudner) led me to a neo-experimental approach, set and improvised work. I follow composer Lou Harrison’s words: “Cherish, conserve, consider, create.” I also worked in projects produced by composers John Luther Adams and Paul Dresher; and in one instance on the moon of Endor, filmmaker George Lucas. Following the experience of 1970’s downtown dancing in New York City, I returned to Berkeley, CA, and formed The Wendy Rogers Dance Company (1977-90). In 1991 I transformed the Company into multi-year, creative cycles. Focused by singular concepts and collaborative process, dancing evolves into performances allied to occasion and place. Since 2011 See What Happens rekindles moving artifacts from my Body of Work (1968 onward) in tandem with dancemaking from the present. I am grateful for Fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council; as well as a 2009 Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award in Malaysia; and a University of California Dickson Emerita Professorship (2018-19). I am especially honored by support from fellow artists, family and friends. W.R.
2026 SALONS are curated
in collaboration with
AURA FISCHBECK
Aura Fischbeck is an interdisciplinary dance artist, performer, improviser, movement educator and writer. Her work investigates the complexity of her lived experience through explorations of physicality, felt states, sound, language, imagery and task, as practices that invite noticing the interplay between perception, proprioception and presence. She moves towards the constancy of change as a way to locate herself as one who is committed to a life in motion. Aura holds an MFA in dance from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (2022) and a BA in dance and poetry from the Naropa University.
SALON OF PRACTICES
Participating Artists:
ABOUT PERFORMANCE SALONS
Performance Salons are a seasonal occurring event providing critical space for artists to experiment and show works-in-progress. Started in 2014 by Catherine Caraker, Diana Lara, Miriam Wolodarski, and Andy Lundberg, this by artists for artists event has been taking place about 3 or 4 times a year. Over time, we have developed diverse feedback methods that are useful for artists and enjoyable for audiences.
Between 2022-2023, the Salon was curated and offered in collaboration with the artists of Performance Primers:
Hannah Ayasse, Gizeh Muñiz Vengel, and Chibueze Crouch.
In 2026, the Salon series is conceived, curated, and produced in collaboration with Aura Fishbeck.
Interested in sharing your work?
contactsenseobject@gmail.com
Past Participating Artists
2025
alloyed mettles (Karla Quintero & Belinda He), Nica Portavia, Kevin Lo, Dylan Cowie-Haskell & Kriss Rulifson, Emily Leap & Miriam Wolodarski, Shira Yaziv & Megan Lowe
2024
Irene Hsi, Ava Maag, Leslie Castellano, Jonathan Kipp, Kevin Dockery, Emily Leap, Teresa Salas
2023
Conni McKenzie, Maya Moshin, Olallie Lackler, Asha Passalacqua, Mindy Zarem, Hannah Ayasse, Ciarra D'onofrio, Brenda Arellano, Josh Matthews
2022
Twyla Malchow-Hay, Sawako Ogo, Pamela Macias, Styles Alexander, Elisa Medina, Melissa Padilla
2019
Hannah Ayasse, Nicole Peisl with Alva Noe, Cathie Caraker with Rosemary Hannon, Ronja Ver, and Margit Galanter
2018
Meg Anderson, Kevin Dockery, Stacey Goodman, Amy Kingwill, Diana Lara with Joy Cosculluela, Gizeh Muñoz, Los Little Guys (Dimitri Kalaitzidis & Eric Elizondo), Judit Navratil, Molly and Aviva Rose-Williams, Randy Reyes, Debbie Taylor, Amelia Uzategui-Bonilla
2017
Liz Boubion, Joy Cosculluela, Lisa Fay with Qilo Matzen, Aura Fischbeck with Arletta Anderson, Christy Funsch and dancers, Rosemary Hannon with Diana Lara and Mindy Zarem, Karla Quintero, Molly Rose-Williams, Andy Strain
2016
Zack Bernstein/ Rajendra Serber, Kosta Bogoievski, Nuria Bowart, Nicole Casado with Maribel Lopez, Soleil Chappelle, Dasha Che, Lila Ann Dodge, Juliana Mendonca/Raíz de Agua, Sam Stone, Kira Kirsch, Minna Kartunnen, Elise Knudson, Vitali Kononov, Kevin Dockery, Utam Moses, Megan Lowe, Sonsheree Giles, Morgan True, Amy Kingwill, Adrian Wong, Joe Kreiter, Angela Vos, Hannah Wasiliewski
2015
Miriam Woldodarski with Rosemary Hannon, Emily Leap, Phoenicia Pettyjohn, Andy Lundberg, Kevin Dockery, and Leslie Castellano, Elio Scudieri, Brandon Stewart, Chani Bockwinkle, Hannah Wasiliewski
2014
Leslie Castellano/ Kevin Dockery/ Cameron Kelly, Vitali Kononov, Rosemary Hannon/Cathie Caraker/ Diana Lara/ Utam Moses, Phoenicia Pettyjohn