she/her/hers

Ginger Krebs is a Chicago-based visual artist and choreographer, best known for ensemble performances that use dry humor, precise choreography and perceptual disorientation to address forms of empire and colonization, surveillance technology and image driven culture. Her dance draws from vernacular movement that non-dancers can relate to. Its physicality and self-effacing humor reflect the industrial, agricultural, Midwestern place where it’s made. 

Krebs made sculpture before shifting her focus to performance, and her dance continues to emphasize the materiality of bodies, and the awkwardness and vulnerability of existing as a body in the world. She is interested in power, and in the potential of both media to address the exploitation of bodies by remote or invisible actors. In rehearsal with her collaborators, she tracks and experiments with the interpersonal dynamics playing out in the group, and the ultimate performance reflects these unique relationships.

The Project

All We Can See from Here proposes a ritual of interdependence. Four dancers build a succession of symmetrical, interlocking shelters with their bodies. A geometric diagram on the floor designates the performance’s zone of operations, where resources are equally distributed, and everyone has committed to stay and “work it out”. When synchrony falters, the team ceremonially re-calibrates. 

The performance investigates differences between how cooperation might be pictured from the outside (as in utopian or even propagandist ideas of efficient coordination), and the painstaking work of getting along in close quarters. The hypnotic flow of patterns suggests computer-generated imagery, as if it’s being produced by image capture algorithms. But each performer’s unique humor and humanity nevertheless persist. They flash intermittently at first, and later propel the team toward flexible and responsive possibility.

The project was begun just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and restarted in residency at HCL. An in-progress performance for a small gathering took place at HCL in December 2021, and an outdoor excerpt was presented at Walsh Park in June 2022, as part of DCASE’s Night Out in the Parks program. 

“The isolation and uncertainty I experienced during the pandemic lockdown made me long for a clear sense of purpose, physical connection, and confirmation of precisely how I fit with other people. Usual markers of time were suspended, and the multi-sensory dialogue of in-person communication was flattened to virtual, visual modes. “All We Can See from Here” reflects these conditions and collateral desires, with its puzzle-like geometries, soft contact between bodies, and slippery, looping sense of time.”

—Ginger Krebs

About the Artist

Ginger Krebs has presented her artwork recently in Chicago at the Cultural Center, Loyola University, The Arts Club of Chicago, Sector 2337, and the Chicago Artists Coalition. Lately she has been recognized with an Artist Fellowship Award in Performance-Based Arts by the Illinois Arts Council and residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University, and at The Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy. She teaches performance and multi-disciplinary studio courses at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.