Ginger Krebs

Instagram: @gingerkrebs

Website: http://www.gingerkrebs.com

Bio: Ginger Krebs performs, choreographs, makes visual artist and leads collaborative ensemble projects in Chicago. Her work has been presented recently at Firehouse Arts Center in Bellingham, Washington, Chicago Athletic Association, Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater, The Dance Center of Columbia College, and Elastic Arts. She has been awarded residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, The Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University-Tallahassee, MacDowell, Ucross, and Djerassi. Her work is currently being supported by a Creative Catalyst grant from the Illinois Arts Council and a dance studio residency at the Chicago Cultural Center. She was recognized with an Artist Fellowship Award in Performance-Based Arts by the Illinois Arts Council in 2019, a MAP Fund grant in 2015, and a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award in 2014. She is an Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Statement: I began, as an artist, by making sculpture, but my interest in networks and relationship dynamics led me to want to enact systems through movement, so I’ve been making performances since 2005. My performances are preoccupied with power, and haunted by the ways it hides behind the mirages of capitalist ideology, while enforcing visibility on other bodies. The dancers respond to spatial constraints, behavioral rules, and to the fundamentally exposed condition of live performance. The humble, “barely coping” material that results is “given the formalist treatment” to become complex, layered choreography that updates 1970’s formalism and complicates it with power and desire. Bravery in the face of vulnerability is central to my work: the way people are impacted by violence and exploitation, and the ingenious psychological responses we invent to cope with, protect or heal from the damage. I’ve made dances of procrastination, a self-pity montage and an awkwardly ritualistic “square dance” of apology and reconciliation (inspired by a pattern that emerged among dancers during a rehearsal process). I made an entire performance about status and my quest for specialness, where at one point the performers compete, as in a game show, for things we had anonymously admitted we wanted, like “muscle definition” and “luxury camping equipment”.