Kelsey Oliver
Kelsey Oliver
Summertime
Music : Marc Rebillet
Choreographer : Betty Mansion
Dancers : Betty Mansion, Veronique Lemonnier, Sarah Magassa, Kelsey Oliver, Ellen Houck, Gabriel Goux, Alessio Sutera, Pierre Lamour, Jérôme De Meûter Videographer : Luca Fernandez
Réalisé avec l'aide de la Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, Service de la Danse
My work is a series of live booby traps.
Part of me craves the fixation of a million tiny riddled details within a maximalism of aesthetics;
the other part of me loves the impossibility of being able to perfect my tasks, due to the unexpected attack of elements - LiikEeee
cheeto dust slippery floor cake or water-filled fishing boots or rotten popcorn-throwing crowds or my precious interrupting cat.
I’m not afraid of danger. Or risk. Or fucking up.
That is where I’m my most taken-off-guard self, my most impulsive self.
I love leaning into the gross, random, and thoughtfully inappropriate.
I dream up overwhelmingly elaborate sets and costumes and movement and speech that feed and ambush my masochistic tendencies.
My body is this eagerly trained work horse that ends up diverging into a thrashy chaotic mountain goat.
I’m a fan of the curveball.
The unexpected humor that spontaneity brings.
The personable, the intimate.
The inevitable loss of control of the work that results in
unforeseeable interpretations.
At its root, I believe collaboration is the best of these
serendipitous concoctions.
I adore co-developing a common absurdist group language with
a wide swath of artists with mutual curiosities.
I am my most favorite self when I'm co-producing uncorked, unhinged
devised performance art.
and pursuing finessed madness.
Queering presumption, and thus, the process.
and defintely feeding on the interactively influenced experience.
Kelsey Oliver, an Austin native, is a freelance choreographer and performer in the digs for ridiculously experimental theatre, film, and concert dance.
Kelsey has choreographed/created for Fusebox Festival, Frontera Festival, SVT's Three Headed Fest, Austin Dance Festival, Beijing Dance Festival, Cohen New Works Festival, Frank Wo/Men Collective, Boss Babes ATX, Underbelly Theatre Company, Ground Floor Theatre, MoHA, The Contemporary Austin, Erica Nix, CB Goodman, Heartland Theatre Collective, UT New Theatre, University of Texas at Austin’s Dance Repertory Theatre, American College Dance Festival Gala, McCallum Fine Arts, and has created much commercial and concert work within the United States and beyond.
She has performed in several productions and film pieces world wide, including work with The Rude Mechanicals, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Magdalena Jarkowiec, Heloise Gold, Nino Soberon, Urzulka, Thee Gay Agenda, The Reverie, Capyac, Meow Wolf, Wunderbaum, Dance Theatre X, Body Shift, Performa/Dance, Ventana Ballet, Paper Chairs, The Theorists, Betty Mansion, THIS IS SLOANE, Raw Paw, Ministry of Muse, Vibe Vessel, Body Art Movement, Years & Years, Mother Falcon, Cordova Quartet, + more. Kelsey has also been an adjudicator and dance instructor for studios and teams throughout Texas.
Kelsey received a B.F.A. in Dance in 2015, studying at the University of Texas at Austin and short-term Le Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France.
grid pc:
mask by Todd Mein
cinematography by Tori Reynolds
wallpaper prints by Ann Hamilton