It began with watching

It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching
MEN in charge / Dance of the Puppets
MEN at Christmas
It began with watching
MEN at The Head
It began with watching
MEN at Mac Hall

It began with watching

Through blunt text and even blunter physicality, It began with watching offers a brutally humorous take on the political landscape as ‘alternative facts’ and outlandish acts take centre stage. A site-adaptive work that is tailored to each space it visits, the absurdist exchanges between performers and audience members and droll commentary in  It began with watching  provide an entertaining and honest portrait of a sector enthralled with power. A droplet of intelligence here, a hint of a shadowy figure, and we are all marionettes, putty in the puppet master’s hands.

The evening-length site-adaptive version of It began with watching premiered in Edmonton on June 27-29, 2017 at Edmonton City Hall and on June 30, 2017 at the Vignettes Building through The Works Art & Design Festival. 

Excerpts of this work have also been shown at more than ten sites between 2017 and 2020 across Calgary’s downtown, at various on-campus locations at the University of Calgary, as well as at EV Junction as part of Alberta Culture Days and at the DJD Dance Centre for the Canadian National Dance Assembly’s annual conference in 2017. 

The film, MEN in charge, which was released in 2021, is based on the stage and site versions of It began with watching, directed by Melanie Kloetzel and shot and edited by Linnea Swan.

Contact kloetzel&co. to book the MEN for your site – restaurant, brewery or boardroom!

Room (a film)

Room (a film)
Room (a film)
Room (a film)
Room (a film)
Room (a film)
Room (a film)

Room (a film)

Room, an environmental dance film by kloetzel&co., examines the themes of ecological precarity and adaptation in the Anthropocene. Based on the live site-adaptive performance work, Room, and filmed on site in Glasgow, UK and Calgary, Canada, the film uses close-ups of physical interactions with a diversity of sites and quick cuts between sites to display the human body as both inherently mobile but also fixed in place, unable to escape the vagaries of environmental transformation.

Created by Melanie Kloetzel, in collaboration with set designer Fergus Dunnet and cinematographer Chantal Wall, Room weighs the limits and possibilities of human efforts to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Winner of a 2019 ‘Creativity Award’ from A Show for a Change film festival, and one of only ten films selected for spudFILM: Wasted – An Environmental Film Fest in the UK, Room has also been selected for Seattle’s Virtual Cinema Festival and as a special feature for the Equinox Mountain Film Festival in Manchester, Vermont.

It began with watching

It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching
It began with watching

It began with watching

It began with watching, a dance theatre work by kloetzel&co., explores the transformation of democracy as ‘alternative facts’ and outlandish acts populate the political landscape. A droplet of intelligence here, a hint of a shadowy figure, and we are all marionettes, putty in the puppet master’s hands.

Commissioned by CrossCurrents 2016, a showcase version of It began with watching premiered at Pumphouse Theatres in February 2016. After residencies at the University of Calgary and the DJD Dance Centre funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the work grew into an evening-length site-based work and a 35-minute theatre work. The theatre version premiered at the 2017 Fluid Movement Arts Festival. It then toured to the Brian Webb Dance Company series in Edmonton in September 2018 and to New Horizons Dance in Regina in May 2019. The work is also the basis for a documentary film, MEN in charge, released in 2021.

It began with watching also exists as a site-adaptive work for boardrooms and government spaces.

2016-2019

Dance of the Puppets

It began with watching
Dance of the Puppets
Dance of the Puppets

Dance of the Puppets

Dance of the Puppets explores the transformation of democracy as ‘alternative facts’ and outlandish acts populate the political landscape. Through sardonic interactions, blunt physicality, and a brutally humorous text, the work exposes the alarming possibilities that arise as governments, concentrated wealth, and surveillance technologies join forces. A droplet of intelligence here, a hint of a shadowy figure, and we are all marionettes, putty in the puppet master’s hands.

The film is directed/edited by Melanie Kloetzel with camera work by Kevin Leiver. Winner of a ‘Best Cast’ award from Toronto’s Alternative Film Festival and nominated for a Best Story/Message award from MarDelDance Film Festival, the work has also been selected for screening through EnCore: Dance on Film in Atlanta, Georgia, the Dallas Dance Film Festival in Texas, the Film Collective in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Desert Edge Global Film Festival in Andore, India, and for Kinetoscope International Screendance Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.

This film short is based on the stage and site works, It began with watching and MEN in charge, as seen under the ‘On Site’ and ‘On Stage’ pages. It was filmed on-site at Edmonton City Hall.

Dance of the Puppets also functions as a trailer for the upcoming feature film MEN in charge, that offers a complete documentary of the creative process of making It began with watching.

The Dwindling Dispute

The Dwindling Dispute
The Dwindling Dispute
The Dwindling Dispute
The Dwindling Dispute
The Dwindling Dispute

The Dwindling Dispute

The dance film The Dwindling Dispute, set in the rapidly changing East Village of Calgary, developed from kloetzel&co’s evening-length work, The Alice Odyssey. When Alice confronts Lewis Carroll’s Red and White Queens in Through the Looking Glass, her world turns upside down. In The Dwindling Dispute, a dance film with performances by Naomi Brand and Melanie Kloetzel and cinematography by Jennifer Mahood, the Queens bewilder little Alice with relentless pseudo-scuffles, precise musicality, and nonsensical wordplay. But who is really in control, Alice or the farcical Queens?

Premiere:
The American Dance Festival’s 20th International Screendance Festival, curated by Douglas Rosenberg and Katrina McPherson

July 19, 2015 – Nasher Art Museum, Durham, USA

Additional screenings:

dance:made in canada festival (Toronto)
August 2015, Betty Oliphant Theatre

IDST Installation (Edinburgh)
December 2015, Summerhall

POZA Project (Glasgow)
January 2016, Kinning Park Complex

Calgary Underground Film Festival Dance Film Night (Calgary)
February 2016, The Globe Cinema

Happenings 12 – A three-month continuous run at Arts Commons in Calgary, AB (2018)

A preview screening of The Dwindling Dispute took place at:
Dance International Glasgow Festival, Tramway 4 – April 29th, 11 am

The Sanitastics

The Sanitastics
The Sanitastics
The Sanitastics

The Sanitastics

kloetzel&co. released the humorous sci-fi dance film, The Sanitastics, in 2011. Set in the Calgary Skywalk system, hygienic superheroes scour the system removing any oddities, invasive species, and problematic beings. With fantastic creatures and virtuosic feats, The Sanitastics offers an electrifyingly contradictory site-specific adventure in a corporate landscape. A collaboration with Jeff Curtis, with support from the Centre for Research in the Fine Arts.

Presented by:
Essential Dance Films, TenduTV, 2012-2013
Sans Souci Festival of Dance on Tour, TX, 2013
Third Coast Dance Film Festival on Tour, PA, 2012
Gallery of Alberta Media Artist, EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts, Calgary, AB, 2011-12 (3-month run)
Sao Carlos Videodance Festival, Brazil, 2011
Festival Internacional de Videodanza de Uruguay, 2011
Oklahoma Dance Film Festival, OK, 2011
Third Coast Dance Film Festival, TX, 2011
Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, CO, 2011

Icarus Fried (the film)

Icarus Fried (the film)
Icarus Fried (the film)
Icarus Fried (the film)

Icarus Fried (the film)

A dance film short based on the live work, Icarus Fried offers a site-specific dialogue with the Frazier Egg Farm in Pocatello, ID. The film developed from a collaboration between clarinetist John Masserini, filmmaker Jeff Curtis, and kloetzel&co.

Presented by:
Northwest New Works PodFest, Seattle, WA, 2008
Danca em Foco International Festival of Video & Dance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2007
Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema in Boulder, CO, 2007 (chosen as a Best of Fest)
DANSCAMDANSE Festival in Ghent, Belgium, 2007

Back Doors

Back Doors
Back Doors

Back Doors

kloetzel&co. collaborated with filmmaker Emily Crawford to create Back Doors, a short film set in the alleys of Missoula, MT.

Presented by:
Ceretana Art Gallery Film Series, Missoula, MT, 2005
Rogers Experimental Theatre, Pocatello, ID, 2005
Lunafest, a national women’s film festival, selected as local entry, Pocatello, ID, 2005

Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease

Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease
Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease - photo by Citrus Photo
Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease - photo by Citrus Photo
Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease - photo by Citrus Photo
Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease - photo by Citrus Photo
Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease - photo by Citrus Photo
Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease - photo by Citrus Photo

Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease

In 2019, kloetzel&co. began examining the character of Faust as a cautionary icon for present times. The work unsettles a classic tale via contemporary performance modalities by employing a heavily adapted/devised text based on Johann von Goethe’s Faust (Parts I and II).  Building on the metaphor of waste as an inevitable byproduct of our current economic, cultural, and political systems, Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease pointedly highlights incessant production as a malady that may have devastating and irreversible consequences for human existence.

Part I of Faust, The Anatomy of a Disease premiered as part of the Professional Series at the University of Calgary with performers Jocelyn H. Leiver and Melanie Kloetzel. 

Room

Room at southside-3 square
Room
Room (a film)
Room

Room

Through residencies at Southside Studios with Team Effort as well as The Work Room (Tramway) in Glasgow, kloetzel&co. created a site-adaptive solo work that explores climate change, human arrogance, and adaptation. The work has been performed at various venues across the UK, in Canada, and in the U.S. from 2014-17, including at The House at the University of Plymouth, through the IF series with TeamEffort in Glasgow, at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and through the CanDance Network’s REMIX series at Spazio Performativo. Through a REMIX residency, the work also inspired a ‘remixed’ solo that responded to Room; this solo was created by Newfoundland’s Sarah Joy Stoker for Kloetzel and was performed at Spazio Performativo in Edmonton.

Room has also now inspired a a site-adaptive film that received a ‘Creativity Award’ from A Show for a Change Festival. For more information, see Room (a film) in the On Screen section of this website.

Set by Fergus Dunnet, voiceover by Suzanna Ferguson, video by Suzanna Ferguson, Chantal Wall, and Rose Ruane.