Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and Ladders
1978
About
Snakes and Ladders is a group piece created by Karen Jamieson during her time as a Resident Artist at SFU, with a percussive score composed and played by Chris Dahl.
The Centre for Communications and the Arts presented the Simon Fraser University Dance Ensemble in its spring student dance concert on Friday and Saturday, March 19 and 20, 1976 at 8 p.m. in the SFU Theatre. The ensemble also performed an abbreviated lunch-hour program at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, March 19. All performances were free.
The concert featured the choreography of artistic director Iris Garland, as well as Resident Artists Karen Rimmer and Savannah Walling.
The People
Choreographer: Karen Jamieson
Composer/Musician: Chris Dahl
Words: Tedd Robinson
Reviews
“Karen Rimmer’s Snakes and Ladders is one of those infuriating dances which is visually engrossing but quite inexplicable. There is a zany, absurdist quality to it which reminds one faintly of American choreographer Paul Taylor’s work. It uses the dancers in ways that seem physically and emotionally right for each one of them yet simultaneously creates an organic sense of their interdependence.”
- Michael Crabb
“Contemporary Dancers mix program nicely”
Toronto Star, February 11, 1980
“Karen Rimmer’s Snakes and Ladders was one of those pieces that worked only if you didn’t worry about little niceties such as sense and meaning. On its own terms, it was a funny patch of chaos, full of movements ranging from adoration to strangulation and as many incidents as a soap-opera synopsis. The movement was so consistently stimulating that none of these puzzles mattered.”
- Stephen Godfrey
“Dancers merit bouquets”
The Globe and Mail, February 12, 1980
Banner photo credit: Deni Eagland, The Vancouver Sun, Friday March 19, 1976
Please note that populating the Karen Jamieson Dance website with new information and images from the archives is an ongoing process that we are undertaking as fast as we can. Karen Jamieson Dance welcomes any corrections or missing information to the description and acknowledgments listed above. These can be forwarded to admin@kjdance.ca