lifeDUET: with

In 1998, Karen and Allen Kaeja embarked on lifeDUETs – a duet-commissioning series. Variations of this critically acclaimed program toured across the world. In 2015, a new program of lifeDUETs was created for Kaeja d’Dance’s 25th anniversary. Including commissions from incomparable choreographers Tedd Robinson and Benjamin Kamino, this program is a celebration of family, of company, of love and partnership.

The work of Benjamin Kamino is a set of rules, a stage, and a practicum for Allen and Karen Kaeja into their own lives. In sequence Karen and Allen take turns imagining the dances alive yet hidden (available yet invisible) inside the body of their partner. They perform these dances with eyes closed for their partner who bars themselves from seeing either by closing the eyes or maneuvering away. Through co-working states of being-with/without-seeing and imagining co-embodiment they form representations which articulate the sacred history of two lovers captured within the continuum of lives-lived-shared. This dance at its root is made of time -- of time given to togetherness.

Other past lifeDUETs (besides the lifeDUETs on our website) have also been created by Peter Bingham, Claudia Moore, Marie-Josée Chartier.

with

lifeDUET commission

Credits

Photos by Zhenya Cerneacov

Choreography by Ben Kamino

Costumes by Karen and Allen Kaeja

Lighting by Simon Rossiter

  • In perhaps the most arresting moment of the work, Allen lifts up a back corner of the paper floor, altering the landscape of the stage by creating a vertical plane. With this paper massif as her backdrop, Karen dances a captivating solo in which the audience, at last, sees the virtuosity we are accustomed to when watching her dance. Her movement is fluid and easy even when she is gyrating her hips or convulsing in heaves. Dancing without the gaze of Allen (he’s still under the paper), she gains a sense of freedom.

    Emma Doran, Dance Current

  • When I notice that Allen has rested his hand on Karen’s knee, I find myself thinking of the likes of Kahlo and Rivera, Plath and Hughes, Stein and Toklas – artistic couples in which a profound affinity for a shared form proved transformative.

    Martha Schabas, Globe and Mail

  • A meditation on emotional polarities of a long-term partnership are, in fact, not oppositional but cut from the same cloth. The tempos mutually conveyed by the Kaejas reverberate through the theatre. Each work leaves us with the resonant pulses of their partnership

    Emma Doran, Dance Current

  • Pushing the boundaries of contemporary whacks complacency right out the door

    Deirdra Kelly, Critics At Large

  • As dancers, they are striking to look at – Allen has a sturdy, imposing largeness that’s infused with warmth and gentleness. Karen is fiercely beautiful with hard features and a mass of thick burgundy hair. When she dances, her reserve turns into something almost violently intense.

    Martha Schabas, Globe and Mail

  • Their merging feels part of their very DNA – reverberating at the cellular level.

    Emma Doran, Dance Current

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