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Kinesis Project, led by choreographer Melissa Riker, brings large-scale, outdoor performances to public and unusual spaces. We are a bi-coastal dance company with 11 total dancers, 5 in Seattle and 6 in NYC.

In 2024/25 Riker is developing Bridge Matter/The Reach her second work in collaboration with Geologist Dr. Martha (Missy) Cary-Eppes, it is a MAP Fund awarded project and is being developed in NYC in partnership with Riverside Park Conservancy/Summer on the Hudson and in Seattle with the support of Seattle Downtown Alliance.

Bridge Matter/The Reach is an community driven Installation of Care with an interwoven performance. The work will premiere in Seattle summer 2025 and in NYC Fall 2025. Bridge Matter’s music is directed by Grammy award winning saxophonist and composer, Johnny Butler.

Riker and her team are open to teaching, residency and workshop options in addition to performance opportunities.

Since 2014 Kinesis Project has brought large-scale, outdoor performances to public and unusual spaces. Over that 10 year span, we have grown to be a bi-coastal dance company with 11 total dancer/collaborators, 6 in Seattle and 4 in NYC.

Works shown in this video and available for performance are:
In Persistence of Memory (costumed in orange)
TimePiece, or Another imperfect measurement of us (costumed in grey)
Secrets and Seawalls (costumed in patchwork)
Capacity, or the Work of Crackling (costumed in natural prints)

more information at video link

CAPACITY OR, THE WORK OF CRACKLING 2022-2023, ready to tour

This 13 minute video offers insight into the performance and creation of Capacity, or the Work of Crackling via performance footage and interviews with key collaborators, Melissa Riker, Director and Choreographer, David Gordon, Musical Director/Opera On Tap and Dr. Martha (Missy) Cary-Eppes, Geologist.

From 2022 to 2023 our work, "Capacity, or the Work of Crackling" was shared in over 15 sites in NYC and Seattle, in 2023 we expanded to Griffith Park in Los Angeles and presented in collaboration with Dr. Martha (Missy) Cary-Eppes and INLAND Physical Theatre in Strasbourg, FR.

This exciting collaboration with Opera on Tap, Anti-Social Music and Dr. Eppes is currently available for performance. The work has a full cast of 5 dancers + 8 musicians or with 5 dancers and recorded music. Riker and Eppes have a global network of geoscientists to connect with as needed.

Example of Audience Re-Growth Over 3 Years

In 2019 and early 2020 Kinesis was performing for thousands on the Seattle Waterfront. These numbers are from shows in smaller public spaces and include the 8 summer weekends of rain in NYC in 2023. NOTE: This chart does not include virtual audiences for "Search(Light) " in 2021.

ABOUT Capacity, or: The Work of Crackling

WHAT: a large-scale, outdoor, immersive performance work incorporating dance, voices and live instruments, created in collaboration with Opera on Tap and Anti-Social Music. Choreographer and Director Melissa Riker developed the vocabulary of the piece in collaboration with the research of geologist Dr. Martha (Missy) Cary Eppes. The work is best experienced in tandem with a geological tour or workshop. In many cities in the US or abroad, Melissa Riker is able to connect the presenter to a geologist or geomorphist.

WHO: Kinesis Project dance theatre, Opera on Tap and Anti-Social Music. Kinesis Project is a bi-coastal, large-scale outdoor dance company with core company members in in both New York City and Seattle, the company is agile, well connected and able to cast dances from both locations. Opera on Tap (OOT) was born in 2005 at Freddy’s Bar and Backroom in Brooklyn and incorporated in 2007 to promote opera as a viable, living and progressive art form and to support the developing artists who continue to keep the art form alive. Anti-Social Music is a non-profit collective of composers and performers created for the purpose of presenting new music by emerging, primarily New York-based musicians. Dr. Martha Cary (Missy) Eppes (Geologist/Collaborator) is a Full Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Her later work has focused on mechanical weathering processes and the insight that fracture mechanics concepts can provide to understanding natural rock fracture. This work’s contribution to the fields of Quaternary geology and geomorphology was recognized by the Geological Society of America through its Kirk Bryan award.

WHY: Riker’s interest in the parallels between the human conditions of “cracking open” as resilience and “breaking” in surprising moments drove the artist to find the research of Dr. Martha (Missy) Cary Eppes. The two found an immediate connection in their research and continued to share information in their process and practice. Riker was the artist in residence at Dr. Eppes’s convening "The Progressive Failure of Brittle Rocks” an internationally attended geology conference, and Eppes’s research and publishings have continued to be material for the creation of all aspects of Capacity, or: the Work of Crackling.

WHEN: Premiering Summer 2023, the piece has been in public development since June 2022 in Seattle, NYC, Jefferson NY, LA and Strasbourg Fr. and is ready to be booked for 2023/24/25.

WHERE: Ideal locations are in sight of mountains, large rocks, natural formations or waterways.

PRESS READY: This immersive experience is a brand-new multi-disciplinary work developed through collaborations of music, sound and visual components. Capacity, or: the Work of Crackling is Kinesis Project's most recent collaboration with Opera on Tap investigating our human capacity for joy, grief and how that relates to the natural processes of the earth's cracking. Capacity, or: the Work of Crackling is an expansive, yet intimate theatrical experience that draws and guides audiences along the bridges and landscapes of Riverside Park South. The performances feature costumes by designer Rebecca Kanach, sound design by Shahrokh Yadegari and music by Anti-Social music composers Diana Woolner, David Friend, Eyal Moaz and Brian McCorkle.

The creation of Capacity, or the Work of Crackling has been made possible in part by Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy, New York State Council on the Arts, UMEZ/Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, John C. Robinson, The Bowick Family Foundation and by the generosity of individual donors of Kinesis Project dance theatre and Opera on Tap

We are deeply grateful for the support, acknowledgement and help of these individuals and institutions.

 

Photos by Brianna Jones of Kinesis Project Seattle in various pop-up performance locations

Photos by Hisae Aihara of Kinesis Project NY in Riverside Park Presented by Summer on the Hudson