Kinesis Project Dance Theatre Presents TRACES OF US, A Site-Specific Dance

Kinesis Project dance theatre, led by choreographer Melissa Riker, creates a magical world along Seattle's historic Waterfront Park. Experience first-hand as this gorgeous dance appears in windows, on ledges, steps and in fountains; add a live band, an epic orange dress and beautiful costumes that strew multi-colored sand.... until the entire Waterfront Park is transformed into a shimmering evening playground.

Traces of Us is a site-specific dance about time, memory, perspective and connection. The performance is a third, powerful collaboration between Melissa Riker and Kinesis Project with costume designer Asa Thornton (Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Broadway's Pippin) and Seattle's own visual artist Celeste Cooning, famous for her large-scale, hand-cut sculptural textiles for public spaces (Pioneer Square, Bumbershoot, New York, and across the U.S. and Canada.) Experience the WaterFront Park in a way you'll never forget; with humor, beauty, amazing art and gorgeous dancing.

Friends of Waterfront Seattle is the City of Seattle's nonprofit partner helping to build the park and ensure its lasting success. Following the public-benefit partnership model, we educate the public about the park and its benefits, raise philanthropic funds to build the park, and will partner with the City to manage and program the park long-term. Our goal is to make the central waterfront a public mixing ground where all communities can share cultural, recreational, and civic experiences in a beautiful environment. Waterfront Seattle / Friends is a founding member of the High Line Network, a movement in cities across the world to reclaim underutilized infrastructure and reimagine it as public space. Explore the future park at our project showroom, Waterfront Space, located at 1400 Western Avenue in Seattle, and open Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5pm.

Gia Kourlas, The New York Times wrote about the company's most recent piece: "Melissa Riker explores ideas about how vulnerability exists both in people and in structures; it comes to life within an immersive environment of movement and whispers."

Melissa Riker is Artistic Director and Choreographer of Kinesis Project dance theatre. She is a New York City dancer and choreographer who emerged as a strong performance and creative voice as the NYC dance and circus worlds combined during the 90's. Riker's dances and aesthetic layer her training as a classical dancer, martial artist, theatre choreographer and aerial performer. She creates dances on site - and in context. Riker invents large-scale out-door performances and spontaneous moments of dance for individuals and corporate clients. Audiences and critics have called Riker's work "a Marx Brothers' routine with soul," "A movable feast." And from The New York Times, her choreography is: "comically acrobatic, gracefully classical, visually arresting."

The M.F.A. Painting Program at University of Washington first brought Celeste Cooning to Seattle. Twelve years later, she is best known for creating large-scale, hand-cut installations. Aside from various exhibitions, her work adorns city parks, storefronts, special events, and the stage. 2013 marked the transformation of Cooning's signature cut paper aesthetic into a permanent outdoor sculpture through 1% for Public Art and Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture.

Bounty functions as a threshold for Jackson Park Perimeter Trail in Seattle's Pinehurst neighborhood. The stylized, ornate fronds harken to the lush, abundant beauty of the Pacific Northwest landscape. More of Celeste Cooning's permanent installations reside in Seattle at Harborview Medical Center, Theo Chocolate, and Starbucks Global Art program. Collaboration is an important facet of Cooning's studio practice. Her childhood experiences as a performer come full circle as she works with Kinesis Project to create an immersive and layered site-specific production. For additional information, please visit www.CelesteCooning.com.

Kinesis Project is a dance organization that produces dance concerts, facilitates educational programs and creates site-specific performances with diverse communities. A company at the forefront of the international discussion of placemaking, art engagement and the cultural imperative of art in public space, Kinesis Project dance theatre invents large scale, space-changing, breath-taking experiences.

Since 2005, Kinesis Project's work has been experienced in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Vermont, Florida and in New York City at such venerable venues as Danspace Project, Judson Church, Joyce Soho, The Minskoff Theatre, The Cunningham Studio, West End Theatre and Dixon Place. The company dances outside in sculpture gardens, universities, and annually since 2006 in Battery Park's Bosque Gardens and The Cloisters Lawn as well as hosting over 30 surprise performances all over New York City and the tri-state area as an element of the company's earned income and outreach programming with volunteer populated flashmobs.

Residencies include: Earthdance 2006, Omi International Arts Center 2008, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center 2011, TheaterLab 2014, Adelphi University 2014. Ms. Riker is a 2016 and 2017 CDI Residency Fellow, 2015 LMCC Community Arts Fund grantee and was commissioned by The Brooklyn Botanic Garden for a surprise large-scale work and performances of her work Secrets and Seawalls at Omi International Arts Center, Long House Reserve, Gateway National Park in partnership with Rockaways Artist Alliance. Ms. Riker has received commissions from Carson Fox and the Ephemeral Festival in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 for large-scale outdoor events, NYU in 1998, for an outdoor work long before "flashmob" was coined, 2006 and 2008 grants from the Puffin Foundation for her work Community Movements, a dance work with community volunteers, Fellowships from the Dodge Foundation, Space Grant Residencies from 92nd St Y, The New 42nd St Studio, Gibney Dance Center, and The Joyce Theatre Foundation, and grants from The Bowick Family Trust and John C. Robinson to support the continued work of Kinesis Project dance theatre.