{"id":102494,"date":"2026-04-02T08:27:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=102494"},"modified":"2026-04-15T08:32:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:32:48","slug":"transforming-grief-with-play-kara-komarnitsky-on-dueting-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/transforming-grief-with-play-kara-komarnitsky-on-dueting-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming Grief with Play: Kara Komarnitsky on Dueting Shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Sharon Kain<\/p><\/div>\n

When I invited Lauren Wightman to collaborate with me on Mine<\/em> we were both in the process of letting things die inside of us. I was deep in the throes of heartbreak after ending a long-term partnership and Lauren had just had a chronic illness flare up that led them to question their relationship to performance. \u201cIt felt like I was at the beginning of something literally dying,\u201d they told me when we reminisced about the process this week, \u201cand now I feel like I\u2019m at the threshold of the new thing.\u201d Coming back to rehearsal for the Material Gallery show we realized that we are both in very different places than when we started this work.<\/h4>\n

We created this duet in December and performed it for the first time in January 2026 as part of RDT\u2019s Emerge<\/em>. Most rehearsals started by lying on the floor in the dark, holding our heavy flesh and bones, trying to gather the immense effort that it would take to move, often with thick tears dripping down our skin. Then we would turn on the flashlights, choosing not to hide in the dark but to look, to see, to witness what was within us. The shadow bodies would arise, pouring and sliding over the white curtain that pulled across the mirror, often merging to create new and inhuman beings. At times the visuals became daunting and grotesque but somehow, we found ourselves in play. \u201cIt\u2019s just me,\u201d Lauren said they realized, \u201cI know that shape and there\u2019s endless possibilities, there\u2019s nothing to be scared of.\u201d So, we found ourselves playing<\/em> in this dark basement with our fear and anger and grief, using the shadows to get curious about what felt so overwhelming and unbearable in our bodies during our day to day. The darkness offered us a way to develop a different, embodied relationship to feelings and experiences that were too terrifying to touch in daylight. The loss transformed into something generative, a spilling into presentness, an embrace of what was ugly and painful but nevertheless ours<\/em>.<\/h4>\n
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Process writing provided by Kara Komarnitsky<\/p><\/div>\n

And then we would write. We built a story instead of steps or counts. Every time we ran the piece we would add to the story, letting the movement bring the words alive and letting the words bring us alive in new ways each time. Lauren recounted that one of their favorite runs we ever did was the week before the premiere when it was just the two of us in the studio. \u201cSometimes I just want to hoard the work,\u201d they shared with me, \u201c[This piece] isn\u2019t about getting on stage and being a show pony, it\u2019s to bring something so private onstage and to try to maintain that feeling as we\u2019re performing it.\u201d The intimate play from our basement rehearsals found its way onto the stage with us and each performance changed to meet what we needed. By the last night I was laughing in moments that previously had me crying, embracing the hand that reached into my shadow rather than flinching away from it, relishing the light on my skin and all the distorted, monstrous shapes that I could create on the wall where the light never touched. All of it was mine<\/em>, I was both the witness and the object, the light and the shadow, the hand and the held \u2013 there was nothing to hide from.<\/h4>\n

We are coming back to this story lighter in our bodies, stirred up by the adrenaline of not knowing what is next, and still afraid\u2026 but curious to see where the story takes us on Friday.<\/h4>\n
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Photo by Sharon Kain<\/p><\/div>\n

Mine<\/em> is the third in a series of dance works exploring witness, vulnerability, and relationship to light that I have been developing for the past two years. It will be part of an evening-length show in 2027 including the other two works, Yours and Mine<\/em> (2024), and Show Me All of It<\/em> (2025). See it in Material Gallery\u2019s Grief Work performance this Friday, April 3 at 7:30pm at V. Project Studio 826 South 500 West, Suite 2.<\/p>\n

This article is published in collaboration with loveDANCEmore.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I invited Lauren Wightman to collaborate with me on Mine we were both in the process of letting things die inside of us. I was deep in the throes of heartbreak after ending a long-term partnership and Lauren had just had a chronic illness flare up that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1713,"featured_media":102495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/DSC_1694.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-04 15:47:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102498,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102494\/revisions\/102498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}