Despair Comics
Despair Comics
1984
About
Despair Comics is a solo piece that fixates on the “soul-searching struggle of a woman trying to find herself.”
- Norman Debono, The Windsor Star, December 3, 1984
The People
Choreography: Karen Jamieson
Performer: Patricia Fraser
An earlier performance took place at Arts Umbrella on Granville Island, Vancouver, April 2-15, 1983:
Dancer: Karen Jamieson
Composer: Michael J. Baker
Performed by: Melinda Coffey and Marilyn Gronsdal
Reviews
“The grotesque flailings of the narrowly circumscribed individual in another new work, Despair Comics, actually made some members of the audience laugh. Perhaps they took their cue from the title, though the piece seemed far more to do with desperation (and the renewal of hope) than with comedy.
With her startling eyes and her serious small circle of a mouth, with her alert, strong body and its bold gesture, Rimmer projects an intense concern. She touches us with her feeling.”
- Max Wyman
“She touches us with feeling”
The Province, June 19, 1983
Karen Jamieson’s Despair Comics is an “exercise in contemporary urban angst,” a piece in which “a housewife figure, trapped in a narrow rectangle of light, repeatedly tries to improve her lot and is repeatedly crushed back down.”
- Max Wyman
”Flurry of feathers floating”
The Province, October 28, 1984
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. These can be forwarded to admin@kjdance.ca