Reviews and Recognition
- Third Place in the Midwest Climate Summit’s Climate Stories Competition 2020 for Tales of the Deep
- Social Entropy selected for the Ohio Dance Festival Professional Concert 2022
- Honorable Mention from the Ohio State University Denman Research Forum 2022 for Interconnect
- Snowmelt selected finalist for Red Rock Dance Festival 2024
- Selected choreographer for Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company’s Movers and Makers Festival 2024 to create Show Me Yours and Mine
- Lake Bodies selected for Queer Spectra Arts Festival 2025, Equinox Mountain Film Festival 2025, and Audience Choice Award at the Utah Dance Film Festival 2025
- Dance Informa 2024: Lake Bodies described as “tenacious, imagistic…in no way shying away from what it seeks to convey.”
- Fjord Review 2025: “’Show Me All of It’ was an intricate dance of light and shadow, featuring a dancer holding a flashlight to cleverly illuminate solos and duets on the stage. The overall theme—the vulnerability of showing oneself and allowing oneself to be seen —was captured in both the movement of the flashlight beams and through a repeating motif of exaggerated breath and heartbeat. The choreography—twisting, turning, and visually arresting— spoke to something primal and human, an expert example of dance having the capacity to do things that words cannot.”
- The Utah Review 2025: “[Show Me All of It] lucidly translated into movement the organic emotional dynamics in an evolving relationship of what we decide to reveal about ourselves to each other and when we feel comfortable and confident enough to do so. The idea of dance as a tangible, practical language fluent in meaning and imagery is well evidenced here.”
- The Utah Review 2026: “[Mine] provided some of the most emotional[ly] riveting moments in Emerge… It is an arresting study of the abstract creative possibilities with lighting and shadow effects.”
Kara Komarnitsky is an interdisciplinary artist currently making work in Salt Lake City. She received a BFA in Dance from Ohio State University graduating summa cum laude with Arts Honors, Research Distinction focused on the use of performance and immersive technology as environmental advocacy, and minors in Environmental Science and Business. Her performance experience has spanned classical modern works with Repertory Dance Theatre, new contemporary works with Fem and Myriad Dance Company, and experimental works through the Interdisciplinary Arts Collective, Lake Apprentice, and many community collaborations. She has self-produced dance films and evening-length shows, and her professional work has been presented through Illuminate Salt Lake Festival, Ohio Dance Professional Festival, Utah Dance Film Festival, Queer Spectra Arts Festival, Material Gallery, Shoreline Swell, 801 Salon, Red Rock Dance Festival, and Repertory Dance Theatre’s LINK series. Kara’s passion for movement extends into her teaching with over 500-hours of training in Hatha Yoga practices and a decade of experience teaching contemporary dance classes to all ages. Her classes and creative practice interweave with each other, seeking to cultivate presence, reverence, and connection through a wide variety of modalities.
Artist Statement
I am an intermedia choreographer and contemporary dance performer living in the space in between techniques. As a mover I am invested in circular and continuous momentum, weight-sharing and partnering, and energetic and meaningful movement. My improvisation background informs my presence in any creative process or collaboration.
My creative process is centered in an ethic of body as ecosystem. I work to physicalize the relationships between the body and our embedded environment through site-specific, experiential research and improvisational workshops. I investigate complex group relationships that investigate the interconnected pulling, falling, resisting, and supporting forces at play in our own (human and non-human) communities, seeking to dissolve the skin boundary and engage our imaginations in more than human awareness. To challenge traditional notions of performance spaces I work with projections, film, sound, and interactive technology to create immersive performances, installations, and experiences, often in collaboration with artists of other mediums. I seek to use my voice to make visible the invisible forces that are the truth of how we experience the world and reveal connections that we cannot see with our eyes – envisioning and transforming our collective idea of where our bodies end and where they begin.
My artistic lineage includes Nicholas Cendese, Laja Field, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, Natosha Washington, Alon Karniel, Eddie Taketa, and Abby Zbikowski. Significant influences include Octavia Butler, Jennifer Monson, David Abram, Jane Bennett, and adrienne marie brown.
Kara Komarnitsky 