Kristin Wagner is a dance performer, choreographer, educator, and administrator based in Boston, MA. Since 2012, she has had the honor of performing at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Boston Center for the Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Jordan Hall, among others. Kristin has been dancing with KAIROS Dance Theater since 2012, and currently serves as principal dancer and rehearsal director for the company. Kristin also performs with Brian Feigenbaum and Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion, and has been creating a series of collaborative duets with Tony Guglietti. In 2017, Kristin was invited as the sole dancer in the New England Conservatory’s rendition of The Soldier’s Tale, and was the face of the 2018-19 season for the Boston Lyric Opera. Kristin has presented choreography across New England, including at the Salem Arts Festival, Boston University, The Dance Complex, Tufts University, Harvard University, AS220, the Boston Center for the Arts, and the Maine International Dance Festival. Kristin is currently on teaching faculty at the New England Conservatory, Wilmington Dance Academy, and Koltun Ballet Boston.
kristincwagner.com
Instagram: @kriscross392

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ABOUT THE WORK

Performed by a trio of men spanning ages 24 through 65, Kristin Wagner's alpha questions the concept of masculinity from a feminist perspective. The performers, each of whom came to dance after years of playing sports, perform the work with raw authenticity, defined by both beauty and violence. Using the world of sports as a lens through which to understand the male experience, alpha - created collaboratively with the performers - is crafted with movement vocabulary inspired by the simultaneous grace and aggression of hockey, wrestling, football and baseball. Within this context, the work explores “traditional” male traits, habits, beliefs, and social performances, asking: what is it about sports that allows so many men to express a range of emotionality - shedding tears for tragic losses, sharing physical contact with one another over historic wins, and so forth - and why is this so hard to translate to other aspects of life? alpha depicts men who are confident and combative, as well as tender and loving, traversing a spectrum of male emotion. In juxtaposing societal expectations of male behavior with private truths of male experiences, alpha challenges standard perceptions of masculinity, deconstructing the term and inviting the audience to reconsider what it really means “to be a man.”