SALT HORSE is a Seattle-based dance/sound performance company created by dancers Beth Graczyk and Corrie Befort and musician Angelina Baldoz. Now a resident company in Seattle's Washington Hall, Salt Horse was formed through a series of residencies and performances in Japan and Seattle between 2005 and 2008.
 
Salt Horse creates visually rich, sensation-based works that illuminate the quiet, unseen, or hidden aspects of nature and the human experience. The company members rigorously merge improvisation and composition to create arresting narratives that weave between the literal and the abstract. Read more about our approach below.

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Primary Salt Horse collaborators:

Angelina Baldoz is a sound artist whose main instruments are the trumpet, vocals and electric bass. She has been collaborating for the last 20 years in the Northwest with many artists, including Lori Goldston, Deborah Hay, Gust Burns, Ellen Fullman, and Torben Ulrich. She has performed in New York, Germany, Japan and Austin, TX.  Angelina scored the feature film, ‘Aliens Cut My Hair’ and composed for Linda Austin's 'Edge of the Fell'.  She is currently touring with the rock band Earth and performs locally in the experimental music group Instead Of and El Pegaso.

Corrie Befort has been performing and creating dance works for over ten years in the Northwest and in Japan between 2005 and 2008. Her award-winning dance films screen in festivals nationally and internationally and she has been commissioned by numerous schools and companies.  Corrie graduated from Cornish College of the Arts, received a danceWEB scholarship to Vienna's ImPulsTanz Festival, and a choreographic residency at the Rosas/P.A.R.T.S. school.  She danced for Scott/Powell Performance (1998-2005), Sheri Cohen (2001-2004) and as a guest with Japanese artist Natsuko Tezuka (2005-2007). For more visit: cBefort.com

Beth Graczyk is a movement-based artist who works as a contemporary dancer, choreographer, teacher and producer based in Seattle, WA.  She has performed both nationally and internationally working extensively with Locate Performance Group (Pablo Cornejo, Paige Barnes) (2002-2006), Sheri Cohen & Co. (2000-2004), Corrie Befort (2003-present) and Scott/Powell Performance (2004-present). Beth co-produced and performed in 12 Hour Play and several dance/music improvisations in Seattle and Portland.  She is a GAP grant recipient for Salt Horse through Artist Trust.  Beth earned a double degree from the University of Washington in Dance and Molecular Biology. She was recently published in Nature Cell Biology for her work on mitosis.

ilvs Strauss (TD) has no formal education in the arts. she spent the greater part of her scholastic career denying that any fiber of her being was remotely steeped in artistry. her post college stint as an analytical chemist at a pharmaceutical company, while interesting in it's own way, effectively sucked her soul. coming to her senses, she, like any self respecting artist, quit that day job. and started working backstage in theater. from there, it has been just a few steps to step into the light and now she busies herself with: Slide Shows, writing haiku, collage art, watercolor, collaborative performance, and Lighting Design. She spends the rest of her time eating, loving and praying. Her work has been shown at On the Boards, NW Film Forum, Canoe Gallery and Bumbershoot.  Visit her haiku blog.

More on our approach:

Salt Horse concocts pieces that oscillate between the dark and strange and the beautiful and poetic, always infused with a twist of humor. While their critically acclaimed stage and video effects are carefully constructed to disrupt the audience's perceptions, their richly layered sound and detailed, full-bodied dancing invite imaginative engagement.

Befort and Graczyk’s choreography continually oscillates the audience’s visual attention from expansive, full-body textures and complex spatial patterning to small, detailed and evocative gestures. Some of Seattle's most distinctive performers have been cast in larger work. The choreography emerges from image or scenario based improvisational structures that require the creation of very specific physicalities.  For example: “You have birds in your head” or “the room is disintegrating.”

Baldoz's music, created simultaneously with the choreography, scores all the physical images. Played live, Baldoz’s music spans highly structured melodic song, electronic textures, crashing of tin pans and water sounds to create a diverse sonic topography.

 As performers Salt Horse members have been described as having an “amazingly raw stage presence and vulnerability that is etched with virtuosic articulation.” (Sean Ryan, OTB)

 Salt Horse often employs scenic "magic tricks" in their works. These arise from a desire to disrupt the audience's expectations in a way that invites them to question how they are perceiving what they are experiencing.  It is a tool to open up the audience's imagination, and empower them to make choices in how they interpret the work.