Pearlman, Karen (1960 - )

Alan Pearlman: Portrait of Karen Pearlman

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Born in St Louis, Missouri, Karen Pearlman received her early dance training at Washington University, St Louis, and later completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours in Dance from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, in 1981. Pearlman also studied with Sara Rudner and other members of the Twyla Tharp company, with ballet teachers Maggie Black and Zvi Gotheiner, and yoga instructors Sharon Gannon and David Life.

Pearlman was a founding member of Timothy Buckley and the Company in 1983 and stayed with the company as it became Timothy Buckley and the Twisters and Timothy Buckley and the Troublemakers. During her time with Buckley's companies, she danced in premieres at Dance Theatre Workshop, The Kitchen, Jacob's Pillow, the Spoleto Festival, and the London Dance Umbrella. She joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 1985, dancing major roles in Freedom of Information, Secret Pastures and Shared Distance. She also created roles in How To Walk an Elephant for the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival and Fever Swamp for the Alvin Ailey Company, among others.

Karen Pearlman and Richard James Allen began their working partnership by founding the New York-based production company That Was Fast in 1985, creating dance, poetry, film and video works which toured throughout the U.S.A., the U.K., Holland, Germany and Australia. That Was Fast suspended operations after touring to over 100 venues on three continents in 1995 when Pearlman and Allen became co-artistic directors of Tasdance. At Tasdance they created the hybrid arts stage production of Thursday's Fictions and toured it and other shows statewide. They also took Tasdance to New York at the invitation of The Kitchen, made a range of dance films, executed schools programs, and created the Tasmanian Poetry and Dance Festival.

In 1997, Pearlman and Allen co-founded The Physical TV Company, a purpose built screen production company specialising in dance and physical theatre. Since its inception, Physical TV has created numerous award-winning shorts and a short feature, Thursday's Fictions. Their work has been broadcast on ABC, KM-TV China, MNN, USA, and TV Slovenia, and it has screened in over 30 countries. In 2007 the Artistic Directors of Physical TV were invited to participate in a Laboratory for Advance Media Production (LAMP) Residential, with support of the Australia Council's The Story of the Future Project, and since then they have pioneered dance screen works involving virtual worlds, mobile phones and mixed reality performance.

Pearlman completed a Masters in Editing from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), a Masters in Media Production in 2002 from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and a Doctorate of Creative Arts at UTS in 2006. She has been the head of Screen Studies at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School since early 2008, where she has brought dance on screen into the consciousness of mainstream narrative filmmakers. Her dance screen research, with The Physical TV Company and a range of other film, dance and new media collaborators, is being supported by Critical Path and the Australia Council for the Arts.

See also: Allen, Richard James ; TasDance

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Research Materials

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Other resources

Find more about Pearlman, Karen in:

• Internet - Google
• Collection - OzLife
• Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
• Pictures - Picture Australia