CAMP Mission Statement

The core of the CAMP mission is to create an engaging, daring and consistently innovative performance language that seeks not only to entertain, but to inspire.   Dedicated to the challenge and beauty of collaboration, and with our sight set firmly on the emerging frontiers of performance, we synthesize sound, movement, image, language and design into an imaginative whole—a reflection of the human spirit and its undeniable need to create, experience and overcome.

HISTORY

The company was formed in 2000 by two dancers (Heather Kroski, Laura Chiaramonte), a musician (Mark Marzocco) and an actor (Colleen Murray).

While we had worked together for years on various projects and in various capacities, we all felt there was greater potential in our work than what a traditional creative process could yield. We believed that a truly collaborative process and a commitment to a collective vision would enable each of us to extend beyond our chosen disciplines, and, as a result, strengthen us as artists.

With this philosophy in place, we participated in our first show as the CAMP ensemble, producing a piece entitled Through Oiled Paper for the multi-artist performance art exhibition Sugar in the Raw. For us as a company, the show was an outstanding success because it validated our approach to the development of performance. The foundation had been set, yet we yearned to push ourselves farther and create our first evening of performance produced entirely by CAMP.

For our next performance, our goal was to define our vision for the company in terms of the themes we wished to explore. We wanted our performances to evolve from several short pieces, strung together and conveying a wide spectrum of ideas, into a performance with a definitive through line. Following many discussions concerning our process, we discovered our spark of inspiration to create usually came from a desire to explore the simple, universal aspects of the human experience—the quiet and private inner workings of the human heart.

With this in mind, we began rehearsals for Fear , the first full production to be produced by our company. The show was a collection of performance pieces exploring the nature of fear by various guest artists interjected within a world premiere performance by CAMP. The development of CAMPs piece was narrowed down to the one fear we all had in common and the one we felt had the fiercest grip upon us—the fear of being alone. Fear premiered in May 2004, selling out each night, and CAMP garnered critical praise for our centerpiece, Alone . In his review, Sid Smith of The Chicago Tribune wrote: “Laura Chiaramonte and Heather Kroski, move with captivating swiftness and style.”

In October 2004, we produced Reveal , our first rep show. Combining two CAMP world premieres ( Fingerprints, The Death of Communism ) with several early works, Reveal presented many technical challenges for the company. Not content to just present a rep show, we strove to place our prior work in a new context. For the performance, we constructed several projection screens that spanned the stage and created a layered effect for our video projections. The screens created an immediate obstacle for the audience to overcome, and slowly, as the performance moved from piece to piece, the barriers peeled away, revealing more and more of the stage. Finally, when the stage was set free from all obstacles, the performance erupts into a raucous celebration.

In December of 2004 CAMP received 501-3C status and became an official Not-for-profit. With new opportunities available to us we made plans to throw our first benefit in the spring of 2005. As we focused our energy on our first benefit we also starting work on a production for Spring 2006, Inheritance , which CAMP premiered a section of for our benefit attendees. Our first benefit was a greater success than even we had dreamed.

With our first benefit behind us we started work on the fall show, Weave. In Weave CAMP revisited work from our Fear production in June 2004. The piece Alone was given new life and new perspective. To balance the show we created a new work, Folding Threads, exploring inter-connectedness. We expressed this by manipulating / spinning fabric while projecting video over the dancers creating moving canvases that jumped throughout the space. To place context between the two works we alternated between them allowing us to tell a story of personal growth and personal journey.