Morgan Hill native Kara Morris began to cultivate her love of dance as a young pupil at Lana’s Dance Studio decades ago. While her last name may have changed with marriage (now Starkweather), the 1996 Live Oak High School alumna’s passion for the performing arts has remained.
The 38-year-old Mendocino Dance Company founder plans to perform before a hometown audience Oct. 29 inside the Morgan Hill Community Playhouse with her latest contemporary dance production, entitled “Untold Stories From the Streets.”
“We basically took three different stories that had to do with people that have experienced some sort of homelessness or street life coming from three different backgrounds,” said Starkweather of the new show. “The content is more of an expression of these different people’s lives and how we interpret their stories.”
Starkweather, who earned her bachelor’s degree in dramatic arts with emphasis on dance and moved to Mendocino shortly thereafter, started her own dance company in 2014 after many years of working with a rotating group of dance partners.
“In 2013, I started teaching classes and gathered a group of people who were all very committed and wanted to dance,” said Starkweather, who will perform with five other dancers in the four-piece show scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. “Our style tends to be athletic. We do some aerial work as well.”
Many of her dancers, like herself, also performed with the Flynn Creek Circus, which came to Morgan Hill the last two summers at the city’s Outdoor Sports Complex on Condit Road.
Her Mendocino Dance Company’s first production was called “Sit With It,” and the group performed throughout Mendocino and Sonoma counties. Now, Starkweather—who has traveled the globe as a member of the Oakland-based Bandaloop vertical dance group—wants to bring her latest act to other towns.
“I’ve been really trying this year to reach out to other communities,” Starkweather said. “We work really hard and put on quite a few shows in Mendocino already. We wanted to start performing those works in other places.”
The other acts in the four-piece show—which is $18 for general admission tickets with a discounted $15 rate for seniors and children 12 and under—include: “Bound,” which works with physical restrictions and opportunities in being civically bound together as dancers are tied together; “Relations,” which demonstrates how people relate to each other physically and emotionally; and “Tide’s Edge,” a Ann Woodhead-choreographed piece inspired from many years of living on the coast.
“This is the first time we’ve done a piece that is a little less personal and really about other people’s lives,” Starkweather shared. “It’s been really fun to use other people’s experiences as motivation to us. In general, the company, we try to produce thought-inspired work that’s usually content based.”
Who: LOHS grad Kara Starkweather’s Mendocino Dance Company
What: “Untold Stories From the Streets” contemporary dance show
When: 7:30 p.m Oct. 29
Where: Morgan Hill Playhouse, 17090 Monterey Road
How: Tickets online thru mendocinodancecompany.com or at door
