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Repertory Archive

Karen Young

Biography

Karen Young has designed costumes for numerous modern dance and contemporary video art projects, which have been seen in theaters and museums all over the world. She has collaborated as a designer with many internationally renowned video artists, with recent projects including David Michalek’s Slow Dancing (Lincoln Center Festival, Venice Biennale) and Goldenly (for Alvin Ailey), Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 5, and Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation’s The Rape of the Sabine Women (Athens Festival, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, Louisiana Museum, Denmark) and 89 Seconds at Alcazar (Whitney Biennial, MoMA). Her design work for dance can be seen in the repertoires of Elisa Monte, Karole Armitage, Larry Keigwin, Pascal Rioult, Philadanco, Noémie Lafrance, Fang Yi Sheu’s LAFA & Artists (Taiwan), and the Martha Graham Dance Company with which she has been associated for many years and where she recently reconstructed Martha Graham’s original costume designs for Clytemnestra. The costumes for Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once (2009) were her first work for American Ballet Theatre.