BIOGRAPHY
Kenneth King is an author and multimedia artist. He lives in New York City and has performed widely there and in international venues.
CRITICAL COMMENTARY
“Technology’s Poet (and Prophet) Comes Into His Own: The world has finally caught up with Kenneth King, whose poetics of technology were always transmitted … with prescience as a model for how we would all live and talk one day. There is something right in this hardly best of all possible worlds when it makes room for an artist of Mr. King’s originality.” —New York Times
“A profoundly original mind from the beginnings of his professional career… brilliant writings.” —Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
“Kenneth King‘s writing is inimitable… poetic, surprising, energizing, intricate, wry, resonant and marvelously full of word wit.” —Sally Banes, author of Terpsichore in Sneakers
“Almost forty years of watching-hearing-reading the works of King, perhaps our only dancing philosopher, have attuned me to his unique voice and vision… King’s linguistic processes are exhilarating, not to say occasionally hilarious. Dense with movement and/or words, they explode and reconfigure the familiar, crack syntax open, invent startling words.” —Deborah Jowitt, preface to Writing in Motion: Body–Language–Technology and author of Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance
“Your work as a writer, choreographer, and performer has had a profound effect on my work and others.” —Robert Wilson, theater/opera director, creator of Einstein on the Beach and founder of the Watermill Center
The Glass Pond: “tackles the nature of art, time, memory, mystery, and humans’ relationships with death… King structures his novel primarily as a series of conversations, recalling the dialogues of Plato…the symposiumlike discussions will likely inspire new connections about life, death, and art.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Red Fog is full of ideas and very good writing… it's a highly imaginative and original work.” —Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux and author of Muse
“Red Fog is an exceptional work… I am stunned again and again with the energy of the writing, the absolute beauty of the words…The pace catches you up, a whirlwind of ideas and all of them clear and intriguing. Red Fog is everything a novel of ideas should be.” —Dina von Zweck, former Director of Publishing at CBS Inc. and author of Mica’s Brain
Red Fog: “Explores the seamy underbelly of society, which can certainly capture the imagination... A weighty meditation on the past, sexuality, and criminality.” —Kirkus Reviews
The Secret Invention: “A celebrity poet is thrust into intrigue, danger, and romance when her inventor brother creates a revolutionary power source that could solve the world’s energy problems. Adeena Adare is a gorgeous, rising superstar of the American poetry field who improbably makes the cover of Cosmopolitan. It’s technically science fiction, after all—because Adeena’s brilliant, reclusive twin brother, Jeremy (imagine Andy Warhol as a humanitarian scientist), has just perfected ‘the Glass Engine,’ a revolutionary, new free-energy source based on lasers and nanoparticles... The busy, fast-paced narrative serves largely as a vehicle for... [a] brisk... mix of New York City glitterati, literati, technocrati, and subatomic nuclei...” —Kirkus Reviews
So Much For Posterity: “A famous writer discovers a furtive operation by an international cabal to take over the world’s media… which culminates in a third-party presidential run that completely overhauls the nation’s Constitution. Steven Stabile is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author… [and] with the assistance of his finest acolyte, Mattressa Hopkins, he also stumbles on evidence of a sprawling network of conspirators—including some major nations—collaborating to buy and control all of the world’s major media empires… the orations are exceedingly thoughtful, in particular those on the profound political power of art.” —Kirkus Reviews
The Disappearing Game: “King’s story is ambitious in its attempt to tackle a range of sociopolitical issues... shocking events unfold.” —Kirkus Reviews
Bring on the Phantoms: “A story of New York City politics mired in sexual secrets and greed… A fast-talking, passionate view of a seedy world of lies, corruption, and sexual intrigue. This is an engrossing book, twisting and turning in every way possible—linguistically, sexually, and narratively.” —Kirkus Reviews
Disruption: “….vigorous and entertaining… ruminative.” —Kirkus Reviews
Bring on the Phantoms: “Great book. Racy, smart, surprising, and educational. Everything you ever wondered about walking on the wild side.” —Wendy Perron, author of Through the Eyes of a Dancer
Bring on the Phantoms: “It’s intriguing the way you balance the maze of political chicanery, cover-ups, and conspiracy theories with a tough-talking Mickey-Spillane-type detective story… a whiff of the bildungsroman leaks into the proceedings too.” —Deborah Jowitt, author of Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance
Writing in Motion: Body—Language—Technology: “Kenneth King was one of the most fluid and dazzlingly inventive choreographers to emerge in the 1960s; his works were always filled with startling juxtapositions and stunning associations, as he seemed able to connect the most disparate extensions of movement into remarkable syntheses. So it comes as no surprise that Kenneth King's writings, filled with his special wit and his immense erudition, should be so multifaceted and exuberantly intelligent. Just open the book at any point, and you’ll find remarks which will start your own imagination racing with associations and connections. Kenneth King, as a choreographer and a writer, is a treasure, and his book is a stimulating encounter with a great mind with the ability to translate his thoughts into both words and movement.” —Daryl Chin, author, critic, Fellow at the International Research Center
Writing in Motion: Body—Language—Technology: “…every page of this collection of his essays and performance texts swims in an intellectual stream where the water runs thick and swift. Steeped in Marshall McLuhan, Susanne K. Langer, Marcel Duchamp (and a dozen other philosophers)… King surveys a wide range of subjects… [H]e is capable of flashing a devastating wit. By perusing these fifteen pieces, the reader can synthesize a deeply personal aesthetic.” —Dance Magazine
“Readers who stumble across Kenneth King’s first book, Writing in Motion: Body—Language—Technology, may decide to pay more attention to their feet, if not their language. Poets, in particular, may find themselves unexpectedly captivated by this dancer’s idea of how to get around in a line of type. King adopts a playful prose style that… derives partly from his sensitivity to the moment when exposition interferes with spontaneity, obstructing the natural tendency of words (and movement) to shoot off in unexpected directions… His book provokes as many questions about reading as it does about writing… His successors have their work cut out for them.” —Nancy G. Moore, PAJ (formerly Performing Arts Journal)
“Writing in Motion makes a significant contribution to both the artistic and critical investigation of the relationship between dancing and writing that has been so provocative in recent years.” —Peggy Phelan, The Ann O’Day Maples Chair in the Arts, Stanford University
“‘So why,’ queried choreographer Kenneth King in a recent newspaper column, ‘are w-o-r-d-s (spoken, written, projected, intoned, sung, hummed, synapsulated) a frontier for dancers?’ This question might well be asked by many New York audiences these days… Of the post-modern choreographers, Kenneth King has probably experimented with words most consistently and energetically. A former philosophy major and a writer who has contributed to such publications as Ballet Review, New American Cinema, Paris Review and the Soho Weekly News, Mr. King sees language as the crux of modern life. ‘Language is bound up with how we see in ways we’re not even aware of,’ he has said. ‘And often, when I do a movement, words come to mind – not because the movement means them, but because the gestures, the act of dancing, become a reflective device.’ In this thinking he follows the lead of Susanne K. Langer, one of the few philosophers who has addressed the esthetics of dance. She has suggested that the evolution of language was related to certain primitive physical behavior, including ritual and communal dances. A moving body and a spoken (or written, or projected) word both carry meaning, therefore, according to Mr. King. Both “resonate” in the world. Mr. King is also fascinated with technology. ‘We live in an information age,’ he says, ‘and the basic unit is the pulse, and these are multiple resonances within each word.’ The philosophical underpinning of Mr. King’s work is complex, but it should not be assumed that his dance lack humor, or pathos or delight. In fact, Mr. King puts together quite a show. He has won a New York State CAPS grant not for choreography, but multi-media, and he has made use of slide, film, radio, tape, various kinds of music (often commissioned), kinetic props—and silence. He has incorporated readings from Langer, Descartes, McLuhan, Nietzsche, Robbe-Grillet, John F. Kennedy and Marie Curie. Puns and tongue-twisters add whimsy to his work, and even to some of his titles – “RAdeoA.C.tiv(ID)ty” and “Wor(l)d (T)Raid.” ‘Can words change how we move?’ Mr. King asks, and he has answered himself. ‘Words give you a new way to mix, suspend, shift rhythms in mid-phrase, they play with dynamics and texture without locking the moving body into a specific set or beat.’” —New York Times, “Uniting Words And Motion” by Barry Laine
PUBLICATIONS
My writings have also appeared in The Paris Review, The Chicago Review, The Antioch Review, /nor (New Ohio Review), Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, Art & Cinema, Shantih: The Literature of Soho, Hotel Amerika, Rio Grande Review, Movement Research Performance Journal, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, TDR: The Drama Review, Semiotext(e), Film Culture, Soho Weekly News, Dance Magazine, File, eddy, Gay and Lesbian Journal Worldwide, Ballet Review, Panache; and in the anthologies Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space and Time, The Young American Writers, The New American Arts, Text-Sound Texts, Footnotes: Six Choreographers Inscribe the Page, Further Steps: Fifteen Choreographers on Modern Dance, Further Steps 2: Fourteen Choreographers on What’s the R.A.G.E. in Modern Dance, and The New American Cinema.
CLUB LIGHTHOUSE PUBLISHING
Club Lighthouse Publishing, Canada/USA was founded in 2006 in Toronto by Terrie Balmer, an author and accomplished painter, and began as an authors’ co-op to utilize the opportunities afforded by the Internet as a publishing alternative. Currently CLP has published more than a hundred authors’ approximately four-hundred books. As Club Lighthouse’s CEO and executive editor, Terrie Balmer is singular for designing unusually imaginative book covers and book art. James Wason, an author as well on the American side, is the technical wiz who adapts the e-publishing formats for Amazon’s CreateSpace paperback editions so CLP authors can be read on screens or between two covers.
Banner photos: Johan Elbers. Site design: Grant King