karen Krolak is a free range collaborator based in Boston, MA who lives with a rare, chronic health condition. Since 2000, she has been the co-founder/Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse, an award winning nonprofit that connects communities with choreography. Her embodied explorations weave in elements of text, textiles, choreography or story telling to spark dialogues that reverberate between communities. Her idiosyncratic pieces have been presented abroad in Rome, Winnipeg, and Gimpo, nationally in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis as well as regularly throughout New England. She earned her B.A. in Linguistics at Northwestern University and her MFA inInterdisciplinary Arts at Sierra Nevada College. Much of her recent work has centered around the theme of finding physical poetry in imperfect bodies and around mourning as she grapples with the car crash that killed her mother, father, and brother. Her ongoing project the Dictionary of Negative Space (www.dictionaryofnegativespace.com) has recently been awarded an I-ARE Residency at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, MA and a residency at the Newton Cemetery in Newton MA with funding from the Newton Cultural Council. It has been featured in exhibitions in Arizona, Nevada, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, and Korea; conferences in Korea, England and the US; as well as in dance collaborations with Monkeyhouse and Scott McPheeters. She frequently collaborates with Nicole Harris, Jason Ries, Jeremy Wechsler, Kwaq7aj', Ralph Farris, Eric John Meyer, Anne Howarth, and Barry Duncan.