Kelsey Oliver

Kelsey Oliver, an Austin native, is a freelance choreographer and performer in the digs for ridiculously experimental theatre, film, and concert dance. She is currently Artistic Director of physical theatre troupe Frank Wo/Men Collective, which spawned from a desire to create collaboratively fervid, humorous, and idiosyncratic devising processes with multi-fielded artists. She likes durational stuff, and devised stuff, and stuff that gets athletic as fug. (kelsey-oliver.com)

What made you want to start creating or selling?

I started creeping into dance choreography/envisioning worlds/dreaming up design elements starting in middle school. I got real gung ho on the short and sweet competition choreography train throughout high school, and starting in college, I was thinking within more durational concert dance works, dance on film, music videos, non traditional dance installations, etc. At UT Austin, the Theatre & Dance department is combined, so my exposure to traditional and weird interactive theatre was enlivened, as well as my interest in collaborating with interdisciplinary artists and exploring as wide a swath of performance mediums as possible. It has since been a fulfilling, often oxymoronic collection of experiences.

What do you wish someone would have told you when you started? Did you have experience or did you learn as you went along?

Divergent thinking can be extremely fruitful through the process, even amidst a convergent thinking goal. When stuck, try to remind yourself to do something random and unexpected, and make sense of it later. If you trust the world your brain is swimming in, then anything coming out of that brain can be (theoretically, and in some way, mind-mappedly) connected. +++Reimagine the structure and the parameters you’re thinking the thing lives in. I knew some stuff. I challenged some modeled thinking. For some projects, I followed another’s visions & structures and with other projects, I tried to start from scratch, and always collaboratively <3

What do you love most about your brand? Or the work you produce?

I love the human conversation element of any collaboration. The o o o what-if moments.

Is this your fulltime job?

Yes!

Who are some of your favorite queer artists or creators? Queer owned businesses?

ATX&NYC&SantaFe-based hoomans: Tori Reynolds, Emmet Hunker: Thee Gay Agenda, Aaron Flynn, Roberto Di Donato, Billie Secular, KD Drackert, Bumper, Hunter Sturgis, Kate Taylor: Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Brown Gal Jewelry +++many moreee

One last random thing about you! Can be totally random!

I can do a mean peacock call.