Spinal Fluid (in progress)
Eric has received a prestigious Princess Grace Foundation Choreography Fellowship to create SPINAL FLUID with AXIS Dance Company. Simultaneously, we will be creating an alternate version of the work on Dandelion Dancetheater with support from the Zellerbach Family Fund and the CSUEB Faculty Grants.
SPINAL FLUID will be a research intensive work, seeking to find methods of choreography that can survive multiple cast replacements over the long term and remain accessible to performers of all body abilities/disabilities and size/shape.
Drop (2007) 
DROP is a dance/theater work that explores the theme of groundlessness – the instability in life we so often try to avoid, but with which we ultimately must come to terms. Reflecting on the performers’ experiences of dashed expectations, surprising losses, and slippery twists and turns that have made them question who they are and the nature of identity itself, DROP exposes the audience to sudden shifts of perspective, experiences of “the rug being pulled out from underneath.” Supported by a major grant from the Gerbode Foundation and produced by DanceArtSF, Inc.
Anicca (2006)
With major support from a Dance USA/Irvine Foundation “Dance: Creation to Performance” grant, Dandelion Dancetheater has created a new dance/theater work, ANICCA. This “in your face” dance/theater work challenges body image prejudice by illuminating the impermanence of all bodies, placing beauty concerns in a larger and more pressing context. ANICCA, which premiered at Project Artaud in San Francisco and has toured to Los Angeles, Hawaii, Blue Lake, CA, and New York, is a site-specific work that can be molded to most venues.
Building on five years of Undressed Project experimentation, ANICCA taps into the vulnerability of full nudity, while simultaneously subverting audiences’ expectations around costumes, utilizing partial nudity, underwear, awkward combinations of clothing (i.e. just socks and a hat, etc). The work looks at body politics, power dynamics, the lines between sensual, sexual and medical nudity, aggression, violence and multi-layered responses to mortality.
A Walk in the Park (2006)
This collaborative duet created by Eric Kupers and Neil Marcus looks at loneliness and the fleeting opportunities for connections through the lens of a meeting between two men, and the ways in which they navigate fear, shyness, desire and connection. It combines dance/theater with physically integrated dance, as well as poetry by Marcus, a disabled artist and activist.
Prism (2005)
Dandelion joins forces with singer/songwriter Lori B and writer Andrew Ramer to research models for performance that deliberately facilitate healing for both the performers and audiences. Crafted specifically for intimate spaces, Prism addresses relationship wounds and their foreshadowing from childhood. Performances transformed a studio at Jon Sims Center for the Arts, SF for an unexpected spatial configuration.
Octagon (2005)
A wild ride along the intersections of improvisation and composition within experimental dance, music and performance painting, using these three mediums to ask questions about the nature of self and selflessness, obsession and detachment. Created and performed collaboratively by Dandelion, avant-jazz quartet Quadrangle and painter Nancy Ostrovsky. Performed at ODC Theater, SF and Electric Lodge, LA.
You (2005)
You plays with the slipperiness of memory and projection in relationship, examining fragments from childhood and how they impact present day interactions. Performed by Josie Alvite, Christy Funsch, Rebecca Johnson, Debby Kajiyama, Eric Kupers, Anne-Lise Reusswig, Manfred Schaechtle at ODC Theater, SF and Electric Lodge, LA.
Night Marsh (2004)
Night Marsh explores impermanence and death and how these given aspects of
life imprint on perceptions of our bodies. Drawing on the research in naked
dancing that Dandelion conducted through three years of the Undressed
Project, Night Marsh has been performed Jon Sims Center for the Arts in San
Francisco, as part of the SF Queer Arts Festival, at the Mondavi Center in
Davis and at the Electric Lodge, Los Angeles. The work incorporates a core
cast of dancers with diverse body types dancing completely naked, and future
versions will integrate a chorus of community members that allows for an
even wider range of naked bodies.
Stories Written Under Skin (2003)
A work commissioned by the California Choreographer‚s Festival in Laguna Beach, for a performance at the Sawdust Festival, Laguna Beach, CA. This work weaves together Dandelion‚s highly physical, quirky and emotionally driven movement and partnering with lyrical story-songs by singer/songwriter Lori B to explore love in its losses and redemptions. Also performed as part of Dandelion‚s „Re-Visioning the Body in Dance #1‰ at Western Sky Studio, Berkeley.
There (2003)
Shown as a work-in-progress at Cal State Hayward and UC Davis;
premiered at ODC Theater as part of Summerfest/dance
Kimiko Guthrie's There, performed by Eric Kupers, Frank Shawl, Debby Kajiyama and Erin Gottwald, tells the vigorous, fragmented story of a man engaged in a race, both backwards and forwards, with Time. Caught in one moment, he looks incessantly back at himself, trying to reconcile who he has been over the years, and as well cannot stop looking forward towards that which he might, willingly or unwillingly become. The piece is set to text by Kimiko.
The Undressed Project (2002 - present)
Shown as a work-in-progress at Jon Sims Center for the Arts; premiered at ODC Theater in SF
Click here to read more about the Undressed Project.
Eric Kupers interrogates the assumptions of physical beauty that have engendered an array of insecurities, from anorexia and bulimia, to self hatred and abuse. By exploring the naked body within the medium of dance, with a cast diverse in size, shape, color, age, race and sexual identity, Kupers challenges the dancers and the audience to remember the innocence, power and beauty of the human body. Undressed experiments with dismantling the stigmas around nudity in this culture, through highly physical dance and partnering that includes acrobatics, intimate touch, physical humor and the exploration of the artistic advantages to having areas of our bodies that wiggle, jiggle, shake and bounce. Created in an Airspace residency at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts and including music by local music artists Down River and Lori B.
Strange Hole (2002)
Shown as a work-in-progress at the East Bay Dance Festival; premiered at ODC Theater in SF
Choreographed by Kimiko Guthrie. Explores the landscapes of loss through three vignettes weaving together loops, holes, catches, slips and sudden disappearance. Strange Hole includes a new duet choreographed and performed collaboratively by Guthrie and co-director Eric Kupers. Performed by Dawn Frank, Kerry Gaither, Kimiko Guthrie, Debby Kajiyama, Eric Kupers and Ching Chi Yu.
Illusive (2002)
Shown as a work-in-progress at Jon Sims Center for the Arts; premiered at ODC Theater in SF
Choreographed by Eric Kupers. An undressed prologue. This duet, performed by Eric and Kimiko, explores and challenges, through humor and fluid dance, the prevailing and constraining beliefs about body type in the dance world.
Start Adrift (2001)
(Work-in-progress) Performed at Jon Sims Center for the Arts; ODC Theater in SF, Cal State Los Angeles
A collaborative project initiated and organized by Eric Kupers, and co-created and performed by Kupers, Manuelito Biag, Manfred Schaechtle and Oscar Trujillo. Part 1 was performed throughout the Bay Area and Los Angeles in the Summer of 2001 and was a series of intimate duets, some highly sensual between men in suits. Part 2 delves into the nature of dating in the gay male world; touching on personal ads, talk-show type stereotypes about gay and bisexual men, fears of vulnerability and isolation, and dance that boldly crosses the line between partnering and explicit making out (with a cameo by Trujillo’s partner, Mazdak). Created in an Airspace residency at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts.
Hitch (2000)
Premiered at Summerfest 2000 at the Cowell Theater in SF; also performed at Open Arts Circle in Oakland
Choreography by Kimiko Guthrie. Tells the story of a woman stranded by the side of the road. Cast: Manuelito Biag, Kimiko Guthrie, Chingchi Yu. Alternate cast included Dawn Frank. Original Live Music: Daniel Berkman; Visual Art: John Jacobsen
Three (2000)
Premiered at ODC Theater in SF; also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland
Choreography by Eric Kupers in collaboration with the dancers. A trio in which the three dancers are always in contact with one another; explores the intense interwoven dynamics of a triangle relationship. Cast: Kimiko Guthrie, Debby Kajiyama, Eric Kupers
Mind Circle (2002)
Premiered at ODC Theater in SF; also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland
Choreography by Kimiko Guthrie. A dance-play exploring aging and the circuitous journey of memory loss. Cast: Brad Guthrie, Debby Kajiyama, Eric Kupers, Sue Roginski
Miyo in the Middle (1998)
Choreography: Kimiko Guthrie, in collaboration with Eric Kupers Original Music: Monica Pasqual, Bob Frank Text: Kimiko Guthrie-Kupers
(The premiere performances of Miyo were produced by Asian American Dance Performances at Theater Artaud in San Francisco. Since then Miyo has toured to New York and Hawaii. Miyo has been funded by the Serpent Source Foundation for Women Artists, and in large part from a generous grant from an Anonymous Foundation. Earlier versions of Miyo were also funded in part by the Zellerbach Family Fund.)
This evening-length dance-play explores life and mind of Miyo, a girl born to a Japanese mother and a Caucasian prison guard in an American Internment Camp during WWII. This post-modern dance/play, uses lyrical, emotionally-charged dance, dramatic scenes, and original music to follow the complex, often tragically humorous family-life of Miyo, including her mother's wandering ghost and her father's other wife and child. Based loosely on Sam Sheppard’s play “Fool for Love,” Miyo in the Middle is the story of an All-American Hapa-Cowgirl, and -without providing the audience with simple answers--sheds light on one woman's struggle to come to terms with her complicated mixed identity, the Internment, and her mother's suicide.
Riverbed (1998)
Choreography: Eric Kupers, in collaboration with Kimiko Guthrie Music: Kaila Flexer and Third Ear, and others Costumes: Dandelion Dancetheater
(Riverbed premiered as part of Summerfest '98 dance festival in San Francisco. Dandelion Dancetheater has since performed the piece in the states of Bihar, Orissa, and Kerala in India, in Los Angeles and at Santa Rosa's First Night festival and in Hilo, Hawaii. Riverbed was funded in large part by a grant from an Anonymous Foundation and by the Zellerbach Family Fund.)
Riverbed, a duet between Dandelion Dancetheater directors Kimiko Guthrie and Eric Kupers, explores the ebb and flow of relationship through the universal metaphor of water. Using contact improvisation-based partnering and full-bodied, liquid-inspired dance, Riverbed portrays an intimate couple at a bittersweet transition in their lives.
2nd Class Sleeper, Seat 26 (1999)
Choreography: Kimiko Guthrie and Eric Kupers Original Music: Hyim Ross Commissioned by: Dancing in the Streets
(Dandelion Dancetheater was commissioned by Dancing in the Streets to create this new piece, which premiered at Wave Hill in New York, and was performed as part of Summerfest '99 at the Cowell Theater in SF as well as in Hilo, Hawaii. These performances are made possible in large part by a grant from an Anonymous Foundation.)
2nd Class Sleeper, Seat 26 is a kinetic, archetypal journey from the known and safe to the frightening and ultimately redeeming territories of the long-closeted spirit. In this piece Dandelion Dancetheater uses unexpected, turbulent turnings of bodies and events, sensual momentum, humor, real-time action, and dream-like imagery to portray the adventures and awakenings of Mr. Zeitzmann, a character metaphorically evolved from the company's recent travels in India. 2nd Class Sleeper, Seat 26 will feature the exciting combination of vigorous, traditional and alternative modern dance, theatrical text and gesture, and abandoned, intimate partnering that the San Francisco-based company has been developing over the past several years. Mr. Zeitzmann, a man without much to say, goes about life in a timid, inconspicuous fashion, not changing his routine in the slightest from day to day. He is utterly unprepared for the wild cast of characters he is about to meet, the colorful chaos he will be bombarded by, and the astonishing unraveling and complete scattering of his very identity as all his carefully placed, skillfully packaged belongings are scattered to the wind.
Other past works include...
In This House (1996), which featured Beverly's Piece (1995), In Their Wedding Clothes (1996), Across the Ocean (1996), and others, as well as work by choreographer/videographer Rajendra Serber; The Fear Project (1995); One time a bird looked at me and I knew it was you (produced by Unbound Spirit Dance Co., 1994); and Did You Say Something (1993).