EUNOIA in Calgary: Marie France Forcier relocates and Fujiwara Dance Inventions at Fluid Festival.

1    Marie France Forcier is the artistic director of Forcier Stage Works, a dancer and new Calgarian. After her very recent relocation from Toronto to Calgary. She made the performance of Fujiwara Dance Inventions' EUNOIA an assignment for her class at the University of Calgary Dance Department. EUNOIA is on tonight at Theatre Junction GRAND as part of Fluid Festival in association with Word Fest. Here's a quick Q and A with Marie France.
     
photo of Marie France Forcier by Walter Lai


     LR: How is the relocation to Calgary going for you? 

MFF: There have been a lot of changes in my circumstances this year: I became a mother, I relocated out West after 15 years in Toronto and I started my first academic appointment. When people ask me this question, I find it hard to isolate the Calgary factor in the equation. So, I’ll answer as best I can: well enough! I feel as though I haven’t yet gotten much of a sense of the local dance community yet, spending the totality of my time whether at work or taking care of the baby. That being said, I have a short performance and a blog entry coming up for the Fluid Festival. I’m hoping that my participation helps to kick-start my integration.


2  LR: What is your new position at University of Calgary and what does it entail)?
     
     MFF: That would be Assistant Professor in Dance in the School of Creative and Performing Arts, Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary. Essentially, there are three parts to the professorial responsibilities: teaching, research and community service. This term, I am teaching a first year course: Introduction to Creative Process: Vocabulary and Analysis, and a third year course: Creative Process: Choreography. I feel fortunate, because I love discussing creativity and there is a lot of that going on in both of those courses.
     
     In terms of research, I am further expending on my existing work on trauma and choreography both in writing and in the studio. I am in the initial draft phase of an article on the politics of presentation and censorship in trauma-related performance, and am starting a new process for a shared program at U of C with Melanie Kloetzel this coming January. Additionally, I am choreographing a work for Dance Montage, a long-running series for community dancers and am serving on various committees, both for U of C and other academic organizations.     

Marie France Forcier's Scars are all the Rage photo by Craig Chambers
dancers: Justine Comfort, Molly Johnson and Louis Laberge-Cote

3    LR: Why did you choose to assign EUNOIA performances to your class(es)?

      MFF: I will be honest and say that I foremost chose EUNOIA for personal reasons. I was out of town when it first premiered in Toronto a couple of years ago and I was disappointed that I couldn’t see it -- this is my chance!

     Of course, there was also more substantial reasoning going into my decision: I wanted the students to see a full-length work from an out-of-town artist, Christian Bök’s poem is a concrete choreographic departure point for the students to research and I believe that exposing dance students to mature artists on stage serves to subtilize or, at least, broaden their appreciation of what is valuable in performance. 

Marie France Forcier's class at the University of Calgary with Forcier's baby River
photo by Oscar Surla

LR: What do you hope the students will absorb/learn/engage with by seeing it?


MFF: I assigned the EUNOIA to my two classes, in fulfillment of different assignments. My first year class will use their experience as a departure point for descriptive writing and basic movement analysis, while my third year class will concentrate on identifying compositional and choreographic strategies inherent to the piece and speculate on how they might apply similar ideas in their own work. 

EUNOIA
Saturday October 17 8pm at Theatre Junction Grand, Calgary
Fluid Festival
http://springboardperformance.com/fluidfest/#eunoia

Fujiwara Dance Inventions continues the Canadian tour in Whitehorse!
Yukon Arts Centre 
October 23, 8pm
http://yukonartscentre.com/calendar/event/eunoia/


Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow, I would love to hear what Marie France's U of Calgary students come up with!
xox, denise
October 19, 2015 at 11:36 AM
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