blue ceiling dancer

Ingrid Hansen and SNAFU take on Fort York: SummerWorks 2011 Dance Interviews

2011-08-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

SNAFU Dance Theatre’s Ingrid Hansen answers some questions about Pretty Little Instincts.

LR: What inspired you to create Pretty Little Instincts?

IH: It’s really hard to say specifically – I think we’re inspired and influenced by everything we take in on some level. I actually started brewing this show while on a cross-Canada theatre for young audiences tour – even though Pretty Little Instincts has nothing specifically to do with youth. I was dealing with the wildness within myself, watching the people around me suppress their own instincts and intuition – and things began to grow. A bit like the mould growing out the damp walls of the apartment we’re staying in here in Toronto. It just erupts. Then spreads. Then you breathe in the spores. I’m not sure where I’m going with this metaphor but let’s pretend it’s really profound.

LR: How are you adapting to the space at Fort York?

IH: We use the huge sloping walls of the Fort, the deep grassy moat, and a wall set with huge wooden spikes. We also use the bats flying overhead, the gophers, the wind, the rain. . . we’ve been performing outdoors rain or shine, with the audience snuggled under tents as the rain gradually washes away the actor’s bodypaint leaving us mostly washed clean by the end of the show.

It’s an incredible, huge, raw open space.

LR: Can you describe the creative process for Pretty Little Instincts both at its inception and as you’ve taken it to new spaces?

IH: We have two brand new cast members, Seth Drabinsky (Toronto) and Heather Lindsay (HerebeMonsters, Vancouver) in this inception and the show has evolved a great deal – especially the characters. The space itself was a huge influence. We are still taking it in every night with each performance.

LR: In three sentences or less, what is SNAFU all about?

IH: Renegade Outdoor Dance Theatre.

LR: What made you want to participate in the SummerWorks festival?

IH: Who wouldn’t want to?

P.S. We have a teaser at http://snafu.liquidbeat.com/next/

We have only a few performances left and we’re out there RAIN OR SHINE.

Pretty Little Instincts

SNAFU Dance Theatre

Creator and Director Ingrid Hansen

Tuesday Aug 9 at 8:30pm

Wednesday Aug 10 at 10pm

Saturday Aug 13 at 9:30pm

www.summerworks.ca

www.snafu.liquidbeat.com

All SummerWorks tickets are $15 each at the door. Tickets can also be purchased online, in person at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave, or by phone at 416-504-7529. Advance tickets are $15 plus HST and a $1 service fee. Several money-saving passes are also available if you plan to see at least 3 shows.

photo of SNAFU Dance Theatre by Gordon Lee

Liz Peterson and Express Yourself at SummerWorks 2011

2011-08-07T17:32:00.001-07:00

Liz Peterson speaks about Express Yourself playing at Hub 14 as part of this years SummerWorks Festival.

LR: What was the creative process like for Express Yourself — can you describe a bit how this work came to be?

LP: Well, it began really as an exploration of the process itself. Sean O’Neill (my collaborator and director of the show) approached me with this idea to create a show that was about “gestures of communication”.

We decided to develop a play without a script that was about performance. So we started with a couple of ideas, some shared influences, such as Pina Bausch, Marina Abramovic and we began to rehearse, without knowing what it was going to be.

Although there were a couple of elements that Sean knew had to be in the show, specific songs or stories or images, we didn’t have a structure. We worked like that for about 6 months, and then we decided that we had something that we were ready to show, but first we invited a couple of people to rehearsals, Ame Henderson being one of them.

Ame eventually came to collaborate with us on Express Yourself, even though we had originally asked her to look at it from a choreographer’s perspective, her input became crucial to the whole concept of the show.

We mounted a workshop of Express Yourself last December with an invited audience. And now we’ve been rehearsing casually again for a few weeks in preparation for SummerWorks.

LR: How is the choreography by Aurora Stewart de Pena integrated into the play itself?

LP: We asked Aurora to choreograph one particular part of the show where there is a shift in the performance and I enact a musical number. We’re constantly playing with shifting modes of performance throughout the play and we wanted to have a moment in the show where the aesthetic was a more heightened performative state; something tightly choreographed and a little tongue in cheek.

Both Sean and myself have performed in shows by Birdtown & Swanville (a company run by Aurora and Nika Mistruzzi) and we were both super exited to be able to include Aurora’s particular approach to choreography.

LR: Your venue is the wonderful and quirky hub 14 –how are you working with the space?

LP: Express Yourself really came to life in hub 14, and we’ve discovered that so many qualities of the show are in part due to the nature of the space.

We’ll be taking Express Yourself next spring to a theatre in St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery in New York, and we’re already trying to think about how to deal with being in a large black box with proper theatre lights and tiered seating and all the associations [with that theatrical setting].

Because Express Yourself is constantly questioning itself as a performance, we want people to be aware of the room: that it’s a studio, more of a rehearsal space than a stage, and because the audience is so close to the performer, it’s a very intimate show.

Having said that, we’re also working with Kim Purtell to find some interesting ways to light the space and that is proving to be a pretty exiting new aspect to the show.

LR: For those who may not know very much about you, could you give me a quick and dirty run down of your artistic pursuits, quests, peaks?

LP: Well, I’ve been creating shows for several years now. I used to run a company called Ammo Factory which was a group of theatre artists that I went to school with at the University of Toronto.

We did a couple of shows at Interaccess Electronic Media Gallery and a piece in the Images Festival. I’ve been interested in experimental performance since I was in a show written and directed by Alex Wolfson.

It was called The String Row Game and we rehearsed it for something like six months, a couple of times a week. Alex was really exploring a new aesthetic, and it was so exiting to finally mount it. We put it up at the Music Gallery in 2002. It was very rigorous, poetic and super challenging for the audience.

In 2008 I went to New York to intern with a theatre director called Richard Foreman who’s work was very much an inspiration for The String Row Game, as well as this group that I went to school with.

Richard’s rehearsal process was intensive and super idiosyncratic. It was weird to immerse myself in the world of this artist whom I had idealized for so long and to find him at the end of his career, a little tired of the whole circus of putting up a show and getting people out to see it.

He’s an amazing artist, and I’m so glad I did it, but it was also very eye opening. It made me realize I didn’t need to be in New York to create the work that I wanted to create. Toronto has a lot of interesting artists and a lot of potential. A quest of mine is to be a part of that potential.

LR: What do you value most as a performer and creator?

LP: Time. But that’s a practical thing. Boring. I think being able to question the work is important, especially when you’re collaborating with people. If you have a group of people in the room it’s important that questions be properly addressed, you know, like, why are we doing this?

Express Yourself

an Events in Time Production

at Summerworks Festival

at Hub 14

remaining shows:

Aug 9 at 7pm

Aug 10 at 9pm

Aug 11 at 7pm

Aug 12 at 9pm

Aug 13 at 5 pm

Aug 14 at 5pm

photo of Liz Peterson by Laurie Kang

Susanna Hood, Shudder at the 2011 SummerWorks Festival

2011-08-05T13:15:00.001-07:00

Susanna Hood

Susanna Hood, creator of Shudder and artistic director ofhum dansoundart, speaks about remounting a work, replacing herself and finding her voice.

LR: Susanna, you are dealing with an injury — how have you adapted the rehearsal process for Shudder to accommodate this?

SH: The main adjustment has been to replace myself with a performer who I really trust. Linnea Swan has performed the role once before, and I’m happy to have the chance to deepen my work with her in this piece.

I am actually looking forward to re-approaching the piece from the outside, where, in fact, I spent a good percentage of the time over its three-year creation process. I have some new perspective on the work as a whole, and liberating myself of the role of performer may allow me make more impactful changes to the piece.

I’ve also done something I’ve never done before, which is to give the performers two full days just to recover the material without me in the room. I did this to ensure that I wouldn’t get sucked in to engaging physically beyond my current means (it’s so easy to want to jump in and demonstrate).

I also chose to do this to practice giving over some responsibility to my collaborators. It’s the kind of act of trust that is worth practicing as I contemplate new relationships to my own work as an aging performer. The piece is bigger than me, it belongs to [the collaborators] as well.

LR: How have you used Francis Bacon’s paintings as fuel for this work?

SH: My first response to seeing an exhibit of his work live in 2007 was completely visceral. His work – its colour, its mystery, its distortion, its movement as violence enacted on flesh – shook my cells.

In some ways, it had a strange feeling of “home” to me. So I brought some of those images into the studio and we responded to them improvisationally. Some of my choices were highly influenced, or at least coaxed along, by reading an amazing book of collected interviews of Bacon by long-time contemporary and critic David Sylvester.

Francis Bacon was incredibly articulate in elucidating his creative process, many aspects of which inspired me. I have, in fact, returned to some of his view points to refortify the piece as we work on this remount.

His interest in what he called the appearance of a person – what lies under the surface – as well as the effect of violence enacted on flesh have been strong anchors for me.

LR: Can you tell me a bit more about the creative process?

SH: My creative process, in creation, is a bit unwieldy. It tends to be long and in layers. I go in with a pretty open field and some inklings and my collaborators, and then I go through a very circuitous process of building, tearing apart, seeing what remains relevant, and rebuilding.

This cycle happens numerous times, and what I’m generally trying to do throughout that is learn how to recognize and listen to the needs of the thing that is coming into being. This leaves lots of time and room for doubt and what feels like groping around in the dark.

But eventually I begin to learn how to communicate with it, and at certain point my job and my choices become crystal clear.

Remounting allows me to question what I’ve already taken as givens. I’m a little less precious about the piece, and I can consider things from a more distanced vantage point. In the few times I’ve done it, it has felt extremely satisfying.

LR: I suppose you’ve been asked many times, but I personally don’t know the answer so I must ask: how did you discover your personal vocal capacity and what made you want to explore it?

SH: I have always loved singing. I sang tons as a kid and I was in choirs and musicals all through school, along with playing several instruments. I’ve had a secret yearning to go into musical theatre for almost as long as I can remember.

At a pivotal point, I chose dance above everything else in terms of the time I had for training. When I moved to Toronto, I had the fortune of being pointed in the direction of a very forward thinking singing teacher – the first of several that I studied with. She’s the one that first really encouraged me to explore integrating my voice into my movement work.

At first I was resistant. I thought it was too weird, and some of the doors it opened up scared me. I’ve had and still have some great mentors, and I continue to learn so much from working with my voice. That’s probably at least part of why I’ve never looked back.

LR: what made you want to participate in the SummerWorks festival?

SH: Michael Rubenfeld was so enthusiastic when he saw the original run of “Shudder” last year, so we began a discussion then about the possibility of giving it another Toronto presentation at SummerWorks.

The fact that SummerWorks comes from a theatre sensibility seemed particularly suited to “Shudder” in particular and to an aspect of my work in general. I’ve had a hard time fitting what I do into the disciplinary categories sometimes required by various presenters, so I’ve learned to move in the direction of individuals who are excited by and want to support what I’m doing.

Shudder

Presented by hum dansoundart

Conceived and Choreographed by Susanna Hood

Directed by Ruth Maddoc-Jones

Lower Ossington Theatre

Aug 6 at 2pm

Aug 7 at 7pm

Aug 8 at 4:30pm

Aug 10 at 7pm

Aug 11 at 4:30pm

Aug 12 at 4:30pm

Aug 14 at 7pm

www.summerworks.ca

interview with Allison Cummings from Combat at the SummerWorks Festival 2011

2011-08-03T18:19:00.001-07:00

Allison Cummings on Combat: 2011 SummerWorks Dance Interviews

By Lucy Rupert

Allison Cummings, co-director of a joint production by tiny bird theatre and Sore for Punching You, reveals a bit about Combat, premiering at SummerWorks Festival.

LR: What is Combat all about?

AC: Combat takes us into a mundane office in what might be Toronto where a young woman, returning from working in a conflict-zone overseas, attempts to re-enter society. Here she finds the tiny conflicts and bids for power amplified. Removed from the sensory experience of war she watches as her office becomes a battleground.

The piece explores scale and distance and how our relationship to conflict embodies itself into our everyday lives, whether it is happening far away on a mass scale, or within the confines of our interpersonal dynamics.

LR: How did you find or decide on your collaborators?

AC: Claire Calnan (co-director of Combat) and I began talking about collaborating together about two years ago, as we were both interested in continuing our individual practices in hybrid theatre. We then sought out performers and collaborators that were both open to and interested in exploring material through a melding of forms.

LR: Can you describe your creative process for Combat a little? What is it like in the rehearsal room?

AC: Both Claire and I approach the creation of work quite differently. We have both directed improvisational exercises, mine being mostly movement based and Claire’s being a technique called Open Canvas. We would then sit down with our writer Adam Underwood to discuss which things that appeared interested us the most.

I began choreographing segments quite early in the process, hoping to build a consistency within the world we were building that could carry throughout the piece and narrative.

We also start our rehearsals with a group ‘plank-off’. Everyone in the room assumes plank position and we decide on how long we are going to ‘plank’ for. Dylan Smith is at the most with 4 minutes, while most of us are almost at 3. This is really hard. And we are all now really buff. We are thinking that we may intimidate the other companies at the SummerWorks yard with our extraordinary buffness.

LR: What are the points of inspiration for the physicality of the production?

AC: Well, as above – Plank! Also, I have been working with images from videos of actual soldiers in Combat. With this we have created a base ‘move’ we are calling ‘Tunneling’.

Basically, it is low to the floor, sneaky and precise. Somewhat reminiscent of a soldier shimmying through a small space. Other moments in the work are built from conflicted communication, the characters built by the performers and the stillness of shock.

LR: What’s next after SummerWorks?

AC: For the team, we are approaching SummerWorks as our first phase in the development of this work. After this festival presentation, we will be gathering what we learned and planning on how to arrive at the next step. We are confident that what we are discovering is rich enough that Combat will have a life beyond this summer.

For myself, after SummerWorks, I will be getting ready to return to Thailand to enter into my second residency at Compeung, where I will be creating new work for an exhibition in Chiang Mai in December.

Combat

A tiny bird theatre/Sore for Punching You co-production

Theatre Centre

Aug 4 at 7:30pm

Aug 6at 10pm

Aug 9 at 10pm

Aug 11 at 7:30pm

Aug 12 at 5pm

Aug 14 at 5pm

www.summerworks.ca

Interview with Kevin Michael Shea of Common Descent's Hero and Leander at Summerworks 2011

2011-08-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

photo by Danielle Donn

It’s Lucy again (Blue Ceiling dance director, dancer, choreographer, multi-disciplinary performer and person very curious about how artists make their work) with some interviews involving members of Summerworks Festival productions with a dance or physical focus. Hope you enjoy them! First up: an interview with Director Kevin Michael Shea of Common Descent’s production Hero and Leander.

LR: What inspired you to work on the Hero and Leander story?

KMS: It’s a really gorgeous story, but it hasn’t been interpreted too much throughout history, which means we can kind of make it whatever we want without having to worry about most people’s expectations of it. The actual myth, revolving around Hero and Leander, is really only about half of the play – the other half concerns a second relationship, inspired by the myth but with different characters, which means that even if people do know the myth, there will be a bunch of surprises in our version of it.

The story also just ends up being such a good way of looking at love, sex, and commitment – the contemporary connections just kept jumping out at me when I was working on it, and it’s lent itself particularly well to the songwriting Wade and Scott have done.

LR: How did you find or assemble your team?

KMS: Friends, and friends of friends. There are a few people I worked with a bunch before. Our set and costume designer, Anna Treusch, has designed most of my stuff at this point, and she brought a few members to our team, as did people Scott knew from musical directing various shows around the city.

LR: How have you made Hero and Leader? What has been the creative process (i.e. collaborative, improvisational, script-driven, spontaneously together, separate elements then integrated etc…)?

KMS: The idea to do something with the myth came up a long time ago, and I tried working on it from a few different angles. Initially it was going to be a very physical one-man show co-created with Wade Bogert-O’Brien (who ended up being the show’s lyricist), and then it was going to just be a play, and then, maybe inevitably, I asked Wade to write a song to help along a scene I was working on. I thought the song he came up with was hilarious when he half-sung it to me in my kitchen, and realized that a musical was the only way I could tell this story. For the next few months we continued in this fashion. I would write a scene and then ask him to write a song, which I would then incorporate. Then, a little while later, I met Scott Christian, who was looking for projects to work on. Once he came on board we raced through the rest. I would send Wade a scene, he would write lyrics and send them off to Scott, who would in turn write the music. And then we would all argue about it.

LR: How would you describe the physicality/dance involved in your show?

KMS: It’s a real mix of things. We have a little bit of real musical theatre choreography, though we’ve really tried to tailor it to the characters, which has resulted in a kind of skewed version of the type of dance people are probably used to in musical comedies. We also work a bit with suggestive movement for some of the more fantastical moments. Mostly, though, the physicality is working in tandem with the design to build images from scene to scene. Our inspirations range from Renaissance paintings of classical subjects to the ways I see couples I know behaving in life.

LR: What drew you to Summerworks Festival?

KMS: There are very few places in Canada where you can debut new pieces of theatre in an affordable way. Especially musical theatre that is aimed at an urban audience. So SummerWorks is absolutely vital in this sense. The other nice thing about it is that you end up being in such good company. Many of my favourite writers and directors and performers have had shows at SummerWorks recently, this year included, and the chance to test our work alongside these people is very exciting and satisfying from an artistic perspective.

Hero and Leander

A Common Descent Production

Summerworks Festival 2011

Factory Mainspace

Aug 4 at 5pm

Aug 6 at 7:30pm

Aug 7 at 10pm

Aug 10 at 7:30pm

Aug 12 at 2:30pm

Aug 13 at 5pm

http://www.summerworks.ca/2011/festival-theatre.php

www.artsboxoffice.ca

Christine Birch and everything in moderation: Toronto Fringe Dance Interviews 2011

2011-07-10T08:42:00.001-07:00

Christine Birch and Rhonda Baker -- photo by Omer Yukseker

Christine Birch and Rhonda Baker get saturated in everything in moderation. Two shows under their belts and here’s a little interview with Christine to tempt you into a seat for the remaining shows. If you’re reading this on Sunday – their next show is at 1:15pm today, so read the interview later and head on out to the show!

LR: I'm intrigued by the friendship that fuels this project. On your website it says you and Rhonda met on your first day of professional training. How has this friendship worked it's way into everything in moderation?

CB: The thing is with Rhonda and myself, there’s never been a choreographer - dancer separation. Our “real life” happenings kind of seamlessly blend in to our rehearsals and vice versa.

Sometimes we wonder if other people work the same way we do or if laughing through half the rehearsal is abnormal…we just go with the flow I suppose.

We know each other so well it’s hard not to let our friendship infuse into the realm and nuances of the work – we exist within it in a lot of ways even though the piece is not about us per se.

LR: What are your vices, those things you can't take or have in moderation?

CB: I would say technology would be my biggest vice and probably is the same for most of my generation. Rhonda and I spend far too much time on social networking sites for our own good although it is a great way for us to connect when we are in different provinces.

Even texting, checking email on a regular basis – there seems to be that need to stay connected to your online persona which I don’t always think is a healthy thing.

It has become a major part of life though so it's very difficult to not be connected. Then there are all the normal vices like over indulging in music listening, beer and chocolate but those ones aren’t so bad really!

LR: What made you want to embark on the Fringe Festival experience?

CB: I actually stumbled upon the Fringe Festival this year - I only submitted my name right before the deadline. When I found out I had been drawn I felt a mix of emotions including fear and excitement.

I co-produced a multi-disciplinary show in the Winnipeg Fringe Festival last summer so I had an idea of what Fringe is all about. I'm thrilled that I have the chance to produce dance work for an audience, which isn't necessarily exposed to dance.

As an interpreter to have a run of seven shows is also pretty fantastic and actually gives one the chance to realize the depth of the work. There is a lot of great energy surrounding the fringe festival and I’m proud to be dancing in a festival with so many other emerging artists in the dance community.

LR: What are the parallels between saturation/moderation and reality/fantasy? How do you link those two ideas, do you link those two ideas?

CB: Everything is relative to what you consider reality and what saturation is. For us – those lines are very close to one another. We joke a lot about obsessing or spending too much time on social media or over certain bands’ music.

We often think that we’re not living in the “real” world but then we have to ask ourselves what is real? I think people obsess as much about things they are addicted to as much as they do about trying to stay in control so I suppose in both situation balance doesn't really exist.

Fantasy most definitely can blend into reality very easily or at least in the daily life in the dance world. Like I said – it’s a very blurry line…

LR: Is there a story to everything in moderation?

CB: There isn't exactly one solid story or plot going on – it’s really just two different takes on what moderation means to us. You know all those things one struggles with and how we deal – sometimes it’s plainly saying ****this and walking away.

The movement is brash, physically demanding, and also very human at some points. We’re just two women having a lot of fun doing what we love to do.

LR: Thanks Christine for the interview and have a wonderful rest of your run at the Fringe!

everything in moderation
by Rhonda Baker, Christine Birch & Tara Gaucher
(www.letsgetsaturated.wordpress.com)
presented by Christine Birch from Toronto, ON

Choreographer: Rhonda Baker & Tara Gaucher
Cast: Rhonda Baker & Christine Birch
Genre: Dance, Physical Theatre
Venue 6 George Ignatieff Theatre

45 min.
Wed, July 6 8:45 PM
Sat, July 9 Noon
Sun, July 10 1:15 PM
Tue, July 12 5:15 PM
Wed, July 13 9:15 PM
Thu, July 14 2:15 PM
Sat, July 16 9:45 PM

Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows

Carlynn Reed and Jonathon Neville in Let's Play House: Toronto Fringe Festival 2011

2011-07-09T17:27:00.001-07:00

Carlynn Reed and Jonathon Neville answer some questions about Imagiscape’s Let’s Play House, a compelling expression of the complexities of caregiving. Six years after its premiere, it comes to the Toronto Fringe Festival. Carlynn and Jonathon (J&C) answer some questions.

LR: Can you tell me what Let's Play House is about?

J&C: Let’s Play House is about changing habits – it’s about changing families without making everyone hate everyone. It is about us as caregivers. Jonathon is sole caregiver for his mom, Christine, who has Alzheimer's. Following university, living at home was becoming stressful but it was increasingly clear she could not live alone. She clutches to a PhD which can't help her now. She says she wishes she was dead.

Carlynn is primary caregiver for her son, Kirk, who suffered a soccer injury. Instead of healing normally, he plummeted into full-body pain. This once-tough athlete and great musician lay on the couch, unable to walk or talk. Months turned to years. No diagnosis. Grim prognosis.

We create theatre with our families about our families. The story overlays and interweaves 3 stories: each of our homes, and the creative process that changed them. Dance is integral to the story.

LR: How have you managed to create a show about chaotic caregiving while experiencing chaotic caregiving?

J&C: When we discovered we were both caregivers and dancers and theatre artists, we knew we needed to take our homes through a creative process. Our homes were stuck systems, where attempts to help elicited defence mechanism responses. Creating this theatre project gave us something we could do together – something we could talk about that was actually enjoyable. It created a context that allowed open dialogue.

We transcribed and categorized fights. We went into rehearsal having a sense of the dynamics that lead to our various typical conflicts. We challenged each other when we saw repetitive default behaviours. We began to care for the progress in the other home as much as our own.

We filmed rehearsals and at home for purposes of a future documentary. Although initially we did not realize how supportive this would be, the camera was attentive, kind, steady, compassionate, and patient. Our videographer was our 'outside eye' - an integral part of our process.

LR: Has the autobiographical nature of the performance been difficult or challenging?

J&C: We needed consensus without compromising the drama. For instance, Jonathon had to get Christine to agree that the not-always-pretty presentation of her is fair – and that it should be exposed to the public to see. She accepted the suggestion that it does not make her look bad – rather she looks grand to have been willing to give her story to help other struggling families.

Christine and Kirk both contributed to the script. When we started learning lines, Christine was our script prompter. She wouldn’t let us include a fart scene. We honoured her request.

Kirk wrote two songs for the show – he was unable to hold his guitar or play piano or sing, but he whistled and Jonathon played it back on the piano. That was Kirk’s first creative act in several years. This time round he is half of the Stage Managing team and excerpts from his new band's first CD complement the original score.

We had previously collaborated on choreography, but this was the first time either of us had collaborated on a script. Many times the process of writing was as painful as the caregiving itself, and there were moments when we were on the edge of abandoning the project. The script is still evolving as we integrate elements previously left on the “cutting room floor”.

LR: Can you speak a bit about the other ways and places Let's Play House has been presented and performed?

J&C: We have performed LPH at the Fringe (Edmonton), at a rented venue (Toronto’s Wellesley Street Theatre), at churches and as the keynote presentation at conferences and AGMs for the Ontario Federation of Cerebral Palsy, the Festival of International Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology, and others.

LR: Why did you choose to participate in the Toronto Fringe with this work?

J&C: The Fringe exposes our work to audiences beyond our fan base or outreach channels. Our caregiving was restricting our freedom to travel or even organize a theatrical run in Toronto. Kirk moved out on his own last year. Christine moved into a nursing home in March. Now we take the world – starting in, and always returning to, Toronto.

Let’s Play House

Presented by Imagiscape

Director: Dennis Hassell

Choreographer: Carlynn Reed & Jonathon Neville

Cast: Carlynn Reed & Jonathon Neville

Genre: Drama, Dance

Venue 6 George Ignatieff Theatre

60 min.

Fri, July 8 8:45 PM

Sat, July 9 1:45 PM

Sun, July 10 3:00 PM

Mon, July 11 10:15 PM

Wed, July 13 5:45 PM

Sat, July 16 12:30 PM

Sun, July 17 7:30 PM

Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows

Kendra Hughes and Kinetic Elements: 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival Dance Interviews

2011-07-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

Kinetic Elements returns to the Toronto Fringe for an exploration of social issues including the protests at last year’s G20 summit. Artistic director and choreographer Kendra Hughes answers some questions.

LR: This is your second time doing the Toronto Fringe? What draws you to the Fringe Festival?

KH: The Toronto Fringe Festival is a fast, fun and great way to introduce your company to audience that you might not otherwise reach. It is an amazing opportunity to produce a show as an independent company. We feel incredibly lucky to participate two years in a row!

LR: For those who have never seen your work before, what would you say your work is all about?

KH: My work is a fusion of dance styles. My dance background includes a collection of styles; I started in modern dance, graduated college in a ballet based program and worked professionally as a hip hop dancer. All of those disciplines contribute to my current work now. This year my focus was to communicate issues that are important to the [Toronto] community through dance.

LR: reSURGEnce has to do with a lot of social issues and seems to be very focused on some of the specific issues in Toronto. I'm intrigued about dealing with the G20 summit through dance: how have you approached this?

KH: The choreography for the G20 piece has been a year in the making almost. At first the inspiration for movement came from watching videos on YouTube of people that were involved in the G20 protests. From there we participated in the workshop Series 8:08 Take Two program, where we were able to get feedback twice from the experience. Over time I have had many conversations with the dancers about the event and about the characters they will play. As the final touch, we had someone come in to teach the dancers some fight choreography.

LR: What is your musical score for this show and why?

KH: The musical score this year is varied between instrumental techno tracks to ambient sounds to no music at all. Each track was chosen by the choreographer to fit the feel and theme of each individual piece.

LR: What is the narrative thread to your show --is there a narrative thread? How is it all put together?

KH: The show is connected through the common thread of social issues. There are pieces about beauty, the loss of control one feels when they are labeled and the G20. Together they make our show reSURGEnce.

Kinetic Elements Presents:

reSURGEnce

as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival

Where: Factory Mainspace Theatre

125 Bathurst St Toronto

When:

Saturday July 9 @ 9:15pm

Sunday July 10 @ 1:15pm

Monday July 11 @ 8:30pm

Wednesday July 13 @ 3:30pm

Thursday July 14 @ 11:00pm

Friday July 15 @ 4:00pm

Saturday July 16 @ 2:15pm

Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes.html are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows.

metamorphosis dance theatre at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2011

2011-07-07T18:28:00.001-07:00

metamorphosis dance theatre tackles some meaty and mature material about identity and discovery with some nods to the great Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse, modern and hip hop dance styles. One of the creators and performers Tyson James answers a few questions.

LR: What is your show about?

TJ: Simply put, discharge is the coming of age story for two men. Each is struggling in their own way with two dual aspects of their identity and it takes a moment of discharge and each other to discover their true selves. "In this final moment,discharge all that you once were, discharge the limits of today, and discharge all that you will become lovingly into the future."

LR: What made you want to participate in the fringe?

TJ: The Fringe is an exciting and truly unique festival. Its lottery system is the ultimate equalizer. As an artist you are free of judgment and scrutiny, because your selection is left entirely up to chance. Company founders Paul Charbonneau and Tyson James knew that metamorphosis dance theatre was going to create challenging and provocative work and in its infancy a festival without a panel of adjudicators has been a dream come true.

LR: How have you and the other collaborators come together for this project?

TJ: discharge was originally presented at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre under a different name as part of the Young Creators Unit in 2010. Paul Charbonneau and I (co-founders of metamorphosis dance theatre) knew that with our premiere work we wanted to discuss identity as it relates to gender and sexuality for queer men in Toronto. Expanding the original piece seemed a perfect fit for the company and for the context of Toronto Fringe.

LR: I understand there is some sexual content and nudity in the show, how do you approach this as a creator and/or performer? How have you reached a level of comfort with these elements?

TJ: It's been important to create a safe space in rehearsal and metamorphosis dance theatre has challenged its artists to be brave in the studio, to push themselves and dare its performers to go places they haven't gone before.

The specific sexual content in discharge is there because it belongs there and is integral to the telling of this story. In this way, any nudity or challenging sexuality is free of shock value because it appears solely in order to reveal something about the characters you are meeting on stage.

LR: What are the dance forms or techniques or movement inspirations for metamorphosis dance theatre?

TJ: Specific to discharge the company is using a wide range of dance forms, from traditional musical theatre vocabulary in honour of the late, great Fosse to raw and challenging modern contemporary. We've thrown in a little hip hop to really shake things up. metamorphosis dance theatre has members from a range of theatrical backgrounds and resident choreographer, Paul Charbonneau, has been challenged to adapt to all sorts of facilities and abilities to create a diverse yet unified dance aesthetic.

metamorphosis dance theatre

discharge

Direction & Choreography: Tyson James and Paul Charbonneau

Cast: Tyson James and Paul Charbonneau

Genre: Drama, Dance

Warning: Strobe Light, Smoking, Nudity, Sexual Content, Graphic Violence, Mature Language

Venue 9 Robert Gill Theatre

60 min.

Fri, July 8 9:15 PM

Sat, July 9 4:00 PM

Sun, July 10 5:45 PM

Tue, July 12 1:00 PM

Wed, July 13 11:15 PM

Fri, July 15 9:45 PM

Sun, July 17 2:45 PM

Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows .

Cendrillon at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2011

2011-07-05T17:51:00.001-07:00

“A poor girl and her ugly step-sisters are totally, wildly obsessed with a boy. When the invitation to his Bar Mitzvah arrives, they must transcend their tween styles and outshine each other for his attentions.” Patricia Allison and Kevin Michael Shea contort the Cinderella story….Get ready: they are also doing Summerworks!  Patricia and Kevin answers some of my questions below.

Lucy: You are doing the double play in Toronto this summer with a Fringe show and a Summerworks show in fairly close succession: Is that madness for you? How are you finding the preparations?

Kevin: It's definitely intense, but in both cases I have great collaborators who take care of a lot of what my job would normally be on a show. Cendrillon is dance-theatre, and I'm able to rely a lot on choreography. Hero & Leander [for Summerworks] is a musical theatre piece, and I'm able to rely a lot on the songs. If both shows were dialogue driven plays that I was both writing and directing, there's no way I'd be able to do both, but since the writing and directing are pieces of a larger puzzle it's far more manageable.

Lucy: with Cendrillon you are remixing the traditional Cinderella story. What is your adaptation and how did you decide on the direction to take with it?

Patricia: Cinderella was a story that both Kevin and I have always had in the backs of our mind to work with one day. We enjoy the themes and the character potential that it has to offer.

Kevin: Like most fairytales or myths, it's a great lens through which to look at various aspects of society and culture. Our show looks at issues of sexual insecurity and anxiety, as well as sibling dynamics. It's also about being twelve years old. So instead of going to a ball, Cendrillon goes to a bar mitzvah, and instead of a prince charming, it's just some boy all the girls have a crush on. Hopefully making the characters so explicitly young will help people see the story with fresh eyes. And combined with the fact that it's set in a very contemporary world, it also makes it quite a bit funnier than the original story without sacrificing any of the meaning.

Lucy: I am a lover of fairy and folk tales myself, so it may be a bit of a loaded question for me to ask: why do you think these tales offer endless possibilities for adaptation?

Patricia: I think they offer endless possibilities for adaptation because they are nice and basic stories based on simple morals and story structure. It gives you a lot to play with and to interpret.

Lucy: In a few sentences can you tell me about your choreographic process?

Patricia: This process in particular was different than most I have been a part of before due to the fact we are trying to blend text and choreography together. Some of the scenes of the show are text driven, so we allowed the text to lead the way and other elements of the plot come from choreography only. The story was the main driving factor so all movement has been based around advancing plot.

Lucy: What do you hope for from your Fringe experience?

Patricia: The fringe experience we were looking for was really an excuse to try this collaboration out together. It has already begun for us in the sense that the process itself is what we were hoping for. We are now excited to get it in front of an audience and see how it is received and to see what kind of feedback we get. We hope to have a lot of fun!

Cendrillon

Presented by Lastname Firstname Productions and Common Descent

Director: Kevin Michael Shea

Choreographer: Patricia Allison

Genre: Play, Dance

Warning: Sexual Content

Mature Language

Venue 1 Tarragon Theatre Mainspace

60 min.

Fri, July 8 5:15 PM

Sat, July 9 7:30 PM

Mon, July 11 1:00 PM

Wed, July 13 11:00 PM

Thu, July 14 11:30 PM

Fri, July 15 Noon

Sat, July 16 6:15 PM

All individual Fringe tickets are $10 at the door (cash only). Tickets are available online at www.fringetoronto.com, by phone at 416-966-1062, in person at The Randolph Centre for the Arts, 736 Bathurst Street (Advance tickets are $11 - $10+$1 convenience fee).
Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes.html are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows.

The Collection and Lady Janitor: Dance at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2011

2011-07-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

The Collection and Lady Janitor are the brainchildren of Jasmine Graham and Eroca Nichols respectively and they've teamed up for a shared program at the Toronto Fringe Festival in Feathers vs. Fauna. Creative, funny and hardworking, these emerging voices in the Toronto dance scene answered a few questions for me.

LR: Ok, Feathers vs. Fauna: tell me a little bit about each piece, what is the show about?

JG: Aviary is a duet performed by Emily Poirier and Jasmyn Fyffe. We created the work collaboratively, working with improvised sound scores that the dancers created in order to generate the movement material. From there, I selected movements and arranged them into phrases, removing anything that seemed unnecessary or out of place in an effort to figure out the logic of the piece and build a cohesive language and structure that would make sense to an audience. I believe that dance is a visual art and my dances are a reflection of that; Aviary doesn't have a linear narrative and it isn't really about conveying a specific idea to the audience. It's about creating a beautiful, fantastical world filled with tragedy, contradictions and humour. I like to leave most of the interpretation up to the audience, they are an integral part of the piece.

EN: My family is a band of outsiders—or at least this is the collective persona that we have cultivated since I can remember. We moved a lot— we’ve lived in trailers, apartments, houses, basements, motels, in Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Nevada, Ontario, and Saskatchewan; my sister and I attended over 9 schools by the time we entered high school. Our nomadism extends beyond the road; my mom had a tarot reading that led us to legally change all our names—first and last-- when I was three. We’ve remained somewhat liquid in the identity department. We’ve had little money. We’ve driven across deserts, mountains and prairies. We’ve broken down. We’ve never quite fit in. We’ve stuck together even when we haven’t. The Deer In Head Lights Sideshow/Slideshow is a solo exploring my family’s collectively generated narrative.

LR: Eroca, with Lady Janitor your work is known for its zany humour -- where do you think that comes from?

EN: I’m kind of a funny lady. Lately I've been on a mission to get contemporary dance to take itself a bit less seriously. Deer in Headlights is a bit darker. It is based on stories from my own personal narrative. It's not with out humor but it's definitely the most emo work I've ever made.

LR: Jasmine -- I've known you primarily as a dancer. What fuels you as a choreographer?

JG: As a choreographer I'm fuelled by the dancers I work with and images that I develop before or during the piece. Sometimes I begin with a clear image of a costume or set or spatial relationship that I want to develop or create, and other times I have no idea what I want or what will happen, and I just work and watch the dancers work until I see something that I think could be further explored. I love to work collaboratively with the dancers; it is so exciting to watch a dancer perform material that they created and/or developed because it is so believable for the audience.

LR: How many dancers are involved in this show and how have you each selected them?

EN: The Deer In Head Lights Sideshow/Slideshow is a solo and I'm dancing it. This is a first for me--normally my work involves huge herds of humans. I’m making myself nervous. Come! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll line dance!

JG: I chose to work with Jasmyn and Emily because they are both amazingly talented physical, open, honest and trusting dancers. They are also good friends and there is nothing better then creating with friends. We have created a really safe, open and honest atmosphere and I think it's a lot easier to create and take chances and make mistakes when your work environment is like that.

LR: What do you each hope audiences will get from seeing Feathers vs. Fauna?

EN: A warped family portrait that highlights the fact that all our families are strange and we love them.

JG: I can only hope that the audiences who come to see Feathers vs Fauna will leave transformed in some way, that is the ultimate honour for creators in my opinion.

The Collection and Lady Janitor present

Feathers vs. Fauna

Director: Jasmine Graham, Eroca Nicols

Choreographer: Jasmine Graham, Eroca Nicols

Genre: Dance, Physical Theatre

Warning: Audience Participation

Venue 10 Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace

60 min.

Fri, July 8 3:30 PM

Sun, July 10 9:15 PM

Mon, July 11 7:00 PM

Tue, July 12 2:45 PM

Wed, July 13 4:15 PM

Fri, July 15 12:30 PM

Sat, July 16 8:45 PM

All individual Fringe tickets are $10 at the door (cash only). Tickets are available online at www.fringetoronto.com, by phone at 416-966-1062, in person at The Randolph Centre for the Arts, 736 Bathurst Street (Advance tickets are $11 - $10+$1 convenience fee)
Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes.html are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows.

Interview with Janet Castillo of Catalyst the Company: Toronto Fringe Dance Interview

2011-07-02T05:15:00.001-07:00

With dancers and creators from a wide range of styles and experiences, Catalyst the Company presents The 5th Element in this years Fringe Festival, working through earth, water, fire, air towards something more personal and unique: what isyour element? Company director and dancer Janet Castillo answered a few questions.

Catalyst the Company

LR: Catalyst the Company has a lot of industry/commercial experience; what made you decide to do the Fringe?

JC: As performers and choreographers, we’ve been lucky enough to bring to life the visions of many people leading the industry/commercial world. After years of doing so, we returned to Toronto and felt creatively stagnant and started talking about our own stories, obstacles, and experiences on our path.

We wanted a platform to share these stories and to show how incredibly diverse we were. Through that, The 5th Element was born and was premiered last May. The Fringe Festival was a perfect opportunity to re-mount the show for a larger audience and to shine light on the talented performers we have at home (right here) in Toronto. We continue to be involved in the industry/commercial world, but know that we have a responsibility to create works that reflect our own voices and the voices of this city.

LR: What is your show all about?

JC: The show is all about finding your own Element - Your own unique gift in the world. Each of our dancers is unique and has come together to build this show. The 5th Element takes audiences on a journey across the elements of life (Earth, Water, Fire, Air), while celebrating the multi-cultural and diversity of Toronto through dance, music, and spoken word. We mash up the freshest mix of urban, classical, and cultural dance to create a new movement in of itself.

LR: How have you adapted the four elements into dance?

JC: Through the rumblings of the earth, to the emotional depths of the rain, to the burning heat of the fire, to the flying freedom of the air…(from our press release).

EARTH - Representing “the heartbeat” of the show, this element showcases the organic and pulsing rhythm of house, latin, tribal, and hula dance as the performers are called to their mission.

WATER – Representing “the obstacle”, this element showcases the emotional depths of movement in contemporary, soul, and ballet as the performers courageously face their own personal battles.

FIRE - Representing ‘the burning heat”, this element showcases the bold, fresh, and in-your-face energy of hip hop, martial-arts and flamenco-inspired movement as performers are filled with passion and the determination to fight back.

AIR – Representing “the flying freedom”, this element showcases the uplifting and moving hybrid of contact improvisation, jazz, ballet, and more as performers find clarity in their gifts and set forth into the future to inspire change.

LR: And the 5th element?

JC: The 5th Element is a new movement in itself. It’s un-definable, infinite, and always transforming. It’s when we take all the elements and selflessly bring them all together. In the original company, there were 5 of us and we each represented a different element. We created pieces by doing a lot of improvisation and experimenting with our styles. We’ve been told that the movement in our show is truly hybrid in its form (without feeling too manufactured or contrived), and combined with our costumes and storytelling, it has inspired audiences to new heights in their own lives.

LR: What do you hope audiences will experience in seeing The 5th Element?

JC: We hope that they will be inspired to find what their own Element is, andto go out and share it with the world! We truly believe that as Catalysts, we are here to boldly ignite others to feel what we feel as artists and to spread the movement to as many people as possible. We want people to feel the range of their raw emotions from passion, to struggle, to seduction, to excitement and elevation. Quite simply…we want to make the world dance…even if it’s just in the rhythm of their hearts.

The 5^th Element

Catalyst the Company

Director: Janet L. Castillo & Natasha Powell

Choreographer: Janet L. Castillo, Natasha Powell, Tiff Mak

Genre: Family, Dance

Venue 3 Bathurst Street Theatre

60 min.

Wed, July 6 10:30 PM 303

Sat, July 9 11:00 PM 319

Mon, July 11 4:45 PM 328

Wed, July 13 9:15 PM 343

Thu, July 14 1:45 PM 346

Fri, July 15 Noon 352

Sat, July 16 7:30 PM 363

Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes.html are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows.

Pocket Alchemy’s Susan Kendal, Brittany Duggan and Krista Posyniak: 2011 Toronto Fringe Dance Interviews

2011-06-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

photo of Krista Posyniak. Photo by Omer Yukseker
Interview By Lucy Rupert

Pocket Alchemy presents three dances inspired by organs, the Mayfly and dialectical theory in Scienceography. I talked to the three collaborators about theory and artistry coming together. (Interview participants Brittany Duggan, Susan Kendal and Krista Posyniak are all referred to by first name for easier reading. I shall remain good old LR.)

LR: The three of you discovered you were all inspired by science in different ways. How did each of you come to find inspiration from science?

Brittany: Dance often deals with the social sciences. What I have loved about making this show is, as a choreographer, I got to make a piece that gets into human behavior while inspired by the natural sciences. The balance has made my head less chaotic somehow.

Susan: When we decided to do a show together some of the works were already in progress. We felt strongly that we needed to find a common element for the show to be cohesive. It’s been delightful to find that the common thread is science, albeit disparate areas.

Krista: I think science infiltrates our lives without most of us realizing it. When the third piece was started, based on dialectic theory, Susan made the associated science link.

We gave them giant labels: Psychology, Physiology and Entomology but each piece delves into an exact idea. In more playful words, we got the microscope out and took a closer look.

LR: Susan — how have you knitted (pardon the pun, I couldn’t resist) together the factual and poetic information about organs? I ask with vested interest, after dancing in A|Chromatic, your 2008 work about colour blindness.

Susan: I do love to incorporate text into my dance work. For Organ Stories all the text is delivered by the dancer. I pulled factual, descriptive text from Gray’s Anatomy (the book not the show!), which is very dry and “medical”.

I commissioned poems from Lindsay Zier-Vogel about each of the four organs featured in the dance. While the poetry is abstract, it’s also evocative and personal. The poems are, I think, the heart (puns are too easy here!) of each section.

For movement inspiration I’ve used emotional associations with each organ, along with their actual functions – for instance a section of the “heart” choreography traces the path that the blood takes through the four chambers.

LR: Brittany — what inspired you to take on the Mayfly?

Brittany – I was commissioned in January 2011 by the Creative Republic to create a piece of dance in response to a group of objects in a box. The objects were small, items you might find in a dollar store, and my designer for that project, Berkeley Poole, noted that they were the types of things that don’t last long.

I played with the idea of ephemerality that both the objects and dance itself as a form share. During a costume consultation I noted looking like a bug, and suggested the Mayfly who I knew to live a very short life once an adult. For the Fringe, the work unfolds in three stages.

LR: Krista (and Brittany, since you are co-creators on the third piece)– How do you make dance about dialectical theory? is it embedded in the creative process? symbolized?

Brittany – Dialectical theory, in the therapeutic sense, was a starting point but the concept of dialect is central – the push and pull of two arguments in the mind of an individual.

Krista: We started with researching dialectic behaviour therapy. Out of that, we learned about the continuous re-shaping of the idea throughout history that was strongly formatted by ancient philosophers.

Using formal ideas that are supposed to be void of emotion, we started to form a skeleton of how one person might use dialectic through inner conscious.

With movement, we played with the notion that two ideas can exist at the same time, and how one would challenge the other. It has resulted in a lot of jarring movement that melts and spirals into gestural movement.

LR: What do you hope the audiences will experience from Scienceography?

Brittany: Each piece asks something a little different from the viewer. I hope the audiences are delighted by visual and thematic range.

Susan: I second that! I always hope the audience finds enjoyment in the dancing along with a dose of discomfort, that it evokes strong images or memories for them and that they leave feeling invigorated and curious and satisfied.

I hope they maybe even laugh aloud if something tickles their fancy, it’s nice to both hear and feel an audience’s attention.

Krista: I’m always hoping that audiences will ask questions of what they saw and also be relate to it. I hope the audience will give us their curiosity that will propel us further in our discovery.

Scienceography: dances of physiology, entymology and psychology

Choreographers: B. Duggan, S. Kendal & K. Posyniak
Cast: Brittany Duggan, Julie Grant, Susan Kendal, Krista Posyniak
Genre: Dance, Physical Theatre
Venue 12 Factory Theatre Mainspace

60 min.
Thu, July 7 6:30 PM
Sat, July 9 11:00 PM
Mon, July 11 1:00 PM
Wed, July 13 7:30 PM
Fri, July 15 9:15 PM
Sat, July 16 12:30 PM
Sun, July 17 3:30 PM

All individual Fringe tickets are $10 at the door (cash only). Tickets are available online at www.fringetoronto.com, by phone at 416-966-1062, in person at The Randolph Centre for the Arts, 736 Bathurst Street (Advance tickets are $11 – $10+$1 convenience fee)

Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes.html are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows.

Alisha Ruiss and Nick Power Get Happy: 2011 Fringe Dance Interviews

2011-06-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

GET HAPPY is a lindy hop based theatrical production integrating poetry, swing-era dancing and live music by Public Gesture Productions. I was lucky enough to have collaborators Alisha Ruiss and Nick Power chime in on their process of creating their “Lindy Hop Dream Ballet” for the 2011 Fringe Festival.

See our conversation below.

LR: I’m totally thrilled to hear someone is using Lindy Hop to build a theatrical production. What made you want to use this dance form to tell a story?

AR: Last August I was asked by Tricia Postle, to put together something swing related at the Majlis for the Figure of Speech series which fosters as collaborations between poets, dancers and musicians.

LR: Is this how you, Nick and Phil met?

AR: Tricia introduced me to Nick for Figure of Speech. I already knew Phil [perfomer and co-choreographer] from the swing dance scene. We did the initial show for Majlis with musicians Drew Jurecka & Chris Bezant and the musicians in the band this time around, Aline Homzya & Mikko Hilden, are colleagues of theirs.

LR: How did you develop the script and choreography?

AR: 98% of the dance is completely improvised! Because it’s lead and follow dancing, it is creation on the spot.

NP: I’d been working on a series of poems, Dancing with Gravity, that were based on drawings by Shelagh Keeley of a modern dancer, Lin Snelling, in rehearsal for a new work. Many of them were visual poems. A lot of what I showed Alisha she appreciated but knew wouldn’t work in the context of swing dance. This put a healthy pressure on me to bring her work that could ‘swing’.

We’ve not been precious about keeping the exact wording of the original poems. We’ve moved from the poem/song/dance collage of the Figure of Speech performances toward a narrative arc with character development.

AR: We used music that fit the dance of course, but also had some relation to the poetry, in terms of either lyrics or mood. We did a lot of re-writing and adaptation for the one-hour format needed for Fringe; and to give the piece more clarity and a tighter narrative.

Nick & I have spoken often about finding a term for just what the piece is – it’s not a play or a musical or a cabaret or a poetry reading. I think of it as a lindy hop dream ballet.

LR: Can you make a living as a professional lindy hop dancer?

AR: Like any dance profession it is difficult to make it your sole source of income. The real deal vintage swing lindy hop (as opposed to ballroom swing) is still a niche market; only a handful of people in the world right now make their living through swing dancing.

My current day job is as a nanny but I’ve done everything from wait tables to administrative assistance in legal offices etc. I have a classical music degree from McGill in voice performance. Dance is still relatively new for me; I only really started with the Swinging Air Force’s boot camp troupe in 2005. I have taught occasionally and hope to do more.

LR: What do you hope audiences will get from seeing Get Happy?

AR: Aside from touching people and entertaining them, the number one thing I hope to do is to interest people in lindy hop/swing and going out and learning to dance.

The theme we’re also exploring in this piece is one we’ve termed swingintimacy. Swing has great movement, rhythm, pulse, play; a real outward quality.

The word intimacy is derived from both intimus (innermost) and intimare (tell, to relate). In real intimacy there is the “telling” & “relating” aspect, the transfer of the self to the other. Swing used to be common slang for sexual intercourse.

LR: Which we also euphemize as “being intimate”.

AR: We often think of romantic intimacy as the pinnacle of emotional human experience, but it’s just one among many experiences of transcendence. To me that transfer of the self to the other is physicalized in dance in the core moves of lindy hop – the swing out, the close position and the swing out again.

The characters in this piece are struggling to go beyond themselves – to get happy, essentially. Happiness is something you receive as a gift and participate in rather than achieve solely of your own accord and ambition.

GET HAPPY

Director: Alisha Ruiss

Choreographer: Phil Bourassa, Alisha Ruiss

Cast: Phil Bourassa, Nicholas Power, Alisha Ruiss, and The Simple Joys Jazz Band

Venue 8 Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse

55 min.

Wed, July 6 6:30 PM

Fri, July 8 8:45 PM

Sun, July 10 1:30 PM

Wed, July 13 11:00 PM

Thu, July 14 7:45 PM

Fri, July 15 1:45 PM

Sat, July 16 3:30 PM

All individual Fringe tickets are $10 at the door (cash only). Tickets are available online at www.fringetoronto.com, by phone at 416-966-1062, in person at The Randolph Centre for the Arts, 736 Bathurst Street (Advance tickets are $11 – $10+$1 convenience fee)
Several money-saving passes http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes.html are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows

Interview with Kate Nankervis of Bonne Compagnie: Toronto Fringe 2011

2011-06-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Kate Nankervis of Bonne Compagnie: 2011 Toronto Fringe Dance Interviews

By Lucy Rupert

I’m Lucy Rupert, I’m the artistic director and dancer for Blue Ceiling dance, based in Toronto. I have a passion speaking with other dance artists about how and why they make their work. This interview is with Kate Nankervis, one of three women who have come together as Bonne Compagnie for this year’s Fringe Festival. Their work, Ab Intra, is an integration of three solos on the theme of privacy versus spectacle.

LR: What drew you to participate in the Toronto Fringe Festival?

KN: The fringe has a real spirit of performance, taking chances to do whatever you can think up and you get what is considered a LONG RUN in the dance world…. 7 shows!

With tickets prices being cheap, people who might never see dance have no excuse not to at least take a chance on us. We are looking forward being in a theatre festival where fresh eyes from outside the dance scene can give comment on the show.

LR: I am intrigued by the notion of the “private becoming spectacle” especially in a world where media is full of fake disclosure of private moments through “reality” based TV shows — how have you broached this idea in your work?

KN: The notion of private becoming spectacle came pretty naturally as we were 3 artists who wanted to create individual solos, at the same time had a desire to be part of a show to which we could work in a collaboratively. Our challenge was to integrate these 3 solos. We are interested in offering the audience a voyeuristic experience.

By nature, solo work can be incredibly private. Besides the obvious of working alone, you are at the essence of it all: your thoughts, your desires, your dreams and your body. You can’t get any more private or intimate than that. Yet, the ironic part of it all is we are doing it to display it and offer it to others in the performance arena.

I consider how our very personal moments are shared on Facebook and Twitter …I wonder what really separates our closest relations from public relations as they can know the same very personal information about us all with the click of a mouse.

We did spend one evening during our residency [creating this show] decompressing over a new episode of So You Think You Can Dance. The 3 of us formed our own judging panel. We spared no emotions or considerations for these contestants. It was all for a good laugh after a long day of doing just want these contestants were ultimately after… to dance.

It brings up some big questions about how the most private, intimate moments can become prime entertainment when seen from a certain perspective.

LR: How did you, Amanda Acorn and Elke Schroeder come together as collaborators?

KN: The 3 of us spend a lot of time together. We drink good coffee, red wine and eat chocolate together. But for this project specifically, when my name was pulled for Fringe it was the perfect opportunity to work on a solo and I wanted to be in the studio more with these girls.

Luckily, I got a residency at Earthdance to create my solo, so when the fringe spot came up, the residency offered the perfect opportunity for the girls to come out and join me to share the solo making process.

We worked alone for about 3 weeks, then for a whole week– I’m talking a 24 hour day if we could work that much — we were together, sharing our dances, bedrooms and pillows. We were showing our dances, exchanging feedback, trying stuff out and really challenging what we are capable of within the solo research we were doing.

LR: You are an emerging artist and I don’t think emerging artists get asked often enough: what is your personal artistic vision?

KN: WOW… big question. At this point, I think my vision is to be interested in the work I am making, both from a dancer’s/choreographer’s perspective but also from a personal place. I see the things that surround me in a new light and wish to understand the world differently through the artwork I am making.

LR: What should audiences expect with Ab Intra?

KN: I think if there was a warning or disclaimer message for this program it would be: These characters could appear in your dreams but more likely in your nightmares tonight.

Their stories are intimate, delusional and neurotic. And there will be some wicked great dancing!

Ab Intra
Bonne Compagnie

Direction, Choreography & Cast: Amanda Acorn, Kate Nankervis, Elke Schroeder

Original music: Linedrawing, J.P. Tamblyn, Chris Willes
Production Design: Shannon Doyle
Lighting Design: Kevin MacLoed
Genre: Dance, Physical Theatre
Warning: Strobe Light, Smoking

Venue: 1 Tarragon Theatre Mainspace

60 min.

Fri, July 8 8:45 PM 111
Sat, July 9 1:45 PM 114
Sun, July 10 3:00 PM 121
Mon, July 11 10:15 PM 131
Wed, July 13 5:45 PM 141
Sat, July 16 12:30 PM 159
Sun, July 17 7:30 PM 170

All individual Fringe tickets are $10 at the door (cash only). Tickets are available online at www.fringetoronto.com, by phone at 416-966-1062, in person at The Randolph Centre for the Arts, 736 Bathurst Street (Advance tickets are $11 – $10+$1 convenience fee)

Several money-saving passes www.fringetoronto.com/fringefest/passes are available if you plan to see at least 5 shows

First Fringe Interview: Alaine Handa of A.H. Dance Company, New York.

2011-06-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

An Interview with Alaine Handa of A.H. Dance Company
By Lucy Rupert

Chameleon by A.H. Dance Company info:
http://tckcckahdanceproject.blogspot.com/2011/06/toronto-were-headed-your-way.html

LR: First could you tell me a bit about your path in the dance field?

AH: I started dancing at 4 in Indonesia. I remember when I was 8 I played the part of a rice grain. I carried a grain of rice and we swayed from one side of the stage to the other whenever a magical bird passed us. When we moved to Singapore I became interested in tap and jazz and took up figure skating, training long hours until I broke my ankle and it was recommended that I take ballet again to strengthen my ankle. The following year I started choreographing for the dance shows at school and by the end of high school, I knew that I wanted to major in dance at college, to pursue choreography and start my own dance company. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in World Arts & Cultures with a Dance Studies Concentration. We approached dance and dance-making as a way to bring change in the world.

LR: How did you get to the point of creating Chameleon?

AH: When I first started college, I attended Pitzer College in Claremont, CA - a small college in a small town. I had quite a bit of homesickness, culture shock, and reverse culture shock when I went to visit "home" for the first time after living in Southern California. I fell into a deep depression and felt out of place all the time. I applied for a transfer to UCLA my 3rd year thinking that a change of environment will uplift my mood. During that transitional summer, I spent a lot of time with an old friend who was in Southern California. I told her what I had been feeling and she recommended that I read David C. Pollock and Ruth Van Reken's book on Third Culture Kids. She said that what I was feeling was normal and that there were others like us. That book almost immediately brought joy and tears in discovering there were others like me.

I kept a journal and wrote poetry, prose, and drew my experiences out and brought these inspirations to the studio. I wanted to embody my experiences as a way of therapy for myself at first. Then, I wanted to create a community of Third Culture Kids and a way for us to tell others our stories. I created a Livejournal and Facebook Third Culture Kids groups. The very first draft of Chameleon was part of my senior project at UCLA.

When Barack Obama was elected President --he is a Third Culture Kid and members of his cabinet were also fellow Third Culture Kids -- I knew the time was ripe to return to the project. I discovered that literature, research, and online communities have quadrupled since I started my research in 2003....

for the complete interview check out Mooney on Theatre:

Toronto Fringe Festival

2011-06-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Allo allo!
So the days of struggling and straining in my own creative process are done (for now) and I'm on to a new project for this blog. In the coming days I'll be posting mini-interviews with the dance artists and producers of the dance shows happening at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival.

I suspect it'll be really interesting and I hope you will all take a minute to read the interviews and get bums in seats to support these talented guys and gals. Already I'm encountering jewelry design, multi-culturalism, plural realities, reinventions of fairy tales and warnings of chocolate and ballistic movement.

Stay tuned!

Bad rehearsal....Get over yourself!

2011-02-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

Work in progress video log!

2011-02-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

A little project I've started as part if my Chalmers Fellowship research. Perhaps too honest, but here 'tis, nonetheless.

Work in progress (and a little posing too)

2010-12-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

Generosity

2010-12-14T13:02:00.000-08:00

At the tail end of a difficult second half of 2010, I encountered some amazing generosity from dance artist extraordinaire, Peggy Baker. Anyone who knows her, knows that generosity from Peggy Baker is not surprising, but infinitely inspiring. Peggy offered me some of her studio time in the beautiful National Ballet School, when she couldn't use the space herself. I add here some pics from the fruitful time there.
A resolution for 2011 for me will be to find similar ways to be generous. Peggy's gesture reminds me that it is really quite easy.

Chalmers Fellowship: memory, rejection, Butoh, the Titanic

2010-11-11T12:27:00.000-08:00

In a Butoh workshop a couple of weeks ago I was reminded of dancing at Phil's and Club Abstract in Waterloo during my university days. About how I learned more about myself as a dancer on their checkered dance floors than I did in the studios sweating and crying my way through ballet classes. (Might sound weird to be reminded of this in a Butoh workshop, but maybe not so if you've ever taken a workshop with Denise Fujiwara/Fujiwara Dance Inventions).

So viscerally I remembered how I used to feel dancing. It was all simmering and I was on the verge of art, of making real art for the first time. Some voice was at the cusp of me. Or I was at the cusp of my own voice. I was totally unconfident but I still felt promise and belief stronger than insecurity.

Shadows came in. People close to me died. I moved to Toronto. I lived with my best friend from high school who, for me, was a swirling cloud of everything I was not and thought I wanted to be. I started in the Professional Program at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, scared to not be in school anymore when so much else in my life was changing. I dated a much older man in whom I placed great faith in his wisdom, simply because he was older. I was sick and refused to see my sickness for what it was. I clung to my former anorexic state in denial of the more erratic state of my eating and my body.

I became my own ghost.
I stopped going out dancing.

I thought the creative possibility I had needed to be sculpted into a Toronto Dance Theatre-type dancer, that it needed to pinned down, described in terms that existed already. I was scared that I wouldn't know what to do with it if i couldn't hold on to it somehow.

I couldn't let the current run through me.
That thing that kept on the dance floor in Waterloo, experimenting and not caring that there were no words for it got squashed.
I was afraid that the current -- if I let it out truly -- would be Isadora Duncan, the way I perceived her: fat, slovenly, lazy, over-wrought.

I have always wanted to be 3 dimensional when dancing and yet I worked to streamline access to my body. And at the same time I was afraid of technique. Afraid that I might work and work to no result. School of Toronto Dance Theatre suggested we part ways and I pursue dance recreationally. They didn't even suggest I choreograph. They suggested I was not emotionally or mentally made for dance.

My way in as a dancer has always been through emotion and imagination. I spent my first 3 to 5 years in Toronto trying to shed that. You can't shed your own skin. Unless you are snake. And even then the same patterns re-emerge in the new derma.

"Let go let go let go" someone yelled at me in an intimate setting. And I couldn't.

But no one ever said, no one has ever said to me, "Trust how strong you are." No one. Not directly anyway.

That buzz, the promise, that visceral being on cusp of everything just died in me for awhile. I had a hard time letting go of the "Stop" that I heard from School of Toronto Dance Theatre. I knew in my heart that someday I would look back on that rejection moment as a good, necessary step in my evolution but for a long time I didn't want to say it out loud. (Happily, I am creating something on the students there this year and so I guess we all have to call a spade and spade and say the bitterness is over.) And it was a good, necessary step in my evolution. My fire came back but that sense of promise never really did. I have made work and stretched and grown technically and intrinsically. But I have felt frustration with myself for not reaching the full potential of my self as a performer. For not feeling as creative as I did dancing for 3-4 hours a night on the dance floor in Waterloo in my little batik skirt and perpetual black t-shirt with waist-long messy hair flying into other people's faces.

While I was pregnant, I could feel it again. After Pablo was born and I was in the studio, I could feel it again. Vibrations. Cellular excitement. The body so ecstatic to speak, the imagination belligerent with sources, the heart huge and strong vascularly and emotionally. Maybe it was because I couldn't get a good hair cut and lived in my batik skirt and perpetual black t-shirt for the first few months?

How perfect that I got to revisit the role of the Titanic/the Ship in Theatre Rusticle's "April 14, 1912". In 2007 when I was first involved in the show I started chopping through my own inner icebergs to reach something more authentic and less about Lucy the noun, more about Lucy the verb (forgive the paraphrase from Tyra Banks). I was able to be a performing body strong, solid, powerful, large, muscular. Nothing was thrown away. Fire in the belly with little stokers heaving coal and a captain up top pushing to 24 knots. I have always known I was lucky to work with this company and revisiting the role in the spring of 2010 was no exception.

I felt the possibility simmering in every moment, even while sinking, a doomed ship.

I have been also lucky in receiving a Chalmers Fellowship this year (administered by the Ontario Arts Council) which has made the process of writing such things as this a necessary part of my day. I have been typing this, elaborating from rehearsal notes, while my 16 month old baby has been crying in his crib (you know -- extremely tired by unable to admit it). He is now silent and I too have run out of cries.

These shadows were cast. That time was lost in a deadzone. I will not draw on them directly but trust that they are in my cells and will surface when it's time to express shadows and angry sadness. Life is titanic, even if you are just one small animal in the great green cacophony.

My affection for Project Runway

2010-11-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll admit it. I really enjoy Project Runway. My Heidi Klum impression is getting pretty good (sadly the Canadian version of PR is no longer; my Iman impression is dead-on). It's fun, it's competitive, but I realize there is a deeper (remember I said "deeper" not "deep") current in it. We get to watch the artistic process in motion. We witness a vision becoming more and more distilled through challenges, as random and asinine as they may be, or perhaps more and more diluted and deluded.

I think the whole thing is marvelous. The transparency of the judges and their biases and motivations, the fact that the public does not weigh in on the competition, it is decided solely by 'experts'. (Although I must say I balk at Jessica Simpson being a guest judge, especially when the dress she wore was particularly heinous.) I love that some designers are clearly more craftsmen and craftswomen than artists and vice versa. And how being a great seamstress or tailor can often disguise lack of creativity while great creativity rarely disguises poor construction (Don't we all know that one in the dance world!)

Like many -- I gather from blogs around the continent -- I am displeased with the result of this last season. There was Mondo Guerra with a clear vision, inspiration, his own style which fits within a certain aspect of fashion, and a lovely personality. If we can think that after an entire season of manipulative TV production bent on making high-stakes drama out of porridge, then there must be something genuine and real about it. For his final collection he fused two extreme ideas into wearable and artful clothing. The clothes were articulate. And I suspect that's a hard thing to accomplish. Over the course of the season, you could witness Mondo envisioning, refining, rethinking his ideas, while keeping the extreme voice of his creations present. I know it's only clothes, but dude I wish I could be "si bien dans mon peau"

But the winner was Gretchen Jones. I'm sure another lovely person, but the producers did manage to find a lot of bitch and insecurity-laced delusional moments to air over the course of her season. Her arc of design was not surprising. Well-done, well-made but nothing that even whispered inspiration. I've heard others comment about her win as an indication of the fashion world right now, thinking of bottom line over artistry in 'these hard times'.

Since when has TV been about bottom line. If it really was about that, it wouldn't exist anymore and everyone would be going to web-shows. (Our TV is currently a very cumbersome and impractical nightstand).

American Idol is churning out over-exposed soon-to-be feat. singers. Let's not talk about the dreckitude (thank you for that new word Andre Leon Talley) of the dance shows. I am sad for the future of Project Runway. I was enjoying watching people create stuff on Project Runway. I felt all sorts of ways I could relate it to my own art form. But really I liked seeing people create stuff....

Well it had a good run. And it'll probably have a couple more seasons before everyone really admits that it sucks.
Oh Heidi, your winner was sad and boring. I'm out.

p.s. I promise no more stupid blog entries like this.

Trying to figure it all out

2010-08-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

It is not the cacophony of a chaotic house with a toddler (the house is not that noisy or disorganized) but the cacophony of my own head which is holding me up. My own desires that confound me now that a baby is here.

There is so much time to make up for....times when I have not been as considerate of my partner as I would like to have been, times for active pausing, allowing relativity to be a friend in the days I am with Pablo, compression of time while training -- I can't do 4 hours a day, 5 days a week every week; I have to find a way to get the same conditioning done in 2, maybe 3 unless I'm rehearsing.

There is the desire to purge my life of things that attach to a suddenly irrelevant past, things purchased when low or selfish, things that encroach on the breathing space I feel we all need as a threesome.

Breathing! OH if i could only remember to do that. And again I don't mean from the rushing, I mean very peacefully remembering to inhale and exhale fully. Only when Pablo is upset or resisting sleep do I concentrate on slowly my heart beat and smoothly breathing. I often fall asleep too in these moments, succumbing to the regular rhythm of myself and the warm baby in my lap.

I'm sure other mums feel this. I'm sure other non-parents feel this in relation to similarly profound and important shifts, additions, subtractions.

I feel like I'm going backwards some days because I always feel myself in relation to myself right now. A true, embodied memory (beyond visceral, emotional, muscular somehow) is never accessible so I forget that me now is different, evolved from me two years ago. I am me two years ago plus pregnancy, birth, creative processes, a vacation, a tour, many challenging performances, dull days, sad days, mild drunks, colds, utter joy, utter hurt and lots of cookies.

Trust. I've forgotten to trust. The details I trust. The big picture, the whole thing oh how I try to clutch you. (Come let me clutch thee -- ha!). I try to hold without focusing my eyes on the details. And then focusing on weeding out the details that are no longer important or maybe I just can't see anymore because my eyes are getting old?

When I'm with Pablo and Dennes, I'm very good at being in the present moment -- sometimes too good, AKA hormonal....I still await the post-pregnancy lunar shift. It is somehow easy to be in the present moment with babies because they are constantly noticing, remarking, discovering. Pablo is always noticing how light reflects off water, mirrors, other shiny things and creating dapples of light along odd places on the wall or ceiling. He makes sure I notice too.

How do I do this when I'm dancing, speeding, processing, expressing, forming and reshaping, saying, thinking, feeling? I want to express everything all at once, but that is impossible.

a little mortality music

2010-06-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

drip drip drip
cells escape
flying over their aerial tricks
of sonic dulce
adagio, legato...hidden beneath
sudden hits
the pulse
that no longer sparks in my
belly
just phantom limbs twitching
if i could turn the corners of my
eyes upwards,
slightly
fill impossible vales, crevices
with good humour
---ah but there's always
beauty een in the shadows and cracks---
what i cannot face settles in
the pit of my stomach as home and hearth
here. here. here. here. here.
5 steps more
the heart stops
she learned that move in the mountains over blistered fingers
she -- heroine of cinema alone
in a box in a box in a box
projected on a 2 dimensional box
geometry confounds
soars
the architecture of my soul
seems limited by the skeleton
it cannot imagine as my breath
can.
what age was she when
the cells rained down in
cantankerous form?
are we there yet?
possessed of pen
of heart
of mind
of breath
where is the spark, the phantom limb
the small voice
"it is because you are a small
animal."
you are useful.
how do you know?
how does a heart break from
so much love, from the
surrounding of potential
deaths in the bodies of
beautiful life. there goes another
one.
like hummingbirds, they don't
hover, linger without stopping
"stand still!" I can't say it
unless I am standing on a chair
wearing the suit of the love
of my life
(and it must be a metal folding
chair, red and black and slightly
tottering)

drip drip drip
music peters out, the ears might
not discern flight anymore
the eyes might not make out
the smoke until it's too late.
what do you and you and i do then?
hold on to each other
like hummingbirds
like super novaic collisions of
geese in snow flapping over
Manhattan -- or maybe it's
Brooklyn --
like the hardedged line of fog
beneath the bridge
that is the end of this known
world.

where too many types of rocks
have funnelled into one
another and mountains are made
to slide to their twins beneath
the ocean.

if i could just breathe that air
forever -- or even for a couple
of weeks
i might close my eyes
without a tear --

(june 17, 2010)

Top 10 Music for Babies

2010-04-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

For something a little lighter than my usual fare: inadvertent music for babies. By this I mean music made for baby-listening that wasn't actually made for baby-listening. Toss out your "Baby Einstein" CDs (I mean get some classical music from somewhere super affordable like Naxos and skip the whole Disney-fication of Einstein and classical music).

1. Radiohead: especially Kid A and OK Computer. (Dennes and considered naming our baby Kid A for a brief time but then realized our second choice for a name, Pablo, was also a Radiohead album and probably would garner less teasing at school).

2. Sarah Slean: Pablo particularly likes The Baroness, tracks "The Lonely Side of the Moon" and "Willow".

3. Arcade Fire: anything and just about everything

4. Modest Mouse

5. Sam Roberts: Pablo used to squirm in my belly when "Them Kids" would play.

6. Flobots: especially "Rise" and "Combat", what can I say, he's a politically minded kid.

7. K'naan: "ABCs" unlike the usual alphabet song.

8. Arvo Part: just about everything he's written can act as a great lullabye.

9. Alexander Balanescu: "Bee Dress" from the Angels and Insects soundtrack. Pure lullabye honey.

10. Leon Redbone: anything at all by this dude.

BONUS: Tina Turner: "Proud Mary" -- just because it was the first song that came on the radio on the drive home from the hospital with Pablo.

I really believe the "music for babies" industry is a crock. They need to hear real music not the plinky-plunk of synthesized xylophones (hey you can get that on Kid A plus a little bit of emotional and poetic content as well!) Lullabyes can be anything, really. Pablo likes "Karma Police" (recognizes it when it comes on the radio) and "The Lonely Side of the Moon" and Gary Jules' version of "Mad World".

Home, the hardest part

2010-04-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

Sad, home from tour. Joyous, while I have a whole week to just hang out with Pablo (and do LOTS of laundry) but I am saying goodbye to playing the ship Titanic again. I love performing "April 14, 1912" with Theatre Rusticle. It is one of my favourite things I've ever performed. Even though there were times on the tour when I thought my body could use a break for one more day, I feel like I could go on exploring, testing, deepening the role for years and years. There is no concrete plan for the future of this play...

The week with Pablo went so quickly. I was upset to go back into rehearsals....and I went into a heavy rehearsal week to boot. When we were trying to get pregnant -- the whole 5 weeks we tired before success! -- I was worried about work after Pablo was born and somehow this year has been a heavier workload than many other years. I suppose I could say the Fates are asking me to choose wisely and feel deeply, both at work and at home.

There was a lovely fantasy quality to touring. Spending time during the day with baby and Dennes, Dennes working remotely and assertively while we had coffee by the ocean, swimming in hotel pools to warm up for the show, the ritual of putting on make up and doing hair -- these are things I never do at home. I'm lucky if I remember to put on mascara and have time to blow dry my hair. And that's not because I have a baby, that's just the way I've always been, excluding those heady hairspray days of high school wherein my tresses resembled those of Robert Smith, but kind of not in the cool way.

And the discipline of preparing for the show physically....this I cannot rein in satisfactorily when I'm not working on a show. This is part baby, but also partly due to my disinterest in most of the technical dance classes going on in Toronto. Yet a dancer at heart, I feel guilty for not being in daily class, though that has never been my forte or the thriving place.

At home my training of late consists of bouncing on the mini-trampoline while Pablo is in the jolly jumper of the exersaucer...or squeezing in Donna Krasnow's CI training DVD while baby naps. Pleasurable, but I'm starting to crave more.

I would also like to go to Cuba.
How's that for rambling all over the place.
Dreaming all over the place, like a messy head.

Still touring....Salt Spring Island

2010-04-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

Well, the inevitable happened. I've been told it happens to every baby....he fell off the bed in the hotel. I've heard stories of falling off beds, change tables, down stairs while strapped into a stroller, but it still didn't stop my breath from being taken away as I saw his little face as he went down.

We are now in week two of the tour, on Salt Spring Island in the beautiful Salt Spring Inn. Pablo was playing with my copy of the Dance Current magazine and got excited while I brushed my teeth at the sink next to him, watching him in the mirror. In the blink of an eye, over he went. I caught him before he made complete impact with the floor. My stomach and intestines have not settled, even though he cried for just a few minutes and has been in a good mood for most of the rest of the day. I can't believe it happened. He fell. I could not stop it. I'm not sure I'm prepared for what is going to happen for the rest of my life with Pablo.

I refuse to believe I'm a terrible parent...I've heard too many stories about babies falling, especially once they figure out how to crawl, roll over, toddle etc....and you can't stop them from making mistakes. They need to faceplant every once in a while in order to figure out how to do things themselves. But I have a horrible bloody imagination and can see in almost every situation how things could become fatal or gruesomely sad. I say it's a genetic flaw, or too many teenage days spent reading and writing morose poetry. Makes no difference now as the vivid images or possible tragedies creep in.

On another note entirely, our opening on Salt Spring Island was mind-blowing. The audience was so receptive. A standing ovation! Today we have struck a good balance, Dennes and I. I played with Pablo early in the morning while Dennes did some work back east for his "real job" -- i.e. not his "nanny job". We lunched together between sessions of rehearsal in the theatre and napped together between rehearsal and opening. We have traded off on rounds of drinks in the hotel bar. I had round one, Dennes round two. I type this as Pablo stirs in the bed (the scene of this morning's accident!) and falls back to sleep. I can hear the cast having a good time downstairs and buoyed by my glass of wine, I hope that we are starting to figure this out: how to be a family with a performer who may indeed tour again.

I wish with all my heart that I had enough work so that Dennes could just follow his wishes for work and time with Pablo. But today was a beautiful, drizzling day that feels like we are on the cusp of discovering a soft and gentle road through this.

I was feeling that I was screwing up on all fronts, letting everyone down, or at least stressing them out. I try very hard to sort things out myself, but self-sufficient and not bother anyone with my nervousnesses or questions. But I am learning that trying to be stoic often leads me to be completely wild and quivering.

Tomorrow a day with baby and Dennes, perhaps some mussels and chevre and good coffee.

Touring with Baby Part 1

2010-04-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

I love flying. I love the surge of take off and the expectation of the wheels touching down. I love looking at the pattern of 'civilization' and nature from way up. I love being reminded of the similarity between the patterns we build and the patterns nature builds -- we are made of her.

I am taking off from Toronto, flying to Calgary for a brief stopover and then on to Kelowna with Theatre Rusticle -- touring "April 14, 1912", the show in which I play the Titanic. It is one my favourite things to perform, because the team involved is brilliant on every level, because there is no phoning it in. If you do, the whole show sinks -- and not the good way.

I have my baby in my arms and my amazing husband in the seat next -- he has taken two weeks off work to come along so that we can all be together. I am suddenly not so thrilled to fly. I am excited by the idea that Pablo gets to fly, see mountains and ocean before he is a year old, that Dennes and I are continuing to do the things we would have done without a baby...of course taking into consideration Pablo's needs, but not becoming complacent to life, especially our desire to travel, and have vacations. (Next stop for Pablo: Cuba? where we decided on his name.)

I am suddenly frightened, as the wheels leave the ground, of the fragility of all of this, of the utter incomprehensibility of this grimy metal bird of gigantic proportions with all of us in it taking off into the air. What if the laws of physics just suddenly stop obeying themselves? Have we discovered a principle that guarantees that these laws will always behave in a certain way? Perhaps it is the research for this show that has me thinking of the mysteries of the world (eg: the depths of the ocean that we understand less than the depths of space). It all seems a very delicate balance, a delicate battle, to use the title of a Matjash Mrowzewski ballet, and I am not sure I am willing to put Pablo into this uncertainty.

But Pablo's hand reaches to the wall of the plane. He places his palm flat against it and, feeling the vibrations, he smiles at me.

And then he doesn't cry for the whole 4 hour flight.
He has prunes and a bit of avocado salsa from Daddy's hamburger in the Milestones (ugh) restaurant in the Calgary airport and then falls asleep for most of the second flight to Kelowna.
What an amazing kid.

opening night

2010-03-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

I am sitting at my dining room table staring out at my new view -- a large oak tree between me and a park where dogs run like wild horses. Baby sleeps in my lap. He has just started to crawl this week and in his incredible mobility he is napping better and sleeping through the night once again. The trouble we left behind by moving at the beginning of the month seem to have cleared his little mind.

Tonight is the opening performance of Theatre Rusticle's new production, Birnam Wood. It is the most extraordinary thing I've been part of as an artist. Perhaps even surpassing the experience of working on April 14, 1912 with Theatre Rusticle (the company's previous production). The most freedom, the most precision, the most play, the greatest number of multiple realities channelling through our performer bodies. Big challenge. (Runs March 18-27th at Theatre Passe-Muraille www.theatrerusticle.org)

And of course that once-banished part of my psyche -- her name is Insecurity -- has returned from exile. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I am surrounded by some of the most gifted artists I have ever worked with -- from designers to crew to performers to director. Perhaps it is because the energetic make up of me has changed....I still feel like electric currents of baby in me, even though he is 8 and 1/2 months old now. His residue has shifted how things feel, developed new suppleness, new strengths: unfamiliar.

But oh so exciting.
I'd like to blame the restless self-criticism on being mercilessly ridiculed from grade 3 til the end of high school, but really that was long ago and far away and I don't even have the same name anymore so surely I am divorced from that psychological beating? (Besides I saw one of my tormentors on the subway last week and he looked miserable and liquor-bloated. I trust the universe to balance things eventually.)

With the opening of any show I crave a sense of great risk, of potentially opening myself to the point of exposed veins and tendons. Theatre Rusticle work is no exception. I am no longer afraid of this exposure. I trust completely my director, my castmates...and I believe they trust me. So why the rearing of the type-A personality?

I'm 5'8" and 125 lbs., but there's a whole universe inside me that can collapse on itself if I listen to that voice that begins each sentence with "should".

Dogs are running in the park behind the old, giant oak and Pablo is now awake in my lap saying "mama...mama...mama". No matter what, I will go on stage tonight and fling myself completely into the world of Birnam Wood. That much doesn't take bravery, it just takes a step.

A shadowy, human-shaped hallway.

2010-02-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

My first proper show since Pablo was born. Luckily I was too tired to get exceedingly nervous -- will people be comparing my dancing, my body, my ideas to pre-baby times? Am I delusional in my sense that my body is looser and psychically more open now that baby is here? and the classic: am I delusional in trying to be a dancer in the first place. My husband is extremely tired of this last question. It is the evil twin of the good question that keeps one honest as a dancer: Why am I doing this? But not asked in a desperate or cynical tone, instead from the standpoint of curiosity. Why am I doing this? Why does this dance need to exist? Why do I need to dance it?

After reading a lot of Einstein and Bergson in the last couple of years I am of the opinion that not much exists on this planet that does not have need to be there. Nature is very economical and practical in its creativity. Man pushes towards excess and production.

So I stepped on stage in the post-partum era. I walked as a strange creature into a downpool of light and tried to submerge into the world of black floor and light pools. For 9 minutes I forgot I was Pablo's mummie. Well, almost. Those things flicker around in the back of my brain even if I don't sense them consciously.

At the end of the piece, back in that downpool, lying on the floor staring up into the source of the light, my hands on my belly, I felt the flickering, lingering presence of baby. There he is, little bits of his energy still, like lightning bugs in my belly. Scar tissue taking flight, sparking. There he is!

Before the show opened, I felt confident in a new wildness and abandon...I watch the video from this show -- always dangerous -- and I doubt it all. But I don't doubt that this piece needs to exist and I need to dance it. The judgement I lay down is purely stemming from years of not-so-great training and discouragement and my own timidity -- a crutch to shy away from success. It is the habit formed by a scared little girl that I've never quite been able to banish.

What rises above this? The growing sense that I am not a creator, but a vessel. A shadowy, human-shaped hallway through which ideas and emotions can slip, flinging limbs and heart in a pattern that might resemble language.

I'm sure I had more 'deep thoughts' to write here, but I am distracted by the systematic and comedic dropping of toys. Pablo reminds me not to take anything too seriously, except curiosity. He says, take curiosity very seriously.

under glass: at an exhibition

2009-12-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

Underglass
Black hallways are rooms in basements
Beneath the clothes and jewelry
Of old days
And jade dancers mocking window
A pigeon cannot see the darling crumb
His eyes lost to concrete dust
Prokofiev broke off the retina
Like a bow beneath remorse

Loaves of bread planed
By snapdragons, their mouths gape
Too soft now to bite at the news

Now alone in a room of dead
Birds, shoes, purses
Ghosts of giggling children blue with
No sound of oppressive observation
No watching this funeral please

Kitten mummified; the ribbons of immortality
Unwrap in spirals of time-edged
Long ago
The diamonds continue in an upward path
Whiskers still feeling the edges of time

The door warns you of this impending sense
The walls whispers in their
Flagrant subtle colour
The bowl gathers the words in a bind, a spell
To protect a foetus
From 1900 to 1960 they embalmed Egypt
In a forgotten camera the waters stir

Say hello to spring for me in the ink used to
Keep fresh the dead
And to letter the posters
As circus rings turn to fire
Arterial, chemical
Solvol removes the clots
(The Frigid Fluid co. of Chicago enters quietly
But slams the door behind and quickly
Paints it red. I have lost Pablo
To infinity in a bottle on a paper
Advert while an elephant chases
Its partners tail the blue cloud descends
Clashing with red
The world stains itself purple my nails are
Full of purple
My eyes are full of purple
My veins exhume and expire the purple.)

Under glass crystal purses, slippers, balls
Echoes from fragility cliffs
Magnified lucite grins, leather cracks and a smile
Metal grapes are welded to the rhinestone vines
But what could you hold in a see-through purse
 the embalmed foetus, the purple ring – the fire?
Shadows on ghost faces, my face in a glass lid
The nonexistent component I am not in a bell
Jar I am a shadow – my earrings
Mimic grapes and fairytale remnants
As though they know something – earrings animate, girl still.

I take off my shoes to feel the tingle in
Hardwood floors, dead objects speaking in
Vibration
Subway passing under – like dead worlds six feet below
I pushed the door lightly and it took over for me

Baby boots, pearls and glass buttons
A bra partly anticipating –
The nipple shield of sterling silver on guard
The aesthetic of inversion
The corset binding tighter tighter
Ti – ghter—ti—the diaphanous within is pinched
Swan Lake’s surface broken 1897
The silk unwinds and the nickel drops.

Cornucopia of chemists’ darling bottles
For headache, Flesher’s Tonic
No sip from the glass – the tiniest one
The size of a plum
Purple in thigh and eye
Toenail to eyelash the seeping begins
We must remove the clots

Lethal baby bottles
Microbes swim in silken drink
Green blue pink turquoise
Etched
As Shrry glasses from grandmother white-haired
With tar chair, black glasses
Small bookcase of must and a river
Along the garden

Dog skulls point teeth at me --threat and idiocy
Their eyes absent they do not know where to bite
I am safe for the time that eyes and light mean anything

Albino house mice bring me small skulls
Red squirrel muskrat white, flashed taken to ghosts
Before birth

One small skull floating in an infinite sea of black velvet
No refraction of light
Densest sea

This gibbon skeleton clings to the tree but the tree is also dead: little rib cage like mine
Imprisoning air
His knees are giving out
One long pelvis and headless
He is almost dead, speaking to me
The light strikes me from behind and
my ghost is blinded by the red edge of my hair
An aura
I have no eyes
Mammal skulls 0-58
Bats and chipmunks

A child says ‘look they are sleeping’
He is too old to be fooled he appeases
And scuffs the floor with sneaking shoes
Tiny jaws separate from tiny head plates
As if speaking difficult words both
Buried under this black and purple backdrop

The small brown bat skulls translucent
Second from end slightly askew
He looks at me out of the other, empty, eye socket:
The rebels always manage to find me, pass on the message from

50 years ago

a baseball cap digs at the glass box
its courtisan asks ‘why is this all here’
she missed the writing on the wall. Must have.

This is no school house no temple mood whiteness
Stillness the final sleep
Underglass

Snow geese eyes slam shut
You must sleep now – subway quakes will fell you quick as a blink
Days not decades ago….feathers fresh clean
White from transformation transfiguration
Migration to a white continent
Duck billed platypus on white wood
Skeleton crowded waiting for the last supper
Rib cage sucked in – waiting to exhale

This bird had osteoporosis
A girl laughs in that stupid way people do
When afraid
Holes in the understanding
Mesh bone pieces slip through blood drips
Purple into marrow and erupts with lava
Core of Earth eats at the centre of creation
Bartering, dealing and wheeling and reeling
Fascination

Snowy owl my father the owl named for
Him the Christmas fire the sharp beak that flew through a dream of mine.
Behind eyes all lilac and ears closing to sharp
Women and their colonial thoughts erupting
From juvenile nubile mouths

The turtles come up for air, salted, dusty, old, tired, rippling, listing through the water

The tree swallow twined his straw and white feathers and spilled the
Plowed snow over
Ghost eggs. (the turtle returns to salt sea,
Crying.)

The swans lie head to the side, a pair of shoes
Of pearl and feathers, a last gasp
The ptarmigans cry towards me; eyes rolled back into their heads, beaks pointing
To the ceiling ptarmigan of sky, thurnder gods
12 ptarmigans

pheasant peacock, sparrow, finch, gliding
on their backs all white as snow
one red glass eye
he arches towards me
weeping blood.
I don’t know this
Blood of red speak to me in purple
Sparrow, I will carry you
Home in my pocket where
It is warm as prehistoric oceans

They hide their delicacy and wrinkles, their stitches
All willow and one rock
White of heart and eye
A woman in ivory pantsuit an dflowered shopping bag
Does not feel on the brink of a glass cage
She stares into the (pitiful) boxes seeing one red
Eye “how clever”

The right, yes, hooded hides just such an eye
Every night

The canary’s feet are tied together – white string
He has been kissed by orange
Many lips of sun beneath that hood
Sensory organs gather by the nose and spread
Out – a grid search for vulnerability
I see
Ivory pantsuits are dangerous, bulls eye
For bow and arrowed walls of brown-purple
Purple-black, black-brown the eye
Of such an alluring first love a Paris

The evening grosbeak brings faint green and yellow
Dusk to the room fooling the death mash
Fooling all ‘ovary on left testes on right’
It quietly waits recognition or relief from
Humiliation
The bottles of circus perfume
Embalming the two-in-one
Night

The walking skeletons have lost their beaks
(blind mice tailors)
circle circle circle chasing each others
spines like elephants in the centre ring
blue from exhaustion
funeral of sense
you can hear the quack of bones float by

albino porcupine supine, nose to nose
paws beneath chins staring into love forever
sniffing

lepus articus fluffs his fur over his shoulder
glancing back as Holly Golightly
ears forward, whiskers out

albino beaver on the island of his skull
oatmeal-coloured, ears buried in the wreckage
tail flaps behind him like a smile

Coprolite white 50 million years old fossil dung
Too much noise “You can’t shoot that
With a shotgun” Dad days to son
The room is filled to ceiling with death
The shotgun could not part
Its mass, walk away

Sit. Good dog. Skeleton guarding eternal

Kissin gnoise too much I cannot say hello
And goodbye a proper burial exhibition
Some “tsk!” from behind
Old man with red eyes and a cowl of night
They steal my goodbye time, these angels of
Subways and museums.
They steal my silence—white

The arctic hare calls ‘follow me’
Bone and sinew tethered to one another
Two teeth remain, fierce
Closed eyes, sewn shut, bulge
Tips of ears black. He heard the sneaking
Hood and red eyes before his fall
He was dipped in a bit of fire
Or perhaps his own speed

Reconstructed wainscoting, wallpaper, doors
Nothing remaining white and priceless

Air hissing from a small hole – cybercrickets
Scold for my wondering
A blue flash in the corner – new ghost – the shuffling of feet

I return to spring – white and charcoal
Hissing psshing no eyes to look
Tiny blue cups trimmed with flowers overflow
With midnight. Angel-twins a wooden doll
Black hair – I used to have her. I
Am not sure where she has gone
Death in a cool calm fashion may be sewn her
Eyes
Satin to feather
Hawk to ptarmigan
Enemy to enemy – I still lie here underglass
My purple skin is white
Was white all along
I am stuffed, sewn
Guarded by dog skeleton
As they yell “are you
Supposed to be quiet?”
Mute Cygnus olor; eyes open ears hut, black marble I see
I shake the glass, glossy in places and very old
I kiss him goodbye the guardian
Of 650
To be dismantled in two days
The walls I have fallen in love with
Will collapse
Me beneath this cage – rib, glass
Pearl, crystal
Violet, lilac
Time stands
Not still
But almost.

In their eyes
Myself
Small, fading
Towards the stairs

(a response to Spring Hurlbut’s exhibit “The Final Sleep”)

Post-Pregnancy thoughts

2009-12-15T07:49:00.001-08:00

I never lost myself while pregnant, though it was one of my biggest fears. I always felt very much me, even more than usual perhaps. I did not feel occupied by the fetus/baby. I only felt his personality, his desire to move -- but do we interpret these moments through our own frames of reference: I felt his particular desire to move because I am a dancer and do not sometimes, refine the kernel of an idea if it means stopping moving for a moment?

I do wish I could have corrupted that part of the physiology that obliterates the memory of being pregnant and of labour. I remember labour -- what it felt like, details of the pain, the attitudes of nurses and doctors and anaesthesiologists. But I have little recollection of the sensations of pregnancy. This makes me sad. I remember looking in the mirror at my belly in a yellow t-shirt at Canadian Children's Dance Centre during a rehearsal with Peter Chin about a week before baby was born, but I remember this as one remembers a scene in a movie or a play....perhaps because I was looking in the mirror.

It is sad because the pregnancy was largely pleasurable, pain-free. The baby was snug and rather content most of the time. Only the last week or two were uncomfortable and that was because of the heat and swollen feet. My belly and baby were still fairly comfy.

I am lucky to have videos and photos of my dancing, pregnant body -- but even still these are 2-dimensional reminders of 3-dimensional sensation.

Sweetly, whenever my heart rate really gets going, I can feel the pulse of blood in the vena cava which bears a distinct resemblance to the kicking of Pablo as he swam his way into position for the big drop.

Now that he is born, I am finding myself recognizing, appreciating and sanctifying (?) the non-physical, sweat-free aspects of the creative process. Type A personality balks a little at all this, but at the same time cannot deny the intense ( and Type A Lucy loves intensity) usefulness, the reflectivity, the deepening that this time allows. It is what I've written in every grant application ("I need more time to develop my work to its deepest artistic potential") but the first thing to get cut from the budget once it demands its inevitable trimming. This is integral, this time, this non-physical part of determining what it is that I have to say that is worth saying. and it is important, now and then, to bring reflection from the recesses of creative process (the unconscious subway-riding part), to let it sit way out in the light, lazy as it may feel.

It is not.
My greatest fears are to be misunderstood or to be perceived (self-perception included) as lazy.

A major principle in the work I've done with Theatre Rusticle is perpetual motion. To find it in perceived stillness. That old saying that still waters run deep needs to be looked at again. If waters are running, even deeply, they are not in essence still, though the appearance is of inertia....

An Interview with dance-theatre artist VIV MOORE

2009-11-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

Viv's new solo show "Worcestershire Saucy" open this Wednesday Dec. 2 at 8pm at Factory Theatre in the Studio Theatre space. Tickets are $15 (CADA, Student) and $20 (general). Reservations 416 504 9971 www.vivmoore.com

Anyone who has seen Viv on stage knows she is a rare beast, the kind of artist you want to be on stage with and the kind of lady you want to have a beer with. She has been a role model for me for many years now and though I don't drink beer, I have had the immense pleasure of being on stage with her in several different shows. She is a relentless scene partner who gently dares you to follow her when she makes an audacious move. In my years of knowing Viv I have not seen her in a solo performance. I can't wait.

Here are a few questions I asked Viv about her upcoming production.

How did "Worcestershire Saucy begin? What was the initial idea?

In 1999, I created Bogie Woman for fFIDA (Paula Citron Award). This was the start of my re-claiming my Music Hall, eccentric dance roots. The same year, when I returned to England to live by myself, I was taking a course with Gaulier in London (England). Together with my intense dislike for his way of teaching and his disregard of humans at that point in his life, I developed a frozen shoulder. So much pain meant I couldn't carry on with anything physical, so I started to work at the Royal Opera House Box Office, which was great but left me feeling creatively dull. I began to research my roots in terms of clog dance and customs and traditions that I had disregarded in the past. When I returned to Toronto 8 months later, I joined a clog group (Half Crown Clog) and began playing with the mixture of traditional and contemporary. Over the past 10 yrs I have developed ideas and realised that I needed to really say something.

What has the creative process been like -- when did you start, how have you developed it?

I started in September and it's been rich. Lying on the floor, crying, then standing up and crying, then more lying on the floor, then exhilarated discoveries - you know, the usual creative process. I was in the room by myself for 3 months, then I asked Dave (Wilson) my now-husband to come in. He knows me like no-one else, and I asked him to tell me what he saw. He's been a wonderful support - always is.

What made you decide to do this solo show? (When was the last time you did a solo show?)

I have never done a solo show. I decided it had to be a solo show, because there was all this STUFF and I needed to get it out there. It was a DO IT NOW thought, one that I knew there was no backing down from.

Will the show reveal anything to us about the secret Viv Moore?
Yes

This is the awesomeness of Viv. She is equal parts mystery and complete honesty. No matter who or what she embodies on stage, there always seems to be this essential Viv-ness, the enigma and the openness.

What are the influences for this project outside dance and theatre?

Butoh, stage combat, English Music Hall

How would you define dance-theatre?

I have no new ways of defining this. Integrated movement and speaking, all at the same time, coming from an image-based world of movement.

What is your ideal day?

Sleep in till 10; have breakfast cooked for me by my personal chef; buy several very expensive articles of clothing that have been specially chosen for me by my personal couturier; take a light tea; have a 2 hour massage by my personal masseur; eat a very nutritious dinner made by the very same chef; sleep in a large 4 poster bed in Grindelwald. You don’t believe me?

What is your favourite colour?
Mauve

Favourite city and why?

London, England. It makes me cry every time I am in it, because I miss it. The smell of it, the feel of it, the news of it. It is in my skin and bones and every sinew.

Go see this show. As her promotional materials state: You will be amused. And I bet, moved.

For the last time...

2009-11-17T18:56:00.000-08:00

If just once more someone tells me that my career means nothing now that I have a baby, I may have to resurrect my idea to move baby and Dennes to Big Sur where we live like curmudgeonly hermits until California breaks off from the continent in the big earthquake that begins the rapture.....or whatever.

I proudly push baby in his stroller to the studio after the last iteration of the "career means nothing" vibe. And I endeavour to make my career mean more now that baby is here.

I have two things to leave to this planet -- my baby, my art -- and hopefully both will be lasting enough to leave something to the planet in turn....

Generosity

2009-10-30T05:47:00.000-07:00

A couple of things have happened in the last year that have caused me to doubt the value of generosity. I have, or my husband has, been taken advantage of, played, suckered in the course of wanting to help. But a book, recommended by the incredibly generous dance artist Peggy Baker, has started to pull me in off the ledge after yesterday's biggest disappointment when it comes to generosity and being taken for a fool. Yesterday I was ready to cancel a co-production with three other artists (who have nothing to do with my heartbreak surrounding generosity), I was ready to move husband and baby to a log cabin in Big Sur California and become a family of cranky old hermits who threaten trespassers with a really big stick.

The book is Lewis Hyde's "The GIft", and though it sounds like a book on witchcraft or a feel-good treatise on artistic talent for would-be artists, it instead dives into market versus gift economy models and is saving me from the corrosion of my belief system, melodramatic as that sounds.

Now I learned many years ago never to give help, money, resources with any expectation of return. I once worked for someone who was constantly giving me things, things I didn't need or want, then reminding me of the gifts given as a tool to manipulate an obligation to her. That, to me is not true generosity, that is more like capitalism. Investing in something in order to get product from it later. All fine and well but don't call it a gift.

The idea, that Hyde puts forth in the first chapter of his book, is about the energy of gifts and generosity, that the flow needs to continue. Someone who receives a gift should pass along a gift to someone else. It's a bit of that cheesy pay-it-forward concept, or the ripples in a pond image, but when you relate it to the creation and sharing of art, it makes sense. If you are creating for yourself, no matter what the form, without a sense of your audience you are stopping the flow of art's economy. That economy is built on the ephemeral value of art, on the intangible, the emotional, psychological or intellectual stimulation. It is built on the things we can't buy in a store. And we need those things. Deeply.

In another book I read recently, which I can't remember the name of at the moment, a philosopher was talking about people under extreme environmental, financial or political duress and that the cornerstones of their societies become food, shelter and culture. Think about North America and Western Europe in the 1930s -- through the Great Depression we had one of the most verdant periods of film and music and literature, among other art forms. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is one of my favourite examples. Everyone was writing a novel in the 1930s the way everyone has a blog or a website now.

At any rate, by the end of Lewis Hyde's first chapter I am dedicated not to becoming a miser but to choosing where and how I let that generosity flow -- both as an artist and in the broader context of my life. I will continue not to expect a return, but I will not allow things to be thrown back in my face -- the struggles I have had this year have stemmed from sharing, opening to those who believe themselves entitled, have placed their needs above mine, and above many others around them. It is hard when this happens between artists. When I can help someone with talent that is not being seen or appreciated it seems important to do what I can to facilitate the exposure of their artistry, but when their dissatisfaction with the whole artistic environment becomes expressed through a deadstop of that flow of energy -- well, I just find that sad. And then to have it thrown back at me, as though I didn't do enough, while we are all struggling to let our lights out from under a bushel...

That's what I'm done with....after all my rambling above, I am simply done with a random flow of generosity. I'll stick with field theory for performances -- let it out everywhere and let it stick where it sticks --but on a personal level, one on one, I will be choosing my channels more wisely, though not less frequently or with less fervour.

The good end to yesterday was another reminder of this flow of gifting....A friend passed along some baby clothes from someone who had passed along some baby clothes and as I washed and folded and put away these new gifts for Pablo, I showed Pablo all the clothes that he has now outgrown and put them in a bag to be passed along to someone who will pass them along to someone until they find where they are needed.

I should have just gone back to my own beginnings when I felt so betrayed by those I shared with and by my own beliefs. Until I was about 5 or 6 I don't think I had any clothes or books that weren't secondhand. And sure enough my mother would go through my closet and take out the things I couldn't wear anymore and together, we would drop them at the Salvation Army or Goodwill.

Hey, it's called Goodwill for a reason.

Ritual

2009-10-05T07:24:00.001-07:00

My friend Monika Berenyi just sent me a film she made about what ritual means to us in the 21st century and it got me to thinking.....

Ritual is connected to the theatre for me, the practice of preparation and comfort before stepping on stage. It has never meant anything religious to me; I wasn't brought up going to church and such. The theatre is like a church for me -- not in a flakey or spiritual communion kind of way, although I suppose there is a bit of that -- but in the sense of community and transcendence it brings, the pursuit of humanity, transparency and meaning in life.

There is nothing authoritarian about my ritual or my comparison of theatre to church. I do not bow down to God, Allah or "the muse" while in the theatre or making my preparations. You can't bow down to the pursuit of meaning, transparency of humanity. If you bow your head and close your eyes you can't take part in the chase.

Bowing the head and closing the eyes happens the land of dreaming for me, equally important and sacred, in a non-religious, non-ritualistic way. I do not prepare for or coax out the dreams, they wash through when they need or want to. Then they are filtered through into preparation for taking to the stage. Perhaps the filter is the ritual. Little dream images slipping through holes in soft cheesecloth....

www.monikaberenyi.com

First time in the studio with baby Pablo

2009-09-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

Listening to Arvo Part -- music I meditated to while pregnant, music I had hoped to play (to remind myself to breathe!) while giving birth, music that could not be played while I was giving birth because everything happened so fast. Sitting on the floor of the studio stretching after dancing/warming up for half an hour. Pablo begins stretching as the music plays. He has been sleeping since we arrived.

Focusing on his sleeping body liberates me while improvising. My body is loose, except my lower back and laterally in my pelvis (muscles over-worked during the delivery), disassembled, wriggling, eager. My ego slips away. I am watching the baby on the floor sleeping while I am dancing. I realize I need to turn the camera on in the corner and just let it go for the whole time. Something new is happening. The mirror doesn't exist, the ego, which sometimes directs my improvisations to things that feel good and I know I can do well, is absent or perhaps watching the baby too.

Pablo wakes up and freaks out a little, not knowing where he is, so we waltz around the room to "Spiegel im Spiegel" -- he laughs and smiles, especially when we do the formal waltz turns over and over again. He's having fun and I'm remembering a bit of footwork for a show Theatre Rusticle will be remounting later this season. He rather likes the Alvin Ailey poster on the wall with it's red-orange background and black silhouetted figure.

I realize bringing Pablo here is important, it forces me to ease off of precision in QUANTITATIVE terms. We may arrive at 1:30pm but what happens in the 2 hours of studio time I've booked must be loosely structured. I must be prepared to be here for 3 hours if I want to dance for 2. I need to stop being so controlled, stop scheduling myself so tightly, enjoy the details that emerge when I don't feel the need to "dance like Lucy".

To find precision in QUALITATIVE terms...I care suddenly less about going to daily technique class (which I never do and always feel guilty about). I am willing to relinquish that dream I never really chased. I am happy with Moksha yoga and studio time. I am old enough to enjoy my idiosyncracies, to develop them into a craft, rather than feel them as a liability, something which has emerged because I don't go to a symmetrical conventional class often enough. Symmetry and convention are important for training, but now that Pablo is here I see new forms of symmetry and convention which fall outside daily contemporary technique class. I am far enough into my career to not care how idiosyncratic my dancing is. To chase THIS dream -- individualism -- to be myself, to do my tendus and plies and then explore wonderland.

My elbows and throat are fascinating today driving the movement that is coming through. My feet which have weakened a little over this summer of no ballet classes and a lot of running around literally barefoot and pregnant, are solid, happy, pliable on the floor.

I must bring Pablo with me to the studio as much as I can in these early months -- until he starts locomoting or stops enjoying his studio-floor naps and watching mummie dance in the mirror. It is an incredible thing to get to do-- to share my work with him so that maybe when he is a little older he will not be sad when I am away from him working, maybe he will understand what I do and how much his existence inspires me -- not so much thematically, but at the root of my spine, in the meaty part of my soul that sends out the order "CHARGE!!!!" How loud this voice is now. I have been a passive observer for too much of my life, avoiding sensuality of the purest kind. You can't do that anymore, not with Pablo here. "Dance like Lucy" can't be in quotation marks anymore.

In the very eloquent words of my friend Sarah Slean: Love is the reason we are here.

Hear hear.

Here here.

Notes after being on the Dora Dance Jury for 2008-2009 PART TWO

2009-08-20T06:35:00.001-07:00

Please read disclaimer in part 1. Synopsis: Random notes from attending dance shows this season, impressions not meant to offend anyone involved in shows, purely personal thoughts on dance, dancing and dance-making.....Groups of thoughts represent a cluster of ideas about an individual show.

The dancers are self-conscious at the beginning and not in a good way.

Schtick without authenticity. Is that ok if it's intentional? how do you know if it's intentional?

They can absorb the style with a certain aplomb but lack artistry.

I feel I am never watching what I wish I was watching....like I have missed something somewhere else on stage that was more entertaining or interesting.

One dancer seems to be flirting with my friend who came with me. Not really taking it seriously?

Now the costumes appear to me to be a disguise for the emptiness of the work.

I am not sure the dancers are convinced of what they've been asked to do.

Are the gestures supposed to be real or accessed?

Why something if nothing is your motivation?

Why something if nothing?

Re: Program notes: I don't care, just do.

Is pathetic supposed to be endearing or clever?

Again, I understand it's supposed to be about "X" but what is the stance, opinion, thesis about X? Otherwise it seems just like practising cursive writing. R, R, R, R....all across a page of an hour.

Where is the art? Is no art the point? Then why should I care? Nothing is posited.

There is no performance. No performance can be a kind of performance, but this feels just empty. I might as well not be here.

Our brains are more sophisticated than this work seems to imply. We can absorb concept X with more complex material. We are not zombies. If we were we would already have stormed the stage in search of brains-for-dinner.

Now this show feels like an insider joke that none of us get to be in on. Like we're not cool enough to even guess how sophisticated the joke is. But I don't think it's particularly sophisticated, even though the performance is quite impressive. I'm starting to resent the "cool" factor that gets applied to the marketing of different shows, I am assuming not necessarily generated by the creators or performers. The cool factor is often empty, inauthentic. True coolness is inspired not cultivated.

One of the best moments of this show is when a raccoon walked by the open window near my seat.

I like how this is defying extremity of line but refreshes the classical form at the same time. However the dancers don't seem to grasp this and are not sending it far enough out to us. Lacking a fluid connection that the choreography seems to inherently possess. Juxtapositions of neo and pure classicism is satisfying.

Under-rehearsed, but they seem to love moving this way.

After watching this, I can't wait to go into the studio tomorrow.

Very slammy and rhythmically the same all the way through. No emotional level can come through, though the dancers and choreographer/choreography seem to want it.

This is the show that other other show wanted to be but couldn't find it's way too.

The creative process revealed without insulting its audience. Pedestrian movement is always stylized, made more than mundane. The impact of simple movement smartly put together.

Baby is not so much into the music of this work.

I smell feet that have been in sneakers too long, corn chips and lemon pledge. Weird.

One dancer's body is too soft for the choreography. It lacks impetus.

What is the root of the sensuality?

Somehow the upper arms of the dancers are inarticulate. Just the upper arms.

Unexpected how the ideas of the choreographer turned into choreography, which is so pleasurable.

The performances are pretty sincere if a little shallow. They are genuine in what they are. You can't get mad at a piece for being what it is.

A bit ridiculous. Sloppy. No relationship to music, so why is the music there? Why not silence?Spacing bad. Costuming lazy. Lacks substance behind gestures. The edge and approach towards it is faked. Movements are heavy and though fast, lethargic, somehow. Good ideas but choreography is not very useful in articulating those ideas. Why break the fourth wall just once and have nothing change in the arc of the work after broken?

The man next to me looks at his watch. No context. No set-up. Why the reactions between dancers? They don't seem connected enough to elicit responses from each other.

Voyeurism is so 1990s.

Why do the legs go up? Do we ever know? What is the relationship between dancer and audience? Nothing ingratiating about it, I am somehow not on her side. Is the substance merely strength? That might be enough.

This one makes me think how clever a designer has to be to light a black costume in a black box theatre so well.

Hallucinations. Ghosts occupy other places on stage, where dancers are not. My eyes do strange things in response. The movement is so classically modern but then planed, cut off, compelling. If you're gonna run, run like that. Leaves you wanting more but still unsure of what you've just seen.

RULES FOR CONTEMPORARY DANCE AFTER THIS SEASON:

No more babies or children in sound scores.

No costuming by American Apparel.

No program notes if you have no opinion about what you state in your program notes.

If you're repeating yourself ask yourself why. If you can't answer don't do it.

No smug dancing.

No smug choreography.

If someone bumps into you and apologizes don't be a bitch about it.

More dance in Toronto, please.

Notes after being on the Dora Dance Jury for 2008-2009 PART ONE

2009-08-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

These are my notes, unedited, unspecified, in random order after attending a full season of shows as part of the dance division jury for the Dora Mavor Moore Performing Arts Awards in Toronto this year. I am not including names or dates, but a stream of thoughts about what I was seeing and feeling while in the audience. Written in the dark, words and phrases to remind me what I liked or didn't like, what moved me to redefine what I do: to walk the walk if my critical eye was going to talk the talk.

Thoughts on the season, on dance and dancing, on choreography and ego as they appeared on stage. Groups of thoughts

represent a bundle of ideas relating to an individual show:

I hate Saturday matinees. Idle, aspiring, rich, ancient.

A lot of clunking around with props. No one seems comfortable.

Why don't they look at each other?

The old ladies behind me smell of patchouli and cigarettes.

What does a flattened palm mean?

Why do intimate gestures get no response from the other dancers?

The dynamic is constantly controlled. No one breaks out.

I think this is supposed to mean something but then why the blank stares? Everything is diluted. Intellectual with no intellect. Philosophical with no philosophy.

You can see the interactions and interruptions coming from a mile away.

Why are the other dancers witnessing? Why not put them off stage?

There is purpose but I can't feel it. No exertion, no risk.

Mild proud angst.

It is not enough to consider it good because they are well-rehearsed.

If the content is to be that obvious, then where is the complicity? the play? What is the difference between the beginning and the end? Why does no one have volition?

I am distracted by thoughts about having a baby possibly, and by new leotards that are to arrive in the mail soon. Simultaneously shallow and existential as I wait for this show to begin.

Someone in the audience smells like vitamins.

Commitment comes and goes but when it's there it's amazing.

The choreography hasn't been looked at from all angles of the house.

It is good to see something so pure. Innocence in the fabric of the choreography. It alleviates an emotional overwhelm for the audience, helps us feel it not as a destructive force but as a nurturing one.

The weight-bearing moves feel like a cop-out or cliche, but how do we express consolation otherwise?

I can't tell if the sound is really good or if it is well-matched to the manipulation of emotions necessary. Maybe that's the same thing?

No dynamic to this show. Everything stays at exactly the same pace and exertion.

The floor has not been mopped.

What is the attitude towards these choreographic moments? There seems to be no thesis, no opinion. Smug intelligence. The choreography is not trying to communicate.

Why this music? Why these clothes as costumes? Why this movement at this position on stage?None of these things seem considered.

Why should I watch this if you are not offering me something even through absence?

Perfect example of how choreography does not have to be innovative if the intentions are crisp and clear and the staging is well thought out.

There is nothing magical about this show. Nothing is supposed to be magical. It is borderline grim. Gravity is palpable. The wobbling or lack of balance in the dancers is fascinating in this context. This is not a denial of emotion, but an intentional suppression, trusting the impact of the choreography, not questioning the vision behind it. They are not projecting into their performances what they think we should be or are seeing. Perfect execution would be boring. It reminds me of Big Sur: the frankness of the landscape, beautiful, complex but so open to everything, unconsciously. Stumbling backwards is still terrifying to watch, even a year and half after I broke my arm.

Empty vessels expressively.

I am watching the evolution of a spine. Illusions created by one lone body. Limbs sprouting.

Transformation without theatricality.

Pretentious audience already. Mr. X's wife was incredibly snotty when I accidentally bumped my coat against her chair. The house is somewhat empty physically and emotionally. People are chatting about academic shit and rushing into the house as the lights are dimming. Yawn.

If I see one more contemporary dance show costumed entirely at Amercian Apparel, I'm going to barf.

No sense of rhythm but a grand sense of space.

What does the torso have to say?

Moving your arms with urgency to intense music and no expression is not necessarily good dance. Just because it's fast also does not mean it is necessarily good.

The rhythm is the same through this whole work. Nice images, but what is your thesis? Your program notes say it's about "X" but what is your attitude towards X, what is your opinion? Show me! There is no investigation of what it all might communicate or mean or what visceral emotion it might inspire. I think this is mandatory even if it's just about physicality.

If I am supposed to appreciate the sheer physicality of it all, then please light it a bit better so that I can see.

What do all the blackouts mean?

It must feel great to dance this piece.

I'm tired of hearing dancers breathe on stage as part of choreography. (Just a personal thing).

It's somehow a bit sexist.

What experience do you want me to be having? If you don't know, we won't.

I am bored with the angsty vocabulary.

BOOOOOOO. That is about all I can muster for this one.

I apologize to my friend who came with me.

Lacked content, care, beauty, palpable concept, follow-through. Smug and lazy in form and execution. Void of content. Said nothing.

Sloppy performance.

Accuracy, clarity and imagination are not as tricky as they sound.

Hard to watch this show objectively when my desire to dance comes so strongly and I am getting towards baby, is it purposeful, good?

The muscularity of this movement is refreshing. Here is tension and release, not constant tension or constant release.

Suspensions feel choreographed and not sensed.

Pure hedonism, not sure what the idea was....

As I continue watching, my mind wanders to conditioning and training I need to do through the pregnancy...

Lacks a bit of subtlety. Everything feels a bit slammed.

Too many solos in a row can numb the potential effect of each individually.

One dancer is clearly trying to be noticed amid the rest who are casual, it actual makes me ignore her rather than pay attention.

This is what that other show wanted to be but didn't have the courage to be.

The immaturity of the students in the audience make this section "funnier" than it actually is. Fascinating!

Is this controversial? I don't feel offended or challenged; moved, yes.

I guarantee that the students here are going to rip off some of what they see when they get to choreograph later this year.

I feel like the choreographer is immature and well-developed at the same time. I am not sure what he is trying to get across. There are no moments of ugliness for me to counterpoint the moments of great beauty and great mundaneness. The dancers spend a lot of time making the audience comfortable so that when those ugly images are presented we feel they are illusions, not reality and that everyone is safe.

It feels like a treatise on theatre and acting.

The acting in this is really bad.

Choreography grew more clear and evident, integrated and woven, the longer you invested in watching it. Acting remained bad. Distracted from dancing.

I love how trussed up this audience is. Uber-cool.

You can't be mad at a work for being what it is. For not being something other than what it wants to be. You have to watch it with the eyes that it wants you to watch it with. But you can only do that when the choreographer makes it clear which eyes you should pop in your sockets.

I want to call out to her in the stillness. Are you alive?

Strange world, the social rules are slightly askew.

It makes me wonder, how does a lighting designer choose his or her moments?

The sound of shoes squeaking on the floor seems like onomatopoeia.

END OF PART 1.

Written for P just before he was born

2009-08-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

little one if these leaves of grass

do not soothe

i hope

the captain's verses do

each night a little insight for little one

who cannot understand

nor hear everything

but feel vibrations

of the madman with wild white hair

among the blades

we hope for you good nights

sleep

dreams

movement, words, music

that carry we do not hope you to be

"artist"

see instead the living of life as an art

and fill your thoughts

with imaginative kindness

blade by blade

green by green each burnt to a crisp

of meaning for future reference

love of all loves made you

together we rise, that song you have liked

along the way

we have moved twisted swords

built worded armies

to combat this world

and its disappeal making new words

as necessary

like Germans

ear to ear

listening

and if your first word starts with an F

we will laugh

we only ask you not become a 20-something

smoking weed in a park with a can of cream soda and a cell phone

continue kicking as hard as you kick now

a lung a rib

a kidney

we will recognize you when you come

sounding your yawp

barbarically

musically

kickingly

(Lucy Rupert, June 25 2009)

Master P himself

2009-08-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

Pablo Neruda

2009-07-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

About six or eight weeks ago, just after we moved into the new digs, I started reading our fetus Pablo Neruda poetry. I found the poem "The Son" and hung this excerpt on the door to our Pablo's room:

"Like a great storm
we shook
the tree of life
down to the innermost
fibres of the roots
and you appear now
singing in the foliage
in the highest branch
that with you we reach"

That says it all.

baby arrives and Henry Miller's Big Sur crest

2009-07-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

Our baby arrived July 1st at 10:06pm. The delivery was an intense, fast and slightly complicated event but baby came through unphased so who cares, now? Pablo Echlin Pehadzic. I look at him constantly amazed that two little cells met and made two more cells and made two more cells and on and on until this whole creature was formed and ready to emerge.

Someone said that Dennes and I maybe waited too long to have a baby, but at the cellular level, we can't have waited too long because any other point in time would not have created little Pablo, but some other probably just-as-wondrous creature, but not Pablo. And we are rather fond of Pablo.

During the last two weeks of the pregnancy (and during my efforts to poop post-delivery) I have been re-reading "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch" by Henry Miller -- one of his greatest books, probably indicative of the depth of tides and beauty in Big Sur -- and I feel compelled to share this passage as a new credo for life:

"If the foregoing seems too complicated, here is a simple regimen to follow: Don't overeat, don't drink too much, don't smoke too much, don't work too much, don't think too much, don't fret, don't worry, don't complain, above all don't get irritable. Don't use a car if you can walk to your destination; don't walk if you can run; don't listen to the radio or watch television; don't read newspapers, magazines, digests, stock market reports, comics, mysteries or detective stories; don't take sleeping pills or wakeup pills; don't vote, don't buy on the instalment plan, don't play cards either for recreation or to make a haul, don't invest your money, don't mortgage your home, don't get vaccinated or inoculated, don't violate fish and game laws, don't irritate your boss, don't say yes when you mean no, don't use bad language, don't be brutal to your wife or children, don't get frightened if you are over or under weight, don't sleep more than ten hours at a stretch, don't eat store bread if you can bake your own, don't work at a job you loathe, don't think the world is coming to an end because the wrong man got elected, don't believe you are insane because you find yourself in a nut house, don't do anything more than you're asked to do but do that well, don't try to help your neighbor until you've learned how to help yourself, and so on...
Simple, what?
In short, don't create aerial dinosaurs with which to frighten the field mice!"
1957

Henry Miller is my favourite genius. It is sad that he is fairly forgotten in the study of literature.
Nonetheless, I believe I have found my new philosophy of life with Dennes and Pablo.

and another thing....

2009-06-11T10:18:00.001-07:00

I have had it said to me outrightly and backhandedly since I have been pregnant that NOW I will understand what my true purpose on this planet is. And let me tell you I find this absolutely offensive.

I have been told that the "glamour" of my "career" (often said, let's be honest, by older men who still have a bit of a hard time with women who have "careers") is all very fine and well for a short time, but children, well, that's the real reason to exist.

Now I'm not saying that's not true for many people, but I think one's reason for existing is purpose and it matters less what that purpose is, so long as it does not intentionally harm other beings, and more that you have a purpose.

It has been insinuated that my time as a dancer should wind down now, that it was wasted or idle time in preparation for the realness of being a mother. I know I have my faults, but I also know that meandering, wasting time, being idle are not in my repertoire. I have never acted or not acted on an impulse of entitlement. I have never gone on stage just to make myself happy.

And as for the glamour of being a dancer/performer/creator....for 95% of us in the arts there is little to no glamour, unless you mean glamour in that old world magical sense. The career itself is not glamorous. For most of us it is just a lot of extremely hard work that you must do, as the cliche goes, because you are compelled to do it, not because of money or dreams of fame. Especially in Canada there is no fame in the arts. But it doesn't mean you don't pay in sweat, to paraphrase Ms. Lydia Grant. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be paid fairly for your work as an artist. And it doesn't mean that your work as an artist is less or more valuable than a parent's drive to raise a child, or a doctor's drive to safe a life.

I will continue to be brutally honest and tell you that I believe my purpose on this planet is to be as open, honest and compassionate as I can be through the vehicle of performance, and this little creature I am about to give birth to is part of that purpose, my marriage to and huge love for Dennes is part of that purpose. To turn things on their ear: Dennes and this little creature are my reasons for that purpose. When I love this much, I feel elementally drawn to put myself out raw on the stage, to interpret disparate points of history and life through my body and to try to compel people, for a moment, sink their heels into the world around them. I guess love is my purpose. Big and corny as that might sound.

So don't diminish my "glamorous career"; it is neither glamorous nor a career, it is the core of my being, not work. My purpose on this planet is to follow the core of my being where it takes me. My drive is stronger and fiercer than my muscles and bones. Don't you dare scold me or anyone else for that or I will show you my teeth.

Insecurity

2009-06-06T07:11:00.001-07:00

I'm about to do my last dance performance before baby is born. I am awash with insecurity.

Now usually I am an insecure dancer. I trust explicitly what my heart and mind can do on stage, but it has taken me a long time to trust what my body can do and it is wavering now. I cannot feel the edge of the stage. I doubt my choices, my feet (always a source of confidence in the past).

I doubt my ability to give birth to this creature living inside me, even though women have done it for thousands of years.

Perhaps it is strange for a dancer or an athlete to go through these last weeks of pregnancy, as the body does what it must without any input or direction from one's intelligence, from one's ability to reason. It just goes. Practicing contractions, softening, deepening. As a professional 'mover' I am used to considering, deducing and compelling the body to move, to contract, to soften, to deepen. Even in improvisation there is an element of intellect participating. There is learned behaviour variegating on itself.

But my body has not been pregnant before and it is choosing, without my feedback, how to be pregnant, how to be ready to give birth.

I find this, in an objective way, very amazing. Subjectively, it scares the crap out of me. My legs dangle from my pelvis by thin threads, my pelvis vibrates like a bell that has been struck by its clapper, my feet are concerned with providing weight to the dangling legs, but seem not to care so much about the ground itself. My arms keep throwing themselves out of alignment. And yet I do not feel like an alien has taken over my body, I do not feel disassociated from myself.

Only a wee bit scared. My confidence drops back to when I was 21 and crying in ballet class every day. What am I doing here? Is any of my dancing worth watching? Worth investigating? Will I be able to uphold all the artistic and personal ideals I set out for myself throughout the pregnancy? Will the force of stating these ideals again and again be enough to make them bloom?

It worked when I broke my arm.
But this is a different beast entirely...

Accidents or Fate? A comparative interview by Lucy Rupert with Susie Burpee and Jenn Goodwin

2009-04-17T06:15:00.000-07:00

An interview for the DanceWorks Mainstage Event coming up April 29-May 2 at Enwave Theatre.

Accident 1. an event that is without apparent cause 4. occurrence of things by chance
Fate 1. a power regarded as predetermining events unalterably 2. an individual’s appointed lot
(source Canadian Oxford Dictionary)

Both artists have been asked the same questions: Consider the similarities and differences in their answers, and if the “how” of their answers as well as the “what” is evident in their choreography.

Susie Burpee choreographer and performer of Mischance and Fair Fortune1. What was the initial spark to create your work for this show? Ovid's myth of Pyramus and Thisbe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramus_and_Thisbe#Ovid.27s_version
2. Do you believe in accidents or fate?
Accidents.
3. What made you want to start choreographing? I imagined things that didn't exist yet in the world, and I wanted to realize those ideas.
4. What would you want an audience to take away from seeing your work?
I hope that they think or feel differently, if only for a moment. 5. What other artists/personalities have influenced your work in general?
Cindy Sherman's photographic work influences my self-solo work. In this work though, the other dancer, Dan Wild, influenced me greatly because we are very much in-tune as dance artists. I believe we are inextricably linked to the work.

http://www.cindysherman.com/
6. How would you describe your relationship to music/sound?That relationship is of great interest to me. With each choreography I make, I am careful to be specific about the relationship. This work is composed by Canadian indie music artists Christine Fellows and John Samson (The Weakerthans). I have continued to work with them.

http://www.theweakerthans.org/
http://www.christinefellows.com/
7. How do you build character or characters for your work?This work was created through sense-memory improvisation, which provided the emotional anchors for the work.

Sense memory, also known as 'emotional memory', is an element of Stanislavsky’s system of Method Acting, perpetuated by Lee Strasberg. Sense memory requires the actor to call on the memories he or she felt when they were in a situation similar to that of their character. Stanislavski believed an actor needed to take emotion and personality to the stage and call upon it when playing his or her character. He also explored the use of objectives, the physical body's effect on emotions, and empathizing with the character.
8. How do you choose your dancers? I am interested in seeing individuals and their personalities on stage, so my works are person-specific. Dan Wild was important because he is so emotionally driven in performance.
Jenn Goodwin choreographer of Accidents for Every Occasion

1. What was the initial spark to create your work for this show?
I’m interested in the “in betweens”, moments we are “off” and we stumble - literally and metaphorically. I like looking at mistakes, how we learn from them, repeat them, or ignore them. I am curious about the links between what is an accident, a coincidence, fate. I think I am also kind of accident-prone and that sparked a curiosity in me physically as well as thematically.

2. Do you believe in accidents or fate?Both. I think I choose which one to believe in when it suits the situation better, to be honest. But I do think some things are 'meant to be', and sometimes things 'just happen'. I like to think both are possible.

For a little bit on Finite Mathematics and the probability of random (accidental) phenomena:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_theory

3. What made you start choreographing?
Beyond choreographing in my basement to Michael Jackson or Grease every weekend…when I was a bit older I was dancing in other peoples’ work, and realized I wanted to create my own images, scenes, scenarios and put them on stage. I had things I had written about - personal stories, experiences that I wanted to put into movement.

4. What would you want an audience to take away from seeing your work?
Perhaps glimpses of themselves, something they can connect with, laugh at, relate to, question. To explore their “voice”, to find their own stories and realize the importance and substance of them.

5. What other artists/personalities have influenced your work in general?
Jenny Holzer (Conceptual Artist with focus on text based work), Cindy Sherman (photographer/filmmaker), Bill Viola (Video artist), and my Aunt Noreen- a performer in her own right who uses humour in everything and to value and connect with even the toughest of times.

http://www.jennyholzer.com/
http://www.billviola.com/

6. How would you describe your relationship to music/sound?
Somewhere between Spinal Tap and Mozart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_Tap
Go to YouTube and search Spinal Tap and other clips from other movies created by Christopher Guest. (e.g.: A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman)
http://www.mozartproject.org/

7. How do you build characters for your work?
I like whenever possible to start from the performers’ and my own experiences and then distort, grow, shrink, shift, change, question and so on.

8. How do you choose your dancers?
For the first time I did an audition this year. It was an amazing experience to see the massive amount of talent in the community and for people to come out and share that. Other times, I wanted to work with people based on shows I have seen them in.

Organic, as defined by....

2009-04-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

Erich Mendelsohn, German architect in the Weimar era:

Organic means " exterior forms express their interior structure...and use, structure and architectural expression coalesce to an organic whole, where scientific facts and creative vision combine to an unbreakable pattern."

I hear the word organic used in dance these days to mean loose or formless, "natural", pure. Like organic food. But I like Mendelsohn's definition.

Exterior forms express their interior structure, their organs. It means something more visceral, made of blood not air.

Dancers do often stray into architecture as a source of inspiration. Usually it comes through as formal, shape-oriented rather than motion-oriented. Ironically most architects are constantly on a quest for the expression of movement through stationary matter.

Mendelsohn encountered this word when Einstein used it to describe Mendelsohn's "Einstein Tower". He took from Einstein's "Organic!" the idea that "one cannot take any part away from it, neither from its mass nor from its motion, nor even from its logical development, without destroying the whole."

Einstein Tower is a little silly looking now, more than a little phalic, but I guess we should not be surprised coming out of 1920's Germany. Still, these were the architects of modernity, something from which we are only just now emerging.

I think we are due for a revisit of this term organic, reclaim it for things meaty and kinetic, direct and abstract.

some deep thoughts

2009-03-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

"True scientific research has to do with curiosity and interest not whether something is useful or not. Besides, you can't really say that something is useless if you manage to figure out what it is you didn't understand at first." Jiang Rong from Wolf Totem

"Perhaps all concepts of freedom in dance made time and again by a society are always also concepts of the freedom a society is willing to give itself." Franz Anton Cramer....This makes me wonder if cut-backs and economic threat are causing us as artists to retreat emotionally? Is it the post 9-11 world? If you're going to venture out you better act like you don't care. You can think, but don't dare care, caring is vulnerability. Vulnerability hurts more.

"When the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 struck, it changed the angular momentum of the planet's spin, speeding it up like a spinning figure skater pulling her arms closer to her body. As a consequence our days are now three millionths of a second shorter." Christopher Dewdney from The Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time

"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." Ludwig Wittgenstein from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Our perception of time can allow us to split a second into millionths and then ever-thinner slices to the point of infinity: eternity. We are immortal if a second can be so sliced...

We have nothing to lose. The world is spinning faster, we have less time before it inevitably ends itself, yet we are immortal so stop fearing vulnerability. Nothing can pierce you; the second before it happens can always be split and split again until we reach infinity.

I read too much.

Dancing with Fetus

2009-03-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

Does baby really enjoy my dancing? He/she only kicks when I stop moving, never protests while I'm going. The only protests are occasional quiet shrieks from my abdominal muscles.

On Thursday I was part of Buzz at Theatre Passe Muraille working with Theatre Rusticle and though I have performed with fetus before, this performance was more emotionally, physically and intellectually intense than other performances.

When I got home and was winding down, I learned something the fetus-adrenalin relationship. Suddenly a karate class was taking place in my belly. Baby has been moving around and kicking lots in the last few months, but this was incredible. I was drifting to sleep, but baby was on an adrenalin high. In my mind's eye I could see the little thing yanking on the umbilical cord saying "More! more!"

Someone said to me yesterday as I relayed this story, "It makes you think about drinking coffee and alcohol while you're pregnant, eh?" It was said almost as though I have been drinking coffee and alcohol non-stop while Fetus has been along for this ride.

Everyone says it's great that I'm dancing and performing so much while pregnant, but then the nitty gritty details of many people's thoughts are that I'm doing something dangerous or risky. Someone actually said to me that having a baby is easy when you're a dancer. "You just take a year off and then come back." I actually laughed at this person. I felt terrible for laughing at them but, "How do you expect me to afford a year off, financially or physically?". Like you can just stop your form for 12 months and pop right back in where you left off. I don't even think the slovenliest of actors would think that you can remain on the edge of your discipline with a year away.

I find the negativity confusing. I am not surrounded by people who do not believe in the value and vitalness of art and culture, but suddenly I am seeing the worms come out of the woodwork, little fragments of belief that an artist should pack up shop while a baby is growing.

"The first six months all you will do is take care of the baby."
No, actually the first six months, baby and I will take care of each other. Baby will come to the studio with me and we continue to dance together. I'll learn from baby and baby will begin his/her life in a creative, imaginative world.

"You're going to have such bad back problems if you continue to dance while you're pregnant."
No, actually if I continue to dance intelligently -- which I think I have been doing for several years now-- my body will get strong in the ways it needs to in order to support the changing body.

"You know Lucy you have to eat more and healthily when you're pregnant."
No, I hadn't realized that. I'm a complete idiot.

A teacher said to me a few weeks ago that people always feel they can tell teachers how to do their jobs because they went to school once and that pregnancy and babies are a similar topic. People feel they can tell you how to be pregnant and a new parent because they were babies once.

Though I know most, if not all, of these people are speaking to me with good intentions, perhaps even a bit of protectiveness for those who know me a bit better, I find it really difficult to filter the negativity. So far in this pregnancy, that has been the hardest part. Fetus is easy.

I am grateful for a break from the well-intentioned advice-givers this week as I've been working with Theatre Rusticle, with a group of performers none of whom have babies or are likely to have babies. They are kind and respectful, but they don't offer up advice. We just get to the work and challenge ourselves inside it. They do not judge my choices and I don't judge theirs. We just make choices bravely all over the place and try to say something beautiful. I love working with this company. Creatively you don't avoid your injury/pregnancy/exhaustion/memory lapse. You just plunge into it and see what's there.

Every morning when I get to the studio I say "Fetus you let me know if I do anything you don't like and then we'll stop."

The only protests I get are my musical choices. (Baby seems to like Radiohead and Steve Reich, Johann Johannsson and Flobots. Not such a fan of Sibelius, Tori Amos or Philip Glass. What can I say?)

Fetus and I have a good dancing relationship. Fetus and my amazing husband Dennes have a good relationship. Dennes and I have a great relationship.

It's our baby and I'll dance if I want to.

Lola McLaughlin

2009-03-07T06:29:00.001-08:00

Yesterday Lola McLaughlin died. An amazing woman, choreographer, friend, spirit. I did not know her but still I cried as I sat in the audience of DanceWorks' presentation of "Provincial Essays". So many fine points in the choreography, so many things accomplished with elegance and humour and humanity that I have watched other companies attempt, stumble upon and eventually leave hollow.

Simplicity of gesture and movement for the sake of execution with the total body. And Ron Stewart....I can't go on enough about how this strangely proportioned body can churn up space and itself. He is not ferocious but a vortex unto himself on that stage. Utterly thrilling.

All the dancers were remarkable -- not only for their ability to perform with clarity and depth, humour and emotion without slipping, just hours after finding out that Lola had passed away.

It ended. I almost missed the end. I'd been staring at a non-focal point on the stage and my mind was wandering over the images I'd just seen and then I felt the lights fading and searched for that final, deftly, obviously final, moment. But no, just a simple fade in a quiet place. Blackout.

We didn't want to clap. Even though it was clearly the end. Even though it was clearly the end of a beautiful performance.

It didn't seem to me to be a completely realized piece, despite it's immense beauty, simplicity, intensity, wit, light. But perhaps that is just perfect.

Though I didn't know her, Lola taught me an important lesson. Life is too short not to put the work on the stage. You can't be afraid of incomplete sentences, unfinished realizations, unpolished stones. When you do that with an open heart, it's the only way to reflect everyday experience even though the prism of abstract contemporary art.

It didn't feel like a completely realized piece, despite immense beauty, simplicity, intensity, wit, light. But perhaps that is just perfect...

A Framing Reference

2009-03-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

Below is an interview I conducted with William Yong, artistic director, dancer and choreographer for Zata Omm Dance Company, regarding his upcoming premiere as part of the DanceWorks Mainstage Series at Enwave Theatre.

What frameworks do you feel in your life? How have you applied them to your current creation?
My dance work Frames is an exploration and manipulation of perceptions through the idea of framing and frames of reference. It is a structure and vision-oriented piece playing imaginatively with the overt and the hidden, the expectations and the discovery. I wanted to create a piece inspired by the idea of framing because it is of such great interest and concern in our world saturated with manipulative media. In my own life I’ve noticed a series of childhood stories that altered in my memory through the passage of time. Some of the events I have begun to see very differently as I have grown older. Psychological perspective on our experiences constantly changes depending on the accumulation of life experience. I am at a stage where I am very comfortable with myself and not too self-conscious about my imperfection, but it wasn’t always this way. This piece, in a way, reveals the progression of my perceptions. I wanted to use those ideas and imagery and set the audiences into a certain frames of mind and provoke them to react and relate.

How are you translating frames into this choreography?
An interesting aspect of this process is that I tried to manipulate my collaborators' perceptions and expectations sometimes. When I work on an idea, my collaborators would relate to my ideas differently. I would use the results in a different way than I originally intend to use. For instance, I would tell my composer in the UK to compose for this specific idea for this section. He would finish the composition and I would deliberately use it for another section and it works perfectly.

The frames are also aspects of time, age, manipulation, body image and proportion, writing, language, media and nudity. I also paid close attention to the design in the aspects of form, overall appearance and proportion. Physical perspective as well as psychological.Has the 'frame' of the physical space at Enwave Theatre or your rehearsal space influenced your creation?
Enwave Theatre and the studio space where I am rehearsing have not been major factors when developing the ideas of Frames, although I am always aware of the theatre in which I will be performing. In a couple of sections, I created imaginary space outside the four walls of the theatre box. The spaces are not physical; they represent memory, dreams or self imagery.

What inspires you most in your creative work?
For me, curiosity towards the body and its inner motives serve as the starting point for creation. Translating an idea into dance is very important to me. I want to create movements that are as self-sufficient, able convey the message and capable of creating different time and space on their own. Dance is not used as a medium to decorate theatrical space here. I always like to find various and stimulating ways to create movement with the dancers which fit and relate to the ideas. In Frames, I started exploring movement with an image, an emotion, an intention, a story or even words that related to my vision.

Do you prefer to dance in your works?
In fact, I was not intending to perform in this work. I was having trouble finding a male dancer for a long while. I am very careful about casting. Eventually I ended up choosing a female dancer instead of a male and placed myself in it. When I studied choreography at London Contemporary Dance School, I learnt strategies for dealing with the difficulties of placing myself in a work. If you are organized and find the right approach, you can take care of both performing and choreographing and do both well provided that you have the time.

You must get asked about this a lot, but I am interested to know what frames of reference you might have gleaned from your experience of dancing in Matthew Bourne's work, the famous all-male Swan Lake?
Working with Matthew was a major experience in my dance career. There, I learnt that contemporary dance can have the potential to appeal to mainstream audiences. People praised and embraced the work everywhere we went. I also learned from Matthew how to masterfully choreograph a narrative-based work; I think it is very hard to choreograph narrative. It was truly inspiring to see how he worked in the studio everyday for five years. He was very organized, well-prepared and visionary.

Just to be whimsical: what is your favourite mode of transportation?
My favourite mode of transportation would be my dreams. They take me so far and to places I could never reach otherwise. I dream about my ideas in dance.

Everything I learned about performing I learned at....

2009-02-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

Phil's and Club Abstract.
If you know Kitchener-Waterloo, don't laugh. You know when you're there for four years of school you have no choice. At some point you will find yourself spending too much time at these bars.

I've been reading "The Body Eclectic" a group of essays about changing training models for contemporary dance and it has led me to thinking about where I got my most significant training. Sadly, not at the University of Waterloo Dance Dept. I learned many great things there, but how to dance, how to perform? Not so much. Not at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. I was not there in a meaningful way long enough, and frankly did not have teachers who believed in me -- for various reasons, not all of which are they to blame for -- and the 8:30am Graham classes were treacherous for my body. I am built like my father more than my mother and lack the seemingly requisite maternal, uber-feminine pelvis. Some great training came after I left STDT and studied fairly intensively with Robert "Ballet Bob" McCollum -- whether he believed in me or not at the start, he gave me such good information and was the first person to encourage me to find my own technique inside the ballet form, or whatever form I was working in.

But where, how did I learn to perform?
In my basement between the ages of 10 and 18, being anti-social, but imagining singing and dancing and communicating with other people whose conjured faces lived in the walls of the fake wood panelling.

And then in 1995-1996 at Phil's and Club Abstract in Kitchener-Waterloo.
At least 3 times a week over the course of 18 months I went to one or the other of these two clubs -- alternative rock/80s retro type music -- at about 9:30-10pm, hit the dancefloor for at least 3 hours straight, then walked out the door and went home to sleep.

I did not make friends with the people who worked or frequented these bars, and basically made a spectacle of myself. I drank only occasionally and talked to almost no one. But emotionally and physically I plugged myself into each song that played, learned to keep dancing to music I didn't like, to keep dancing near people I didn't like, to keep dancing no matter what. I learned that people would watch this -- whether they thought I was a total freak, a loser, a marvel, or an artist -- to the point where bouncers would remove anyone who tried to hit on me or disturb me while I was dancing. I recall one night that someone was rather violently dragged up the stairs at Phil's. Perhaps he'd been bothering others as well, I'd never know because I rarely noticed anything except the sensation of the music, the vibrations and the emotions it sent through my skin and bones.

This time is utterly romanticized in my memory. But I think it was the most intensive training I got in performing. A drunken group of university boys is not an ideal audience and yet I received no bad reviews. Occasionally someone would buy me a drink.

Dancing so much at the end of the heyday of grunge music, finding ways to channel myself through Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, the Violent Femmes, and Radiohead were all exceedingly worthwhile ways to spend my time and the $5 cover charge.

I won't dance for vodka-cranberry anymore, but I do often close all the blinds in the house, turn off the lights and cut a rug for an hour or two. Reminds me of why I'm still here, trying to do this.

Being human, avoiding Concepts.

2009-02-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

I'm going to go out on a limb and make some allusions to a couple of shows I recently saw. I'm sorry if it offends anyone.This is purely opinion, but coming from someone who deeply cares about the art form, not out for a vicious attack on someone else's work.

I just read a review of a show I saw this week that said the title of this show provoked economical thoughts, that you are getting your money's worth. All I could think, when I read this was that I got my money's worth, but then I was given the ticket for free. All of the critics have been gentle with this work, which seemed to me to seriously lack follow-through, depth, and incubation beyond the "this is a cool concept" stage. I honestly don't know what the critics are seeing in this show; they are gently describing, never excavating the images and ideas for true meaning. Meanings are ascribed in a "this is what this image should mean" kind of way, but for me these intended meanings never blossomed. The work remained utterly unhuman, despite its very capable, very human performers.

Infuriating.

Especially when I saw Batsheva Dance company the next night in Ottawa -- show at 7:30, we were back in our hotel room by 8:56 with changed souls - Batsheva's work "Three" wasn't theatrical or particularly emotion-driven, just bloody brilliant and open, open, open. Not an ounce of pretense, or even concept anywhere. Totally thrillingly human.

You can tell they do not rehearse with mirrors, as their bodies have such cellular 3-dimensional understanding of movement. By removing the sense of "effect" or "shape" the audience sees the movement, the actual movement, not the concepts, not the technique. Not the leg in the air but the path it takes as it swings. It becomes completely ephemeral and completely unforgettable. They show us the force and exertion required to execute the movement, however with the softest of landings from soaring jumps, but they do not demonstrate the exertion or layer the expression of exertion into the choreography.

The dancers know where their edges are within millimetres. Their muscle fibres must sing with neural impulses.

I return to Toronto, happy that our winters are slightly warmer and our culture slightly less conservative than Ottawa's, but I wonder what is wrong with this city? Why are our dance companies in jeopardy of vision impairment to the point of blindness? Batsheva is from Israel, not Ottawa, so I am not implying that things are necessarily better in Ottawa -- except that Batsheva is not touring to Toronto. Toronto, really all of Canada, is so full of talented dancers and creative thinkers but where is the mystery, the vision, the openness, the human-ness in our dance works?

What is wrong with this city? How talented the pool is, but how shallow the waters; it makes me want to barf. And I'm pretty sure it's not morning sickness this time.

Now off to the studio with me to try to act on these grand expectations.....I can't pretend that I have any concepts about how you craft mystery, vision, openness and human-ness but I am willing to try until I can't dance anymore.

Gwen Stefani and MLK

2009-01-29T10:57:00.000-08:00

I think I have found the soundtrack for the beginning of each day, these days. Perhaps it is pregnant brain, but then again I've always been a bit of a crier....I just listened to Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For?" and seriously I started crying! But for some reason if I'm doubting my ability to dance and be pregnant and continue dancing with a young baby, I'm going to throw on that track.

Now follow that up with OMD's "Southern". You can laugh at my 1980's throw-back, and a throw back to a not-so stellar album (The Pacific Age) by the once-groundbreaking synth-heavy band, but with a bit of back-tracks combined with samples of Martin Luther King's speeches will bring to your humble little knees. Again, possibly because I'm pregnant, possibly because I'm have a secret life as a historian: words about leaving a better world for children yet to be born and making sure they know the history that has brought them here carry the most profound weight for me.

"Well I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life-- longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land..." MLK, April 3, 1968.

Now, I don't necessarily fall in with any particular concept of "God", but this is most positive thing ever written or spoken and I'm on board.

Go get "A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.", the most inspiring book you'll ever read.

Save the Gwen for days when you need a kick in the arse. MLK is daily reading.

jitters

2009-01-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

I'm dancing tomorrow in a premiere of a co-creation with the amazing Barbara Pallomina. The dance is in a format which just foreign enough to me to make me feel flutters in my stomach -- although that also might be baby. I'm not sure why I don't trust that everything will unfold as it should. It always does. And of course I always, also, don't trust that it will until 'curtain up'. Is this something everyone feels, or am I just particularly neurotic?

dancing solo...sort of

2009-01-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

"To succeed a work of solo dance has to move the audience on many levels. We have to be awed by the capabilities of the dancer's body, touched by the emotions the work conveys, and challenged by the intellectual puzzle the choreographer has given us to solve as we interpret the dance." Kim Hays, Swiss News.

I am proud to say that this was written by Kim Hays as a lead in to a glowing review of a dear friend of mine and phenomenal dancer, Lazaro Godoy in his solo Jugo di Limon.

Her outline of a successful solo work cobble some tall boots to fill, no doubt. I am stuck on "awed by the capabililties of the dancer's body". I think this goes beyond the technical and easily intertwines with the emotions of the work and the intellectual puzzle. Emotion and intellect will lead the body to physicalize in some pretty awesome ways. With these partners, you are never alone in a solo.

But how do you make a solo interesting? How do you construct a puzzle for yourself when you are making your own solo work? How do you capture the intrigue of the puzzle when you yourself built it? I feel my brain veering off into Greek mythology and metaphysical philosophy by even posing that question.

How do you avoid the cliche of "being in the moment", while still being in the moment?

Here's where I announce to the blogosphere that I am pregnant....and that is one way to dance a solo with a puzzle you made yourself, but cannot resolve yourself, thereby being in the moment without indulgence or inevitability, even amongst choreography. Here is a way to be awed by the capabilities of the dancer's, one's own, body, the baby's body. Baby dips, ducks and dives without complaint -- so far -- rolls, spins, leaps with enigmatic complacency. According to ultrasound imaging, baby jumps around when I am still.

Next weekend I am about to perform for the first time with baby in utero. It is a duet with another fabulous dancer, Barbara Pallomina -- it is also a mysterious trio wherein the audience will never see the third dancer's movements. Appropriately I am portraying mud and smoke -- obscure and cloudy...

More on complicity and the economy...from Peter Brook!

2009-01-01T07:03:00.000-08:00

After writing my last entry, I re-read The Empty Space by Peter Brook and found his description of exactly what I was trying to express about theatre and lazy directors, complicity and "deadliness". So in the words of someone far more eloquent than I:

"Of course nowhere does the Deadly Theatre install itself so securely, so comfortably and so slyly as in the works of William Shakespeare. The Deadly Theatre takes easily to Shakespeare. We see his plays done by good actors in what seems like the proper way-- they look lively and colourful, there is music and everyone is all dressed up, just as they are supposed to be in the best of classical theatres. Yet secretly we find it excruciatingly boring -- and in our hearts we either blame Shakespeare, or theatre as such, or even ourselves. To make matters worse there is always a deadly spectator, who for special reasons enjoys a lack of intensity and even a lack of entertainment, such as the scholar who emerges from routine performances of the classics smiling because nothing has distracted him from trying over and confirming his pet theories to himself, whilst reciting his favourite lines under his breath. In his heart he sincerely wants a theatre that is nobler-than-life and he confuses a sort of intellectual satisfaction with the true experience which he craves. Unfortunately, he lends the weight of his authority to dullness and so the Deadly Theatre goes on its way." (p. 12-13)

When audiences feel let down by this dullness, they resist going to any theatre. Theatre is expensive....I know, not that much more than seeing a movie, and certainly less so than professional sports and rock concerts but in those contexts audiences feel like they know what to expect: intense exertion, a contrite story summed up in slick fashion, that one big song that everyone knows and loves and when the band plays it the 20,000 people in the stadium sigh with relief. I recently experienced this phenomena in a festival in Halifax, when I performed in a work that was the poster-image for the festival. The image was plastered all through the city and at the opening show, you could feel the air quality change when I hit the shape that in the photo on the poster. Weird, for an experimental physical theatre work. But still, the recognizability made them relax, and even though it was 3/4s of the way through the show, and in an incredibly abstract moment, it seemed to quell the fears, make the whole work cling together in the audience's minds in a memorable way. A little air escaped their lips...

"Ah, there it is."
It was strange, but beautiful to experience this.

But my original point in bringing this up is combined also with the observation of rousing standing ovations at mediocre performances I've seen recently. People go to the theatre -- for dance, for mainstream or experimental or musical theatre -- to be moved and they WANT dearly to be moved by it. When people are let down, they can convince themselves that they've been transformed, or conjure a transformation because that's what they came for. Presto: standing ovation. "Why do we applaud? And what?....We want magic but we confuse it with hocus-pocus, and we have hopelessly mixed up love with sex, beauty with aestheticism." (p. 46)

Or, as Peter Brook also suggests, they can stop going. It's not worth the risk anymore. What if we lowered our ticket prices? Would the risk more affordable? Sure it's an hour and a half of my time, but it's only ten bucks....I'd be willing to risk it. Ten bucks is a fun gamble. For $30, maybe not. But we are curious creatures, even if we measure our risks carefully, especially as the economy hobbles along.

For me, in 2009 it will be important to remember another of Peter Brook's examples:
"...they are tragically incapable however hard they try of laying down for one brief instant even in rehearsal the image of themselves that has hardened round an inner emptiness." I want to forever crack that image of myself, before it has a chance to harden. The quest to know oneself as an artist, or a whole human being has got to be flexible. Typecasting is bad enough when it's done externally, why do we want to do it from the inside out. You can't resist who you are or change how an audience may interpret your movement and words, but you can't bank on it either. Perhaps I have little image of myself because we have no full-length mirrors in our house. If I discover my inner world is empty, I will start shouting, chasing down the echoes.

" ...a most powerful explanation of the various arts is that they talk of patterns which we can only begin to recognize when they manifest themselves as rhythms or shapes." (p. 47)

all quotes from: Peter Brook, The Empty Space; Penguin Classics, U.K., 1968.

2009: make manifest those patterns through rhythms and shapes that seek the barriers and attempt to blast through them, call out those complicit in laziness or dullness, make eye contact. Avoid mirrors.
Happy new year.

Complicity

2008-12-17T14:51:00.000-08:00

Complicity, in its best form in the arts, works to our favour, where an audience, complicit with us as performers, is in on the action. They follow you as you play your edges, get excited as you near them and sense when you go beyond.

But I think there's a dark side to complicity. When an audience is seduced into believing they have been given the keys to the VIP -- that they are in on the cruel joke or the cool move.

Complicity, at its worst in humanity -- and perhaps this is where my graduate studies in history firmly overlap with my life as a dance artist -- has been used to coerce, cajole, urge people into following along with a regime that is a house of cards or a house of evil.

We all seek a sense of belonging. Complicity--which can, I believe, be fostered by leaders political or artistic -- can be a dangerous track to a sense belonging but with the stakes of excluding others, overlooking flaws in the fabric, or abandoning creativity for the sake of holding onto that identity.

I think it's time we gently call out our artistic leaders when their cultivation of complicity rests on cruel jokes and cool moves, when we are made complicit by understanding the catch-phrases, so to speak.

Innovation is not the be all and end all, but I do believe that as artists, and more generally as human beings, we strive for growth and deeper understanding of our existence. As artists, let's take our audiences along with us as we try to grow, so that they can relate with their own stretching and shifting.

It's important not to be too comfortable. Change is inevitable. It's important not to rest on the identity you think you've carved out for yourself. You are changing too. That identity might actually not fit anymore, and if you look closely, you may find that something is bulging out that you might not like everyone to see.

Good Jazz -- Helix Dance Project

2008-12-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.helixdanceproject.com/
I'm no officianado of jazz dance, I have taken one or two classes in my life and the last one was at least 20 years ago in a time of my life when I did not need to wear a bra or shave my legs. But on Friday I went to Helix Dance Project, not knowing at all what I was going to see -- which is so liberating -- I had only a vague idea that maybe they were connected to hiphop somehow.

Although not everything about the project was slick or integrated, I have to say it was some of the best jazz dancing and jazz choreography I have seen in a long time. And in moments I thought the only difference between what this company was doing and what I do, or what TDT does, or what any contemporary/modern choreographer does, is just categorization. And maybe a little bit more front-facing dancing in for Helix.

But even the front facing made me think -- they are doing this for the audience, for the entertainment, even when expressing rather moving moments and relationships, which they did. Sometimes I think those of us less commercially-minded in our art-making ought to see a show or 4 like this and remember that audiences like seeing happy, healthy bodies moving through space with a certain amount of joy, and the work does not need to be profound or complex in order to be worthy.

I'm not trying to say that Helix Dance Projects are shallow and simple, not at all. But the form lends itself to a transparency that is really refreshing after seeing dance after dance that is obscured by its own concept.

In recent years it seems like there is a heavy emphasis on versatility of individual dancers, of being able to perform in myriad techniques, but without necessarily mastering or deeply exploring any one of those techniques. To my mind, there are as many potential dance forms or techniques as there are individual dancers working out there and if we all developed our appreciation of other forms, and our understanding of ourselves, we might feel less competitive, more supportive, and ultimately more stable regarding our discipline within the greater spectrum of culture.

There is room for every kind of dancer in the professional sphere, so long as they are pushing and opening themselves to the audiences that come. I want to be in all those audiences, inspired by what I am seeing, defining myself in relief to what others are doing, and determining the overlap.

But that's sappy old me....compassion and empathy, compassion and empathy....plies and tendus, plies and tendus....rice and beans, baby, rice and beans. Basic blocks of energy.

Thanks to Linda Garneau for inspiring all these thoughts with the Helix Dance Project show, and especially for her very witty old couple dance, the surprise golf-stroke move was a true Fred-and-Ginger moment.

Jorma Elo

2008-12-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

I have almost no words for this man's choreography. I want to dance it, I want to see it live. With all due respect to Balanchine and Cranko, Crystal Pite, John Neumeier, Christopher Wheeldon and my friend Peter Quanz -- this man is a new wave of ballet....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWTGuqpuZp4

Curiosity...

2008-10-24T18:07:00.000-07:00

why do we watch what we watch? obligation?
i'm on the jury for the dora awards, dance division this year, so yes, for me it is partially obligation, but a responsibility i take very seriously and do with joy. the shows i get to see this year! good, bad, ugly. astounding, shocking, moving. i say bring it on. bring it all on.

but i see work, i go to the theatre to follow my curiosity similar to the curiosity i feel in the studio. i don't know how everyone else feels, but i know my curiosity is run by my gut and is generally pretty smart. (Don't know about the rest of me, but my curiosity has got it going on.)

so what do you do when you go to theatre and your own curiosity extends beyond what you're witnessing and you feel cheated. why do people stop with a concept and not delve in deeper? do concepts stop when fear and/or arrogance rule?

concepts in art-making -- i could go on about this forever. for me concept is not the same as idea, theme, inspiration. in this context it is a superficial treatment of an idea, theme or inspiration. once you plunge the concept into the waters of your imagination and curiosity you reach something artful.

back to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's show with Toneelhuis -- MYTH -- a concept that could have lay on the skin. but it did not, it sank down, sank in, like a tattoo, a rash, a perfume. fascinating. is it purely that european companies have better societal, cultural and financial support? or is there something different about the approach conceptualizing a work (different from the noun concept -- verbs are always so much better!)?

so many questions, will someone come my way with answers?
some days i am tired of living here in toronto, feeling the pulse of the dominant aesthetic in dance here, feeling my own blood moving at a different rate.

i do not want to be a complainer. i just want to be confident about my pulse of my own blood....

The Abecedarian -- the dance by Lucy and the poem by Sarah Slean

2008-10-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

After performing my work "The Abecedarian" this weekend, some audience members asked about reading Sarah Slean's poem which was written for me to use as inspiration for choreography. Sarah is a most generous and amazing artist, on many levels and I hope you can take the time to read this beautiful poem below. It is also published in her most recent book of poetry. See www.sarahslean.com for details....

ABECEDARIAN - by Sarah Slean
A - amelia earheart yearning to fly. awe flowers open in her dreaming eye. like the long and constant exhale of the sky while the monk at his table, is writing.

B - what you reach for is already there, in your hand, you may think we are birds condemned to the land, but somewhere eternal, beyond feeble sight. the gravity creature is always in flight.

C - consecutive clock has an itch it must scratch, it will tick and will tock and will cower and crack, but "circle", the word, contains all that C knows, the hard kick of time and the soft way it flows.

D - parting the years like a volatile sea... "Now" opens time like a dictionary from young to old and from A to Z you are always right there in the middle

E - ecstatic, the embers fly up to the trees, exhaling their lives with elegant ease the campfire instructs us to rise from our knees but who, of the gathered, is listening.

F - follow me follow me follow me follow me today is the fountain from which you must feed forget that you fell from that Genesis tree the fruits and the flowers are not fantasy

G - "God" is the guess that they want you to make but grace, when it's granted, won't let you partake go further instead, to the uncharted lake, where you know golden swans are a-swimming.

H - the earth softly utters a holier word in the hollow where bickering gods can be heard "heaven is coming", "it's already occurred!" they shout in the faces of unnoticed angels

I - this, the illusion we ironically see, that I am not you, and you are not me like ivy its climbing and choking the tree that, despite a great crown, grew from one common seed

J - jewels of sweat on the Jesuit brow, mecca vibrates under thundering bows and the monk, at his table, cannot fathom how there is only a mouse in the temple of Now

K - yet who can contest its most curious might? this killer of kings, this glorious knight who quiets the enemy, not with a fight, but almost as if letting go of a kite?

L - in longing to know, we must love the unknown with Kierkegaard, trembling, and aching for home we leap and discover the light in a stone is the very same light in the heart of a master

M - "master?, what master?", the suicides ask "How am I a slave if I know not my task? How can I love God when I know it's a mask that my own starving mind has created."

N - Napoleon squirms in his watery grave and Nietzsche's convinced that there's nothing to save. he spat on the flowers the poetess gave as she murmured the sonnets of Rilke.

O - Overmen shatter, but archers will go, even though hard the seasons of suffering blow watch how he opens, caresses his bow in the midst of uproarious battle.

P - piercing all shadows with blistering light the arrows flies high through the perilous night love, sent in earnest, will always make right the erroneous aim of its sender.

Q - then what must we make of the stumbling queen who gropes in the firelight for answers unseen? she poisons herself to dismantle the scene that plays and replays in her memory.

R - ravens assemble all over her chair and peck at the riches of rags in her hair tangled in puppetry, courting despair, her play will crescendo to ruin

S - that's when Seymour appears, his lost sister to claim, like the monk at his table, he tells her, "don't aim, how can you see, when you're drowning in shame, the You that is ancient and without a name?"

T - "Tomorrow torments you and time is the terror, a watch is the gift that will torture the bearer. to live is no art - art is for the pretender to live, my dear queen, is an act of surrender."

U - "Undo the divisions a hungry heart makes remember the swans in the uncharted lakes theirs is a silence that slowly unties the veil that for so long has covered your eyes"

V - a veil, she imagined, a veil of lace with patterns the mind wants to frantically chase a veil that, though lovely, obscures the true face of a queen who is yearning to see.

W - who will record the inquiry herein? all of these questions have answers built in Wonder is all, and forever has been the jewel in our cognitive crown

X - sometimes there is simply no need to explain the sexier side of existence is plain delicious it is to know pleasure and pain to court them, but never to marry.

Y - you are the puzzle, you, the perfection you, the miraculous, living reflection of everything vast and beyond feeble sight you are the gravity creature, alight!

Z - like sandbags from magical hot air balloons, we cut at the rope of our fictions and soon, there's a You that is ancient and without a name and zenith and zero are one and the same.

Continuing advocacy for arts and culture after the election

2008-10-18T06:18:00.001-07:00

I was at the Mayor's Arts Awards Luncheon yesterday and Mayor David Miller, without being partisan, managed to say what a crappy thing cutting arts and culture funding is, and spoke about how proud he was to stand among other mayors across the country to oppose the culture cuts. There's something to be learned from him.

And then there's Jim Fleck who gives millions to the arts but is a staunch supporter of the conservative party, who has recently cut arts and culture funding at an alarming proportion and probably will try to cut more now that Stephen Harper has been reelected.

We shouldn't be afraid to stand up for what we believe in, regardless of our place in the political spectrum, or in the cultural landscape. As Jean Chretien said to the US when they were looking for support to invade Iraq, sometimes being a good friend means telling your friends when you think they are wrong. And the beauty of democracy is that politically you can do this!

As artists, arts and culture workers or organizations we should be advocating for culture. It used to be we had to advocate for funding increases proportionate to other sectors and to the costs and standards of living increase, but now we have to advocate just to stay at the same level as always. This should be frightening to us, regardless of what party we believe in on other issues, and regardless of what party is threatening our livelihood. And we shouldn't just be advocating for increases in funding. We should be highlighting how vital culture is to any society. There is no society without it. Culture is not something "normal people" can't relate to; "normal people" are making culture all the time. Culture is how we interpret landscape, skylines, fashion; how we organize our gardens, our time. Dance is how fast we walk to work with our iPods. Music is the rhythm of the squirrels dodging cars on residential streets....Culture is simply how we perceive and make sense of the world we inhabit.

Our mayor here in Toronto, for his faults on other counts I'm sure, understands how culture is woven into the social, economic and political fabric of a community, not as a fringe benefit of living in a rich country --because arts and culture thrive in places where people have very little -- but as an inextricable part of human interaction, arts and culture as form to the voices we possess collectively and individually. If we don't have that chance to put our voices into form, we reduce our language to metaphoric grunts and snorts.

Come on, man, we're better than that.

This is just the beginning.....

2008-10-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

....of my writing about Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's MYTH, which I just saw at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. I made the pilgrimmage alone on a wing and a prayer. I've been reading about his work for years and this is the first chance I've encountered to see his work. It could be disastrous. All this idealizing and I could have totally bottomed out with a stinker -- but this is no stinker. In fact that word shouldn't come close to descriptions of this show. Although a few people left about half an hour into it....

...What a thing they missed.

"Real people" and their shadows trapped in a library. Walls have slippery doors that the shadows slide, twist and tease their way through. Their movements have no bones. Like shadows they have clear edges but physics don't seem to apply to them. The "real people" search through their personal myths and stories to make sense of the swirling beasts around them, they are possessed, they reason, they cry, they sing.

Singing and music-making descends from the rafters where 8 musicians are perched. A six-foot man in drag tap dances with a team of shadows. Two women fight inside one giant white hoop skirt. A shadow rebels from its owner tearing at her as she tears at him. A baby cries for his maman as he contorts in softly flops across the floor. His maman looks for her maman among her library-fellows, ignoring the baby she has just delivered.

What truly broke my heart was a quote from Henry Miller that was projected across the top of the set for "chapitre 3":

"All growth is a leap in the dark."

Anyone who knows me well, knows I am obsessed with Miller's work, philosophy, life. What followed the projection of this quote was somehow a summation of my hopes and fears of life.

I could only go along for this amazing ride. I can't say I understood all the action, but I did not feel I needed to. I felt the logic of the director/choreographer, though I could not palpate it. I felt the struggle of the shadows and their people though their individual stories were obscured.

Shadows obscure the true colour and shape of things, but meanwhile reveal the shape of other things. Another projected quote was "The sun has never seen its shadow".

After MYTH, it feels like maybe the shadows have seen, and felt, everything.

To be continued....

Nuit Blanche dancing at Casa Loma

2008-10-05T17:37:00.001-07:00

In the stables of historic horses named Prince and The Widow...every hour 10 minutes of dancing, 10 minutes of preparing the body, 5 minutes getting out of the stable, 20 minutes of desperate active napping.

at 3am I felt distinctly that my body was asleep while my mind, by act of sheer telekinesis, was moving the body without the help of muscles or skeleton. Eyes open, feet smell -- they are not used to being in shoes for 16 hours straight. Audiences are shell shocked, rude, rapt, lovely. The floor is cold, hard, easy to spin on, stained by historic horse poop.

it was an incredible night of dancing. filling a ghost ridden building with fresh, respectful life. Guided by horses long gone and the Romantic fantasies that swirl around Casa Loma -- especially at 4am.

From what I can see the Nuit Blanche festivities were most inspired across the city. I only wish I could have seen the dancing mascots at Lamport Stadium.

some part of my body is still dancing, scraping a hoof, tossing a tiny, cellular mane. It may take days for the ghosts to leave me.

Daniel Leveille, Vote Culture

2008-10-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

I just came back from a talk that Montreal choreographer Daniel Leveille was giving at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. To me his words embodied the myth and reality of Montreal danse. I've heard Toronto dance artists speak of the lack of emotion in Montreal dance, as though it is a very good thing....it is not "theatrical", "emotional", "expressive". Like those are bad things.

Well, it is very satisfying to hear Daniel describe dance theatre as dance that makes a social statement (as opposed to a socio-economic statement or a political statement), and describe the human body in its elemental state (thus his pieces are costumed by naked flesh) as the truest expression of the individuals dancing. He spoke of the quest for perfection being clouded by all the trickery we do, the time we spend disguising the imperfections, rather than finding the expression in the trying to reach an ideal.

This is not dance devoid of emotion. This is totally human dancing, totally embodied humanity framed by a proscenium.

Now I'm off to watch the all-too-human, So You Think You Can Dance Canada...I can't help it. Dance on TV! it hasn't been like this since Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev were on the Muppet Show! I travelled by at least 6 middle-schools today and saw teenagers trying their dance moves on the basketball court.

Forget the black-tie galas, Stephen Harper. People are relating to the arts all over the place. Vote, people, vote! Try to imagine what will happen if he gets his wish. According to an online report from Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage in 2007, PCH budgets will be cut by $80 million in 2008 and cut again in 2008-09 by $140 million. Based on these accounts, culture, heritage & sports may be cut $220 million over 2 years. That is not merely a nail in the coffin, that is tonnes of earth piled on a live being!

Even with the rise of reality dance TV shows, believe me you won't want to watch the dancers that are on those shows if they have no where to train, no live shows to see and be inspired by, no music to dance to.

The Violent Femmes circa 1991

2008-09-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

I remember dancing my sad little heart out to the Violent Femmes at my high school dances, at a basement bar in the city where I went to university, probably in a random parking lot somewhere in Toronto after I was dumped....but last Sunday I plunged my somewhat happier little heart back in those icy waters in the studio during a "proper" rehearsal.

What glee, what joy, what angst.
Does anyone remember the Violent Femmes, aside from "Blister in the Sun"? I feel like my whole existence so far can be summed up in three of their songs: Add It Up, Kiss Off, and American Music. (For those of you who know the words to that one, it's true, nobody wanted to go to the prom with me, baby -- it took three tries before someone said yes. Truly humiliating!)

How less convoluted our late 80's and early 90's angsts were...the angsty music now seems wound up in so many almost inarticulate ways. Maybe it's perspective. I remember how everything felt so sad and awful when I was 16, and now I can see how important those days were, but how inconsequential most of my worries were --well outside of losing my mother and worrying about losing everyone else in my life. So I can read the music through that lens, you know the 20/20 hindsight lens.

But now my worries are more complex and wrapped in too much knowledge, and so the new angsty music feels much more dense, enigmatic.

What's my point?

The Violent Femmes should be remembered. And danced to. Seriously.
Muscle memory is an amazing thing. Add It Up was playing as I rehearsed a solo from repertoire on Sunday (decidedly NOT the original or intended music for the solo's performance), and I could feel my 16 year-old body in my friend Cheryl's blue Toyota tearing through the streets of Sarnia, Ontario with that song cutting the air like a Milwaukee-spawned knife.

Someone find out what those boys are doing and buy them a whisky for me. Then take your place on the dance floor and Dance, MF, Dance.

what do you want to watch?

2008-09-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm a hedonist as a dancer, I fully admit it. I like to do things that feel good. However, my definition of feel good does not always equal "pleasant". Sometimes what feels good to me are penetratingly sad moments or things that are physically difficult if not impossible. Sometimes what feels good is to run and jump and tumble so much that I feel like I'll vomit at the end of the phrase.

But there's another kind of hedonistic dancing -- that performance quality that is purely aobut the pleasure of the movement. I watched dancing like this recently and although the dancer was gorgeous, I felt I had been asked to witness a dancer exploring the sensation of her movement without comment, attitude or hypotheses. Now in this case, I felt that it was a choice the choreographer had made rather than the dancer's impulse, but it left me feeling vacant and unmoved by anything I was watching.

The dancer's dynamic shifts did not seem to shift dynamic. The quality was consistent even when it changed. It was eerie -- when I felt stimulated enough to pay attention. My mind loped all over the place. I felt peeved that I was not asked to engage in the work, merely to watch it.

I wonder, is this the preponderence of release technique? Is it arrogance on the part of we choreographers, assuming that the dancer's sensations are enough to feed our audiences? Is it just me who feels disappointed?

There are so many different ways to reel an audience into your work. Visual artists do it in amazing ways because there is not necessarily a moving object before the pair of eyes looking at the work. But great paintings and great dances of all disciplines, styles, approaches work a bit of alchemy and both halves wind up the better for it.

It brings me to mention a standing ovation I recently witnessed at a mediocre to not-bad performance of a big-name company in Canada. It was by no means the only one I've witnessed in recent years that seemed overkill for a lacklustre theatrical experience. I think audiences crave that transcendental experience at the theatre and will convince themselves they've seen it because they want it so badly. Now I'm not pitting audiences against myself. I crave it too! I want to be blown away, moved to tears or joy or anger or a more peculiar emotion like covetousness or euphoria...

Leading me to my question, when you go to the theatre - or to any environment that promises some theatrical experience, anything from an art gallery to a b-boy battle -- what do you want to watch?

I want to be standing on my feet at the end, but I don't think watching someone go through the motions, even if they are beautifully executed motions, is enough.

I want more. From the things I witness. From the things I do, myself.

other work

2008-09-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't really danced in two weeks. It's killing me. I'm spending a few weeks 9-5 at a desk at the university, making some money before the big leap into just being artist. I'm doing my yoga and pilates and a bit of cardio here and there. But it's all I can do not to bust out while listening to my iPod on the streetcar. My legs are longing to fly through the air, my back is ready to arch and flex and twist. I am not made to sit. I hurt more from this work than from anything I've done on stage or in rehearsal....well except for that breaking my arm on stage business.

Help!

1,2,3 and Peggy Baker

2008-08-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

I just finished Peggy Baker's Summer Intensive and launched straight into performing in Caroline Niklas-Gordon's show 1,2,3 (don't believe NOW magazine that said Blue Ceiling dance produced it -- it was all done on Caroline's steam). I feel the earth radically shifting under my feet. New verbs, new images, new fullness and height to my dancing. Perhaps nothing has changed but my insides, but what glorious insides are sprouting, then!

It is amazing to me, because this week was also my birthday and I am an age where the traditional dance thought is that you are done improving physically and while your artistry may rise, your technical ability is on the wane. I feel so far from that 'truth' that it might as well be on the far side of Pluto. Peggy's intensive, and particularly the time she spent with us in 'creative practice', has revealed how it is that we can turn that traditional thinking on its ear, how it is that your artistry's deepening can strengthen and extend your technique as a dancer and as an interpreter.

It seems fitting as well to come across these thoughts while obsessively watching the Olympics and seeing older and older athletes liberating mind from body to win medals. You train, you train, and you train some more and then your use the wisdom that comes from your years on this planet to surpass yourself. I'm not saying that you can't be wise and young, but there is something to just being alive for a bit longer that endows you with some understanding of the universe and yourself that you just don't stumble upon until a certain autumnal part of the path.

Well now, this is all very philosophical and perhaps too ethereally-written. But just go watch Peggy Baker dance, or most of Pina Bausch's Wuppertal dance company, or the Canadian Olympic Equestrian team and convince me that they don't have something to teach us all about the fusion of mind and body in the post-40 era.

I have a while before I arrive at 40, but the view looks pretty good from here.

Perils of Touring

2008-06-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

Yes the hotel had a pool and a hot tub....unfortunately I have a peculiar rash on my left thigh now....

I tipped over the flimsy bowl for take-out noodles and nicely soaked the hotel's remote control for the TV. Room 641 may be forever stuck on CNN....

And now there are a few dozen pictures of me looking very tired and smudgy-eyed from stage makeup that never quite washes off before it must be reapplied....

Secretly, I love it all.
Except the rash.

i think i like vancouver

2008-06-08T16:13:00.001-07:00

I have a crappy view from my hotel room, though I can see a small rhomboid of water....but so far I don't mind this place. Certain corners are graced by small ghosts, but thankfully memory is discontinuous on the theme of the last time I was here and the bad images are sparse and scattered. I got to see Ron Stewart rehearsing at the Scotia Dance Centre. Ron was one of my favourite dancers in Toronto when I first moved there and he hasn't been back much, at least to my knowledge. I was a little starstruck. His movement quality always had, for me, the quality of those sleek enormous sea birds who can fly for days without flapping their wings. And the depth of integration and expression he had....well I guess it's no surprise that he's out here, where these quality seem to have more weight in the dance community. It makes me think that I should be dancing here once in a blue moon, rather than never.

Vancouver has such a gem in the Scotia Dance Centre. I loved rehearsing in a studio with a gray ceiling and such natural light. The floors have that inevitable feet-smell but what a gorgeous thing these Vancouver dancers have.

Coming back at Theatre Rusticle's April 14, 1912 after a two week hiatus from rehearsals was arduous but as always revelatory. Now the trick is to take it on the stage without dropping the ball, the movement, the lines, the blocking, the sticks, the energy, the argument, the smells, the tastes, the sounds.....

Off to a hot bath before technical rehearsals which will probably suck the joy right out of me...as technical rehearsals tend to do.

But I think I like Vancouver....we'll see how I feel after 5 shows and 6 more days.

no feelings

2008-06-04T06:23:00.000-07:00

what is this no emotion, no feelings on stage?
a concept is not the heart of the matter.
clever does not equal smart.
clever may equal cool.
but cool changes quickly to lukewarm.
and we all wonder why we should care.
apathy hits the eyes first and then the ears.
but the heart never really shrugs and slouches in its chair.
maybe it just naps for a while.
until something radiates towards it.
long fingers of heat or crisp sunlight, or devastation or utter melancholy.
something other than the dispassionate, cool and clever statement of nothing, really.
a maple key is spiralling upwards by my window -- now that's something, somehow defying gravity on a windless day.
not clever, but terribly interesting, it has some meaning on a grey, windless day.

Images from Ava/Chroma

2008-04-03T05:19:00.000-07:00

photos by Melanie Gordon

Ava/Chroma

April 2. 2008

after opening night

2008-04-03T05:10:00.001-07:00

Ava/Chroma opened last night. I was worried because I pulled a hamstring during the dress rehearsal in the afternoon and couldn't bend forward without pain. The muscle felt like a piano string....But I took the advice of dancer Jennifer Dallas (who was a paramedic at one point in her life!) and by show time I was ready to go and only one or two things needed to be adapted in the choreography in order to dance. Thanks also to Darryl Tracy who gave Jennifer great advice about Traumeel, that Jennifer passed on to me.

Kyle Abraham had the audience in the palm of his hand and I am so glad that he got such a great response....It will make it easier to bring him back again for more work together.

Three more shows left and I can't wait to dig in again. The blackness of the Theatre Centre space frees up the imagination and the lighting design (by Jason Hand) gives subtle hints and clues to live inside.

Come jump into the world with us.

behind the scenes glimpse on youtube!

2008-03-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-S612rx4tE

Check out a bit of behind the scenes with Matthew and me, captured by Jessica Baran and Julye Huggins from DUO!

Ava Soolingen and Tars Larsen prepping for the stage....

One week to opening show!

2008-03-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

A two hour rehearsal, a three hour rehearsal and a two hour yoga class and I'm realizing that this time next week I will be sweating and out of breath at this hour probably in the final minutes of my duet with Matthew Romantini. Yesterday DUO lovelies Jessica Baran and Julye Huggins came into Matthew and my rehearsal, filmed a bit of our work and interviewed us. Matthew and I were at turns silly and very serious so we are worried how they will edit it! Perhaps me saying "The National Ballet's Rolling Stones ballet sucked!" or something about whether or not our bums look good in our choreography. It's funny how even with a short creation process the intensity is such that we pick up each others' body language and jokes. I take it as a good sign that we're ready to be on stage together!

Similarly Jennifer Dallas and I, dancing in Susan Kendal's work in the same show, have discovered that we can avoid train wrecks of our memory quite fluidly together. For some reason this is more exciting to me than knowing I can perform a work perfectly: knowing that I'm on stage with someone who can freestyle with memory or muscle failure. It makes you stay present, and totally in the moment. I love it.

I'm glad there's one week left before opening. But I will be ready....

11th hour

2008-03-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

We're less than two weeks to the opening of Ava/Chroma, the show I am coproducing with Susan Kendal as part of DanceWorks CoWorks series. My dear new friend Kyle Abraham is coming in from New York to perform, my coproducer is 8 and 1/2 months pregnant, and up until Tuesday my cocreation with Matthew Romantini was feeling good, but not great yet.

So now I will sing the praises of having an outside eye come in. Early on in the process, Matthew and I had the great fun of working with Julia Sasso. She pushed us right out of our habits and skewed our view on the material we'd made so that we could see new potential for it.

On Tuesday, Andrea Nann came in as our outside eye and watched a run of the 20 minute duet we'd made. She asked a few questions, suggested rearranging the order of the sections and we ran it again. PRESTO! The work was taking on all the things we felt it had been missing.

At first I felt like a failure because I hadn't seen this possibility....but I hadn't actually SEEN the piece, I'm dancing in it! Plus I refuse to use mirrors in rehearsals whenever humanly possible. How did I expect myself to understand what the full, continuously shifting picture might be? My job as an interpreter of dance who also creates dance changes as the process moves closer to performance. The movement finds its own spirit and I focus on channelling my energy to fill it. In the 11th hour, another pair of eyes can make sure that the loose spirit of the choreography and the dancers' channels of energy tell the same story.

What a thrill to have worked with two such amazing and different outside eyes, who each were the perfect fit at the time they came in to the studio with us. I am ready to bat this one home now. I hope you are there to see it, and to let me know what you think.

Ava/Chroma runs April 2-5 at Theatre Centre (1087 Queen St. West) 8pm
Tickets are $15-20 -- call DanceWorks at 416 204 1082 for reservations and tickets!

Sarah Slean's poem for my dancework "The Abecedarian".

2008-03-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

For those who were asking -- here is the poem Sarah Slean wrote for me as I created my dance work "the Abecedarian". An abecedarian, for those who don't already know, is an ancient poetic form in which the lines or images appear in alphabetical order. Sarah was very kind to give me such a beautiful 'score' from which to create my dance. (You can see an excerpt of that dance on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geVDZGW-9B0)

ABECEDARIAN - S. Slean
A - amelia earheart yearning to fly. awe flowers open in her dreaming eye. like the long and constant exhale of the sky while the monk at his table, is writing.
B - what you reach for is already there, in your hand, you may think we are birds condemned to the land, but somewhere eternal, beyond feeble sight. the gravity creature is always in flight.
C - consecutive clock has an itch it must scratch, it will tick and will tock and will cower and crack, but "circle", the word, contains all that C knows, the hard kick of time and the soft way it flows.
D - parting the years like a volatile sea... "Now" opens time like a dictionary from young to old and from A to Z you are always right there in the middle
E - ecstatic, the embers fly up to the trees, exhaling their lives with elegant ease the campfire instructs us to rise from our knees but who, of the gathered, is listening.
F - follow me follow me follow me follow me today is the fountain from which you must feed forget that you fell from that Genesis tree the fruits and the flowers are not fantasy
G - "God" is the guess that they want you to make but grace, when it's granted, won't let you partake go further instead, to the uncharted lake, where you know golden swans are a-swimming.
H - the earth softly utters a holier word in the hollow where bickering gods can be heard "heaven is coming", "it's already occurred!" they shout in the faces of unnoticed angels
I - this, the illusion we ironically see, that I am not you, and you are not me like ivy its climbing and choking the tree that, despite a great crown, grew from one common seed
J - jewels of sweat on the Jesuit brow, mecca vibrates under thundering bows and the monk, at his table, cannot fathom how there is only a mouse in the temple of Now
K - yet who can contest its most curious might? this killer of kings, this glorious knight who quiets the enemy, not with a fight, but almost as if letting go of a kite?
L - in longing to know, we must love the unknown with Kierkegaard, trembling, and aching for home we leap and discover the light in a stone is the very same light in the heart of a master
M - "master?, what master?", the suicides ask "How am I a slave if I know not my task? How can I love God when I know it's a mask that my own starving mind has created."
N - Napoleon squirms in his watery grave and Nietzsche's convinced that there's nothing to save. he spat on the flowers the poetess gave as she murmured the sonnets of Rilke.
O - Overmen shatter, but archers will go, even though hard the seasons of suffering blow watch how he opens, caresses his bow in the midst of uproarious battle.
P - piercing all shadows with blistering light the arrows flies high through the perilous night love, sent in earnest, will always make right the erroneous aim of its sender.
Q - then what must we make of the stumbling queen who gropes in the firelight for answers unseen? she poisons herself to dismantle the scene that plays and replays in her memory.
R - ravens assemble all over her chair and peck at the riches of rags in her hair tangled in puppetry, courting despair, her play will crescendo to ruin
S - that's when Seymour appears, his lost sister to claim, like the monk at his table, he tells her, "don't aim, how can you see, when you're drowning in shame, the You that is ancient and without a name?"
T - "Tomorrow torments you and time is the terror, a watch is the gift that will torture the bearer. to live is no art - art is for the pretender to live, my dear queen, is an act of surrender."
U - "Undo the divisions a hungry heart makes remember the swans in the uncharted lakes theirs is a silence that slowly unties the veil that for so long has covered your eyes"
V - a veil, she imagined, a veil of lace with patterns the mind wants to frantically chase a veil that, though lovely, obscures the true face of a queen who is yearning to see.
W - who will record the inquiry herein? all of these questions have answers built in Wonder is all, and forever has been the jewel in our cognitive crown
X - sometimes there is simply no need to explain the sexier side of existence is plain delicious it is to know pleasure and pain to court them, but never to marry.
Y - you are the puzzle, you, the perfection you, the miraculous, living reflection of everything vast and beyond feeble sight you are the gravity creature, alight!
Z - like sandbags from magical hot air balloons, we cut at the rope of our fictions and soon, there's a You that is ancient and without a name and zenith and zero are one and the same.

january blooms

2008-01-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

So last weekend was Dance Ontario's big DanceWeekend and I was invited to perform that piece that broke my arm last year (during tech rehearsal for DanceWeekend!). "The speed of our vertigoes" caused great vertigo indeed, over the last year. I performed the work recklessly three days after my cast was removed, then the following week in Germany and two weeks after that in Guelph (on a carpeted floor in an art gallery). My partner, Dennes, went through many levels of distress. Then it was my turn as December 2007 approached and I needed to start rehearsing the work again. My 'stage fright' or nerves have gotten worse and worse as the years go by and now faced with a solo performance on the biggest stage for contemporary dance in Toronto, with a piece that makes me feel immensely vulnerable in its most calm situations, and a history of breaking my arm while dancing it.

The Premiere Dance Theatre stage is fascinating. It looks huge from the house, but tiny when you're upon it. It's ceiling seems to go on forever through a maze of ropes and beams and bars and cross overs and dust. It is a tremendous black cavern when you work with a darkened backdrop. The black velvet absorbs everything so that there is just little old naked you left there.

Larry, the former firefighter now tech at PDT who witnessed my accident last year, opened the curtain to let Samara through the curtain to announce my performance. I stood on my mark, a piece of purple tape marking the space between the callouses on my big toes. Larry dropped the curtain and subtly pumped his right arm at me. The curtains opened. I was immersed in blackness, one long tunnel of light. I could see the footlights of the aisles, but nothing else in the house. The blackness, like when you are trying to see at night, began to reveal its different depths. My first cross to upstage left, the music begins, it jumps a little, the sound cue misses all subtlety, but it's ok. The stage is opening up and is no longer a stage. January blooms a big black velvet flower that buoys me in sparks for the next 15 minutes. I do not fall. I do not even come close. I take two quick bows and let myself hear the cheers from the balcony.

I go to the dressing room and I cry, just a little tiny bit. I have unspooked the vertigo. I take a very hot shower pack up my things and meet Dennes in the lobby. We decide this piece is retiring from the repertoire for a little while so it can take on a new significance that is not related to the breaking of bones or anxiety levels.

We have a drink and some nachos, tradition after Harbourfront Centre performances, at the Boathouse, look at the cold, blowing lake and let it evaporate into history.

Unless, of course, someone offers me a lovely contract to perform it again. No reasonable offer turned down...

2007-12-23T15:48:00.001-08:00

I have been discouraged lately about this career I have chosen for myself. But I never question my desire or "rightness" of being a dancer, of absorbing all I can of dance. In the last month or so, it has come in direct relief against the rest of my life why it is that I dance rather than something else. Why I gave up songwriting and piano-playing for a less direct commune with audiences. There is something so wonderful --when one has felt misunderstood, like one's words are constantly twisted, why one feels one is tilting at windmills because the real enemy is formless-- about saying exactly what you mean with such specificity and completeness, and yet at the same time with such mystery and ephemerality, as when you 'speak' through dance. And to know that even if those people witnessing the dance do not understand it in express terms, they take something away from the experience. They can't help it. Unconsciously, viscerally, with kinesthetic sympathy they take it with them. A trace. That's all I ask, all I want. I talk myself right back onto this path again and will sign off now to go do some tendus and plies and splits in search of a strange new thing to say through my body...

Pina Bausch "Nefes" at the NAC in Ottawa November 25 2007

2007-11-30T18:02:00.001-08:00

Water is breath. Hair is breath and moves like water. Their arms flow and rage, gestures as old as the waves touching the shores of the stage, of the land that inspires this dance. It unravels for almost three hours, the blackness of the stage enlarging itself at each minute, the edges of white, screens, escorts, soap, skin, the way light hits the water.

She is a conjurer, making it rain on stage, making puddles appear and disappear through the floor boards.

A glass of glowing blue liquid, a line of men and women humming along with Tom Waits. We all wait and wait for the moment we can applaud.

The conventions of Pina Bausch have never made so much sense to me, been so abstract, dark and eerily logical as with this piece. The hair in the women's eyes, the men spinning, tossing and flinging the women. The men themselves in spasmic commune with each other. The water as a character that links each member of the 20-person cast.

Sadly Pina did not make an appearance at the curtain call; the audience was eager to express their appreciation for her entire career. The sea of people at the NAC clapped appropriately sounding like rain. The cast came to the front of the stage and looked us in the eye. I held my breath and smiled.

At the Wrecking Ball IV -- Sarah Slean's poem for Lucy

2007-11-09T12:40:00.000-08:00

If you want to read the full version of the poem Sarah Slean wrote for Lucy Rupert's piece "The Abecedarian" please visit Sarah's website at www.sarahslean.com.

More on At The Wrecking Ball soon....

Hari Krishnan and INdance -- Recipes for Curry

2007-10-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

It is hard for me to write about Hari Krishnan in some ways. His endearing stage presence reminds me of Charlie Chaplin, of whom I am excessively fond, so I always enjoy Hari on stage. In Hari's new production, part of DanceWorks' Main Stage Series 2007-08, there are four pieces. they contrast and dip and dive past one another. Hari's solo, created by Margie Gillis, is like a incantation that puts Margie in front of us. A simple sequence of movements, circling the stage, a flicker of precise images with more sweeping movements. A man's jacket, a beloved, a moveable sand dune, a balancing point. I'll admit I didn't "get it" but I felt Hari had climbed inside Margie's skin.

The next piece was a quartet, executed with sobriety and quirkiness. Precise hands, elastic jumps, purple semi-transparent costuming with precise pleats and elastic breath as they moved. The soundscape for this piece morphed from electronic to natural sounds, cricket imitations to crickets. Four animals in the woods gathering neon coloured seeds cognizant of each other but not interacting. Curious.

A duet for Hari and Allen Kaeja followed. All I can say about this piece was that I felt I was watching Charlie Chaplin and Bruce Willis stand in for Burgess Meredith and Fred Astaire in "Second Chorus" or Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in a vaudeville number from "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". The highlight for me was seeing Hari lift Allen in a Kaeja-style contact move.

The final work had its most amazing impact, for me, at the end when 8 dancers moved like a breathing multi-limbed organism across the stage in Bharatanatyam style. Amazing individuality inside this organism. Bodies of all shapes and sizes (TRULY!) moved fiercely in their own tempests. In another moment that brought it home for me, 6 dancers sat on the ground, stamping out what seemed a complicated rhythm in unison. Suddenly their camoflauge tops (for the girls) and undies (for the boys) came into focus. This was a global army, who possessed the power to pound their feet into the ground with such precision and a slightly bored ferocity. We should fear these soldiers.

How Dare She performance Oct 6

2007-10-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

I saw a collection of dances created by and performed by women at Pia Bouman Studio Theatre in Toronto on Saturday October 6, 2007. The Dance Matters Series, curated by Tanya Crowder, has been going strong for almost a year, and this one featured Tanya Crowder in a work created with Julia Sasso, Caroline Niklas-Gordon in her own work, Claudia Wittmann in her own work, Tracey Norman and Ali Gratian in a collaborative work, and Ashley Sanderson in a work by Karen Kaeja.

What struck me strongly was that these five works had to be performed and created by women. The female voice was necessary. Two works covered tempestuous relationships between daughters and fathers, two explored unique, even odd, female creatures, and the fifth had a quality of compassionate decision making made by female souls.

In Tanya's work created by Julia Sasso, I see a stranded, existential sex kitten who grapples with dispersed intensity. A powerful creature emerges, unable to harness the unfocused images bouncing about her. We can't quite see what we she sees; it seems like she can't quite either. But her body is firm. She will control her body through all its mutations. She is a pillar that does not move, except by her own will, inside uncooperative, invisible weather. And yet it is somehow purely incidental that all this happens. She descends back into her own pool of black, feet crossed like puncutation -- flirtatious and threatening at once.

Caroline Niklas-Gordon is a good friend of mine and I feel like she doesn't choreograph enough because she has really cool ideas. Her work in this show revealed to me a particular Caroline-ness in scratchings and undulations, in her plain open face the jaggedness of a spirit. Whereas Tanya's demons seem omnipresent and amorphous, Caroline's inhabit specific places in her body and the space around her. Psychological details focus as a cinematic score kicks in. Things become familiar, melodramatic, cinematic as the music. And then the dance drops out of her and she simply walks. Her gray dress is really apparent in this very simple exit. She fades off stage.

Claudia's solo was wrenching. Inherent principles of butoh, grief, quiet, smallness, ferocity. She presented us a shirt belonging to her father and through the work we see the object, really and metaphorically, from many angles. We see the process of this piece as the product. Becoming is the point, not indicating or depicting. Her feet are pale frames against the floor, a box of emotions spelled out in slow steps. Though Claudia seems tiny and elfin, slightly androgynous, there is something clearly woman about the story she traces. The program note says the work is about her relationship with her father. There are many possibilities for this relationship, from heartwarming to absolutely chilling in what we see.

Tracey and Ali's work is buoyant. Their styles of movement and speech are contrasting. Tracey's voice is more conversational, and her movement is like a conversation with a friend. Ali's voice is slightly more mechanical, more rehearsed and her movement is articulated is like an oration. I was compelled by these contrasts, and the affection and comfort with which they dance together, passing by a strolling violinist. He too had an interesting attack to his movement stillness in passages more aggressive and minimalist, strolling as the lyric lines come out. Maybe it wasn't actually this way, but it seemed this way in hindsight. I was reminded of a performance I once did with my dear friend Rebecca, maybe 8 years ago, something evident of friendship in the performance. In the spareness of words it was as though they were speaking an abbreviated language only they know -- but they let us in on it. What I dug most was how they paid attention to each other, so it was a trio of two dancers and a musician rather than three lone souls.

The final work was another earthly, but preternatural creature. An ipod creature, a creature of rain and snow and quivering and rocking. An expectant creature, a disappointed creature. Her images moved in sharp focus about her. The way her neck moved was captivating. Ashley Sanderson interpreted Karen Kaeja's "The rain outside my window turns to snow and I can't hear it anymore" was like haiku. Spare but lush, images rich and singular. One solid point being made. I did not feel cold, as though rain was turning colder, to snow, but instead greater and greater warmth as the piece went on. As though I was inside an apartment where the furnace had been turned on for the first time and the heat slowly crept up to my third floor while outside the world was changing.

With all of the pieces, I am intrigued to see what life they have beyond this performance, what new images and sounds might emerge, what new wit or strength.

We need more opportunities like these to speak about, discover what we see in, and just feel dance in a casual environment. I came home and watched excerpts of "Fame" on Youtube and felt totally inspired to remain a dancer and moving.

the beginning

2007-10-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

I am starting this blog to try to stoke a fire for contemporary dance in all its guises and forms. Recently I've been hearing a lot of dance artists bemoaning the lack of analysis, discussion, criticism in the sense of describing and analysing what we're seeing, what we're creating. This is my very small way of contributing.

I will not review dance, per se, but write responses and things I see inside choreography and performance.

Feed the fire and respond to these words!