Playing with Pop Art: An Interview with Pamela Rasbach

Tomato Soup

Typecast Dance Company 

A DanceWorks CoWorks presentation

Winchester St Theatre

80 Winchester St

Thurs. Jan 26 – Sat. Jan 28, 2012, 8pm

Interview by Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: What is Tomato Soup all about?

Pamela Rasbach: Tomato Soup is a fictional story of a lover, an actress, a robot, and a ringmaster. Throughout their journey we witness each character’s relationship to consumerism and each other. Tomato Soup is inspired by the visual aesthetics of Andy Warhol. 

LR: What do you hope audiences experience at the performances?

PR: I have experimented with comedy, so I am hoping the audiences will enjoy this cheeky and playful work, which contrasts with my last piece [Missed Connections, 2010]. We are also excited to share a new work of Missy Morris, as part of our new initiative to promote other emerging choreographers.

LR: How did you decide to team up with choreographer Missy Morris?  

PR: Missy has danced with Typecast since its beginning. When she expressed interest in choreographing, she was an obvious choice as our first guest choreographer. We wanted the company to collaborate with someone we knew well and trusted. We hope to include other emerging choreographers in future productions.

LR: How have you translated Pop Art into contemporary dance? What was your creative process (internal or with dancers) to explore this theme?

PR: Pop Art was used as visual inspiration to convey the theme of consumerism. Pop Art’s obsession with the object is explored as the dancers interact with each object on stage. There is also an element of chance in this piece, as the artists never dance with the same product twice!

LR: What do you dream next for Typecast Dance Company?

PR: We hope to continue to produce works that showcase the power and passion of young artists, and would love to give second life to our works by touring.  Mostly importantly, we would like to continue having fun and sharing our love of dance with new audiences.

www.typecastdance.com

This interview has been edited for length and content.

Manga meets Dance: An Interview with Maxine Heppner

My Heart is a Spoon

Maxine Heppner/Across Oceans

A DanceWorks CoWorks presentation

Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen Street West
Friday Jan 20 – Sat. Jan 21, 2012, 7:30 pm
Sun. Jan 22, 2012, 2pm Tickets: 416-538-0988

Interview with Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: What is My Heart is a Spoon all About?
Maxine Heppner: This is the first incarnation of the piece, the first development from a complicated idea – to explore how a young person and an older person each comes to terms with the power of their contained energy, their rage. It’s about dualities. A girl. A man. Black-and-white. Complex colour. Power, and its lack. Explosion. Creation. We’ve been inspired by the graphics of manga novels and that they are the outgrowth of traditional drawing of Japan’s 1600′s.

LR: What do you hope audiences will experience at the performances?

MH: We hope they will become immersed in the worlds we are creating, that they will experience some of what we are working with in rehearsal: the magnetism of bold energy that so easily sucks us in, but then spits us out without any reason. And also the grounded focus that keeps the dancers and images from evaporating. We also hope that because we are presenting a production that is still in creation, that they will share their experience with us about the concepts and challenges of the topics on twitter during the coming weeks, and at the talkbacks afterwards.
LR: How did you assemble your creative team?
MH: Because of the dualities of themes I looked for dualities in the collaborators themselves and between us. Takako Segawa can be so boyish and so womanly but is always pure impulse and feeling. Gerry Trentham transforms amazingly from intellectual to instinctual man. Fujimoto Takayuki, our light and media director who works in high tech theatre design accepted the challenge to explore virtual and actual in performance. Alex Yue designs handmade origami. Sarah Shugarman is creating a sound score that is both acoustic and electronic.

LR: What keeps you inspired and creating after over 30 years creating and performing?

MH: In creation I most enjoy the direct human exchange. Today En Lai Mah (choreo-assistant) and I were trying to sort out imagery with several props.We spent most of four hours wordless, moving objects, marking the dance for the other to see, nodding, shaking heads, laughing, changing things around.These are the golden moments. Inspiration is not controllable. It comes from anywhere unexpectedly; from an intellectual concept, a rush of sound, watching cranes lift parts of a building into place, the way a waiter turns on his feet in a crowded restaurant, birds…

LR: From where does the imagery in My Heart is a Spoon derive?
MH: The powerful drawings of graphic manga novels. The freedom of imagination in old legends. Modern history. Pure energy, pure colour.

This interview has been edited for content and length.

TDSB’s Dare 2 Dance rocks the George Weston Recital Hall

As young people streamed into the Toronto Centre for the Arts  on Thursday December 8th, I don’t think the patrons of Memphis had any idea what was going on in the packed theatre next door.  It was the TDSB’s Dare 2 Dance finale and it was an incredibly exciting night of dance. Twelve schools from across the GTA competed in the finale with remarkable pieces choreographed by the students.  The evening was structured like the So You Think You Can Dance television series, complete with celebrity judges: Allen Kaeja, Debbie Nicholls-Skerritt, and Tre Armstrong. All the pieces had social justice themes such as mental illness, female empowerment, and drug abuse. After each performance, the judges gave each group feedback.

Highlights of the evening included a powerful performance about domestic abuse by an all female cast from Vaughan Road Academy; an athletic duet about drug addiction by two students from the Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies; and the winning team from William Lyon Mackenzie C.I. who danced about isolation and acceptance.

The Dare 2 Dare competition makes dance a focal point in Toronto high schools and empowers students to be choreographers.  Dr. Christopher Spence, the Director of Education, has clearly endorsed this event in order to promote creativity, health and social justice amongst the enthusiastic students.  It was so wonderful to see young women AND men excited about dance and cheering on their friends and classmates as they bravely took the stage. For more information, please check out the TDSB’s website: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/_site/ViewItem.asp?siteid=10391&menuid=30555&pageid=26147

I can’t wait to see what the come up with next year …

60 Years with Mi Young Kim

60 Years of Rhythm and Movement

KDSS/Mi Young Kim Dance

A DanceWorks CoWorks presentation

George Weston Recital Hall

Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts

5040 Yonge St.

One Night Only – Nov. 15, 2011 7:30 pm

For Tickets, Please call: 1-855-985-2787

www.ticketmaster.ca

 

Interview by Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: What is your upcoming show all about?

Mi Young Kim: “60 Years of Rhythm & Movement” is a showing of the work I am most proud of  since I have established my career in Canada. It concisely demonstrates what I have achieved as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, presenter and partner in the arts.

LR: What do you hope audiences will experience from seeing “60 Years of Rhythm & Movement”?

MYK: By showing a series of traditional, contemporary and creative pieces,

I hope the audience will see the value and potential of Korean dance in Canada, adding much richness and uniqueness to Canadian dance. The dances that will be presented encompass the classical, folk, traditional and contemporary genres with a lot of interconnection between the dance, visual and musical elements.

I am happy to share the stage with Keiko Kitano, Sampradaya Dance Creations, Kozakura Sensui, York Dance Ensemble and Samulnori Canada.

LR: What keeps you inspired to create and perform and teach?

MYK: In my twenties and thirties, I was inspired by watching famous dancers’ performances. Looking back on it now, it was just an imitation, not an inspiration.

In my forties and fifties, I was especially interested in the seasonal changes: the fresh green leaves sprouting from the trees in early spring, the crystal clear lake on a hot summer night, the fresh autumn breeze and the falling leaves, and a snowman in winter. The expressions and postures of Virgin Mary statues were also material for my work.

These days, I get inspiration from people around me, from positive traits of the people I encounter daily, and how they transform into mutually beneficial interactions.

LR: What is the most important thing you would like to convey about Korean dance to people unfamiliar with the forms?

MYK: Dance is a wonderful way to represent a culture because it touches our

visual, aural and tactile senses.  Korean dance is delicate and introspective, yet strong and powerful, which allows people to express their emotions gradually through the dance.

I think, through my work, audiences can have greater insight into the Korean culture. My work also reflects on Canadian culture and how it has changed me.

LR: What do you most want to celebrate with this 60th anniversary performance?

MYK: I want to celebrate culturally-specific dance in Canada, what artists like

myself have achieved here, and my long, very active and fruitful career at age 65.

LR: I’m sure I speak for many in the dance community from all disciplines and forms of dance when I wish you a very happy celebration!

This interview has been edited for content and length.

 

An Interview with the Very Fluid, Very Fluent Peter Chin

Tribal Crackling Wind (Toronto)

Fluency

A DanceWorks Mainstage Event

Thursday November 3 through Saturday November 5 at 8pm

Enwave Theatre

Tickets: www.danceworks.ca

Interview by Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: What is Fluency all about?

Peter Chin: Fluency is about the desire to become part of culture that’s not one’s own and by extension cultural translation and empathy.

LR: What do you hope audiences will experience with your performance?

PC: I hope audiences will have some insights into different ways of being present in the world, while laughing and having a good time.

LR: I’m curious, how many languages do you speak and how/when did you learn each?

PC: I speak English as a first language, which is spoken in my birthplace Jamaica. I speak Indonesian from living there over a seven-year period, mostly self-taught and writing and reading letters (before the internet!). I have been learning Spanish for about three years now. You will have to come to the show to decide if I can speak it or not.

LR: You seem compelled with many of your works to integrate yourself with many different cultures, where do you think this impulse come from?

PC: This is precisely one of the questions that is posed in Fluency. It’s a big question that cannot be answered well here, but I think that this is an urgent instinct that is based on a conscious love of humanity in all our diversity.

LR: Who are your dancers for this work and how did you find/select them?

PC: Billy Marchenski is a wonderful actor/dancer who can handle very complex spoken and danced interplay at a virtuosic level, and he’s funny and charismatic.

Alison Denham, who happens to be Billy’s partner, is a beautiful and technically-endowed dancer who is empathetic to my work and where it is coming from.

I am dancing myself, and have chosen myself because I am the direct witness of the experiences in Nicaragua, which this work is about.

María Constanza Guzmán makes her professional debut in a dance piece in Fluency. She is a professor of comparative literature and translation at York University, and she will give her erudite analysis of the efforts of Peter Chin to become Nicaraguan.

This interview has been edited for length and content.

Building Community at the CODE conference

The Council of Ontario Dance and Drama Educators (www.code.on.ca) is a phenomenal organization of elementary and secondary teachers.  Every year the organization hosts a large conference with stimulating workshops in dance and drama.  I am here in Collingwood representing DanceWorks at the Trade Fair.  I am trying to make more teachers aware of the work we do.  This year DanceWorks is offering four secondary student matinees (the most ever!), and one special post-secondary matinee.  With the new Ontario Dance Curriculum, it is great to see more and more dance organizations at CODE every year.  Teachers are very excited about the 2011/12 Season programmed by Mimi Beck.

Mimi is in Calgary this weekend for the CanDance Network’s AGM and the Fluid Festival; I am here in Collingwood for CODE; and Rosslyn Jacob-Edwards is holding down the fort in Toronto for Zata Omm’s performances of Eight Ways from Mara.  What a weekend!

Five Questions about Eight Ways – William Yong and Zata Omm

Zata Omm Dance Projects (Toronto)

Eight Ways from Mara

A DanceWorks Mainstage Event

Enwave Theatre

Thursday October 20- Saturday October 22 8pm,

Sunday October 23 2pm

Tickets: www.danceworks.ca

Interview by Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: What is “Eight Ways From Mara” all about?

William Yong: ‘Eight Ways From Mara’ explores the three elemental forces of Confusion, Temptation and Distraction. As devices of the demon of temptation (Mara), these forces attempt to divert us from our correct path according to Eastern Philosophy.

Today’s confusions and distractions are manifold: rapidly changing technology; global environmental threats; media-fuelled insatiable desires; religious wars. This work is a world I created in order to look at those struggles, to deal with these contemporary challenges that cause us great confusion.

LR: What do you hope audiences will take away from seeing it?

WY: Through this piece I hope to show determination of conserving nature and humanity amid the influences of science and technology. We hope the audiences will find resonance between the underlying philosophy and their own experiences of modern life. We want to create a journey, to broaden and alter the audience’s perspectives and provoke some reflection on modernity.

LR: How do you balance choreographing with dancing your own work?

WY: I am rather active while I am choreographing. I always go in and out of the dance, participating, demonstrating and interacting with the dancers – in group sections, anyway. Making the transition to include myself in the piece is natural and not troublesome. I just need more time, and of course I rely on the video camera a lot.

LR: What is the creative process like with your multi-media artist, Elysha Poirier?

WY: Elysha Poirier is also my technological strategist for ‘Zata Omm Dance and Technology Research Laboratory’. We work very closely together; I give her very specific conceptual ideas for development of the design. She understands how to creatively realize and interpret my ideas, and make them visually compelling. It is my desire that all the integrated arts form a coherent single work.

LR: What, more generally speaking, sparks your creative flame?

WY: I have always been interested in philosophy and psychology. I often choose complex and difficult subject matter that is close to my heart but very challenging for me and my collaborators to distill into dance, but that ultimately can lead to an edifying experience for our audiences.

This interview has been edited for length and content.

The many layers of Marie-Josée Chartier

Chartier Danse: STRIA

DanceWorks CoWorks Series Event

Enwave Theatre

Oct. 14-15, 2011 @ 8pm

To Order Tickets, Call: 416-973-4000

An interview by Lucy Rupert

 

Lucy Rupert: What is Stria about?

Marie-Josée Chartier: The work creates parallels between the stratas (or strias) existing in nature and its inherent layers of history (rock formations, for example) with layers formed in our bodies and created by our own histories.

Starting from my history, I unearthed many memories and stories. Throughout the work they surface and take on different forms of expression. It is about where I have been and where I am now; reflections on love, loss, nature, and the creative process, using different performing disciplines. Stria is about my last 30 years as a performer and the desire to bring to the stage my performance style as a dancer, vocalist, and theatrical performer.

LR: What do you hope audiences will experience from seeing Stria?

MJC: I can tell you what sources and inspirations I have worked from in order to create the work, but ultimately, the audience will make its own interpretation while experiencing the work in the theatre. I hope that they will connect some of what they see, hear and experience with some of their own moments in life; that they will be transported and moved.

LR: Your works often have very strong images, rooted in visual art – does Stria have any such roots or launching points?

MJC: Probably not nearly as much as other works. The strongest visual image for me in this work is the landscape of the Badlands — I was fortunate enough to hunt for dinosaur bones with paleontologists in the heart of the Badlands. It is a very moving and poetic terrain, one I connect with very deeply.

This landscape has been also an inspiration for the puppets, the set, the sound, the costume and the lighting, designed respectively by Mathieu Rene, Trevor Schwellnus, Thomas Ryder-Payne, Martha Cockshutt and Bonnie Beecher.

LR: How does your creative process or research differ between creating a solo and creating a group work?

MJC: My creative process seems to differ with every project I undertake. I need to find the proper process for the proper investigation. I use improvisation for the initial phases of creation, whether for solo or group, and from there I distill, eliminate and flesh out the elements that interest me.

With a solo, what is ultimately different is in the performance. Once I step on stage for a solo, it is actually quite liberating; it is my own and I can let myself go during the performance.

LR: As a “self-portrait”, what have the special challenges been in creating and/or rehearsing Stria?

MJC: It is a very long and lonely process. It has been a time of deep introspection dealing with so many facets of my life, personal and artistic. Because I suspected that this would also be very challenging, I worked closely with my director Ruth [Madoc-Jones] to guide me through this.

The greatest challenge was to find a form and structure that could communicate clearly what I wanted to share while investigating these different events in my life in a very unconventional way. It is a wild roller-coaster ride, as I transform at rapidly contrasting energies and with a wide emotional range.

This interview has been edited for content and length.

Big, Deep Artistic Mining with choreographer/director Michael Greyeyes

Signal Theatre (Toronto)

from thine eyes

A DanceWorks & Native Earth Performing Arts Co-Presentation

Enwave Theatre

Thurs. Sept 22 through Sat. Sept 24, 8pm, Sat. Sept 24, 2pm matinee

Interview by Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: What is your show about?

Michael Greyeyes: from thine eyes is a work about our mortality.   This dance theatre work follows six characters at the very moment of their deaths.  We ask what is it to imagine, what they see and experience? Is there a light?  Is it just darkness?  Are the ancestors there to greet us?  In my culture, there are many stories about traveling to the Land of the Dead.  In fact, this work’s origins began a number of years ago in another story—Pimooteewin (The Journey), a Cree language opera, with libretto by Tomson Highway.  This opera was based upon a trickster tale about the folly of trying to bring back the dead to the land of the living.  Our original workshop of this piece was actually titled “Land of the Living”; I knew this work was not about the dead or about dying, it was about the way people lived their lives and about the crucial, liminal moments in their lives when they learn about themselves.

LR: What do you hope the audience will get out of your show?

MG: I am interested in theatre in the largest sense of that word. A theatre artist is one who fearlessly leads the rest of us into the darker territories, where for whatever reason, we sometimes fear to tread.  Or conversely lead us into areas of pure joy and mirth, which we have somehow forgotten.  The best theatre does that for me. I’m hoping to create a work with multiple layers, multiple perspectives and effect.  When I leave a theatre space, I want to be changed in some way.  This is what I’m working toward.

LR: How does theatre, as a form or discipline, inform your choreography?

MG: As a theatre educator, I am responsible not for teaching a love of theatre—that is what draws us together in the first place—but instead I hope to teach my students its complexity as a tool.  As a choreographer, I want to work with artists with similar desires.  I need, as my former boss Eliot Feld, the great American choreographer once said to us in rehearsal, for the dancers to understand that any movement must be informed by the performer’s perspective. Our thinking and experience fills movement and makes it worth watching.  In my choreography, I create movement from character.  To me choreography is another kind of writing. It must push the narrative forward. A director, which to me is interchangeable with choreographer, drives the whole production forward based on the strength of our own belief in the story we are telling and our ability to lead by example.

LR: How did you choose the performers involved in your work?

MG: I am very keen on working with dancers as actors.  I am interested also in that more traditional theatre aesthetic in which the stage looks like life—the performers that I have cast in this work are multi-generational and I need them, particularly in this piece, to have the force of experience working for them. We are dealing with big stuff—shattering guilt, yearning, fear, unadulterated joy, and paralyzing loss—so I want to work with actors that are unafraid. I envisioned the dance with [these brilliant performers] as characters and the choreography emerged from them inhabiting those worlds.

 

LR: Though utterly universal, mortality and end-of-life is a pretty intense topic to take on and you seem to be taking it head on – what has brought you to this thematic exploration?

MG: Interestingly it’s a subject with which I have dealt with numerous times as a performer. On a more personal level, this work emerges from conversations I had with my Mom when her mother passed.  She said, “I was always afraid of death.  I had fear, but then I watched mom die and it was gentle…  I’m not afraid of it anymore.”  When my own mother passed, she began the next part of her journey. My wife and I too had experienced our own private loss, through recurrent miscarriage.  Those years of immense joy turning into more immense grief changed us forever.  From thine eyes is in many ways how I am continuing to deal with all of those losses.  But in helping to write these stories, I too am working my way towards a gentler understanding of life and its passing.

This interview has been edited for length and content.

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David Earle: A force in the Past, Present and Future of Modern Dance in Canada

Toronto Heritage Dance: An Evening of Chamber Dance

DanceWorks CoWorks Series Event

Winchester Street Theatre

Sept. 15 – 17, 2011 @ 8pm, Sept. 18 @ 2pm

To Reserve Tickets Call: 416-204-1082

Cash at the Door

Interview with Lucy Rupert

Lucy Rupert: How did you come to be involved in Toronto Heritage Dance?

David Earle: Nenagh Leigh (Co-founder and Founding  Director of Toronto Heritage Dance) has always encouraged me to create and has expressed an appreciation of my work.  The late Donald Himes (board member of Toronto Heritage Dance) played an important role in establishing a concern for the preservation of repertoire.  Trish [Beatty] and I both learned this art form from the example of the masterpieces of American Modern Dance. We are proud and grateful to recognize the value of what preceded us.

LR: Your work in the Toronto Heritage Dance production is Miserere.  What is the piece all about?

DE: The Miserere was originally part of a longer work for TDT in 1980 – Exit, Nightfall, five dreams after death.  It was the 4th dream and was performed by 15 dancers in 3 groups of 5.  Since the inception of DtDE [Dance Theatre David Earle] in 1997, when we performed it with a choir in the Elora Festival, Miserere has been our signature piece, closing most programs sometimes with 5, sometimes 10 and, when possible, with 15 dancers.

I think its positive effect on audiences comes from the illustration of trust and constant support – the ideal of community we could experience.

LR: What do you hope audiences will get from seeing the Toronto Dance Heritage production?

DE: The Toronto Heritage Dance program is attempting to correct a failure in ‘the system’ by assuring that each generation has the example of those preceding it. No other art form in Canada is expected to grow with no knowledge or experience of its past.

To know what is new, you have to know what has been.

LR: What keeps you inspired to make and re-stage your works?

DE: Firstly, I am always seeking some form of expression, and work constantly at discovering and reinforcing my uniqueness.  Dancers suggest dances to me. In dance, it is the people around me that make me want to create – I offer the dancers a context in which they can experience that same quest.  My past works are my second concern, and sometimes I learn from them.  I enjoy seeing my past works altered and illuminated by new individuals preparing and performing them.

LR: What do you see as the major changes in modern dance over the years you have been working?

DE: The contemporary arts have largely lost their audience, becoming dialogues within each art form.  The insistence on novelty is a dead end.

I have the impression that, in Toronto, dancers create instruments, beautiful instruments – and then rarely have the opportunity to perform dance in its fullest expression for audiences that have an appetite for that.

I think that the post-contemporary arts will return to the elements that have constituted the arts for many centuries; form, content, and a concern with communication.

This interview has been edited for content and length.