I'm bummed that I am going to miss the full-length version of Tara Cheyenne Performance's How to Be at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre next week. I have been following the development of this work over the past few years (read past posts here, here and here) and was excited to see this latest iteration, not least because it unites on stage all the previous performer-collaborators, including Justine A. Chambers, Susan Elliott, Kate Franklin, Josh Martin, Bevin Poole, Kim Stevenson, and Marcus Youssef.
Thankfully I was able to get a sneak peek of the work earlier today as choreographer and TCP AD Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg invited me to stop by the studio to take in a run-through. In deference to Tara and the performers--and also because the piece is still being refined in sections--I will not divulge what's in store for viewers. But I can say that there will be surprises--including from the costumes!
And also that the Prince section remains.
And, finally, that you would be a fool to miss this show.
P
Showing posts with label Tara Cheyenne Performance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tara Cheyenne Performance. Show all posts
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Edge 3 at DOTE
Last night's Edge 3 program at the Dancing on the Edge Festival was made up of three solos by three Vancouver artists/companies who like to explore the porous boundaries between dance, theatre and performance/installation art.
First up was dumb instrument Dance's Ziyian Kwan, remounting the neck to fall, which she first presented at Dance in Vancouver in 2013, and which I have previously written about here. The piece's movement has changed over time, as has Kwan's costume (I recall a black suit and heels from the premiere). But the core set of objects with which Kwan interacts remain; these include two cardboard boxes, one small and one large, two sets of chopsticks, a large plastic bag into which she sinks her head and body, and a furry stool, upon which Kwan at one point mimes a virtuosic cello solo, an ode to composer Peggy Lee's wonderful musical score. Each object anchors a set of external commands (delivered by a recorded Asian female voice) against which Kwan struggles to adapt her body, the piece being as much a rumination on perceptions of racialized and gendered comportment as it is a tribute to the pioneering work of somatic practitioner Amelia Itcush.
The second piece on the program was The Biting School's Helmeat. To the pounding beat of the classic song "War: What Is It Good For?," the curtain opens upon Aryo Kkakpour kneeling at the downstage edge of a red-taped square; he wears a red jumpsuit reminiscent of prison garb and wrapped around his head is a turban of tinfoil. At a certain point Khakpour unplugs the cable of the speaker to his right and the music stops; he begins to methodically lay out tiny squares of tin foil in a grid just on the other side of the downstage edge of the red tape. Retreating upstage and calling for the lights to dim, the next thing we see is Khakpour rolling about the stage, crushing the tinfoil atop his head into a face-masking silvery balaclava, minus the eye and mouth holes; thus blinded our hero staggers about his enclosure, feeling his way from object to object (two stacks of wrapped helmets upstage, a full-length mirror, a shopping cart, and that speaker) via the tape on the floor. However, the signature moment in the piece must surely be the extended bit of coitus that Khakpour engages in with the shopping cart, grinding his pelvis into its handle as he slowly positions it in front of the mirror. Climbing in, he takes out a kazoo and proceeds to hum out the tune to "The Ride of the Valkyries." The piece concludes with Khakpour turning over an actual helmet to reveal a mess of hamburger meat inside. Telling us that this is what we've been waiting for, he then proceeds to roll the ground beef into individual meatballs, which he slowly and deliberately places upon the squares of tinfoil from the top of the show. While this is happening, Arash Khakpour--Aryo's brother and the other half of The Biting School--emerges from the wings and begins striking the set. The link established by the two brothers between consumerism, petroleum products and war might seem a bit obvious were it not for the charisma of Aryo as a performer. He commits utterly to everything he does and so is eminently watchable. In turn, the strangeness of the world that he and Arash create, in which everyday objects and tasks are turned into exceptional and even alienating phenomena, reminds us of how thoroughly we have internalized war into our daily diet.
Finally, the evening concluded with a short excerpt from Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg's work-in-progress, I can't remember the word for I can't remember, a collaboration with local actor/writer/director John Murphy. Loping on stage on all fours like a chimpanzee, Friedenberg opens her big expressive eyes wide and blinks blankly out at the audience before climbing into the lap of one front-row spectator and proceeding to pick invisible gnats out of his hair. Already we are putty in her hilarious hands. After a short blackout, Friedenberg stands fully upright centre stage in a square of white light. She launches into a monologue, or at least one side of two potential dialgogues, about how she can't remember with whom she was having a conversation. This theme of waning memory, linked closely by Friedenberg to our current age of multiple electronic devices, social media and general information overload (who can remember anyone's phone number anymore, she asks), alternates with the piece's other big concern, namely the categorical boxes into which we slot different people, and into which we in turn are slotted (or slot ourselves). On the one hand, Friedenberg seems to be suggesting, there is the forgetting that happens as a result of benign neglect--that is, because we have ceded the task of remembering to software and big data. And then there is the more wilful forgetting we do, the things (or people) we put into boxes and then hide away at the back of our closets or underneath our beds. There's no suggestion at this point which kind of amnesia is more harmful, although (to go back to her opening entrance) Friedenberg does hint that both are evolutionary processes. And that each has bodily effects--which she ably demonstrates through a series of physical scores that accompany her text. I look forward to how text and movement evolve together in this piece as Friedenberg and Murphy continue with its development.
P
First up was dumb instrument Dance's Ziyian Kwan, remounting the neck to fall, which she first presented at Dance in Vancouver in 2013, and which I have previously written about here. The piece's movement has changed over time, as has Kwan's costume (I recall a black suit and heels from the premiere). But the core set of objects with which Kwan interacts remain; these include two cardboard boxes, one small and one large, two sets of chopsticks, a large plastic bag into which she sinks her head and body, and a furry stool, upon which Kwan at one point mimes a virtuosic cello solo, an ode to composer Peggy Lee's wonderful musical score. Each object anchors a set of external commands (delivered by a recorded Asian female voice) against which Kwan struggles to adapt her body, the piece being as much a rumination on perceptions of racialized and gendered comportment as it is a tribute to the pioneering work of somatic practitioner Amelia Itcush.
The second piece on the program was The Biting School's Helmeat. To the pounding beat of the classic song "War: What Is It Good For?," the curtain opens upon Aryo Kkakpour kneeling at the downstage edge of a red-taped square; he wears a red jumpsuit reminiscent of prison garb and wrapped around his head is a turban of tinfoil. At a certain point Khakpour unplugs the cable of the speaker to his right and the music stops; he begins to methodically lay out tiny squares of tin foil in a grid just on the other side of the downstage edge of the red tape. Retreating upstage and calling for the lights to dim, the next thing we see is Khakpour rolling about the stage, crushing the tinfoil atop his head into a face-masking silvery balaclava, minus the eye and mouth holes; thus blinded our hero staggers about his enclosure, feeling his way from object to object (two stacks of wrapped helmets upstage, a full-length mirror, a shopping cart, and that speaker) via the tape on the floor. However, the signature moment in the piece must surely be the extended bit of coitus that Khakpour engages in with the shopping cart, grinding his pelvis into its handle as he slowly positions it in front of the mirror. Climbing in, he takes out a kazoo and proceeds to hum out the tune to "The Ride of the Valkyries." The piece concludes with Khakpour turning over an actual helmet to reveal a mess of hamburger meat inside. Telling us that this is what we've been waiting for, he then proceeds to roll the ground beef into individual meatballs, which he slowly and deliberately places upon the squares of tinfoil from the top of the show. While this is happening, Arash Khakpour--Aryo's brother and the other half of The Biting School--emerges from the wings and begins striking the set. The link established by the two brothers between consumerism, petroleum products and war might seem a bit obvious were it not for the charisma of Aryo as a performer. He commits utterly to everything he does and so is eminently watchable. In turn, the strangeness of the world that he and Arash create, in which everyday objects and tasks are turned into exceptional and even alienating phenomena, reminds us of how thoroughly we have internalized war into our daily diet.
Finally, the evening concluded with a short excerpt from Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg's work-in-progress, I can't remember the word for I can't remember, a collaboration with local actor/writer/director John Murphy. Loping on stage on all fours like a chimpanzee, Friedenberg opens her big expressive eyes wide and blinks blankly out at the audience before climbing into the lap of one front-row spectator and proceeding to pick invisible gnats out of his hair. Already we are putty in her hilarious hands. After a short blackout, Friedenberg stands fully upright centre stage in a square of white light. She launches into a monologue, or at least one side of two potential dialgogues, about how she can't remember with whom she was having a conversation. This theme of waning memory, linked closely by Friedenberg to our current age of multiple electronic devices, social media and general information overload (who can remember anyone's phone number anymore, she asks), alternates with the piece's other big concern, namely the categorical boxes into which we slot different people, and into which we in turn are slotted (or slot ourselves). On the one hand, Friedenberg seems to be suggesting, there is the forgetting that happens as a result of benign neglect--that is, because we have ceded the task of remembering to software and big data. And then there is the more wilful forgetting we do, the things (or people) we put into boxes and then hide away at the back of our closets or underneath our beds. There's no suggestion at this point which kind of amnesia is more harmful, although (to go back to her opening entrance) Friedenberg does hint that both are evolutionary processes. And that each has bodily effects--which she ably demonstrates through a series of physical scores that accompany her text. I look forward to how text and movement evolve together in this piece as Friedenberg and Murphy continue with its development.
P
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Edge 6 at Dancing on the Edge
Last night, as part of the Edge 6 program at this year's Dancing on the Edge Festival, I got a chance to revisit--and enjoy all over again--two works I had previously seen in earlier incarnations. A version of Tara Cheyenne Performance's how to be, which TCP AD and choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg has been developing with collaborators Justine Chambers, Susan Elliott, Kate Franklin, Josh Martin, Bevin Poole, Kim Stevenson, and Marcus Youssef since last fall, was showcased as part of Boca del Lupo's Micro-Performance Series earlier this spring. I wrote about that performance, a trio featuring Friedenberg, Franklin and Stevenson, and very much tailored to the tight confines of the Anderson Street Space on Granville Island where it was performed, here. For this iteration, which I was privileged to witness being partially built as part of a studio visit last month, Friedenberg has taken herself out of the dancing equation for the first time in her company's history. Instead, she has constructed from the abundant raw materials of movement and spoken text that are her stock in trade a series of vignettes for Stevenson, Franklin, Martin, Poole and Youssef that focus on what I will call the "doing of being," asking what it means when we materialize our aspirational or compensatory or competitive thoughts about who or what we wish to be as physical enactments of struggle or mimicry or synchronicity or incongruity.
For Youssef, a theatre artist, this means dealing with his anxiety about performing as a dancer in this piece, something Friedenberg showcases right at the top of the show. Just as Firehall AD and DOTE producer Donna Spencer is finishing her curtain speech, Youssef, nattily attired in suit jacket and tie, descends to the stage from where he had been sitting in the audience. He places a notebook before him on the floor, consults it briefly, and then begins to assume various ballet positions with his feet, eventually ending up in third--and demonstrating a fantastic turn-out in the process! More consultation of the book follows, and then an attempt at an arabesque. Next we get a bit of tap and step-dancing. And, finally, the big finish: a double pirouette with planted jazz hands. Consult, repeat: just as Youssef starts to win us over with his efforts, the other dancers--also surreptitiously embedded in the audience, and similarly attired in jackets and ties--descend one by one to the stage, with Stevenson (who happened to be sitting beside me) bringing up the rear. Forming a quartet upstage right, they cycle fluidly and in unison through the steps Youssef has been trying to master, and which he now seeks to match with ever increasing desperation to their rhythms. This sequence culminates with Youssef taking to the chair that has been positioned downstage centre, the other dancers clustered around him as he begins to talk to an off-stage analyst about his relationship with his father and an older sibling he never knew he had. The psychology of the group is still in play, however, as the other performers variously mimic and mock Youssef behind his back; whenever he turns around, they pretend to be engaged in some other activity: we hear the tail-end of a joke being told by Martin; or else Poole has launched herself into an energetic round of charades. In both cases, Youssef is clearly positioned as being on the outside of the group and amidst this at once proximate and separate relation of bodies before us we see how the principle of inclusion and exclusion is central to identity formation in our culture.
Each of the other performers experiences her or his own moment of separateness within the group, and to the extent that I read this piece as an attempt on Friedenberg's part to explore the question of dance ontology within a larger spectrum of ways of being in the world, it was fascinating to watch these amazingly talented but also very different movers explore the dialectic of coming together as an ensemble while also holding on to their individual expressiveness. This is a tension for any freelance dance artist performing in someone else's work, but throw in the fact that in this case the choreographer is known for her highly charismatic solo dance-theatre performances, and one can perhaps see why Friedenberg chose to absent herself from the stage in this case. Instead, the role of comic cut-up is here taken over by Stevenson, who in a virtuosic spoken word sequence demonstrates her mastery of faux-sincerity in praising the talents of her fellow performers in relation to herself, all the while simultaneously masquerading and revealing in her gestures the violence such comparisons are doing to her own psyche. Franklin is utterly compelling in a section in which she is literally straining to make herself seen and heard while being forcibly constrained by three of the other dancers. Poole makes Michael Bolton's power ballad "How Can We Be Lovers" utterly her own, despite the opprobrium of the others. And Martin has a hilarious Magic Mike moment in which we witness the uber B-boy give way to his inner Beyonce, swinging his hips, shaking his ass, and vogueing like there's no tomorrow. There's also a terrific duet between Stevenson and Franklin that turns (again, quite literally) on the often fine line between affection and aggression, as the two attempt to trade ever more physical kisses and caresses while also tossing out compliments that start to sound like personal indictments.
Before Stevenson and Franklin come to actual blows, Martin and Poole intervene, and the piece concludes with two couples waltzing to Prince's "Purple Rain." Youssef watches from the sidelines, the non-dancer yet again excluded from the group. Until, following a brief blackout, we see him centre stage, busting a set of grooves that, to refer back to his opening attempts to follow a choreographic score, suggests that sometimes to be part of a structure you just have to improvise.
Structured improvisation is the basis for Mutable Subject/Deanna Peters' NEW RAW. I first saw the piece as part of EDAM's fall choreographic series in 2013, and wrote briefly about that premiere here. Following a second outing in Edmonton in 2014, we are now getting, at DOTE 2015, version 3.0.
The piece begins with dancer Molly McDermott slouched in a chair downstage right, her head thrown back. She is illuminated from above by a soft spot. Peters stands beside her, in the half-light; her back is turned towards us, a sliver of which we can see courtesy of the suit jacket she is wearing back-to-front. As McDermott begins to twist and contort the lower half of her body in the chair, her toes somehow always in demi-pointe, Peters rests her right hand just above McDermott's right shoulder, as if seeking to calm or still or comfort her--or maybe just to prevent her movements from getting too out of control (a point to which I will return). At a certain point the chair begins to move, pulled backwards by an unseen Alexa Mardon, who is crouched behind it. By the time the chair comes to a stop upstage, McDermott's movements have become a riot of frenetic tics and crooked shapes and the chair starts to take on more ominous associations--as something to which McDermott's body has been tied or strapped, for example, and from which she is seeking to free herself (in which case that hovering hand of Peters is perhaps not so benevolent after all, and maybe that open slit from the backwards suit jacket starts to look like one we'd see on a standard issue hospital gown). Then, too, as an object that encodes and scripts an entire history of sedentary gendered behaviour, the chair carries associations of decorous bodily comportment (women don't usually get to manspread) against which McDermott might be rightly rebelling.
McDermott does eventually escape the chair's confines, and after she and Mardon exit the stage, Peters, still with her back too us, turns turntablist, putting on an old 45 and cranking up the volume. There follows a most compelling floor solo, in which Peters moves her body across the stage in a series of sexily languorous poses, exposing the gorgeous curves and silhouette of her back to us as the suit jacket falls about her head, but always keeping her face from us. Indeed, one of the things that is most interesting about the opening of NEW RAW is how consciously Peters has herself and her fellow female dancers avoid the (presumptively male) gaze of the audience: Peters dances with her back to us; McDermott, while in the chair, has her head cast upward to the ceiling; and Mardon in the opening sequence is completely invisible behind the chair. A little later on, following an amazingly physical duet between Mardon and McDermott in which the former aggressively "manhandles" (the word seems appropriate in this context) the latter, these three will perform an improvised trio of walking with album covers held in front of their faces. And when the fourth dancer in the group, Elissa Hanson, finally appears she does so by shimmying on stage on all fours, her ass in the air--and defiantly in our noses.
Hanson's delayed appearance is the prelude to the thumping climax of NEW RAW, in which the four dancers move from avoiding the potentially objectifying gaze of the audience to actively soliciting and even owning that gaze--of being quite explicitly in our faces. This begins when Hanson eventually stands upright and turns around, her acknowledgement of us and what we want prompting her to tease us with a catalogue of provocative poses culled from the catwalk and beauty pageants and striptease; a highlight during this sequence is when the flirty little moue Hanson begins to make with her mouth grows bigger and bigger, turning into a gaping open maw that functions simultaneously as a silent scream at the indignity of our presence before her. Thereafter, as the music gets louder and louder, the women improvise a series of forward and backward movement lines, their accelerations towards and retreats from us operating like a taunt. Yes, here we are dancing in front of you. But that doesn't mean we are dancing for you. It's a cheeky dance slap in the face. And it feels amazing.
P.
For Youssef, a theatre artist, this means dealing with his anxiety about performing as a dancer in this piece, something Friedenberg showcases right at the top of the show. Just as Firehall AD and DOTE producer Donna Spencer is finishing her curtain speech, Youssef, nattily attired in suit jacket and tie, descends to the stage from where he had been sitting in the audience. He places a notebook before him on the floor, consults it briefly, and then begins to assume various ballet positions with his feet, eventually ending up in third--and demonstrating a fantastic turn-out in the process! More consultation of the book follows, and then an attempt at an arabesque. Next we get a bit of tap and step-dancing. And, finally, the big finish: a double pirouette with planted jazz hands. Consult, repeat: just as Youssef starts to win us over with his efforts, the other dancers--also surreptitiously embedded in the audience, and similarly attired in jackets and ties--descend one by one to the stage, with Stevenson (who happened to be sitting beside me) bringing up the rear. Forming a quartet upstage right, they cycle fluidly and in unison through the steps Youssef has been trying to master, and which he now seeks to match with ever increasing desperation to their rhythms. This sequence culminates with Youssef taking to the chair that has been positioned downstage centre, the other dancers clustered around him as he begins to talk to an off-stage analyst about his relationship with his father and an older sibling he never knew he had. The psychology of the group is still in play, however, as the other performers variously mimic and mock Youssef behind his back; whenever he turns around, they pretend to be engaged in some other activity: we hear the tail-end of a joke being told by Martin; or else Poole has launched herself into an energetic round of charades. In both cases, Youssef is clearly positioned as being on the outside of the group and amidst this at once proximate and separate relation of bodies before us we see how the principle of inclusion and exclusion is central to identity formation in our culture.
Each of the other performers experiences her or his own moment of separateness within the group, and to the extent that I read this piece as an attempt on Friedenberg's part to explore the question of dance ontology within a larger spectrum of ways of being in the world, it was fascinating to watch these amazingly talented but also very different movers explore the dialectic of coming together as an ensemble while also holding on to their individual expressiveness. This is a tension for any freelance dance artist performing in someone else's work, but throw in the fact that in this case the choreographer is known for her highly charismatic solo dance-theatre performances, and one can perhaps see why Friedenberg chose to absent herself from the stage in this case. Instead, the role of comic cut-up is here taken over by Stevenson, who in a virtuosic spoken word sequence demonstrates her mastery of faux-sincerity in praising the talents of her fellow performers in relation to herself, all the while simultaneously masquerading and revealing in her gestures the violence such comparisons are doing to her own psyche. Franklin is utterly compelling in a section in which she is literally straining to make herself seen and heard while being forcibly constrained by three of the other dancers. Poole makes Michael Bolton's power ballad "How Can We Be Lovers" utterly her own, despite the opprobrium of the others. And Martin has a hilarious Magic Mike moment in which we witness the uber B-boy give way to his inner Beyonce, swinging his hips, shaking his ass, and vogueing like there's no tomorrow. There's also a terrific duet between Stevenson and Franklin that turns (again, quite literally) on the often fine line between affection and aggression, as the two attempt to trade ever more physical kisses and caresses while also tossing out compliments that start to sound like personal indictments.
Before Stevenson and Franklin come to actual blows, Martin and Poole intervene, and the piece concludes with two couples waltzing to Prince's "Purple Rain." Youssef watches from the sidelines, the non-dancer yet again excluded from the group. Until, following a brief blackout, we see him centre stage, busting a set of grooves that, to refer back to his opening attempts to follow a choreographic score, suggests that sometimes to be part of a structure you just have to improvise.
Structured improvisation is the basis for Mutable Subject/Deanna Peters' NEW RAW. I first saw the piece as part of EDAM's fall choreographic series in 2013, and wrote briefly about that premiere here. Following a second outing in Edmonton in 2014, we are now getting, at DOTE 2015, version 3.0.
The piece begins with dancer Molly McDermott slouched in a chair downstage right, her head thrown back. She is illuminated from above by a soft spot. Peters stands beside her, in the half-light; her back is turned towards us, a sliver of which we can see courtesy of the suit jacket she is wearing back-to-front. As McDermott begins to twist and contort the lower half of her body in the chair, her toes somehow always in demi-pointe, Peters rests her right hand just above McDermott's right shoulder, as if seeking to calm or still or comfort her--or maybe just to prevent her movements from getting too out of control (a point to which I will return). At a certain point the chair begins to move, pulled backwards by an unseen Alexa Mardon, who is crouched behind it. By the time the chair comes to a stop upstage, McDermott's movements have become a riot of frenetic tics and crooked shapes and the chair starts to take on more ominous associations--as something to which McDermott's body has been tied or strapped, for example, and from which she is seeking to free herself (in which case that hovering hand of Peters is perhaps not so benevolent after all, and maybe that open slit from the backwards suit jacket starts to look like one we'd see on a standard issue hospital gown). Then, too, as an object that encodes and scripts an entire history of sedentary gendered behaviour, the chair carries associations of decorous bodily comportment (women don't usually get to manspread) against which McDermott might be rightly rebelling.
McDermott does eventually escape the chair's confines, and after she and Mardon exit the stage, Peters, still with her back too us, turns turntablist, putting on an old 45 and cranking up the volume. There follows a most compelling floor solo, in which Peters moves her body across the stage in a series of sexily languorous poses, exposing the gorgeous curves and silhouette of her back to us as the suit jacket falls about her head, but always keeping her face from us. Indeed, one of the things that is most interesting about the opening of NEW RAW is how consciously Peters has herself and her fellow female dancers avoid the (presumptively male) gaze of the audience: Peters dances with her back to us; McDermott, while in the chair, has her head cast upward to the ceiling; and Mardon in the opening sequence is completely invisible behind the chair. A little later on, following an amazingly physical duet between Mardon and McDermott in which the former aggressively "manhandles" (the word seems appropriate in this context) the latter, these three will perform an improvised trio of walking with album covers held in front of their faces. And when the fourth dancer in the group, Elissa Hanson, finally appears she does so by shimmying on stage on all fours, her ass in the air--and defiantly in our noses.
Hanson's delayed appearance is the prelude to the thumping climax of NEW RAW, in which the four dancers move from avoiding the potentially objectifying gaze of the audience to actively soliciting and even owning that gaze--of being quite explicitly in our faces. This begins when Hanson eventually stands upright and turns around, her acknowledgement of us and what we want prompting her to tease us with a catalogue of provocative poses culled from the catwalk and beauty pageants and striptease; a highlight during this sequence is when the flirty little moue Hanson begins to make with her mouth grows bigger and bigger, turning into a gaping open maw that functions simultaneously as a silent scream at the indignity of our presence before her. Thereafter, as the music gets louder and louder, the women improvise a series of forward and backward movement lines, their accelerations towards and retreats from us operating like a taunt. Yes, here we are dancing in front of you. But that doesn't mean we are dancing for you. It's a cheeky dance slap in the face. And it feels amazing.
P.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Tara Cheyenne Performance and Kidd Pivot in Rehearsal
Yesterday was a pretty special day. I got to sit in on rehearsals by two amazing Vancouver dance artists who will be premiering new work in July. And while very different in scale and tone, it was interesting for me to note that both works are consciously being constructed as dance-theatre performances, not least in their combining of text and movement. The pieces also share the distinction of having well-known local actors move (quite literally) outside their traditional comfort zones on stage, partnering with professional dancers to tell a story via kinaesthetic as well as narrative means.
The first rehearsal was of Tara Cheyenne Performance's How to Be, which will play the Firehall as part of the Dancing on the Edge Festival in three weeks. TCP Artistic Director and choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is working with the amazingly talented Kate Franklin, Josh Martin, Bevin Poole, Kim Stevenson, and Marcus Youssef on what will be her second group show after the highly successful Highgate. However, this current work--a scaled down excerpt of which Friedenberg showed as part of Boca del Lupo's Micro-Performance Series at the Anderson Street Space earlier this spring--eschews Highgate's overt theatricality in favour of a deliberately toned down, non-spectacular and process-oriented exploration of themes of subjectivity, authenticity and relationality. The performers, all playing versions of themselves, are modelling for us in their individual movement styles and ways of being in their very different bodies, as well as in the coming together--sometimes harmoniously, sometimes more fractiously--of those styles and bodies, how all of us as human subjects must move through this world at once singly and as part of a larger collective.
All of this makes for some amazing comic set pieces (which I won't spoil before the piece opens), but also moments of truly poignant intimacy and vulnerability--what Friedenberg described as "hilarious heartbreak." It was also such a privilege to watch Friendenberg, who is not dancing in this iteration of the piece, work with her performers, at one point trying out three different spatial configurations of a sequence with Poole before very naturally and organically landing on what felt like the right fit. And all of this while keeping up a steady stream of witty banter and trademark one-liners. I know from experience what a joy it is to work with Friendeberg, and this studio visit (to Stevenson's shiny new space, The Happening, on Fraser at 39th) only confirmed that fact. I look forward to the DOTE show, as well as the full-scale version of the piece at the Cultch that Friendeberg is working towards for April 2017.
The second rehearsal visit took place at Progress Lab 1422 on William Street, where Kidd Pivot's Crystal Pite was working on a sequence from her new work-in-progress Betroffenheit. A co-production with PL 1422 co-tenants Electric Company Theatre, the piece will have its world premiere in Toronto at the end of July as part of the Panamania Festival that runs in conjunction with the PanAm and ParaPanAm Games. Vancouver audiences have to wait until next February to see the finished work; however, the presenters of that staging, DanceHouse, arranged yesterday's sneak peek as a perk for subscribers and donors. What we saw was an excerpt of a complex and highly physical duet between actor, ECT founding member and Betroffenheit co-creator Jonathon Young and dancer Tiffany Tregarthen. Betroffenheit is one of those composite German words that manages to encompass a complexity of meaning that seems inexpressible in anything other than a full sentence in English; in this case, it refers to the state of shock and bewilderment that befalls one in the wake of a disaster. It is, I am assuming, just such a state that Young's character finds himself in when he encounters the creature played by Tregarthen. It's not clear whether this creature is a magical being from another dimension or a product of Young's character's imagination; whatever the case, both Young and Tregarthen appear to be simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by each other, and the part of the duet we witnessed unfolds as at once a solicitous sharing of each other's bodily proximity and weight and as a desire to extricate oneself from the other's potentially threatening grip.
All of this results in some pretty acrobatic partnering, with Tregarthen at one point poised in the air over Young's prone body as she balances her knees on his raised hands and her own arms on his forehead. From this position she must then somersault backwards, while somehow also managing to pull herself and Young up to sitting position, so that they are both facing each other with legs extended and intertwined. It was fascinating to watch Pite work this particular bit over and over again, making minor adjustments (like having Tregarthen grab a bit of Young's shirt or getting Young to help out with momentum by giving Tregarthen a little shove) in order to refine the timing. Equally interesting to me was Young's running commentary as all of this was going on, bringing an actor's characterological "motivation" for his actions (e.g. "I have to get this thing off of me") to the specific physical tasks he needed to perform.
I couldn't stick around afterwards to mingle as I had to dash to the last of my Mountain View Solstice rehearsals. But a perfect day became even more special as I was exiting because I ran into Pite, who was ducking out to get a bit of air. I reminded her of who I was ("that annoying academic who wrote the article about your work"), and she was so gracious, saying how much she appreciated my interpretation of her work, and suggesting that we work together some day (!!!). Even if that never happens, it's enough of an ego-boost just thinking about the possibility. And all of Vancouver is richer for Pite's decision to pursue her career from here.
P.
The first rehearsal was of Tara Cheyenne Performance's How to Be, which will play the Firehall as part of the Dancing on the Edge Festival in three weeks. TCP Artistic Director and choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is working with the amazingly talented Kate Franklin, Josh Martin, Bevin Poole, Kim Stevenson, and Marcus Youssef on what will be her second group show after the highly successful Highgate. However, this current work--a scaled down excerpt of which Friedenberg showed as part of Boca del Lupo's Micro-Performance Series at the Anderson Street Space earlier this spring--eschews Highgate's overt theatricality in favour of a deliberately toned down, non-spectacular and process-oriented exploration of themes of subjectivity, authenticity and relationality. The performers, all playing versions of themselves, are modelling for us in their individual movement styles and ways of being in their very different bodies, as well as in the coming together--sometimes harmoniously, sometimes more fractiously--of those styles and bodies, how all of us as human subjects must move through this world at once singly and as part of a larger collective.
All of this makes for some amazing comic set pieces (which I won't spoil before the piece opens), but also moments of truly poignant intimacy and vulnerability--what Friedenberg described as "hilarious heartbreak." It was also such a privilege to watch Friendenberg, who is not dancing in this iteration of the piece, work with her performers, at one point trying out three different spatial configurations of a sequence with Poole before very naturally and organically landing on what felt like the right fit. And all of this while keeping up a steady stream of witty banter and trademark one-liners. I know from experience what a joy it is to work with Friendeberg, and this studio visit (to Stevenson's shiny new space, The Happening, on Fraser at 39th) only confirmed that fact. I look forward to the DOTE show, as well as the full-scale version of the piece at the Cultch that Friendeberg is working towards for April 2017.
The second rehearsal visit took place at Progress Lab 1422 on William Street, where Kidd Pivot's Crystal Pite was working on a sequence from her new work-in-progress Betroffenheit. A co-production with PL 1422 co-tenants Electric Company Theatre, the piece will have its world premiere in Toronto at the end of July as part of the Panamania Festival that runs in conjunction with the PanAm and ParaPanAm Games. Vancouver audiences have to wait until next February to see the finished work; however, the presenters of that staging, DanceHouse, arranged yesterday's sneak peek as a perk for subscribers and donors. What we saw was an excerpt of a complex and highly physical duet between actor, ECT founding member and Betroffenheit co-creator Jonathon Young and dancer Tiffany Tregarthen. Betroffenheit is one of those composite German words that manages to encompass a complexity of meaning that seems inexpressible in anything other than a full sentence in English; in this case, it refers to the state of shock and bewilderment that befalls one in the wake of a disaster. It is, I am assuming, just such a state that Young's character finds himself in when he encounters the creature played by Tregarthen. It's not clear whether this creature is a magical being from another dimension or a product of Young's character's imagination; whatever the case, both Young and Tregarthen appear to be simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by each other, and the part of the duet we witnessed unfolds as at once a solicitous sharing of each other's bodily proximity and weight and as a desire to extricate oneself from the other's potentially threatening grip.
All of this results in some pretty acrobatic partnering, with Tregarthen at one point poised in the air over Young's prone body as she balances her knees on his raised hands and her own arms on his forehead. From this position she must then somersault backwards, while somehow also managing to pull herself and Young up to sitting position, so that they are both facing each other with legs extended and intertwined. It was fascinating to watch Pite work this particular bit over and over again, making minor adjustments (like having Tregarthen grab a bit of Young's shirt or getting Young to help out with momentum by giving Tregarthen a little shove) in order to refine the timing. Equally interesting to me was Young's running commentary as all of this was going on, bringing an actor's characterological "motivation" for his actions (e.g. "I have to get this thing off of me") to the specific physical tasks he needed to perform.
I couldn't stick around afterwards to mingle as I had to dash to the last of my Mountain View Solstice rehearsals. But a perfect day became even more special as I was exiting because I ran into Pite, who was ducking out to get a bit of air. I reminded her of who I was ("that annoying academic who wrote the article about your work"), and she was so gracious, saying how much she appreciated my interpretation of her work, and suggesting that we work together some day (!!!). Even if that never happens, it's enough of an ego-boost just thinking about the possibility. And all of Vancouver is richer for Pite's decision to pursue her career from here.
P.
Monday, March 2, 2015
how to be at the Anderson Street Space
Yesterday afternoon I made my way to Granville Island to take in the first of this year's Micro Performance Series, presented by Boca del Lupo. Staged at the intimate Anderson Street Space, this season's line-up of shows kicked off with Tara Cheyenne Performance's how to be. An excerpt from a larger work-in-progress, the thirty minute piece is conceived and directed by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, who performs alongside Kate Franklin and Kim Stevenson.
After spectators are ushered into the tiny quadrangular performance space and we take our places leaning against the walls, the three women, clad nattily in men's suits, take turns entering and exiting from the lone door, sometimes muttering aloud to themselves, at other times simply taking the measure of the room. Eventually they come together in a whispered chorus of first world modal phrases: "I should juice more"; "I should do more Pilates"; "I should eat less pasta." As always with TCP, text is an equal partner alongside the movement, and in this case the interrogative mode ("Should I wax my pubic hair?") operates in dynamic tension with the declarative ("I'm very good at remembering song lyrics").
The performers, playing to the space, have fun rearranging audience members, positioning us into four groups (whose significance we discover at the end of the show). They also test the limits of our physical boundaries, inserting themselves at various points in between our own bodies, or snuggling up close for a quick nap or animated conversation with one or other of us. This is only appropriate given the intimacy of the space, as well as the larger issues Friedenberg seems to be exploring in this piece. Part of the question of "how to be"--especially in polyglot urban centres like Vancouver--is how to interact and get along and move beside others in proximate material relation: how, in other words, to share space with strangers. (And coming together as an audience has much to teach us in this regard.)
Friedenberg, who over the past decade has made her name as a charismatic solo performer, as fleet of tongue as she is of foot, builds here in how to be on her previous success in Highgate with multi-character work. She provides numerous opportunities for her fellow performers to shine. Thus, in an hilarious sequence involving the three women not only moving but speaking in unison, Stevenson emerges as a virtuoso comic mimic in the mould of her director, channeling her Jesus-loving grandmother as she laments the daily grind of trying to make her way as a single working artist in Vancouver. For her part, Franklin is given a show-stopping solo, in which she performs various ballet moves while offering advice-laden bromides to the audience: "Eat more organic vegetables"; "Call your mother"; "Don't be a dick."
All of this bodes extremely well for the full-length piece Friedenberg is working towards, not least when one considers that her other collaborators on the project include Justine Chambers, Susan Elliott, Josh Martin, Bevin Poole, and Marcus Youssef. At present, what was staged as part of Boca's MPS was a more than satisfying appetizer. Watching Friedenberg and Stevenson wrestle to kiss each other while Franklin does a stationary step dance against one wall or, alternately, Franklin and Friedenberg sing and sway along to the Whitney Houston standard "The Greatest Love of All" while a head-scratching Stevenson engages in random badinage with the audience, is pure comic gold.
P.
After spectators are ushered into the tiny quadrangular performance space and we take our places leaning against the walls, the three women, clad nattily in men's suits, take turns entering and exiting from the lone door, sometimes muttering aloud to themselves, at other times simply taking the measure of the room. Eventually they come together in a whispered chorus of first world modal phrases: "I should juice more"; "I should do more Pilates"; "I should eat less pasta." As always with TCP, text is an equal partner alongside the movement, and in this case the interrogative mode ("Should I wax my pubic hair?") operates in dynamic tension with the declarative ("I'm very good at remembering song lyrics").
The performers, playing to the space, have fun rearranging audience members, positioning us into four groups (whose significance we discover at the end of the show). They also test the limits of our physical boundaries, inserting themselves at various points in between our own bodies, or snuggling up close for a quick nap or animated conversation with one or other of us. This is only appropriate given the intimacy of the space, as well as the larger issues Friedenberg seems to be exploring in this piece. Part of the question of "how to be"--especially in polyglot urban centres like Vancouver--is how to interact and get along and move beside others in proximate material relation: how, in other words, to share space with strangers. (And coming together as an audience has much to teach us in this regard.)
Friedenberg, who over the past decade has made her name as a charismatic solo performer, as fleet of tongue as she is of foot, builds here in how to be on her previous success in Highgate with multi-character work. She provides numerous opportunities for her fellow performers to shine. Thus, in an hilarious sequence involving the three women not only moving but speaking in unison, Stevenson emerges as a virtuoso comic mimic in the mould of her director, channeling her Jesus-loving grandmother as she laments the daily grind of trying to make her way as a single working artist in Vancouver. For her part, Franklin is given a show-stopping solo, in which she performs various ballet moves while offering advice-laden bromides to the audience: "Eat more organic vegetables"; "Call your mother"; "Don't be a dick."
All of this bodes extremely well for the full-length piece Friedenberg is working towards, not least when one considers that her other collaborators on the project include Justine Chambers, Susan Elliott, Josh Martin, Bevin Poole, and Marcus Youssef. At present, what was staged as part of Boca's MPS was a more than satisfying appetizer. Watching Friedenberg and Stevenson wrestle to kiss each other while Franklin does a stationary step dance against one wall or, alternately, Franklin and Friedenberg sing and sway along to the Whitney Houston standard "The Greatest Love of All" while a head-scratching Stevenson engages in random badinage with the audience, is pure comic gold.
P.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Worshipping at the Altar of Tara Cheyenne
Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is a fearless performer: in making character the centre of her unique brand of dance-theatre; in using humour to probe some of our deepest cultural taboos and human fears; and in putting herself over and over again in positions of extreme vulnerability and/or ridiculousness in order to establish a connection with her audience.
All these elements are on display in her latest work, Porno Death Cult, on through this Saturday at the Firehall in a production directed by Neworld's Marcus Youssef. Based on a 2010 pilgrimage Friedenberg took along the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the work explores the eroticism of devotion, the pornography of belief: whether that comes in the form of slick, Vegas-style Christian evangelism; new age Yoga maxims; or simply wanting to be filled up, like Friendenberg's central character Maureen, with something that incarnates, or indeed makes plainly carnal, the experience of faith.
Channeling the seductive androgyny of Jared Leto on Oscar night, as well as so many images of a crucified Christ, Friendenberg arrives on stage in a white suit, her long hair hanging over her eyes, her body twitching and gyrating convulsively as she flits about the stage, trying not to step on the red-carpeted aisle leading from the audience to the wonderful altar-cum-iconographic-shrine designed by Mickey Meads. Eventually Friendenberg puts her hands together, as if to pray, and parts her mane of hair, peeking out shyly at us, her expectant congregation. But she cannot immediately speak and so instead she repeats a sequence of meek, almost apologetic gestures: grabbing her crotch, for example, as if in shame, or slowly turning her palms toward us in search of the stigmata she would have us understand was really there. Indeed, one of the things I found so compelling about this performance was how Friendenberg, as a dancer, made an idea like the mortification of flesh--a fetish at once religious and deeply erotic--into a richly satisfying kinesthetic experience.
Then, too, whether it was through a compelling and physically exhausting sequence of kneels, or in her expert demonstration of various iconic yoga poses, Friendenberg also used movement (alongside a steady stream of words) to suggest how much of belief is merely habit. As Pascal famously said, "Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe." Which is, on one level, the lesson that Maureen learns over the course of the show. Having waited in vain for a special visitation from the Son of God--a deeply longed for embodied encounter, à la Madonna in "Like a Prayer," with that obscure object of desire on the cross--at the end of the show Maureen takes a seat among us in the audience, turning to a fellow supplicant in the daily pilgrimage that is life and asking: "How was your week?"
It is Friendenberg's uncanny ability to combine the ecstatic and the banal into such moments of collective transformation that makes me a believer.
P.
All these elements are on display in her latest work, Porno Death Cult, on through this Saturday at the Firehall in a production directed by Neworld's Marcus Youssef. Based on a 2010 pilgrimage Friedenberg took along the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the work explores the eroticism of devotion, the pornography of belief: whether that comes in the form of slick, Vegas-style Christian evangelism; new age Yoga maxims; or simply wanting to be filled up, like Friendenberg's central character Maureen, with something that incarnates, or indeed makes plainly carnal, the experience of faith.
Channeling the seductive androgyny of Jared Leto on Oscar night, as well as so many images of a crucified Christ, Friendenberg arrives on stage in a white suit, her long hair hanging over her eyes, her body twitching and gyrating convulsively as she flits about the stage, trying not to step on the red-carpeted aisle leading from the audience to the wonderful altar-cum-iconographic-shrine designed by Mickey Meads. Eventually Friendenberg puts her hands together, as if to pray, and parts her mane of hair, peeking out shyly at us, her expectant congregation. But she cannot immediately speak and so instead she repeats a sequence of meek, almost apologetic gestures: grabbing her crotch, for example, as if in shame, or slowly turning her palms toward us in search of the stigmata she would have us understand was really there. Indeed, one of the things I found so compelling about this performance was how Friendenberg, as a dancer, made an idea like the mortification of flesh--a fetish at once religious and deeply erotic--into a richly satisfying kinesthetic experience.
Then, too, whether it was through a compelling and physically exhausting sequence of kneels, or in her expert demonstration of various iconic yoga poses, Friendenberg also used movement (alongside a steady stream of words) to suggest how much of belief is merely habit. As Pascal famously said, "Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe." Which is, on one level, the lesson that Maureen learns over the course of the show. Having waited in vain for a special visitation from the Son of God--a deeply longed for embodied encounter, à la Madonna in "Like a Prayer," with that obscure object of desire on the cross--at the end of the show Maureen takes a seat among us in the audience, turning to a fellow supplicant in the daily pilgrimage that is life and asking: "How was your week?"
It is Friendenberg's uncanny ability to combine the ecstatic and the banal into such moments of collective transformation that makes me a believer.
P.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Dance in Vancouver Programs 1 and 2
The 2013 Dance in Vancouver Biennial ended last night at the Dance Centre with a reprise of this year's mainstage programs 1 and 2--only in reverse order from how they played Wednesday evening.
Leading off the 7 pm program was A Crazy Kind of Hope, conceived and directed by Sarah Chase, of Astrid Dance, in collaboration with Toronto-based performer Andrea Nann, Artistic Director of Dreamwalker Dance. Excerpted from a longer work-in-progress, the piece begins with Nann standing on a bench upstage right, looping her arms in a series of graceful arcs as she begins to tell us a story of the Chinatown origins of her Uncle Wayne's carp pond on Hornby Island. This conceit of matching a series of repeated gestures to a gradually unfolding narrative continues with Nann's description of a subsequent trip to Tofino with her husband and daughter, and finally culminates in a stunning loop of ninety-nine arm waves (11 circuits of 9 gestures each) in which Nann brings together the spirit of her daughter, who died very young, with the brother she never knew. The piece unfolds like a beautiful mathematical equation, our delight and wonder increasing as, through the accumulation of repeated gestures, we start to recognize the work's patterns.
Next up was Vancouver stalwart Joe Laughlin's Left. In this iconic work a male dancer (Kevin Tookey) in Elizabethan ruff and cuffs is at once seduced by and himself attempts to woo a teacup, positioned centre stage. And we in turn are seduced not just by Laughlin's precise choreography, as Tookey steps daintily around and gingerly balances with the focalizing piece of china, but also by James Proudfoot's amazing lighting, which expands and contracts the spotlight around (and at one point within) the teacup to dizzying effect.
Following the intermission, Wen Wei Dance Artistic Director Wen Wei Wang unveiled a work in progress called Made in China, co-created and performed with Gao Yanjinzi, Artistic Director of Beijing Modern Dance Company (and seven months pregnant!), Qui Xia He, of the Vancouver-based Silk Road Music ensemble, and the multi-talented video and sound artist (and SFU Contemporary Arts alum) Sammy Chien. The piece uses movement, music, spoken word, and projections to explore the collaborators' common cultural and different personal relationships with China. Seeing Wang, in particular, interact with the black and white palette of Chien's live video projections was mezmerizing, and I look forward to the unveiling of the full piece.
Finally, the evening closed with an excerpt from Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg's Highgate, her intensely theatrical and mordantly funny take on Victorian funerary culture. Very much a work of dance-theatre, in which text and movement are fully coeval, the piece focuses on Mrs. Graves (Friedenberg) and her trio of professional mourners (Alison Denham, Bevin Poole, and Susan Elliott), who are linked not just by their testaments but also by their vestments of mourning. By that I mean that costume designer Alice Mansell's shared skirt for the women plays a starring role in the work, leading to many of the wonders of Friendenberg's choreography as the dancers bend and twist and contort their bodies into various states of lamentation--all to the precise cues of Marc Stewart's richly immersive score. Needless to say, Friendenberg herself is a compelling performer, and her Mrs. Graves will go down with Goggles as one of her most memorable characters yet.
Afterwards I once again led a talkback with the artists from the 9 pm program, and after worrying how I would put Wang's and Friendberg's very different works together, we ended up having a very interesting conversation about compositional process and cross-disciplinary collaboration. All in all it was another great edition of Dance in Vancouver, and I'm so glad I was able to participate in my own small way.
P.
Leading off the 7 pm program was A Crazy Kind of Hope, conceived and directed by Sarah Chase, of Astrid Dance, in collaboration with Toronto-based performer Andrea Nann, Artistic Director of Dreamwalker Dance. Excerpted from a longer work-in-progress, the piece begins with Nann standing on a bench upstage right, looping her arms in a series of graceful arcs as she begins to tell us a story of the Chinatown origins of her Uncle Wayne's carp pond on Hornby Island. This conceit of matching a series of repeated gestures to a gradually unfolding narrative continues with Nann's description of a subsequent trip to Tofino with her husband and daughter, and finally culminates in a stunning loop of ninety-nine arm waves (11 circuits of 9 gestures each) in which Nann brings together the spirit of her daughter, who died very young, with the brother she never knew. The piece unfolds like a beautiful mathematical equation, our delight and wonder increasing as, through the accumulation of repeated gestures, we start to recognize the work's patterns.
Next up was Vancouver stalwart Joe Laughlin's Left. In this iconic work a male dancer (Kevin Tookey) in Elizabethan ruff and cuffs is at once seduced by and himself attempts to woo a teacup, positioned centre stage. And we in turn are seduced not just by Laughlin's precise choreography, as Tookey steps daintily around and gingerly balances with the focalizing piece of china, but also by James Proudfoot's amazing lighting, which expands and contracts the spotlight around (and at one point within) the teacup to dizzying effect.
Following the intermission, Wen Wei Dance Artistic Director Wen Wei Wang unveiled a work in progress called Made in China, co-created and performed with Gao Yanjinzi, Artistic Director of Beijing Modern Dance Company (and seven months pregnant!), Qui Xia He, of the Vancouver-based Silk Road Music ensemble, and the multi-talented video and sound artist (and SFU Contemporary Arts alum) Sammy Chien. The piece uses movement, music, spoken word, and projections to explore the collaborators' common cultural and different personal relationships with China. Seeing Wang, in particular, interact with the black and white palette of Chien's live video projections was mezmerizing, and I look forward to the unveiling of the full piece.
Finally, the evening closed with an excerpt from Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg's Highgate, her intensely theatrical and mordantly funny take on Victorian funerary culture. Very much a work of dance-theatre, in which text and movement are fully coeval, the piece focuses on Mrs. Graves (Friedenberg) and her trio of professional mourners (Alison Denham, Bevin Poole, and Susan Elliott), who are linked not just by their testaments but also by their vestments of mourning. By that I mean that costume designer Alice Mansell's shared skirt for the women plays a starring role in the work, leading to many of the wonders of Friendenberg's choreography as the dancers bend and twist and contort their bodies into various states of lamentation--all to the precise cues of Marc Stewart's richly immersive score. Needless to say, Friendenberg herself is a compelling performer, and her Mrs. Graves will go down with Goggles as one of her most memorable characters yet.
Afterwards I once again led a talkback with the artists from the 9 pm program, and after worrying how I would put Wang's and Friendberg's very different works together, we ended up having a very interesting conversation about compositional process and cross-disciplinary collaboration. All in all it was another great edition of Dance in Vancouver, and I'm so glad I was able to participate in my own small way.
P.
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