Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Performance Day

Yesterday, the first day of summer, was one of those gorgeous sunny Vancouver days when the city shows itself off in truly spectacular style. And then promptly serves up way too many competing activities to enjoy it by: the Dragon Boat Festival at South False Creek; Car Free Day on Main Street and Commercial Drive; the Jazz Fest; National Aboriginal Day festivities at Trout Lake; the much-mocked group yoga thingy that was moved from the Burrard Street Bridge to the Plaza of Nations; FIFA Women's World Cup action; and a little thing called Father's Day. And then, of course, there was the most important event of all: our Summer Solstice Dance and Music Celebration at Mountain View Cemetery.

I decided to walk up Main Street to 37th in advance of our 4 pm call time. Big mistake. The throngs of people out enjoying the sun and free activities slowed me down. Plus I got distracted by the discounted clothing items at Motherland and Eugene Choo, and by friends I happened upon. By the time I got to Celebration Hall I was already sweating profusely. After a brief warm-up led by Hailey, Jessica definitively set which way we all moved during the in-out crouch step at the end of "New Friends," as we were finally all together. This involved a change of direction for me, which threw me off in the final run-through that followed. Fortunately I remembered to go the right way (which was actually the left way) during the actual performances.

As for those performances, I think they went very well. We had good crowds for each show; Mark and all the musicians were in fine form (and the sound was great); Diane's installation (a beautiful hall of mirrors referencing both Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel" and Jean Cocteau's Orphee) was a hit; Sarah managed to cajole and shame nearly everyone who came out to dance during the end of "Open Up Your Heart"; and the setting did not let us down, even cuing up a gorgeous sunset for the end of our 9 pm set. And then there was the dancing: mistakes were made, to be sure, and our timing was off in places. But we had fun, the audiences responded enthusiastically, and as with LGC we succeeded in animating an under-used public space in Vancouver through a coordinated artistic intervention.

On the latter front, it was great to see so many LGC alumni out to support us. I look forward to seeing them again in three weeks, when the documentary about the making of the Vancouver version of Le Grand Continental screens on the Queen E Plaza on July 14. In the meantime, later today I begin rehearsals for my next community dance project: Wreck Beach Butoh, which happens July 4 and 5. Onward in movement!

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 13

Even though we have another impromptu rehearsal scheduled for this Thursday, last night was officially our dress rehearsal. Diane had requested that we all wear our performance clothes, which meant we were awash in a sea of white--including Mark and his fellow musicians. It was really quite stunning visually--and that was from within the dancing cloud. I can only imagine what we look like from a distance, walking up towards Celebration Hall at the beginning of "Spiegel im Spiegel." It's true, some folks' white wardrobes are more impressive than others--Suzie and Hilary, in particular, were wearing gorgeous dresses--but everyone had made an effort with their outfits. Kitted out as we were, it felt like we were a real performance ensemble--that, or members of a religious cult (which, given the locale, wouldn't be such a stretch of the imagination).

There was no futzing with individual pieces or specific sections. It was straight into a full run-through of the entire piece, which we did three times to live musical accompaniment. Our timing was off in a few places and I for one made a series of small mistakes at various points (including stepping on poor Suzie's toes twice); however, overall things went fairly well. It was especially helpful to finally connect the three different sections of choreography, and to have the musicians there to give us specific cues to help with the transitions. One thing I have to remember is to be near the top of the triangle for the start of the mixing bowl bit of "Spiegel," as otherwise Suzie and I will be out of place for the waltz section.

There were lots of other small notes that Jessica and Hailey gave us, but mostly they reassured us that we looked great and that they could tell we were having fun. We had compliments, as well, from several curious passers by who paused to watch our antics or were drawn in by Sarah's booming voice.

Now we just have to hope that this gorgeous weather holds through to Sunday!

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 10

Last night we reached an important milestone in our rehearsals: we were joined by the musicians who will be performing the live score for us on the evening of June 21st. They include Little Chamber Music AD Mark Haney on double bass (whose original composition, "New Friends and Stranger Companies," is the second of the three works we dance to), Marina Hasselberg on cello, Adrian Verdejo on electric guitar, and Sarah Wheeler on vocals. Sarah's song, "Open Your Heart," is the third and final piece we dance to. We got a taste of what that choreography will look like when Jessica danced it solo for us while Sarah sang; the combination of Sarah's big voice and Jessica's fluid movements, combined with the fact that we were outside just at dusk, was intoxicating. Several of us suggested that we should just leave things like that, with Jessica dancing alone for the final number; that said, and as difficult as I know this new choreography will be to learn on top of all the rest, I am eager to start mastering these final steps. Sarah's song is big and bluesy and Jessica has appropriately composed a concluding line dance for us (shades of Le Grand Continental redux), complete with lots of turns and hip shimmies and hand claps.

Of course, we only have three more weeks in which to learn this--plus perfect the other two numbers. And I'm going to be away next week because of a conference. Oy vey!

Mark's friend Joelysa Pankanea was also there last night to teach those of us who wish to sing during the circle formation bit of "New Friends..." that particular bit of vocalization it. It sounded really great when everyone was just standing around inside Celebration Hall at the beginning (I wasn't singing, just listening). However, when we went outside and tried our first run through of this piece things sort of broke down. Trying to remember the choreography (and our spacing) from two weeks ago, combined with the added complexity of counting on our own in our heads to the live music, plus singing on top of all that proved too much for most of us. For now we've decided on a core of four singers who will break off and cluster in the centre during this bit, with those who wish to among the dancers free to join in while also moving should they see fit.

Working through "New Friends..." several times, we eventually did get the timing and most of the choreography in pretty good shape by the end. After the aforementioned preview of "Open Your Heart" by Sarah and Jessica, that left time for a couple of run throughs of "Spiegel Im Spiegel." Here the first challenge was hearing the music from where we start, at the edge of the road leading south to Celebration Hall. The second, for me, was working through the duet portion of the piece. For personal reasons, Suzie couldn't be there again last night and as it's been ages since we danced this bit together, I sort of just faked my way through. Tt's my turn to be away next week, and I'm wondering if we shouldn't book some extra time together to perfect this...

Notwithstanding all my very real anxieties about how much there is still to do between now and the performances on the 21st (another fun fact I learned last night: there'll be two of them, at 7 and 9 pm--see the poster below), I am proud to be part of this creative experiment. The music is amazing, Sarah's voice seems to fill the entirety of the spectacular Mountain View setting, and Jessica has worked hard to craft group movement that complements both. Clad all in white (I previewed my outfit last night), it'll seem like we're floating through space like one of Laban's famous movement choirs. And with any luck the dying light will mask our slight imperfections.

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 8

One thing my admittedly brief career in community dance has taught me: knowing how to count is important, especially when the musical beats are irregular and the accompanying movement even more improvisatory. All of which is to say that the careful reader of this blog (please identify yourself, whoever you are, so that we can have coffee!) will have noticed that I've skipped a number in my rehearsal documentation of the Mountain View Summer Solstice dance project. That's because I was in Montreal last week on business--a seemingly ridiculous phrase when applied to academics, but in this case I was truly in meetings for three days straight, from which I will also be producing a final report.

In my absence, Jessica and company finished setting the opening Arvo Part piece, which meant I had a lot of catching up to do at last night's rehearsal. I duly arrived early and tried to assimilate the last half of the duet that ends this section. But without Suzie there to accompany me it was a bit haphazard, and I mostly tried to focus my concentration on absorbing what Jessica was doing. Fortunately the new choreography repeats certain phrases from the first half of the piece, so I wasn't completely lost.

After the rest of the company's arrival, and following our opening warm-up, we moved on to learning brand new movement, which in this case will be accompanying the second of the three musical compositions of the evening. This is the original piece that Mark is in the midst of composing; the final version will be performed live on the evening of the actual performance, but for now he has given Jessica a skeletal bass track from which to begin building her choreography. He then plans to respond in turn by layering over different instrumental motifs. This is all very well and good in theory, but Heather wanted an assurance that Mark would at least provide us with a struck cymbal or some sort of other distinctive musical cue to alert us as to when we are to pop up from our bent-over, haunch-in-the-air grooving at the start of this piece.

We did spend a lot of time last night "assuming the position," to use Jessica's phrase--that is, bent over at the waist and sunk into our quads, moving only our tailbones and heads and fingertips for successive counts of eight (see, more dance numeracy!). This does eventually culminate in full verticality, leading into what I've dubbed our sci-fi sequence: a series of robotic steps forward that then segue into a brief and somewhat anomalous Fosse-esque jazz flourish that is really just a prelude to a longer Matrix-like bit of mirrored improvisation. I was partnered with Diane for the latter and we had a lot of fun channeling our inner Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss--though who was Neo and who was Trinity might have been hard to determine to the outside eye.

I have to say that I do like the improvisatory bits. It takes a lot of the pressure off in terms of the quality and the timing of the movement. But, as I suggested at the outset of this post, that doesn't mean that you can stop counting!

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 6

Last night we began outside! Jessica and Diane and Mark decided to take advantage of the gorgeously warm and light-filled evening by having us set our waltz partnering pattern on the paved promenade outside Celebration Hall.

However, figuring out when, and in what directions, the different quartets were meant to set off took some doing. Plus, truth be told, I think we were generally friskily distracted by being outside. If June 21 is anything like last night--complete with a lovely crescent moon--we're going to have some serious competition for spectators' attention. Nonetheless, Jessica and Hayley persevered (kudos to them both for dealing with such aplomb and forbearance with our chaotic and roady bunch--although Hayley did have to tell us to be quiet more than once last night, generally we get very few of the kind of dressings down for misbehaving we routinely received from Emily during LGC rehearsals).

After trying the waltz pattern a few more times with the music blaring from a portable speaker Mark had hooked up, we then did a trial run-through of our walking entrance. This starts from the bike bath that bisects the northern and southern sections of the cemetery--which is a long way away from where we're meant to end up, near Celebration Hall, at the end of this sequence. We may be sprinting during the last part of it.

After a short break, it was back inside to learn a new partnering phrase, one that incorporates some of the contact improv-style movement we experimented with in previous sections. Specifically, there is a finger and head sequence that involves some tricky transferring of weight. Suzie and I managed fairly well, although we were slightly off in our counts each time. And there were a few bumped foreheads.

Diane told us at the end of the rehearsal that we are behind in our rehearsals--only two months to the performance! So we definitely have to pick up the pace from here on in. We still have 15 or more minutes of the piece to set. Apparently we'll be finishing with the Part song next week--although I'll miss that, as I'm going to be away in Montreal.

I'll just have to practice in my hotel room with the videos.

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 4

We were reduced in numbers last night owing to the long weekend. Nevertheless, Jessica pressed ahead in teaching us new choreography.

Following from where we left off last week, we learned two new phrases of 16 counts each. When Jessica and Hayley (I'm still not sure I've got the right name) performed them successively for us to the music, they looked impossibly long and complicated. But when they were broken down and we assembled them together, in our own bodies, it was surprising not just how quickly (relatively speaking) we mastered them (again, relatively speaking). Even more surprising was how fast we sailed through them when we eventually put the phrases to the music. Then again, this is where time itself becomes relative in the dance studio. We've spent four weeks and a total of eight hours learning just 3.5 minutes of choreography. We're only half way through the first piece of music!

Speaking of that music, as with most post-classical compositions, it is incredibly difficult to count out the beats. There are very specific places in the Part piece where Jessica has us doing things, particularly during our walking circuits at the beginning. Last night Hayley was very helpfully counting out the beats so that we could know when these different bits were coming up. However, I'm pretty sure Mark and Diane don't have the budget to wire us all with ear pieces for the actual performance, so somehow we're going to have to each internalize this rhythm for ourselves.

Jessica and Hayley were going to spend the rest of the night after rehearsal making videos for us, which will definitely help. I've been lax in practising  at home so far. Partly that has to do with the frenzy of the end of term. However, I know the lack of visual aids is also a bit of a disincentive to using my own body to jog my memory--which is, of course, what I'll need to do come performance day.

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 3

I was pretty tired at the start of last night's rehearsal--a long day followed by a rushed dinner and a mostly uphill bike ride against the wind. When Mark announced that there was a plan afoot to have us sing in addition to dance during part of the June 21 performance I was suddenly re-energized--with horror! Fortunately it has since been clarified that the singing won't be compulsory. And it sounds like, as with the overall concept of the piece, this part of it has been thought through with care. I look forward to seeing how it evolves--just without me contributing any off-key bass notes.

After a brief warm-up Jessica showed us, through the small band of windows on the north side of Celebration Hall, where we would be beginning our dance--from just beyond the lip of the bike bath that cuts across the cemetery at 37th. We will process up to the Hall in time with the first piece of music, Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel." As part of that procession, however, there will be various bits of choreography, the first few motifs of which we learned last night. These included a simple bounce up and down on the spot to the first piano note; a reaching of our hands skyward and then a twisty floating of them down to our sides, followed by a final, gentle bump of the arms in time to another of the piano notes (a really gorgeous move); and, finally, a little grapevine and hop on the spot with a partner. The latter took Susie and I a bit of time to master, but eventually we got there--and we had a lot of fun doing so.

Then came the really complicated part: massing in a triangle formation and learning an 11-count sequence from start to finish. The sequence begins with a coordinated leg and arm circle, followed by a step backward with upraised arms, a step forward with hands on knees, a quarter turn to the left, a torso swivel, and various bits of arms stretches and rolls that conclude with our hands above our heads and balancing on our toes, ready to fall on eleven. That I can remember most of this sequence in my head is a good sign. Now it's just finding time to practice it between now and next Monday.

That's right: no holiday for us. Not when there's only eleven more weeks to performance.

P.

Mountain View Solstice Dancers: Rehearsal 1

We liked it so much the first time, we came back for more! That's right, gentle readers, get ready for another blow by blow account of a new community dance project. Last night 40-odd alumni from Le Grand Continental, joined by some eager new participants, gathered at Celebration Hall in Mountain View Cemetery to begin rehearsals for an outdoor dance performance that will take place the evening of the summer solstice, June 21.

The project is the brainchild of Mark Haney and Diane Park, LGCers who also make up The Little Chamber Music Society That Could (LCMS). LCMS has an artist residency at Mountain View, and as part of their program of work, Mark will compose a new piece of music, Diane will create an installation involving mirrors, and we dancers (who presently number 52) will perform some original site-based movement. Overseeing the choreography is Jessica Barrett, also from LGC and, we soon discovered, an excellent teacher.

Even though it's been less than two months, it felt as if I were greeting long-lost relatives as I exchanged hugs with my LGC peeps in the foyer of Celebration Hall, a modernist jewel-box of a concrete building in the middle of Mountain View that I've cycled past many times but never been inside. Soon enough, however, we were catching up on gossip like old friends as we filtered into the hall, which has windows to the west and north that let in the natural light, a shiny black marble floor, and incredibly high ceilings from which are suspended light fixtures that look like they are designed by Omer Arbel. A bit different from the Ukrainian Hall, to say the least.

After Mark introduced himself and explained a bit about the project, including the other musical pieces we'll be dancing to (among them Arvo Pärt's haunting "Spiegel im Spiegel"), Jessica took us through a few introductory warm-up exercises and also gave us an overview of the composition and rehearsal process for the movement. The biggest difference for those of us who participated in LGC is that we won't be learning set choreography. Rather, we'll be creating the piece together in collaboration with Jessica, who already has several ideas for different movement structures based on the music and the site, but who will also very much be taking her cue from our improvisations in rehearsal.

To that end, we began by improvising in canon to a basic waltz step, mixing things up by leading with alternating feet, and eventually adding in some fairly simple arm movements. Somehow I found myself at the front of the group and paired, no less, with the un-upstageable Ling. It didn't help that Ian and Darren's cameras were also back, trained on us one last time for a final bit of documentary footage. But despite all the reasons to feel pressure as Jessica counted us in to the first diagonal pass, I didn't. Instead I just let myself go, attuning my body's rhythms to the rhythms of the music as best I could. And everything was fine.

I wouldn't have been able to do that before LGC.

Thirteen more weeks before our performance. Stay tuned for lots more.

P.