tending to our roots and hitting the wall you built to hide behind

"we were tending to our own few acres
in a space where time was ageless
and never clearer when not distracted
by the distortion of mirrors, we were

uncovering small miracles
all wandering and then
I’m on an island, I said
limbs shooting out in all direction
along the lengths of loops and repetition
inhabiting spaces once clearly defined

mine, but this time crossing the line with
a diminished resistance, to one moment
stretched out as I stood, within myself

and there is something I meant to say
about this, but the words slipped on their way
to my lips, the letters wound around
in limitless combinations, to ride
the tide of an oceanless wave
pouring endlessly into the depths of
wet pages

for the human condition never so
evidenced as when in search
of a guide, to keep going, to step
forward and fall, spiralling
in and in and inward
hitting the wall you built to hide behind
from the compression of time and the pressure
of dwelling anywhere except on the
sidelines, when finally you realize
you’ve been redefined
by nine lives

growing up in the absence of existence
from the remains, one base
with encouragement from the wind
a duration held for deep listening
we were tending to our roots not searching
for an ending, but you can humour me
if you have no will to believe this
or adhere to my incoherent ramblings

i am a witness" 

by Rhonda Baker

Photos by Rhonda Baker

Cataloguing our research

Things we were discovering, trying, avoiding, and coming up against in the studio at CLEaR Forum June 2-6, 2014. Field Research Location: Ross Creek Centre for the Arts.

Accumulation              Sticking with

Directive                     Ambiguous

Chance                        Craft

Predictability              Surprise          

Control                        Openness

Texture                        Sameness

Landscape                   Structure        

Embed                         Separate

Sensorial                      Analytical

Seeing                          Hiding

Syntax                         Phrasing

Order                           Chaos                                                 

Change                        Monotonous

Perspectives                Assumptions

Toolbox                       Habits

Desire                          Demand          

Vulnerability               Comfort

Uncertainty                 Victory

Space                           Crowd

Observation                Introspection 

Listening                     Interpreting

Community                 Individual  

~Sara

Contemplation, ACTIVATION, excavation, reflection, percolation, realization

We emerge from the work field and from the tall grass, complete with a few causalities from co-dwelling with nature. Simultaneously exhausted and rested, as a collective we are more awake to what is already there. Mocean’s 2^nd annual CLEaR Forum: Choreographic Lab, Exploration and Research Program was held last week, June 1-6, at the picturesque Ross Creek Centre for the Arts in Canning, NS, and from the gathering, co-habiting, and questioning – I am proud to report that both as a collective and individually artistic widening took place. 

CLEaR Forum 2014- The team during the golden hour on the beach.

As a work-group and as a supportive peer network we lived embedded with each other; and more importantly embedded with each other’s questions and habits, therefore witnessing or conceivably activating a shimmering of new possibility from each participant.  

This year, the program boasted representation from the local and national dance community with dance artists from Halifax, Fredericton, Montreal, and Vancouver. The nine artists on-site included; Researching Choreographers Jacinte Armstrong (Halifax) and Emily Gualtieri (Montreal); Program Dancers: Rhonda Baker (Halifax/Toronto), Julia Carr (Vancouver), Artistic Director Susanne Chui (Halifax), Bridget Lappin (Halifax/London), and Lucy M. May (Fredericton native and Montreal-based dancer with Compagine Marie Chouinard); and Choreographic Mentors Lesandra Dodson (Fredericton) and myself, Artistic Associate and Program Director Sara Coffin.

The purpose of the CLEaR Forum program is to offer a forum for discussion and inquiry within the creative gesture, and to provide two emerging to mid-career choreographers with studio space, skilled-dancers, and in-studio provocation from a choreographic mentor team. 

Mentor Lesandra Dodson observes Jacinte Armstrong as she works with Lucy May and Bridget Lappin

In addition to this, the program offers morning research (in the form of open-ended propositions) to probe the creative gesture of all participating artists and to close the day's work – facilitated evening discussions are scheduled as a means to share resources and consider art making practices beyond the CLEaR Forum eco-system. 

I am thrilled Mocean Dance can offer this resource to our community as the program serves many purposes in which the breadth and depth of its offerings are difficult to articulate. In attempt to name a few and proclaim the use of service – CLEaR Forum serves as a platform for professional development, cross-pollination amongst dance making communities, for network and connection making, and serves as a focused retreat and repose for personal interrogation and creative development.

CLEaR Forum is my favourite auxiliary program that the company offers beyond our creation/production. I love the challenge of creating a precise focused container for research to take place within. And within this framework, it is also my job to allow the container to be responsive and flexible to the inherent eco-system created by the gestalt of the program participants. 

Dancer Lucy M. May, working with Jacinte Armstrong

In a program designed to support and stir those involved, I love facilitating and observing the concord and the rub of being vulnerable, accountable, open, spontaneous, and calculated in one intense format. By setting up such continuums, it is the space between each of these (personal and creative) acts that the magic and resultant transformations can take place. Without the gift of time and such a plausible forum, such introspection is unattainable if working isolated in one’s own thoughts.  This is the purpose of CLEaR Forum.

In addition to creating the program structure, I also serve as a choreographic mentor on the two-person mentorship team. This year I was joined by Fredericton-based Choreographer Lesandra Dodson. 

Perhaps this is a slightly formal title in the context of my discussion tactics and informal self. Nonetheless, it is a useful title to delineate the roles within the program. In retrospect, I think I would much prefer the title sounding board or peer adviser, as it is important to me to continue to orientate the program towards peer learning and using the resources that we already have. Regardless, I firmly believe that discourse and a fresh perspective offered by an outside eye can serve to redirect or unblock one from their own habits’… whether the peer reflection seems useful in the moment of the offering or not. CLEaR Forum is the exact 'no stakes'  and 'unattached' time and space to get overloaded, to re-consider, to be agitated – so one can remould themselves more articulate and defined or be opened to new window of possibility to further explore post program. 

Dancers: Julia Carr, Susanne Chui and Rhonda Baker, working with Emily Gualtieri

As American composer Morton Feldman suggests, CLEaR Forum is in place so that we can “concentrate on not making the lazy move.”

The forum is the activation…. and the aftermath of such activation is in itself a beautiful dance that occurs in the striate of the immediate, near, and distant future. 

It was a beautiful week of rigorous inquiry and I am proud to be in the presence of such good company and such stimulating artists. 

~Sara

Embrace Adventure with Mocean Dance: Susanne & Lesandra's 3rd Guelph Dance Festival

Excerpted from the Guelph Dance Festival Blog (May 28, 20134):

http://guelphdance.blogspot.ca/2014/05/embrace-adventure-with-mocean-dance.html

In the weeks leading up to Guelph Dance Festival 2014, some of the Festival artists will share their vision with us here on the blog. These intimate, behind-the-scenes looks will bring us closer to the artistry, process, and experience of dance. We encourage you to not just read these amazing stories, but to ask questions and engage in conversation about dance in our comments section below. Embrace adventure with us in 2014!

Susanne Chui shares a bit about her experience working with choreographer Lesandra Dodson for the third time. Mocean Dance performs at On the Stage A on Friday, May 30 at 8pm at the Co-operators Hall of River Run Centre. Tickets are available now through the River Run Centre Box Office!

Susanne: In preparation for writing this blog post, I reflect that this is actually my third time performing in the Guelph Dance Festival, and each time it has been in work by Lesandra Dodson. I further reflect that each time Lesandra and I travelled to the Festival, we have been at very different stages in our lives, and in our work as dance artists. In fact, the Guelph Dance Festival has acted as a kind of marker in the ongoing flow of time.

Photo of Mocean Dance by Holly Crooks.

Susanne: Our first appearance at the Festival was 2003, when we performed the quartet Kuere, with TILT: sound + motion dance company, where I was a dancer, fresh out of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and Lesandra was choreographer-in-residence. The second time, in 2011, we presented a solo I commissioned from Lesandra, called Her blameless mystery.  By then, both Lesandra and I had moved from Toronto and were living out east, myself in Halifax, NS and Lesandra in Fredericton, NB. I had made the transition from being primarily a ‘for hire’ dancer in the ‘big city’ to a wearing the many hats of being an independent dance artist in a smaller city. Lesandra had kids and built a family life in New Brunswick, while becoming immersed in that community and continuing her choreographic practice.

Now in 2014, I am returning to the Festival as Artistic Director of Mocean Dance company, having made another big ‘move’ from independent dance life to running a company. Lesandra also took on a leadership position in her community, as Executive Director of the Charlotte Street Arts Centre.

Photo of Mocean Dance by Holly Crooks.

Susanne: Inasmuch as our lives have changed over the past 11 years since Sandy and I first came to Guelph, her choreographic work has also shifted, evolved, and changed with time. Over this period I have been in a fortunate position to sense this shift, literally through my body, by performing her work. So how has it changed? Well I would say that the biggest shift is a  ‘distilling towards the essential’. Where Kuere was highly physical, dense, fast paced, layered with text, the work we will be presenting this year, A leash for two hounds, is sparser, less ‘dancey’, more pared down. In creating this piece, Lesandra wanted to challenge herself to work within limits. The first was how to create a duet on a man and a woman that is not a traditional male-female “relationship.” The second was to not use text or video, two elements that were becoming common in her work, and played a large role in Her blameless mystery. The third was to use props, but also with the limitation of using them outside of their intended way. As she worked with Darryl and I, she further began to impose limitations, including the significant choice to have us face the back for almost the entire piece. The question then became what can be expressed when the face is taken away?

Photo of Mocean Dance by Lesandra Dodson.

Susanne: To me, these limitations are part of Lesandra’s search for the essential. She has always been a huge ‘editor’ of her material, she’s not the kind of person who is married to the movement: if it’s not speaking to her, it’s cut! (So much so that we joke that all her pieces end up only being 12 minutes long!) But I think this shift towards essentialism goes beyond editing. I think it speaks to a deeper desire that is surfacing in Lesandra. She appears to be at a stage in her life where less is more, where depth trumps breadth, where the ‘why’ is more important than the ‘what’. I see this in her life as well, having survived the amazing circus of independent dance life, raising a family, and running an arts centre, she is taking a step back and looking at what is essential to move forward. I’ve seen this shift in many of my peers and I’m starting to feel a pull in this direction as well. To me this is what makes following an artist’s work over the long term so exciting: you get to see the work evolve as a reflection of the evolution of the artist herself. I’m pleased be able to witness this process and be part its’ expression through dancing Lesandra’s work. I wonder if audiences in Guelph will remember the other two times we presented at the Festival, and if they too will experience this subtle shift. Looking forward to finding out!

See you soon Guelph,
Susanne Chui

Reflections from Northampton

This post is a little late for publication, but as you read you can see where I may have gotten held up...

We did it!
A fantastic piece in full fruition on stage, a cycle of questions and reflections embodied in full form, presentation with many congratulations…it all happened here with the wonderful and…. yes I’m gonna say it…. the beautiful Mocean Dance team. (We discovered during our travels that Northampton loves the adjective: beautiful).

Photo by Derek Fowles

 
I am extremely proud and grateful for the inquisitive generosity, vulnerability and permeability that was tested and exhibited by all involved. Thank you to Jacinte Armstrong, Rhonda Baker, Sarah Rozee, Susanne Chui, to my collaborators Andrew Hawryshkewichand Phil Thomson and to my mentor/thesis adviser Chris Aiken.

Photos by Jessica Goudreault

I was proud to witness all the hard work and vulnerability that was exhibited on the Smith College stage:

From my cohorts: Shaina Cantino, Safi Harriott and Mat Elder – we each in our own way took our weight off-balance and tested our tilt in unfamiliar axes to seek disorientation and in this place we were able to find a new sense of clarity from our bewilderment.  (an excerpt from our directors' notes in the program)

My loving cohorts and I celebrate!

To the wide range and many perspectives in performativity that graced the stage; the enthusiastically green by talented undergraduate dancers, the local professionals from the community, past and present graduate students, and the professional dancers hailing from Canada (that’s us!).

***

As I digest, I realize that the first 15 days of February had been the most impactful and revealing days I have ever experienced in my artistic career. From choreographer, teacher, mentee to performer I had on every possible hat in a two-week span.

During the first 15 days of February my schedule included the following:

• My MFA Thesis dance project with Mocean Dance was presented for all to see, 

Body Abandoned in performance, Photo by Derek Fowles

• I organized and facilitated an outreach workshop (taught by Susanne!) and post-secondary education discussion with the Southern Vermont IBIT Dance Company Pre-professional Training Division, 

• I contributed my lighting and artistic improvising sensibilities for a performance of master improvisers that I deeply respect: Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser and Mike Vargas in Threshold, operating a lighting board that I learned in 10 hours,

 

• and I taught and performed at the prestige conference loved by all at the American College Dance Festival at Boston University. 

Teaching at ACDFA at Boston University

Photos (and below) by Troy David Mercier

Performing in "How Did I Get Here?" by Chris Aiken at ACDFA

Whirlwind doesn’t even begin to describe the intensity of the artistic craft, decisions and emotions that I have experienced….. just to survive each day. I am blessed, I feel set afire and I am wiped at the same time.  Pausing to do a rough calculation, from Feb 1-15 my artistic efforts reached approximately 1100 people.

The premiere came and went and now even March is coming to a close. Yikes! The end of the road is nearing. I have pulled myself out of recovery mode and push through to reflective mode.

It is now spring break at Smith and I am thick into my thesis writing, the final yet maybe the most difficult portion in this journey. Give me ideological questions and an empty studio and I can figure out the message physically no problem…. words on the other hand, this medium is a much different process.

I'm on page 22.... only 38 more to go....

The graduate student writing life,
(a heartfelt supportive gift from Chris Aiken).

Yours Truly, Sara

:)

Body Abandoned in Rehearsal at Smith College

Photos by Jessica Goudreault

Post Human and the Body Abandoned

Choreographer's Musings:

()  ()

o

-------

I feel fragmented, sped-up and simultaneously a float. I feel decentralized, in which I exist in a disheveled hyper-dream state, continually pulled from my once grounded corporeal self I am positioned in a parallel existence of me and my other.

My sense of otherness is growing as the digital traces of my life, my virtual in-between self, follows me around.

I increasingly notice the separation of my inwardness of experience from the outwardness of my action. The two are constantly separated from what is felt and what is (re)represented in our mediated culture. 

I am caught in questioning of the affects of not actually ‘thinking about the body’ when positioning the body amidst the digitized, a culture that exists in temporalized space and spatialized time. A place that fosters the new modality of the “always on” existing in the in-between spaces of neither here nor there, instead encouraging the product of “both-and.”

As I reflect upon this sate of being, I ask what would the vanishing “thinking body” lead to, and more so, what does the vanishing edges of the corporeal self mixed with the digital self create?

I start from this sense of the forthcoming posthuman, in which the extreme perception of self is stretched so thin the very edges of corporeality start to dissolve. Reflecting on the changing ecological field of relationships between flesh and virtual, and self and other, I aim to create a dance reflecting the sensation and consequences of our in-between and multimodal existence.

To do so, I begin with what I know, my own phenomenological experiences and I interrogate my own personal modes of experience. I begin with the body. My research serves as both a reflection of this new bodiless state and a source of inspiration to construct from.

I venture into the spaces of formlessness and the unknown. My corporeal edges are thinning and I prepare for what the Body Abandoned might look like.