my battery is pure love

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Rock Bottom Movement while I was in Stratford this spring as part of SpringWorks Festival. Their work was funny from the get-go, clever, absurd, wonderfully danced and thoroughly enjoyable. I loved watching it, and I also longed to get up there and join them.  Luckily, choreographer Alyssa Martin was on hand and I got to meet her and her electrically-charged dancers after the show. When I heard they were self-producing in Toronto this July (DO IT YOURSELF at Dancemakers Centre for Creation, July 2 and 3 at 8pm) I knew Alyssa would be my next interview. And here it is.... photo of Alyssa Martin courtesy of Rock Bottom Movement LR: What drove you to make this show happen? AM: I’m always driven by a need to get my voice out there & try out my work with an audience. This time in particular, I was itching to get back into a theatre because I’ve been using more casual spaces with limited lighting & space for the past little while...

With a rush of immersive, augmented, non-traditional, call-it-what-you-will new dance works being staged inventively these days, it has got me thinking a lot about rehearsals. As dancers we spend a lot of time training our bodies to physically do very specific things and be in the best, most responsive physical shape for the tasks at hand. But when the tasks at hand involve the unpredictability of an audience immersed in your world with no clear separation of stage and witnesses, how do you prepare? You can't rehearse an interactive audience without just performing with an interactive audience. A new level of readiness and confidence is imperative. I sat down -- usually that's a cliche in interviewing terms, but we really did sit down in the same room together! -- with Jennifer Robichaud to speak about her site-specific, potently interactive work GRIDLOCK for Larchaud Dance Projects which opens June 11th at the Artscape Youngplace building. The work moves through t...