my battery is pure love

I met Noah Kenneally sometime around 2001, when my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I ran a performance series out of a warehouse space in the west end of Toronto. Noah was introduced to me by a frequent performer in our space: Lisa Pijuan-Nomura. (I don't think anyone Lisa has ever introduced me to has ever been a jerk, she naturally attracts the most lovely people.) At the time Noah was a theatre performer and maker, a puppeteer with a fiercely smart and political mind. Noah and I went on to share the stage three times. The first in Lisa Pijuan-Nomura and Erin Shields' joint experiment "The Paradise Project" -- an exploration of Paradise Lost that happened at Lula Lounge. The second time, Noah and I played villain lovers in Theatre Rusticle's "WISH", an adaptation of Congreve's "The Way of the World". The final time was in a Blue Ceiling dance project that was part of Harbourfront's HATCH program in 2005. "Days of Mad Rabbits...

In a way, the first thing Louis Laberge-Coté does in his solo, The art of degeneration, refers to blurred lines, which makes me smile. This was what I had just been considering on my way to rehearsal. I was reading Louis' email responses to some questions I sent him and wrote a note for me to think about: duality and blurring of lines between the choreographer and dancer - an ongoing and personal question -- and between the destruction dance can cause the dancer and its simultaneous power to heal that destruction. Over twenty years ago I started attending the School of Toronto Dance Theatre Professional Program and Louis was my class mate. Those days were full of the wreckage of angst and the utter joy that dance, and training to become a professional dancer, can bring. Less than a year later, I had been dismissed from the school for my inability to mitigate the angst and joy. I obviously found my own way through the rejection, but I marvelled at others...