Dancemakers Interviews for Serge Bennathan's Chronicles of a Simple Life: Carolyn Woods

 Dancemakers/Dance Collection Danse

Research project celebrating Dancemakers 50th anniversary

Interviews with original cast members of Serge Bennathan's "Chronicles of a Simple Life" (1993)

DANCEMAKERS: CHRONICLES OF A SIMPLE LIFE RESEARCH PROJECT

CAROLYN WOODS June 18, 2024

Interviewed by Lucy Rupert via Zoom

LR: What are you doing these days?

CAROLYN: I’ve been teaching Pilates for a long time. The last time I really danced was in 2012. But once a dancer always a dancer. I don’t go looking for gigs but if something really special came along I wouldn’t say no. When I left Dancemakers a critic said that I was retiring – and it didn’t feel like that for me. I wasn’t retiring, I was moving on from Dancemakers and to something else.

I’m turning 59 this year and some life stuff has happened, and I feel like…. well, I love Pilates, but I do this other technique called ELDOA and I teach kundalini yoga as well – there’s something in those two forms that’s very interesting for me. So, I’m in the process of discovering where I want to go next and I’ve stepped away from teaching Pilates, giving myself some space to figure out what I want to do. I’m doing a lot of yoga which is putting me in my body and I’m missing dance in a way. But the yoga is very satisfying, so we’ll see.

ELDOA is working with the fascia. And myofascial stretching. I learned it in Toronto and it’s great because it’s spreading out more. It would be so great if it was in the world of dancers because it’s so strengthening. Once you get the fascia aligned, the injuries start to disappear.

LR: This all sounds amazing. I’m so grateful that you are willing to chat with me about Chronicles of a Simple Life. This piece settled something in me, something in the grieving of my mother’s death a few years before I saw the work at the University of Waterloo --though I wasn’t conscious of this happening as I watched it, or anytime after. Not really until I thought about this project. What I saw back then: I was astounded at the movement being so utterly human and so utterly virtuosic. Accessible and human but not pedestrian. I felt like I saw my people on stage. People who don’t fit in but belong together because of it.

That was my starting point for this research/arvhical project. So, I’m interested in creative process, performance and any other memories or sensations ….

CAROLYN: My memory is a little vague, but what I do remember -- maybe it’s already been said through the others, you kind of just said it too…..I think that was the time we were the closest as a company, during Chronicles. A real excitement and energy towards creating something new. Something we were all really invested to be 100% there for Serge in the process. We had a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. 

Serge was still new to us at that time. [When he first joined Dancemakers] He did a remount, La Beauté du Diable and then Chronicles. He was trying to express the variety of bodies in front of him. He really loved that we are all so different. There was this sense that we were creating new movement, new energy. Almost like we were in this place of crystallizing who we were going to become. He really loved the women. And the women in the company were becoming a force. 

We were up for the challenge. 

That being said, I was much more comfortable in the group idea of it. Being the shy person I was when he put me in the position of the last solo [of Chronicles], I went through two personalities there. One where I was kind of living who I really wanted to be, this person in the moment on the stage, expressing emotion. I always had trouble expressing myself….and then on the other I had the insecurities – why me? why put me in this position? I battled with myself a lot. It wasn’t until the last few years of dancing with Serge where I felt I didn’t have to let those demons rule me anymore. But because I believed in Serge’s choreography and that we were creating something amazing, it gave me the courage to drop my fears as much as I could. I was just reading this quote form the program where Serge said, “you have to love and cherish to defeat fears, whatever they may be”. We were all kind of doing that. He was doing it himself. He had insecurities about taking over the company. He had a big ego, so he was up for the challenge.

He worked us hard but through that came a resilience to just embrace the creativity, the moment and this idea that we were a community. At that time, it felt that there was a lot of support in Toronto. The other companies…. we liked what each other were doing and were supportive across the companies. It was powerful time.

LR: Serge spoke a lot about how it takes great vulnerability to be as courageous as you all were. It seems like it’s rubbing right against what you’re saying too. He said you have to be an ogre of life, in Chronicles in particular, but the whole approach to being and accepting how strong you are, being courageous enough to show how strong you are – this was akin to being an ogre of life.

CAROLYN: I love that.

LR: I’m really curious about the solo at the end, of course. I got to watch a shaky digitized VHS recording form the PDT, and it’s slightly off to the side so you can sort of see into the wings. It’s such a good trip to remember the tech that existed then and now we can just film our phone.

CAROLYN: There are no good recordings of anything we did back then.

LR: There is a really good version of Sable/Sand that seemed to be shot by professional tv cameras – shots from multiple angles, close-ups. It is beautiful.

Do you have any memories or thoughts now about that final solo in Chronicles? Share only as much as you feel you want to share – what it was for you, how did you see it in the context of the whole piece?

CAROLYN: It hadn’t been long since I’d lost my own father when we did Chronicles. I guess I was experiencing that through Quand les Grand-Meres, but Chronicles--  because it was me by myself on stage, there was an opportunity for me to find peace with him dying so young. He died at the age I am now. I was so young. I was in my early 20s when he died. By Chronicles I was maybe 25. Being somebody who’s a bit shy and afraid to express myself. I held a lot of emotions in. So, at first there was the whole battle having a solo, but I really connected to Serge’s movement. Slowly it was through that piece because of all the dynamic schlacking  you got it out. It was like therapy. That last solo was an opportunity for me to learn again to express myself in a positive way. It wasn’t a sad thing for me. It was a poignant part of the piece, but it was a sort of liberation allowing myself to be present on stage and expressing the emotions of grief and of friendship and love.

I guess that’s about it. I think there were so many things that were gelling together for me to have that experience. Dancing in shoes was grounding for me. It was the first time I’d ever danced in shoes. We loved the costumes, the expressing of those loud movements. If I look back it’s probably exaggerated, how much we were breathing, huffing and puffing on stage. It was important to do it, though. Figuring out who we were in this company.

It was a challenge to have the reasonability of a solo, especially one at the end of the piece.

LR: Before I watched the video at Dance Collection Danse, I remembered there was a solo at the end but not what it was. And when I watched the video, I thought ‘this is not sad. It surprised me that it did not seem sad to me but full of possibility. 

CAROLYN: Possibility, that’s a nice word.

LR: I wonder too, maybe from something Gerry said to me. Did they stay on stage in the dark while you danced the solo?

CAROLYN: Yes, they were there the whole time I believe. When I was running with my arms up and running around them. I could do that over and over. I loved running with my arms up. It was the most glorious moment for me.

When we were on tour in Germany there was a leak – Serge would come out with white running shoes, all in black with white running shoes – he’d mop it up. There was a wet spot though when I was running in the circle, I slipped I fell down I kept my arms up and just got up and kept running. I had a real connection to my grandma at that time and she was notorious, for falling and getting up really fast without anyone noticing. So, it was a funny moment for me.

LR: I had heard about the water on stage but not about your interaction with it. Julia Aplin told me about Serge coming in and mopping. Gary had a memory of that performance too. I can imagine that particular performance that had a lot of memorable things….Was that the stage that was on an angle to the audience.

CAROYLN: I think so……it was an amazing life.

LR: The number of places Chronicles was able to tour, it’s just unfathomable to the companies here now.

CAROLYN: The lighting for that end section, if I recall, at first the lighting was very much on them [Gerry and Gary] but as the solo went on the lighting faded from them. But I could feel them there.

LR: I remember the feeling when I saw the recording, that me in 1993 didn’t understand why the piece ended the way it did, because I was 20 or whatever, and I had grown up in a small place without a lot of exposure to a lot of different kinds of dance….but to me back then the end with Gerry and Gary seemed right and the solo was beautiful, but I didn’t get it…..Now it’s obvious to me – because there’s more, death isn’t the end. Relationships endure death. I cried watching the video.

When did you start dancing with Dancemakers and how did you get there?

CAROLYN: I moved from Edmonton to Toronto and was basically taking class at Dancemakers and Toronto Dance Theatre in 1988-89 and then I did a guest thing [at Dancemakers] when Carol Anderson was still company director, I was in a couple of group pieces and when she stepped down and Bill James took over, there was an audition. I don’t think I was totally the right person for him. I love him dearly. I wasn’t very good at improvising, and I was so shy but there were people who really liked me – Philip Drube, Andrea Ciel Smith, Julia Sasso. Those three in particular really fought for me to stay with the Bill James company and then through that time some people made their own exits. I was only with Bill 1-2 years.

LR: He was there two seasons.

CAROYLN: Yes, and then Serge came in and I did an audition, and I was kept and some were let go. I didn’t know why he wanted me because he had such ballet background, but he chose me for La Beauté du Diable with Jackie Nell and Learie McNicholls. I was thankful for my fortune and just did my best to try to accept that regardless of my insecurities.

LR: I wish I knew how to do that. I still struggle.

CAROYLN: I feel like I’m finally getting over it but it’s something I consciously, mentally work on. I spend time in the morning organizing my thoughts and meditating and remembering that we all have a place here, we’re all meant to live a joyful life. It’s really about us and not anybody else. The more aligned we are with joy, the more we are going to do that with everybody else in our life. I wish I had the mindset back then, but I wouldn’t have struggled and pushed myself if I had been more stable back then.

LR: That ties into something Gerry, Gary and Marie-Josée all talked about. They weren’t sure why there were kept in the company because they didn’t think they fit Serge’s ballet background or his use of  weight. Conscious or not conscious maybe that was what he brought together whether he knew he was doing it or not.

CAROLYN: He looked at the spirit of people and then always found a way to work with their bodies. We were so different physically. He was the first person that I felt – that he never ever made us feel small for what our bodies looked like, our hair styles or make up. He was wholly inclusive of who we were. It was very special to be around somebody like that.

LR: That maybe why Dancemakers company class was the only company class I felt comfortable attending. That acceptance, and also hard work.

CAROLYN: We loved our dance classes. It was who we were to start the day in the morning as a company, with live music and the community taking class with us. It fuelled the energy of who we were.

LR: There was a real sense of – maybe not family, that’s too cheesy a word for it – but the synergy of the group and it seems like from what people have been saying, that Chronicles really gelled the group together. I wonder – this is a very specific sort of kinesthetic question – but do you have any way of describing it – I’m intrigued by everyone’s account of how there were no counts but breath and a sense of sensing each other – do you have any memory of that building?

CAROLYN: I don’t know if I can add anything to what others said, but because we were so different it was the continual rehearsal of the piece that really gelled that kind of rhythm together. We did use breath and some cuing inside the work – “Hey”, “now” “thump”. Serge was a quick choreographer. He got the pieces out and then we just rehearsed them over and over and over. You get to sense each other because we knew each other so well from inside it. It was such a rhythmic piece. We knew who were going to be together through the working.

Learie didn’t stay long after that and I even wonder if we remounted it at one point without him.

LR: Ken Cunningham came in I think.

CAROLYN: That’s right, thank you!  We didn’t always rehearse with Serge, mostly with him at the beginning because we didn’t have a rehearsal director, but then Julia Sasso stepped into that role, and she was very rhythmical so that was helpful. Someone like Julia who could break things down and we could create a kind of a rhythm inside the looseness of the rhythm or the choreography. It was just the rehearsing it over and over that built that group dynamic, and synergy, as you said.

Most of us were pretty rhythmical. Jackie [Nell] was such an interesting, beautiful dancer – long limbs -- but she had trouble keeping up with the group sometimes…she was just a bit longer and more fluid in her movement but we always figured it out.

Learie was very different in those early years too – but we found that group rhythm together. It started with dance class in the morning and continual rehearsals and sometimes we’d just sit around and stretch at the end of the day. We drank together…..that all helps.

LR: It’s all layering, all of these impressions. You’re the first one to talk about the repetition. There’s something to that. I miss the Dancemakers, the Serge voice in Toronto. There’s a big hole left and it has not been filled by anything that is even close.

CAROLYN: Thank you for saying that.

LR: It was a really special time. So many dancers who stayed for so long. Something was really built from spending the time together. I feel that working with Denise Fujiwara now – even though we’re not together all the time, maybe three months of the year in pockets – but there really is something about that spending the condensed time together. Even when there’s a pause, when you come back together it ‘zings’ together because you’ve spent time over time at it.

It's very hard to put in that time now, we’re missing out on that kind of relationship, how it makes the work better. Everybody is an independent contractor, gig after gig, different groups, different choreographers. The companies in the 90s could dedicate time to their own identities and didn’t have to be all things to all people.

CAROLYN: Serge really respected the other companies, especially Robert Desrosiers’. Within the company I appreciated that he appreciated that, the variety. And we all did go out and support each other all the time. It was a special time. I can see -- funding, COVID – it doesn’t exist the same way now. I appreciate the time I lived as a dancer.

LR: I appreciate that it was my entry into the professional dance world, the mid-90s Toronto – I got the last of the really good wave before the first round of big funding cuts. I got see a lot of wonderful stuff, and to see support across companies. There was a bit of a scene all together. 

CAROLYN: Did you know Julia Aplin in Waterloo?

LR: No. I think she graduated and I started a full year after she left. But we knew about her.

CAROLYN: I apologize that I haven’t seen you perform. You’ve probably been here in Vancouver…..

LR: I’ve never performed my own work in Vancouver. I performed there with Theatre Rusticle in 2008 and I was just there in May with Fujiwara Dance Inventions at the Firehall – that was my first time performing as a dancer in Vancouver. It only took almost 30 years into my career, but I got there.

CAROLYN: There’s no time to peak until you feel you are in your peaking time.

LR: I’ve been a late bloomer all my life, so this is just another phase of blooming late.

Do you know where Jackie Nell is? No one seems to know.

CAROLYN: No, she used to be here in Vancouver, but she moved.

LR: She’s the only person from the original cast I haven’t been able to contact. 

Do you have any specific of memories of Chronicles or other work form that era?? Excitement revelation or….?

CAROLYN: I looked a little bit at the videos from the ident-a-thon – Julia Aplin, Julia Sasso, Andrea, Marie-Josée – the things they were saying about going out for the poster shoot, the cold and the fun, I remember that. And Serge’s language – all the words he kept creating. I wish we had documented them over the years. He just made things up because he didn’t know English very well.

I think the other thing I would mention is that Serge brought in things to complement what we were working, something we needed like Diane Miller for Pilates and to help learn how to manage our bodies better. It wasn’t until we met her that we learned how to do the “full mark”. Up until then we were dancing everything full-out all the time all day long. But the pieces were starting to wear on our bodies a little. The full mark – the full emotion, commitment, intention but you just work under a little physically. At first Serge wasn’t sure about it. He was very passionate and forceful in the beginning in some ways, and he also transformed and became more nurturing. He wanted to help the health of all of us. Then the voice work to learn how to express ourselves more.

LR: I’m really intrigued by the “full mark”. Sometimes you have to do all the big stuff to do the details – but this part about the full intention: that’s key. In most cases if the intention isn’t inside that big movement, the big movement might not happen. It’s the intention that will complete it or fill it.

One more question:

The thing I miss the most Serge’s work’s absence in Toronto, is that quality of humanity within the movement – do you have any other thoughts about why his choreography possesses this great virtuosity and compassion at the same time? What do you think fuelled that?

CAROYLN: For me it goes back to the fact that all his work had emotional content to it. If he was someone like Danny Grossman, making new works all the time, something would have had to evolve and change, but he was working from something that moved him, touched him. He was very much in tune with cracking open who he was as a person and then vice versa, wanting us to crack open about who are we, the truer that we could become in ourselves, the truer the movement became. We would sometimes perform and think ‘we were awesome’ and he’d say ‘it was ok’.. I had to think about that was causing that. ….I think it was that the ego was performing, we weren’t in our humanity when we did it. We’d have to go back to the emotions, the roots, to ground us. When the piece came from its true place, he was always happier, regardless of what the critics or the audiences said. We had to be really true.

It wasn’t always easy to do. You come in with moods and injuries.  For me I couldn’t have met somebody better in my life to go through that kind of experience. Just before Serge came to Dancemakers, I wasn’t sure if I was really attached to dance. When Serge took over the company that thing inside me said ‘oh yeah, this is what I’ve been searching for’. There wasn’t anything he created that I didn’t have love for.

LR: I’m sure that’s another reason why he kept you in the company at the start. He probably felt that from the start. 

CAROLYN: I was his muse there too, there were delicate moments. We were in a relationship, and we had to be clear and open with the other dancers. As far as I know all of us always loved each other through all of that.

He invited Pina Bausch to our studio once. They were performing in Ottawa and passing through, maybe. Serge invited her to a rehearsal at our studio and she came. We performed an excerpt of something for her. I don’t remember what we did. The only stipulation was that she would be able to smoke while she was there. 

That was Serge….his icons were Pina, Nureyev, very passionate people he followed. Serge to me is ultimate creator – he writes, he paints, he follows writers, he follows painters. I learned to so much about dance from Serge – I wasn’t very experienced; I didn’t read a lot. He brought a lot of that culture to us. We were richer for it, I’m sure.

LR: Which studio did Pina go to? Dupont and Ossington or Distillery District?

CAROLYN: The one above the garage. Such an old stinky studio. But the best dance floor. The best studio ever.

LR: The first show I ever produced of my own was in that space.

CAROLYN: Does it still exist?

LR: I believe it is still the same martial arts school that moved in after Dancemakers left. If it isn’t it still some kind of martial arts or fitness studio. It is probably in some kind of similar form. 

CAROLYN: So many great dancers came through that studio.

LR: I think I performed in three shows in that space. It was a wonderful place to perform.

Thank you so much for your time and sharing so much of your experience. Everyone I’ve interviewed is touching on similar things but expressing them in very different ways and I think that is why the work is so amazing – individuals going through the same thing with different experiences but doing it together.

CAROLYN: Thank you for contacting me. I also feel like Serge was such an icon in that era. He brought so much to the city and to have someone chronicling that and wanting to talk about it -- it’s nice to know it’s not just going to be forgotten. Thank you Lucy.

LR: I’ve always been a huge fan of your dancing: a mysterious and approachable presence on stage and that is really magical and inspiring.

CAROLYN: I look forward to seeing you dance one day.