my battery is pure love

Listening to Arvo Part -- music I meditated to while pregnant, music I had hoped to play (to remind myself to breathe!) while giving birth, music that could not be played while I was giving birth because everything happened so fast. Sitting on the floor of the studio stretching after dancing/warming up for half an hour. Pablo begins stretching as the music plays. He has been sleeping since we arrived. Focusing on his sleeping body liberates me while improvising. My body is loose, except my lower back and laterally in my pelvis (muscles over-worked during the delivery), disassembled, wriggling, eager. My ego slips away. I am watching the baby on the floor sleeping while I am dancing. I realize I need to turn the camera on in the corner and just let it go for the whole time. Something new is happening. The mirror doesn't exist, the ego, which sometimes directs my improvisations to things that feel good and I know I can do well, is absent or perhaps watching the baby too. Pablo wakes...

little one if these leaves of grass do not soothe i hope the captain's verses do each night a little insight for little one who cannot understand nor hear everything but feel vibrations of the madman with wild white hair among the blades we hope for you good nights sleep dreams movement, words, music that carry we do not hope you to be "artist" see instead the living of life as an art and fill your thoughts with imaginative kindness blade by blade green by green each burnt to a crisp of meaning for future reference love of all loves made you together we rise, that song you have liked along the way we have moved twisted swords built worded armies to combat this world and its disappeal making new words as necessary ear to ear listening and if your first word starts with an F we will laugh we only ask you not become a 20-something smoking weed in a park with a can of cream soda and a cell phone continue kicking as hard as you kick now a l...

Our baby arrived July 1st at 10:06pm. The delivery was an intense, fast and slightly complicated event but baby came through unphased so who cares, now? Pablo Echlin Pehadzic. I look at him constantly amazed that two little cells met and made two more cells and made two more cells and on and on until this whole creature was formed and ready to emerge. Someone said that Dennes and I maybe waited too long to have a baby, but at the cellular level, we can't have waited too long because any other point in time would not have created little Pablo, but some other probably just-as-wondrous creature, but not Pablo. And we are rather fond of Pablo. During the last two weeks of the pregnancy (and during my efforts to poop post-delivery) I have been re-reading "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch" by Henry Miller -- one of his greatest books, probably indicative of the depth of tides and beauty in Big Sur -- and I feel compelled to share this passage as a new credo for life...

An interview for the DanceWorks Mainstage Event coming up April 29-May 2 at Enwave Theatre. Accident 1. an event that is without apparent cause 4. occurrence of things by chance Fate 1. a power regarded as predetermining events unalterably 2. an individual’s appointed lot (source Canadian Oxford Dictionary) Both artists have been asked the same questions: Consider the similarities and differences in their answers, and if the “how” of their answers as well as the “what” is evident in their choreography. Susie Burpee choreographer and performer of Mischance and Fair Fortune1. What was the initial spark to create your work for this show? Ovid's myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramus_and_Thisbe#Ovid.27s_version 2. Do you believe in accidents or fate? Accidents. 3. What made you want to start choreographing? I imagined things that didn't exist yet in the world, and I wanted to realize those ideas. 4. What would you want an audience to take away from seeing ...

Yesterday Lola McLaughlin died. An amazing woman, choreographer, friend, spirit. I did not know her but still I cried as I sat in the audience of DanceWorks' presentation of "Provincial Essays". So many fine points in the choreography, so many things accomplished with elegance and humour and humanity that I have watched other companies attempt, stumble upon and eventually leave hollow. Simplicity of gesture and movement for the sake of execution with the total body. And Ron Stewart....I can't go on enough about how this strangely proportioned body can churn up space and itself. He is not ferocious but a vortex unto himself on that stage. Utterly thrilling. All the dancers were remarkable -- not only for their ability to perform with clarity and depth, humour and emotion without slipping, just hours after finding out that Lola had passed away. It ended. I almost missed the end. I'd been staring at a non-focal point on the stage and my mind was wandering over the im...

Below is an interview I conducted with William Yong, artistic director, dancer and choreographer for Zata Omm Dance Company, regarding his upcoming premiere as part of the DanceWorks Mainstage Series at Enwave Theatre. What frameworks do you feel in your life? How have you applied them to your current creation? My dance work Frames is an exploration and manipulation of perceptions through the idea of framing and frames of reference. It is a structure and vision-oriented piece playing imaginatively with the overt and the hidden, the expectations and the discovery. I wanted to create a piece inspired by the idea of framing because it is of such great interest and concern in our world saturated with manipulative media. In my own life I’ve noticed a series of childhood stories that altered in my memory through the passage of time. Some of the events I have begun to see very differently as I have grown older. Psychological perspective on our experiences constantly changes depending on the a...

After performing my work "The Abecedarian" this weekend, some audience members asked about reading Sarah Slean's poem which was written for me to use as inspiration for choreography. Sarah is a most generous and amazing artist, on many levels and I hope you can take the time to read this beautiful poem below. It is also published in her most recent book of poetry. See www.sarahslean.com for details.... ABECEDARIAN - by Sarah Slean A - amelia earheart yearning to fly. awe flowers open in her dreaming eye. like the long and constant exhale of the sky while the monk at his table, is writing. B - what you reach for is already there, in your hand, you may think we are birds condemned to the land, but somewhere eternal, beyond feeble sight. the gravity creature is always in flight. C - consecutive clock has an itch it must scratch, it will tick and will tock and will cower and crack, but "circle", the word, contains all that C knows, the hard kick of time and the sof...