my battery is pure love

It's a dreary raining gray, far-too-cold-for-April 29th day in Toronto, but you can be assured that somewhere in the world it is sunny and warm, and since it is International  Dance Day, we can all soak up that sun vicariously. I intended to write about International Dance Day sooner but have been bogged down by a string of illnesses over the last two months which have drained me of my ability to get things done in a timely fashion. I've been rehearsing one project or another non-stop, which is amazing -- truly amazing how dancing can transport the ailing body from itself even if just running a 30 second section of choreography. I can forget that I have pneumonia/sinusitis/a bad cold/an eye infection. The possibility for transcendence through dance can be on this individual microcosmic scale, and also has been noted recently in work with those suffering from Parkinson's. Dance as a regular activity can override symptoms and give participants in dance liberation from...

1         Tracey Norman is the co-producer of the Blumberg/Norman Double Bill and one of the hardest working dance artists in Toronto. A teacher, choreographer, interpreter, researcher, arts advocate and truly one of the kindest and smartest people I've met it is no wonder so many of her collaborators work with her again and again. Tracey is currently on faculty at York University in the Dance Dept, where she completed an MFA in Dance dramaturgy in 2010.         Here are Tracey's answers to the same questions I posed to her co-producer Angela Blumberg about their artistic practice and their upcoming show. e    Where do you get your ideas for new dances? My ideas come mostly from everyday life. I’ll be walking down the street and see something that makes me think of something else and so on. The actual object or subject I am drawn to in the first place might be highly compelling or quite mundane ...

     Continuing my interviews with artists collaborating on projects, I am bringing you a couple from the choreographers of the Blumberg/Norman Double Bill. I posed the same questions to both choreographers -- Angela Blumberg and Tracey Norman. Up first is Angela, an electric dancer with refined and unusual ideas in choreography and piercing body intelligence. Angela is originally from Germany, trained at the Laban Centre in London, then came to Toronto where she completed her MFA in Choreography at York University. Her choreography has travelled to the UK, Sweden and recently to Taiwan. She frequently collaborates with her partner, composer Augusto Monk. Where do you get your ideas for new dances? I can find inspiration in various things including literature, music, simple movement explorations, and the visual arts .  What remains.  [a new work premiering in the Blumberg/Norman Double Bill] for example was inspired by jewellery-like acc...