my battery is pure love

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...

I was at the Mayor's Arts Awards Luncheon yesterday and Mayor David Miller, without being partisan, managed to say what a crappy thing cutting arts and culture funding is, and spoke about how proud he was to stand among other mayors across the country to oppose the culture cuts. There's something to be learned from him. And then there's Jim Fleck who gives millions to the arts but is a staunch supporter of the conservative party, who has recently cut arts and culture funding at an alarming proportion and probably will try to cut more now that Stephen Harper has been reelected. We shouldn't be afraid to stand up for what we believe in, regardless of our place in the political spectrum, or in the cultural landscape. As Jean Chretien said to the US when they were looking for support to invade Iraq, sometimes being a good friend means telling your friends when you think they are wrong. And the beauty of democracy is that politically you can do this! As artists, arts and cul...

....of my writing about Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's MYTH, which I just saw at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. I made the pilgrimmage alone on a wing and a prayer. I've been reading about his work for years and this is the first chance I've encountered to see his work. It could be disastrous. All this idealizing and I could have totally bottomed out with a stinker -- but this is no stinker. In fact that word shouldn't come close to descriptions of this show. Although a few people left about half an hour into it.... ...What a thing they missed. "Real people" and their shadows trapped in a library. Walls have slippery doors that the shadows slide, twist and tease their way through. Their movements have no bones. Like shadows they have clear edges but physics don't seem to apply to them. The "real people" search through their personal myths and stories to make sense of the swirling beasts around them, they are possessed, they reason, they cry, they s...

I just finished Peggy Baker's Summer Intensive and launched straight into performing in Caroline Niklas-Gordon's show 1,2,3 (don't believe NOW magazine that said Blue Ceiling dance produced it -- it was all done on Caroline's steam). I feel the earth radically shifting under my feet. New verbs, new images, new fullness and height to my dancing. Perhaps nothing has changed but my insides, but what glorious insides are sprouting, then! It is amazing to me, because this week was also my birthday and I am an age where the traditional dance thought is that you are done improving physically and while your artistry may rise, your technical ability is on the wane. I feel so far from that 'truth' that it might as well be on the far side of Pluto. Peggy's intensive, and particularly the time she spent with us in 'creative practice', has revealed how it is that we can turn that traditional thinking on its ear, how it is that your artistry's deepening can st...

So last weekend was Dance Ontario's big DanceWeekend and I was invited to perform that piece that broke my arm last year (during tech rehearsal for DanceWeekend!). "The speed of our vertigoes" caused great vertigo indeed, over the last year. I performed the work recklessly three days after my cast was removed, then the following week in Germany and two weeks after that in Guelph (on a carpeted floor in an art gallery). My partner, Dennes, went through many levels of distress. Then it was my turn as December 2007 approached and I needed to start rehearsing the work again. My 'stage fright' or nerves have gotten worse and worse as the years go by and now faced with a solo performance on the biggest stage for contemporary dance in Toronto, with a piece that makes me feel immensely vulnerable in its most calm situations, and a history of breaking my arm while dancing it. The Premiere Dance Theatre stage is fascinating. It looks huge from the house, but tiny when you...