FEB 26-27-28 GAS STATION ARTS CENTRE
The Rhythm

Dance work by Casimiro Nhussi and Paula Blair
Guest musical band Papa Mambo
And of course NAfro Band

CAST & CREW

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Casimiro Nhussi

DANCERS
Paula Blair
Helene Mancini
Nicole Coppens
Robyn Thomson Kacki
Kim Hildebrand

MUSICIANS
Dave Brown
Roger Cloutier
Tim Church
Ewingi B. Kiki
Kelly Leveille
Cam MacLean
Jay Stoller
Nick Kolisnyk

LIGHTING DESIGN
Gabriel Cropley

dance, discipline, and the anarchic body; or, how do i get my body to let me take a dance class?

by a. charlie peters

photos by Ryszard Hunka

commissioned by the Young Lungs Dance Exchange for its 2015-2016 Research Series

how do i get my body to let me take a dance class? this sounds like i’m invested in the mind/body split. I’m not, but i slide into it as readily as the next person born after René Descartes started thinking he is because he thinks he is. some believe that Descartes’s famous seventeenth-century statement, “i think, therefore i am,” founded modernity. right up to the present day, many people regard the mind or brain as the boss of the body. dualisms such as mind/body, man/woman, adult/child, good/evil all feature one term that is privileged over the other term. in the mind/body pairing, the mind is usually the one on top. a friend of ours is writing a play about cryonics. in cryonics, they sometimes freeze whole bodies, but you can also get someone to cut off your head and freeze it after you die so it can get reattached to another body when they’ve figured out how to fix what killed you. that’s how much some people value their bodies, apparently. in my case, though, when it comes to taking dance classes, anyway, it feels like it’s my body that’s calling the shots. it feels like i have an anarchic body, one that doesn’t want a leader or a mind thinking that it’s the boss.

anarchy means “no leader”: this is the literal translation from the Greek. i’ve been in a university environment for much of my life, so i’m used to leaders and to having my mind disciplined by them. for many years, i’ve had professors, advisors, employers, and department chairs telling me what to do. i might not like the hierarchical, top-down structure of so many of our school and work environments, but where the life of the mind is concerned, at any rate, being directed is something i can handle, even enjoy. and my body comes along for the ride.

disciplining my body, though, is a bit different. there are limits to what it’ll put up with. for years, i attended yoga classes, but, with yoga class, you don’t have to be all that disciplined: you can go or not go. it’s not like you have to be at a particular class on a regular basis. and because i have this somewhat hypermobile, disorderly body, yoga teachers would tell me to do the opposite of what they were telling everyone else to do or to do what felt right in my body. so i wasn’t exactly getting bossed around in yoga class. plus, half the time yoga instructors are making exactly the same shapes at the same time as everyone else so it feels like you’re all in it together. and moving to music at home or in a club or in free-style dance classes such as the Isadora Duncan workshop that Jolene Bailie arranged are experiences that i really enjoy. (Isadora freed dance from many of its restrictions, and i learned about her contributions when i was really young, so participating in this workshop was really wonderful thing for me!) no, it wasn’t these experiences that tested my limits; it was when i tried to learn a classical Indian style of dance named Kathak with Ian Mozdzen that my body rebelled.

the Kathak teachers were awesome, the people at the India School of Dance were super nice, and Kathak is super beautiful and interesting, but however much i thought i wanted to learn Kathak, my body just didn’t want to go to the same place at the same time every week and be taught to move with the kind of precision required by a classical dance form. having to move my arms or legs up or down or in or out several inches so as to mimic these ancient postures—however beautiful and charming these postures are—ended up being the proverbial straw, in terms of my physical training. Ian continued with Kathak lessons; in fact, he will be moving to India at the end of summer to learn more about classical Indian dance. and me? i dropped out. and i really wanted to learn Kathak, too.

the Hunger Games series of books and films features Twelve Districts filled with poor people who supply the citizens in the wealthy Capital with all that the well-to-do citizens need to thrive. it’s a lot like the relationship between the body and the mind of a scholarly type person: the body is like the Twelve Districts: it supplies the food and circulates the blood and the oxygen and then it has to just sit there and keep working at supplying the whole body with stuff while the mind—which resembles the wealthy citizens of the Capital—satiates itself with books and films and lectures. in the Hunger Games, because a Thirteenth District had tried to overthrow this unjust system sometime in the past, each of the twelve remaining districts has two of its young people selected to fight to the death in the annual hunger games while the citizens of the Capital get “entertained” by this blood sport. importantly, in each annual hunger game, there is only one winner. eventually, the people in the Twelve Districts rebel, inspired by the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, who refuses to kill all her opponents and become the sole winner of the games. trying to learn Kathak has taught me what i’d only suspected was true from all those years in yoga classes: that my body has a mind—many minds! entire districts!—of its own. perhaps a more egalitarian relationship among all these body-minds and my mind-mind (which no doubt has its own bodies, too) might make it possible for me to take a Kathak class sometime.

and this is precisely what anarchy is all about: egalitarian relationships. anarchy often gets a bad wrap. it’s frequently compared with chaos or nihilism, concepts which no doubt have their up sides, as well, although we seldom hear about them. in fact, Elise and Jasmine Allard, in their performance on January 16th, demonstrated that chaotic movement can be a safe and welcome expression of intense feeling if someone you love is there to catch you. i’ll talk about two separate moments from this performance: in the first, Jasmine holds Elise around the waist while Elise moves her arms and legs intensely; in this first instance, intense movement is enabled by Jasmine’s grasp. in the second of these two moments, Jasmine dances around like crazy until Elise can’t stand it any more and stops her. each sister is the ground that supports the other’s wildness. love both enables and disables chaotic movement.

researching this paper, i learned that contemporary theorists of anarchy embrace wildness and that they are concerned about oppression and the abuses of authority. authority tries to convince us that the few are more forceful than the many. no one in their right mind,—or maybe i should say “in their right body”! or, “in their right body-mind”!—would believe this for long, would they? Isabell Lorey is one of the scholars who is currently theorizing anarchy. Lorey writes about the 2011 Occupy Movement, the writings of philosopher Jacques Ranciére, and the idea that real democracy—by which Lorey means direct democracy, as opposed to representative democracy—is anarchic. what Lorey wants us to do is to practice democracy, real, anarchic democracy, all the time. she calls this “presentist democracy” (59). fill all of our presents, all of our nows, with real, egalitarian democracy, that’s what Lorey advises. And, if democracy is what we actually want, this recommendation makes a lot of sense, for, as literary theorist Jon Clay puts it, “the equality of beings is not imposed … [on us] from ‘above’ … but is rather … [our] own”; it “is assumed among … [ourselves]” (15).

Lorey’s recommendation about being present involves having a different kind of relationship with the past and the future, a relationship that is perhaps more distanced, or more occasional. instead of thinking about the past or the future a lot, might we choose, instead, to think about them only when we really need to. rather than “intending” to do a given thing, might we “carry” an idea “with us,” instead? would this be a substantially different way of doing things? how do we “get out of” dwelling in our pasts or in our futures? i think that Brenda McLean and Brittany Thiessen demonstrated a way to do this in a sequence of movements accompanying an apology. during their rehearsal of “Dinner,” a vignette from Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, Brenda flippantly, insincerely apologizes to Brittany before following this up with a sincere, heartfelt apology. during the flippant apology, Brenda turns her back on Brittany and moves away from her. but during the sincere apology, Brenda wraps her entire body around Brittany, who is seated on the floor. apologizing addresses feelings of guilt, grief, or regret about an event that happened in the past. an insincere apology will keep this past event in play and maintain the distancing effects of estrangement. in contrast, a sincere apology can collapse this distance, assuage troubling emotions, and bring people together in the intimacy of a present moment of reconciliation. and Brenda’s and Brittany’s movements demonstrate how collapsing space collapses time, too. the direction and orientation of their bodies in space encode the temporal dynamics of the sincere and the insincere apology and bring to life the presentist politics recommended by Lorey .

these days politics has been largely reduced to policing people who are barely able to eke out a living (91). this perspective about contemporary politics is associated with thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault and it is a perspective that is also shared by a theorist named Mick Smith. while writing about how we might stop dominating what he calls “the more-than-human world,” Smith celebrates wildness. he calls wildness innocent, “ethically anarchic” (92), and “synonymous with creative freedom from social restraint” (94). Smith’s “more-than-human world” played a significant role in classes offered during the Young Lungs Research Series. on January 24th, facilitators Ali Robson, Janelle Hacault, and Sasha Amaya asked those who attended the classes to become sand, water, gulls, and trees! French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari see all earthlings as interconnected, as assemblages that are always becoming with the things that they—we!—come into contact with. this is true in the most basic and fundamental way. when we eat mushrooms, melons, or mango, we become these plants and they, in turn, become human beings. our interactions makes us assemblages of human and non-human parts. we breathe in what trees exhale—and vice versa! other kinds of becomings took place during these classes, as well. Sasha asked class participants to move around the dance floor with different body parts doing the leading—first the pelvis, then the ribs and the feet—people were even asked to let their bodies be led by more than one body part at once! in becoming-led by pelvis-minds, rib-minds, and feet-minds the leadership of the thinking head was disrupted, although it, too, was given its chance to take the lead! on another occasion, in a rehearsal exercise featuring one person mimicking another person’s everyday gestures, dancers Freya Olafson and Lise McMillan were asked by creator Treasure Waddell to become one another!

these types of exercise ask us to engage in a certain wildness, or in what Mick Smith calls “creative freedom from social restraint.” in this phrase, Smith celebrates freedom along with wildness. i would sure love to celebrate both of these ideas, too. but while celebrating wildness has many fans among anarchists, there are some thinkers, though, who argue, and very convincingly, too, that the concept of freedom is just another tool in the massive toolbox of those who police us. in fact, a theorist by the name of Nikolas Rose argues that governments invented freedom! as Rose explains it, governments convince us that certain behaviours are reasonable and normal. then governments convince us that we freely choose these very behaviours that they have conditioned us to adopt! Rose suggests that we think the way our governments want us to think, including and perhaps especially when we think that we are free. and thinking that we are free when, in fact, we are being highly disciplined and rigidly policed by those who govern us may be one of the biggest problems, in Rose’s point of view, that we moderns face.

Seeing Rachelle Bourget in rehearsal really brought home to me the visual dominance of the thinking head and its companion, the expressive face. for the first part of the rehearsal, i’m sure i spent as much time looking at Rachelle’s face and head as i did observing her dancing body. and even as i write this i realize: there i go, participating in the mind/body split again! i’ll start over. at first, i spent as much time watching the top eighth of Rachelle’s physical form in rehearsal as i did watching the other seven-eighths. then Rachelle wrapped a red scarf over her head and almost everything about my viewing of her movement changed. Rachelle’s head became another part of her moving body, an eighth of her body as opposed to the head of a body. lots of other interesting things became apparent, too: many of her movements were directed sideways; in other words, they were oriented towards the horizontal plane. (poststructural theorists, much like anarchists, are very interested in collapsing hierarchies, and they talk a lot about collapsing them by putting things side-by-side. poststructuralists are all about the horizontal, the lateral, the sideways.) to return to Rachelle’s dance: with her head covered, Rachelle’s limbs—pale in contrast with her black clothing and red scarf—came more into focus and the way she moved one arm as if to fit her elbow into the curve of her waist came to seem like an exercise in self-construction, something i might not have noticed had Rachelle not donned the mask. at the same time, Rachelle’s other arm was angled such that the space between this second arm and her core became a hole that drew my attention to the air within which she moved, air that was shared by everyone else in the place. also, Rachelle’s body made curves where one would not expect them and straight lines where i would never have thought them possible; for instance, at one time, Rachelle’s arm and shoulder were angled in such a way as to point straight down at the floor while the rest of her figure remained erect. i’ve put a slide of the “Russian feminist punk rock protest” (wiki) group Pussy Riot up on the screen because the effect of Rachelle’s dance, on me, anyway, was very political in a horizontal, egalitarian way. the other seven-eighths of our bodies offers so much!

in the introduction to his book Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement, André Lepecki explains that, “Rethinking … [what it means to be human] in terms of the body is precisely the task of [dance] choreography” (5). Lepecki has his criticisms of choreography, however, due to the “commanding voices” of its masters and the extensive discipline it requires of dancers who must nonetheless maintain a posture—and the imposture—of spontaneity (9). Lepecki goes on to talk about how dance is supposed to be all about movement. movement is the ontology or beingness of dance, as, since the Renaissance, at any rate, dance has been understood to be the art form that is all about uninterrupted, unceasing, rhythmic, flowing, movement. modernity, itself—that is to say, the period that stretches from the time of Descartes’s famous statement, “i think therefore i am,” all the way up to the present day—, is said to be all about movement, too, by some theorists; and Lepecki agrees.

but Lepecki is something of a rebel, as well. while he agrees with those who argue that modernity is all about movement and that dance, since the Renaissance, has been all about movement, he rebels against the idea that dance needs to be defined this way, preferring, instead, an expanded definition. Lepecki would have dance appreciated as a dynamic political force that embraces the body’s movement and its stillness, as well as the contributions of the philosophical, theorizing mind. now, what Lepecki says about dance being an art form that is predominantly about movement makes a lot of sense. i wonder, though, about his suggestion that movement is, as he puts it, “the kinetic project of modernity” (my emphasis 3). another way to look at it would be to think of modernity as being about people coming to terms with the fact that everything is always already in motion as well as the fact that the earth isn’t some still point at the centre of the universe, the way many Europeans apparently thought it was before Copernicus. dance, making use of both movement (and relative stillness), may be the art form that can help us the most as we come to terms with the fact that movement and change are the only constants, the only things that don’t change.

Mark Franko is another theorist who is interested in dance’s political contributions. for Franko, dance need not be the traditional, choreographic product of a student who mimics a teacher; it can also be the incorporation or becoming-embodied of the gift of dance. he makes this claim in “Given Moment: Dance and the Event,”a meditation about how dance, post 9/11, can help us come to term with events, especially traumatic events. Franko foregrounds the teaching methods of a Balinese dancer and teacher named Mario who transmits dance moves with his own body by “position[ing] himself behind his pupil whose arms and torso he manipulates into positions” (119). as one pupil puts it, the person being taught is like a tree whose branches are being arranged. Since the dance moves are not being “transmitted across a mediating space of observation and interpretation” (120), Franko characterizes this kind of teaching as a gift. this teaching is the giving of “self-force”; it is “the communication of dance as gift” (120).

The Young Lungs Dance Exchange Research Series has foregrounded the gift of dance and genuine spontaneity, too, particularly in the form of improvisation and collaboration. during her show, Treasure Waddell used improvisation to include the audience in the collaboration. the Research Series was itself an extensive network of collaboration. in fact, i wonder if the degree of collaboration during this Young Lungs Research Series might even address a criticism that some theorists make about gift economies. some theorists suggest gift-giving necessarily creates debt. if you give, there is the expectation that the person you give to will give something back, which is the debt part. in the Young Lungs Series, the creator of one show was a dancer in another and a dancer was also an administrator and on and on! so, in a situation with this degree of collaboration, where people are giving and getting all the time, finding someone who could be experiencing a lack of a reciprocity that could be called debt might actually be quite difficult! there is no doubt in my mind-body district that there were masters of dance involved in the processes of these past months, but the degree of reciprocity among the participants has made hierarchy virtually indiscernible.

collaboration may be another way to think about anarchy. if we (and our body parts) are always taking turns leading the way, are there still people whom we might characterize, in total, as leaders?

theorists of anarchy are frequently theorists of utopia, as well. and, like the word anarchy, the word utopia uses negation to make meaning. whereas anarchy means “no leader,” utopia means “no place.” put another way, the word utopia suggests that there is, in actuality, no fabulously wonderful place, no place in which we all might want to be and become together. but maybe, if we were to practice the kind of presentist democracy that Lorey recommends and if we were to have a revolving leadership such as the one demonstrated in this Research Series, we could have anarchy in both senses—in the dual sense of direct democracy and in the sense that there is no one person who is “the leader”—and maybe we could have utopia, too, here, in this place where we live. which would mean we’d need to coin a new word, a word for utopia achieved. how about the Cree word “ōmatowihk,” which means “in this place”? we could say—here’s a sample sentence—the Young Lungs style of dancing and dance-making is “ōmatowihk,” or the state-formerly-known-as-utopia achieved “in this place.”

oh, and i think i’ve learned a way to get my body to let me take a dance class! maybe i need to stop disciplining my mind quite so much; maybe this way my body can handle a little more discipline!

Works Cited and Referenced

Franko, Mark. “Given Movement: Dance and the Event.” Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory. Ed. André Lepecki. Middeltown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2004. Print.

Lepecki, André. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. New York: Rutledge, 2006. University of Winnipeg eBook. 21 Nov. 2014.

Lorey, Isabell. “The 2011 Occupy Movements: Ranciére and the Crisis of Democracy.” Trans. Aileen

Derieg. Theory Culture and Society 31.7/8 (2014): 43-65. SAGE. Web. 22 December 2015, Rose, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print.

Smith, Mick. “Primitivism: Anarchy, Politics, and the State of Nature.” Against Ecological Soveriegnty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World.

CHOREOGRAPHER’S LAB
August 8-19, 2016
Winnipeg, MB

COMPANY LINK, a Winnipeg based company dedicated to Experimental Dance and Theatre is currently accepting applications for
 
4 Choreographers and 6 Dancers

to participate in an intensive two-week exploration into the integrated use of Text and Movement.  

All participants will receive a $500 Honorarium for their involvement. 

What is the Lab? 
The Lab is an opportunity for dancers and choreographers to come together for an intensive two-week period to investigate current performance issues. It is led by a skilled facilitator and is designed to promote performance skills, develop a language for objective analysis and encourage critical dialogue within a supportive and collaborative group of peers.   This year’s exploration will centre on the integration of TEXT AND MOVEMENT and will be led by Company Link’s Artistic Director, Tom Stroud. 

The integration of text and movement has been a long time interest of many choreographers.   However, there are few opportunities for creators to explore and develop their skills in this area free from the pressure of the paying public. The Text and Movement Lab addresses this need by providing four creators and six performers a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in an in-depth collective exploration of the potential inherent in the marriage of text and movement. (For more detailed information about how the Lab works please visit the Company website provided below) 

The Lab will be open to both emerging and established professional choreographers and performers and will run for two weeks Monday – Friday, 9:00 – 5:00, August 8-19, 2016 at the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film at the University of Winnipeg.  

Please Note: preference will be given to those choreographers operating without ongoing support.  Participants will be selected by a committee consisting of the Facilitator and two established artists from the community. 

To Apply:  please send a paragraph or two about your interest in the Text and Movement Lab and a brief Bio and/or Artistic Resume, by March 1, 2016 to 

Tom Stroud
822 Dorchester Ave.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3M 0R7
 
Please indicate whether you are interested in participating as a performer or a choreographer.  If applying as a choreographer please indicate if you would be interested in participating as a performer if we were not able to accommodate you as a choreographer.   Applicants will be notified of the results by March 15, 2016.

For more detailed information please visit  http://www.companylinkwpg.com or contact Tom Stroud at mailto:tom@companylinkwpg.com 

MISFIT BLUES

MISFIT BLUES

JANUARY 21-23, 8PM
THE RACHEL BROWNE THEATRE

BUY TICKETS

WCD’s co-presentation with Fortier Danse-Création of Paul-André Fortier’s Manitoba Premiere of MISFIT BLUES and the remount of THIN ICE.Sublime misfits, Fortier and Regina’s incandescent Robin Poitras, get wild and silly in an ‘intoxicating ride through the incomprehensible abstractions and piercing truths of two people experiencing themselves as a unity.’ —BWW Review by Matt Hanson.

Love, Clowning and other Silly Antics
Although they’ve been around awhile, they view intimate relations as an equation with several unknowns, except that today there are no limitations to expressing their enthusiasms and their failings. They love each other, good or bad. They sound each other out, challenge each other, know how to manipulate one another. Thick as thieves, they also get bored, enjoy a good laugh, tread delicately between candour and cruelty. Under the ambiguous gaze of coyotes created by the Amerindian artist Edward Poitras, they present tender, perverse, hilarious characters – angelic tramps straight out of a Beckett play or burlesque cinema. Sublime misfits.

After a successful and brilliant career over the past 40 years, the choreographer Paul-André Fortier pursues in Misfit Blues an adventure that began at the FTA in 2008 with Cabane. In this duo with the incandescent Robin Poitras (Bells, FTA 2013), he appears here in a new light in this bittersweet caricature of the grand human comedy.

Text by Fabienne Cabado

Special Note
Paul-André Fortier wants to recognize the special contribution of Robin Poitras to the development of the choreography ofMisfit Blues. While she is not a co-author of the piece, Robin Poitras fed the creation process with her presence and with her exceptional improvisation skills.

 

This work is dedicated to Denis Lavoie.

 About the Artists

PAUL-ANDRE FORTIER

 Paul-André Fortier has made an immense contribution to contemporary dance in Quebec over the past 40 years as a pioneering creator, performer and teacher. He has created nearly 50 choreographies, solos, group pieces and site-specific works. Interested in the crossover between different generations and art forms, he regularly features young dancers in his work, as well as other artists. In 2010, he was appointed Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French govern­ment. In 2012, he received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and an appointment to the Order of Canada as Officer. At the age of 67, Paul-André Fortier is still performing his unique take on dance polished by maturity.

ROBIN POITRAS

Robin Poitras is one of Saskatchewan’s most prolific dance and performance creators. Creating dance, performance and installation works, she has been actively engaged in contemporary dance practice since the early 80s. Her practice is rooted in a physical world comprised of choreography, dance and actions/acts. She co-founded New Dance Horizons in 1986, where she continues to act as Artistic Director. With an interest in research into diverse fields of artistic and somatic practice she has developed a unique interdisciplinary approach. Robin’s works have been presented across Canada, in Spain, France, Germany, Mongolia and Mexico. She is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2006 Mayor’s Awards for Business & The Arts in Regina, and the 2004 Women of Distinction Award for the Arts.

 

EDWARD POITRAS

Edward Poitras is a multi media visual artist with a background in performance creation. A product of the experimental Indian Art Cultural programs of the 1970s, Edward has worked as a teacher in the arts and has worked in communications in a audio visual department and as a freelance graphic artist. Edward has also been involved with a number of Aboriginal artist run centre’s and has curated a series of exhibitions whose focus was Treaty Four Territory. He has also co-curated a couple of story teller festivals. Edward has shown his work in international art biennials and other major national exhibitions. Edward lives on George Gordon First Nation.

 

Thin Ice

Thin Ice was created in January 2015 with two graduating students from the Professionnal Program of the School of Contemporary Dancers in Winnipeg in response to an invitation from Robin Poitras for her Men in Dance Festival held in Regina.

Fortier Danse-Création is remounting Thin Ice in Winnipeg in collaboration with the School of Contemporary Dancers.  Aaron Paul, graduated student, and Trevor Pick, 3rd year student, will perform the piece in a double bill program with Misfit Blues.  The evening will be co-presented by Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and Fortier Danse-Création.

 

About the Dancers:

Aaron Michael Paul began his early dance training at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. After six years in the Professional Division, Aaron continued his studies at the School of Contemporary Dancers. Aaron has had the opportunity to perform works by Stephanie Ballard, Odette Heyn Projects, Constance Cooke, Drive Dance, Gaile Petursson-Hiley, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, Tedd Robinson, and Paul Andre Fortier. Aaron is thrilled to be apprenticing for WCD this season.

Trevor Pick is currently in the Third Year of the Professional Program of The School of Contemporary Dancers. He will be performing with the graduating dancers of the Program in New Dance Horizons’ Prairie Dance Circuit performance series in Regina in March 2016 and at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa in June 2016. Trevor has performed in a professional project with choreographer, Ming Hon, which was presented at aceartinc in June 2015. He was the recipient of a bursary award for the 2015 Pilobolus Summer Workshop Series. He is deeply honoured to have the opportunity to perform Paul-André Fortier’s Thin Ice (Glace vive).

Kathleen Hiley Solo Projects celebrates its first full length evening of dance with three world premieres and signature works by renowned Canadian choreographers, Stephanie Ballard, Margie Gillis, Gaile Petursson-Hiley and Peter Quanz. Solo artist Kathleen Hiley, recognized for her dramatic, evocative and expressive interpretations by critics and audiences alike is highlighted in this diverse program of physical, emotionally charged and stimulating choreography. Kathleen Hiley Solo Projects premieres February 12 & 13, 2016 at the Gas Station Arts Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council. 

Performer 
Kathleen Hiley

Choreographers
Stephanie Ballard
Margie Gillis
Gaile Petursson-Hiley
Peter Quanz

Friday February 12, 2016 – 8:00 PM
Saturday February 13, 2016 – 8:00 PM

Gas Station Arts Centre 
445 River Avenue   Winnipeg, Manitoba

Tickets: $20
 Tickets available at the door or at kathleenhiley.org/tickets

The Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance

(In partnership with The Red Nose Diaries)

Presents

Mask and Clown Intensive (Baby Clown)

Led by John Turner

Artistic Director of the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance

April 23-May 8, 2016

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Fee 1300$ (plus GST)

100+ hrs.

Max 16 students

*This course has a rigorous schedule; expect full day classes with one day off, to be determined by the Instructor at the start of the workshop.

It is not necessary to be a performer to take this workshop.

All are welcome, from all walks of life!

A deposit of 650$ is required to guarantee a spot in the class.

For more information or to apply please email Spenser Payne or Alissa Watson

at – TheRedNoseDiaries@gmail.com

Course Description:

This course is based on the work of Canadian Clown Master Richard Pochinko and has been named many things: From Mask to Clown, Clown Through Mask, or The Baby Clown Workshop (the student’s clown is born at the end).

In this workshop students begin with a focus on listening. The initial exercises are used to awaken and encourage a sense of pleasure, an awareness of the audience, and an honest physical and emotional response to internal impulses and external events. Many exercises are done with eyes closed to help exercise and expand the student’s experience of perception and focus. The body (through specific movement exercises) is approached as a source of visualization for character or story elements through improvisations that include a great deal of work with colors.

Once the color work is done the students are ready for the making and wearing of six masks. This is an involved process of physicalization and visualization, exploring the innocence and experience of eachmask and the relationships between them. The masks are guideposts to the student’s creative playground and as such are also the guideposts to his/her clown. With each mask the student prepares a short turn (sketch) to express the essence of the mask without the use of verbal language. Through these turns and the exercises of the entire workshop the rules of clown emerge giving the student a fundamental understanding of clown and a deeper experience of the elements at play in any performance situation. This workshop is an intense blast and furnishes the student with multiple characters and a malleable structure for continued creative exploration with limitless applications. It is not necessary to be a performer to take this course. All are welcome, from all walks of life.

About the Instructor:

JOHN TURNER is best known as the “Smoot” half of Mump & Smoot, along with Michael Kennard (“Mump”). This award winning Canadian clown duo has delighted audiences throughout North America for the past twenty-eight years. After three sold out Fringe Festival tours in 1989, 1990, and 1992, Mump & Smoot went on to play regional theatres across the continent with great success.

These theatres include the Astor Place Theater (Off Broadway), Yale Repertory Theater, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Dallas Theater Center, the American Repertory Theater (Boston), Baltimore Center Stage, the Canadian Stage in Toronto, Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, and the Vancouver East Cultural Centre to name but a few.

John began teaching the Pochinko style of clown in 1991 at Equity Showcase in Toronto. He taught there for 7 years before opening his own studio, The SPACE, with Michael Kennard where he continued to teach, direct, and work on Mump & Smoot shows for the next 6 years. He currently teaches primarily throughout the summer on his farm on Manitoulin Island. He also has had ongoing teaching gigs at Laurentian University in the Francophone drama programme (14 years), the Centre for Indigenous Theatre (6 years) and the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Company (5 years). Other teaching stints haveincluded the Yale School of Drama Graduate Program where he was an associate artist for seven years, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Workman Theatre Project), the University of Tel Aviv, the University of Calgary, Bishops University, the University of Guelph, California State University, Michigan Tech, the Humber Comedy Centre and the Stratford Festival.

John is also the director of Karen Hines’ Citizen Pochsy, one of the acclaimed trilogy of Pochsy Playson which John has collaborated for over a decade, (nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Drama).

Other directing credits include Sandrine Lafond’s Little Lady, Michael Kennard’s Puzzle Me Red, Miriam Cusson and Mélissa Rockburn’s Stuff, Diana Kolpak’s Lionheart, Emelia Symington Fedy’s Patti Fedy in Lovers Rock. For the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group, John directed the workshop and full production of The Gulch, as well as Tomson Highway’s A Trickster Tale. John also directed Clown & Such… at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Louis Negin’s The Boy Scouts’ Manual, and Linda Brokenshire’s The Lecture and The Hero.

Along with his long time partner and collaborator Michael Kennard, John has used his extensive performance and show creation experience to create more advanced workshops specifically designed for the student that wishes to use this work in a professional capacity. Some are performance oriented and some are creation oriented but there are as many reasons for taking them as there are students.

Obra Prima Capoeira is offering beginner capoeira classes. Every one is welcome. 

Time: Tuesday’s 8-9:15pm and Saturdays 3-4:15pm

Where: university of Winnipeg recplex gymnasium

Cost: free

Contact: Orr.mimi@gmail.com for more info.