Research Series Nov-Jan 2018

This winter, three teams, each with their own set of questions about movement, are working in the Young Lungs Dance Exchange Studio. Hannah Everest, Brittany Thiessen, and Jaz Papadopoulos lead the movement research this series. Between them, they have wide-ranging approaches to movement – contemporary dance, clown, dance/theatre – providing for a multifarious series of events.
January 26th-30th, the three research teams invite you to take a gander at the colourful linings of their creative processes.

All events take place at 618 Arlington St.

JANUARY 26TH – SHOWING 5:30 doors/ 6PM start/ $10 – All three works-in-progress will be showcased

JANUARY 27TH – ENDNOTE 5:30 doors/ 6PM start/ Free – Presentation of essays in response to research

JANUARY 30th – WORKSHOP 2PM – 5PM / $10 – Researchers will led a movement workshop based on their research

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Find their project descriptions and artist bios below

BRITTANY THIESSEN

Brittany Thiessen is obsessed with live performance of all kinds.
Especially taken with acting, music, and dance, she often finds herself caught between the three, setting herself up for what she likes to call an ‘existential art crisis.’ In response to this crisis, she’s decided to investigate how these three mediums can exist together onstage, (specifically in improvisation) throughout this Research Series.
Her recent acting credits include: On Love (Winnipeg Fringe), My Name is Rachel Corrie (May Works), and From the Seat of a Canoe (Long Take Collective). Brittany is a co-founder of Make/Shift Theatre, Company in Residence for Theatre Projects Manitoba, who are in the midst of dramaturgy on their new work, The Party: A Scientific Romance. Also known as ‘B-Rabbit’, she is one half of the musical-comedy duo, BUNNY, who harmonize about everything from time travel to Instagram. Later this spring she’s looking forward to assistant directing TPM’s A Short History of Crazy Bone, another piece which blends the worlds the dance and theatre.

ALEXANDRA ELLIOTT

After performing her own work in New York Alexandra Elliott and Hurricane Sandy came face to face. Physically demanding and emotionally charged, her work made it back to her hometown of Winnipeg and beyond. As a contemporary dancer and choreographer it is Alex’s highest intention to leave you transformed. With over ten original works under her belt, her dances have been produced in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. Alexandra remains humble with a commitment to learn from her seniors and peers. She has studied choreography with award-winning choreographers Tedd Robinson (QC), Susie Burpee (ON), Marie-Josée Chartier (QC), and Susan Rethorst (NY). Fresh after graduating with a BA Honours Degree from the University of Winnipeg and The School of Contemporary Dancers, Alex was a company dancer with the unforgettable Ruth Cansfield Dance. Four years later she joined the Young Lungs Dance Exchange to pursue choreography. After seven years of constant support from this organization she has taken an important step and is now the Artistic Director of Alexandra Elliott Dance. She had the unique opportunity to self-present her own production and will continue to do so with the supportive community she lives in. Alex cycles to her studio every week, year round, to make the creation of dance her daily practice, and not one day is taken for granted. She is thrilled to announce the unveiling of Art Holm, a bi-annual performance series that showcases three artists of different disciplines. Alex shares the role of curator and producer with fellow artist Hilary Anne Crist.

DAVIS PLETT

Davis Plett is an intermedia artist working with audio, text, and performance. His praxis attempts a resistance against reductive ontological formulations of bodies, minds, and the economics of meaning under capitalism, recontextualizing the rituals, spectacles, and material detritus of consumption/production to reveal their/our infinite horror, beauty, and mystery. Davis holds degrees in performance and literature from the University of Winnipeg and has studied clowning with John Turner, intermedia performance with 2boys.tv, and composition/sound design with Greg Lowe. As a composer/sound artist he has worked with Theatre Projects Manitoba, Mia van Leeuwen, 2boys.tv, Frances Koncan, and Gislina Patterson. Upcoming projects include THIS IS GOING TO BE A SILENT POEM, a text-based performance for overhead projector, audience, and projectionist, and Fanta, an intermedia creation/performance that just completed its first stage of development through a fall 2017 Young Lungs residency.

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HANNAH EVEREST

An independent contemporary dance artist originally from the west coast of BC, Hannah Everest is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Dancers and the University of Winnipeg (BA Honours degree). Thrilled to be embarking on her first choreographic research project through Young Lungs, she has had the pleasure to have worked professionally with Jennifer Mascall of Vancouver BC, Odette Heyn and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Danielle Sturk in her 2013 film A Good Madness, and be part of WCD’s VERGE under the direction of Brent Lott. Most recently, Hannah is excited to be collaborating as a dancer and creator in a choreographic mentorship with Johanna Riley, to be completed in February 2017.

SASHA WILDE

Sasha holds a Bachelor of Arts (honours) in dance from the School of Contemporary Dancers in
affiliation with the University of Winnipeg. While in school Sasha had the opportunity to work
with many esteemed teachers and choreographers. With the School of Contemporary Dancers
she performed in the 50 Dancer Project at the 2016 Canada Dance Festival. Post graduation
Sasha traveled to Mexico to perform in the show “Creando Lazos a Través de la Danza”
(Creating Bonds Through Dance) with GPS Dance Collective, of which she is a founding member.
She has also participated in projects with Stephanie Ballard and Dancers: Landscape Dancing,
Odette Heyn Projects with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Dancers’ Studio West: Dance
Action Lab, a Choreographic Mentorship with Johanna Riley and NAfro Dance Productions,
including the 2017 Moving Inspirations Dance Festival. Along with performing Sasha teaches
modern and

ILSE TORRES OROZCO

Ilse Torres Orozco is a recent graduate of the Professional Program of the School of
Contemporary Dancers and Co- Director from GPS Dance Collective. She has had the honour of
working professionally with Stephanie Ballard and Dancers, Odette Heyn- Projects with the
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Gearshifting Perfomance Works and with the Mexican dance
collective Colectivo 1.618. She was the artistic coordinator from the project “Creando Lazos a
Través de la Danza” that was presented in León, Mexico as part of Canada’s 150 th anniversary.

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JAZ PAPADOPOULOS

Jaz Papadopoulos is an interdisciplinary artist who works in experimental poetry, installation, video and performance. They are interested in diaspora, gender, bodies, place, memory, grief, and ritual. They are a current recipient of the New Artist in Media Art Production Fund at Video Pool. Jaz lives in Treaty 1 territory.

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ESSAYISTS

GRAHAM WIEBE

Graham Wiebe, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba completed his B.F.A. (Hons) Degree at the University of Manitoba. Employing the snapshot as material toward a visual memoir, Wiebe’s photographs become a record of impulse and engagement. These fragmentary and still documents weave together to highlight the intersection of the urban and suburban landscapes, creating an intimate portrait of youth culture rooted in time, place and personal experience. His photographs have been exhibited and published internationally. Wiebe recently won the AGO AIMIA Photography Scholarship Prize Program, exhibiting his series Summerland at the Art Gallery Of Ontario.

BETH SCHELLENBERG

Beth Schellenberg is an arts administrator, curator, writer, and MA student living on Treaty One Territory in Winnipeg, MB. Her academic research is focused on how creative works and popular movements illuminate dominant social ideologies, and on the transformative nature of communications technology on cultural production. Her work has been featured in Dear Journal and PaperWait: Contemporary Art Writing, and she has upcoming pieces in Briarpatch Magazine and De Gruyter’s Open Cultural Studies journal.

Photo by Public Parking and Laina Brown

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(November-January)

with essayists Jillian Groening and Leif Norman

Jaime Black is a Métis multidisciplinary artist based in Winnipeg. Perhaps best known for her pivotal work The REDress Project, an installation project addressing violence against Indigenous women and girls. Jaime’s art practice engages in themes of memory, identity, place and resistance.

Currently Researching…

Jaime’s work is situated in an understanding of the body and the land as sources of historical and cultural knowledge and is centred around themes of memory, identity, place and resistance. She is interested in the body/land as sites of social and political struggle, sites of historical, and collective memory and as vulnerable and often contested spaces. She is interested in the ways in which we can re-establish agency and resilience through interactions between the land and the body.

-=Team=-

Leah Decter is an inter-media artist and scholar currently based in Winnipeg; Treaty 1 territory. Her work focuses on contested spaces, largely contending with histories and contemporary conditions of settler colonialism through a critical white settler lens. Decter’s work has been exhibited, presented and screened widely in Canada and internationally in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands and India. She holds an MFA in New Media from Transart Institute (Berlin) and is in her final year of a PhD in Cultural Studies at Queens University (Kingston, Canada).

Brenda McLean and Ali Robson                                               Photo by Leif Norman

Brenda McLean is a Winnipeg independent theatre artist, whose focus is on physical theatre performance and design. Recently Brenda has become very interested in Improvisation Dance Movement and Contact Improvisation Dance and how they can be used to create unconventional movement in theatrical performances. Brenda is interested in the combination of Contemporary Dance and Physical Theatre to create hybrid performance techniques with both text and movement. This last summer, she was one of the Choreographers in Company Link summer workshop where they created new choreography everyday with the focus on text and movement with dancers. Brenda is also the founding member of Theatre Incarnate,  www.theatreincarnate.ca and The Talentless Lumps (an all female bouffon troupe).

Currently Researching…

McLean will research with contemporary dancer Ali Robson and mentor Grant Guy, the use of gesture in performance. How does one create gestures, what is gesture, how can it be used as a performance tool, how does one ask or direct gesture work from their performers? Many dancers and actors are asked to generate and create gestures in their performances with little to no training in it, we are going to investigate and train in this technique to better understand how we can use it best as a performance tool.

Lise McMillan, Emily Barker, Rayanna Seymour, Kristy Janvier       Photo by Leif Norman

Kristy Janvier is from a small northern community in Canada called Flin Flon and is of Aboriginal (Dene), Irish, and Ukrainian decent. At the age of 18 she had an opportunity to work abroad as a performer in Japan. From there, her love of acting, dance, movement and exploring began. After two contracts in Tokyo and moving to California, Kristy embarked on two cruise ship contracts in the Caribbean before calling Hong Kong home for 8 years.  While in Hong Kong, Kristy began to search out new forms of movement including yoga, contact improvisation, Gaga and other somatic practices which lead to a Hong Kong-Netherlands exchange of artists and debuting her first choreography credit while working with Korean visual artist Soyoung Lee.  Upon returning Canada, Kristy has travelled to Toronto (Kaha:Wi Dance Theatre) and Vancouver (Raven Spirit Dance) to connect with contemporary Indigenous artists in the country. Her vision is to build bridges between the two worlds and filter this work up North. Inspired by all things in nature, Kristy continues to find new ways of connection and creativity.

Currently Researching…

For Kristy’s research project, the theme is largely based on water looking at it from the views of bloodlines, the rivers through the province that were once the highway systems of our ancestors and what they are now, the fluids in the body and healing rituals for change. Bringing together three other dancers with Indigenous backgrounds to dialogue and explore movement together to create this dance.

Artist Statement: Exploring space without leaving Earth. My feet have carried me to many place and in many ways. Ising the soles of my feet as landing pads, I allow the grace of my breath to move my body throughout the environment. Upon my recent return to Canada, I have to come to explore my ancestral and Indigenous roots to discover how their feet have travelled these lands. Im drawn to elements of nature, incorporating outdoors spaces, Through dance I’m able to step into the shoes that carry one into a world that cannot be expressed with words.

-=Team=-

Performers:

Rayanna Seymour (Hourie) is Anishinaabe from Naongashiing (Big Island), Treaty #3 Territory. Her parent’s are Lorraine Seymour and Raymond Hourie and she has 7 siblings. Today, she is in her second year of law school at Robson Hall, University of Manitoba. Seymour sits on a few Indigenous student groups and works part-time on Anishinaabe nibi Inaakonigewin (water law). Her goal is to continue on in graduate school and become a professor of law one day. One of her favourite activities—besides visiting with nieces and nephews—is dance. She grew up dancing in the pow-wow circle as a fancy shawl dancer, and then started dancing jingle in her teens and has recently picked up her shawl again, so now able to dance both. She also dances Zumba once a week to have some fun and release some stress from studies.

Emily Barker

Lise McMillan

(AUGUST-OCTOBER 2016)

with essayists Praba Pilar and Michel Saint Hilaire

 

Zorya Arrow                                                                   Photo by Michel Saint Hilaire

ZORYA ARROW is looking forward to developing her new solo work in the Research Series this quarter. A Winnipeg-based dance artist, she holds a BA Honours degree in Dance with a minor in Theatre from the University of Winnipeg. As a graduate of The School of Contemporary Dancers Senior Professional Program Arrow has created over nine original performance works in the dance/theatre scope. Her major dance works have been presented by Nova Dance Collective and as a part of Young Lungs Dance Exchange’s (YLDE) Production Series.

Currently researching:

What are our bodies urges? How clearly do they sit in the body? What does miscommunication between the body and the mind look like, and where can one find clarity between the two? By exploring questions around mind-body connection or lack there of in a psychoanalytical way, one researcher Zorya Arrow aims to develop a movement framework for what will eventually be a seven minute dance piece designed for an alternative audience-performer relationship.

==- Team -==

D-ANNE KUBY [mentor] After 12 years with Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers (1979 -1991) D-Anne has gone on to work as an independent performer, choreographer, video artist, teacher, and rehearsal director. She relocated to Vancouver in 1994 but could only deny her prairie roots for so long. She currently resides in Winnipeg where much, but certainly not all of her dancing is done in the privacy of her living room.

 

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Carol-Ann Bohrn                                                               Photo by Michel Saint Hilaire

 

CAROL-ANN BOHRN was born and raised in Brandon, MB. She is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Dancers and holds a B.A. Honours degree in Dance from the University of. She has performed work for local choreographers Jolene Bailie, Brett Owen, Ming Hon, Freya Olafson, Odette Heyn, Brenna Klaverkamp, Brent Lott, Alexandra Elliot and Nina Patel. She most recently participated in the Cartae program at aceartinc, where she created her first live piece ‘Eudaimonia’, her first video piece ‘Routine (Mea Culpa)’ as well as a series of digital prints. She will be performing at Fem Fest this September with Gearshifting Performance Works. She is interested in somatic techniques such as Feldenkrais, Alexander, Mitzvah, and meditation.

Currently Researching:

How do our thoughts and our behaviours influence one another? How is it that our actions can be utterly detached from our inner state? Carol-Ann Bohrn is interested in how this performative aspect, over time, can be forgotten or unconscious, and how it can turn into the basis of our identities and sense of self. When does a performance of “happiness” help you to overcome your pain? When does it displace your “authentic” experience further? How are traumatic experiences, depression, and the effects of social emotions like shame, guilt, embarrassment, jealously, envy, empathy, and pride processed in our bodies and in our environment?  These ideas are the launching point for Carol-Ann’s research this fall. It will be articulated with physicality and video work in collaboration with local artist Madeline Rae.

==- Team -==

MADELINE RAE [collaborator]

hannah_g [mentor]

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Delf Gravert                                                              Photo by Michel Saint Hilaire

DELF GRAVERT works mainly as an actor, and film photographer, and occasional funk/soul dj.
Most recently, he has finished an experimental film about his mother’s photography premiering at WNDX this year.
Last year, aside from doing a solo photography show at Fleet Galleries, Delf also studied Commedia Dell’Arte and Clown at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in California as part of the Professional Training Program. In 2014, Delf was honoured to have been a part of No Exit, in the role of Garcin, a theatre research production directed by Tom Stroud. He also devises his own stuff including the The Bike Ride, a physical comedy piece co-created with Leigh Anne Parry.  Wonderful weird times were had in 2013 working with Young Lungs in a production, Encounters of the Mankind, alongside Ian Moyzden and directed by Tanja Woloshen. Delf also really digs learning the ancient art of kung-fu at Ching Wu and it is good because he can always make it there on time as it’s only a block away from his studio.

Currently Researching:

How does a persons environment affect one’s physicality and imagination. Responding primarily with nature, Delf is researching the necessary changes in physicality of say walking on an windswept icy lake in -50 weather, or moving on 4 limbs across an uneven rocky landscape. The seed of the research began in Nunavut with his own responses to landscape through voice, character, costume, and movement studies. How does our environment shape and change who we are, and how must we adapt our way of moving both physically and and with our inner self? The weather, landscape , the sounds we hear, the animals, the people we meet all shaping our reality and imagination, our supposed understanding of ourself.

=- Team -=

RICK SKENE [mentor]

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Andrew Henderson and Eroca Nicols                                    Photo by Michel Saint Hilaire

EROCA NICOLS aka Lady Janitor. After earning her Honors BFA in Film/Video/Performance and Sculpture from California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA), Eroca Nicols’ artistic practice shifted to the body. She studied in professional programs in Canada at both Ballet Creole and The School of Toronto Dance Theatre before pursuing further training in functionally based and improvisational forms. She is currently a Toronto-based but nomadic artist, curator and educator. Her company and alter ego, Lady Janitor, has presented work in Canada, USA, Europe, and the UK. Eroca has performed internationally and is co-founder of the arts advocacy and professional training provider, the Toronto Dance Community Love-In.  Her commitment to community based arts engagement has led her to create platforms for presenting both her own work and the work of fellow makers—DIMBY (Dance In My BackYard) and Badass Dance Fun (a mini festival at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre) are among these projects, as is the Love-In. Eroca teaches partnering and contemporary dance including workshops in UK, Europe and North America. Her teaching and training are deeply influenced in her continued study of anatomy and biomechanics.

ANDREW HENDERSON aka Glamdrew.

Currently researching:

(to quote the team)

“Oh hieeee,

This is Glamdrew and Lady Janitor and we’re researching a dance piece in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We are -choreographer and mystical nomad, Eroca Nicols (aka Lady Janitor) and -dying, uncelebrated celebrity fashion icon, Andrew Henderson (aka Glamdrew .)

Some important points:

-We have been collaborating together for five years but recently our roles have shifted.

-Two years ago, Andrew was was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and roughly 3 months before that, Eroca got funding to research death rituals and the performance of grief around the world. We are not joking.

-Previous to the diagnosis, Eroca called Andrew “the stage manager of my life” and since being terminal, she has become the co-choreographer of Andrew’s death.

-The timing is obviously epic and has led us both into waves of death positivity, or death obsession, as the psychiatrist refers to it.

-Our current research involves deeply committing to practices of femme adornment, femmeditation and self care, finding ways to talk about death and dying in accessible as well as fantastic ways and developing a living funeral ceremony for the person dying as a performative as well as sacred act.

…It could stop there…

Or continue?

It’s basically fashion art queers working the latest funeral trends, subsisting in rural Manitoba, while developing a living funeral ceremony called Taking it to the Grave, nbd. The show involves the public confessing their sins and/or telling Andrew stories they want taken to the grave and then images from these confessions being live tattooed on his body amidst some mystical fashion, dancing, divination and ghosting. Taking it to the Grave is a ceremony performance on the verge of life and death.

YLDE Research Series showing: aceartinc October 18, I can’t remember the time…

Production run:

Sister Shows…

Taking it to the Grave: October 21, 8pm and October 23, 2 pm

Truthteller: October 22, 8 pm

All at aceartinc…”

=- Team -=

CARLY BOYCE [performer/collaborator]

SUE LAVALEE [mentor]