Platform forchoreographicdevelopment
© Montréal Danse
Despite the context, we continue to operate within a framework adapted to the reality of the pandemic.
Four choreographers will be selected to experience and contribute to an intensive week of research, discussion and artistic process development from December 13-17, 2021. Working as facilitators with these choreographers will be two experts who bring a wide range of experience to the process:
Choreographer
Choreographer and Dancer
Theorist, Dramaturg and Performance Artist
Dancer
Dancer and Dance Against Violence Dancer-Facilitator
Performer and Dance Against Violence Dancer-Facilitator
December 13 to 16 – Agora de la danse, Montreal
*Reserved for workshop participants in accordance with government regulations.
Artistic Director
December 13th Resonance – What if our I is actually a We?At the very least, the pandemic has clarified how much we depend on each other to feel alive and creative. Rebecca Solnit, in her book Paradise Built in Hell, talks of how our basic need for community identity is fed during disaster. I’ve become fascinated with how our community identity differs from our individual identity. Resonance theories by Hartmut Rosa and Rainer Muhlhoff along with thoughts by Maaike Bleekers on collaborative processes will be shared as ways to name how we interact and co-create with one another. This open discussion will be looking to see how these frames can be useful in understanding the embodiment of ideas and renaming our creation strategies.
Researcher and Teacher
December 14th Mimesis, Mediation, MultiplicityDancers have bodies that, even in their singularity, always incorporate multiplicity. Dance is also a practice that holds multiple bodies together at once, in mimetic gesture. Screen-based media has contributed to this phenomenon. I will speak about the link between multiplicity, mimesis, mediation and dance by looking at a variety of examples. Case studies include the role of (often uncredited) dancers in early rotoscoped cartoons and mo-cap CGI films to produce dancing animated characters; live dance performances by Freya Bjorg Olafson and Marie Claire Forté in collaboration with Alanna Kraaijeveld; and the phenomenon of viral TikTok dances. Out of these examples emerge crucial discussions about identity, appropriation (such as digital blackface), visibility, erasure, technique, and the role of capitalism in perpetuating dance as a spectacle that both asserts and overrides multiplicity.
Dancer and Activist
December 15th Kathy meets Karla: A Journey for the Sake of DanceAn open discussion between Karla Etienne and Kathy Casey looking at the multiple hats that Karla wears as an artist and how they serve her as an advocate for equity and justice.
Dancer and Choreographer
December 16th “How do you describe falling while you are falling?”Movement in any direction is a falling and catching. Collaboration and the creative process is best described from my experience by the feeling of being in this in-between. And I see a final production of anything a map or document of this falling. From the Covid perspective how do we talk about the present while we are essentially still falling? How do we stay with the discomfort and vulnerability engendered by not knowing where and when we will land? How do we collectively locate and ground into a territory that is always shifting? What skills and support do we need to develop to stay in the unknown?
