{"id":12925,"date":"2015-06-05T00:08:51","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T07:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=12925"},"modified":"2015-06-03T13:49:08","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T20:49:08","slug":"promoting-new-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/06\/05\/promoting-new-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting new dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dance Centre\u2019s 12 Minutes Max features works from five\u00a0up-and-coming\u00a0choreographers on June 12. Pictured here is Con8 Collective: Charlotte Newman, left, and Georgina Alpen. (photo by Andy White)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

An abundance of riches. Scotiabank Dance Centre\u2019s 12 Minutes Max on June 12 showcases the talents of five up-and-coming choreographers \u2013 three of whom have Jewish community connections.<\/p>\n

Started in 1994, 12 Minutes Max was redesigned and relaunched last year, \u201cwith a strong focus on choreographic development, critical feedback and dialogue.\u201d In a season, there are three modules and the June show features artists selected from these sessions, with each performance lasting 12 minutes or less. Among the artists featured are Caitlin Griffin, Charlotte Newman (Con8 Collective) and Naomi Brand.<\/p>\n

Griffin was featured in the JI<\/em> last August<\/a>\u00a0for a piece that was influenced by her time in Israel in 2013 with the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, as part of its Dance Journey (Masa) program.<\/p>\n

An exploration of the impact of war on women, what was then called The<\/em> Way They Walked Through the World<\/em> featured three dancers, and pairs of army boots played a central role. In 12 Minutes Max, Griffin\u2019s work is performed by Delphine Leroux and set to Bach\u2019s Klavierb\u00fcchlein f\u00fcr Wilhelm Friedemann.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work has evolved significantly from last September\u2019s showing in several ways,\u201d Griffin told the JI<\/em>. \u201cThe process I went through of collecting choreographic material and experimenting with the boots has distilled my areas of interest and inspired new curiosity about the themes of conflict and femininity. While I am still working with the boots in other offshoot projects, in this incarnation, here or there<\/em> focuses on the established movement vocabulary, transplanted into a classical music environment without boots. It has become a study of the potential within the movement. It is the development of one layer of my continued interest in the material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Griffin said The Way They Walked<\/em> \u201cserved as an invaluable project to create a sketch of my interests and goals in this stage of my artistic development. Since then, I have been selecting small seeds from within that larger sketch and developing them into their own short solos. Ultimately, I may use them in combination in a more developed, longer work, but for now I am learning a lot by seeing them as individual studies to explore and cultivate my creative process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Con8 Collective\u2019s Newman is new to the JI<\/em>. Born and raised in Seattle, she moved to Vancouver to study at Simon Fraser University, graduating last year with a BFA in dance. She told the JI<\/em> that she hopes to call Vancouver home \u201cfor the foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Con8\u2019s contribution to 12 Minutes Max is Vanilla to the Touch<\/em>. Created and performed by co-artistic directors Newman and Georgina (Gina) Alpen, in collaboration with Robert Azevedo and Elliott Vaughan, it is described as \u201ca quick-thinking, tongue-in-cheek look at growing up in West Coast suburbia, pulling from experiences of bras, boys, rolled-over jeans, juice boxes and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike many young girls, I started dancing around the age of 3 and simply never stopped,\u201d Newman said about the beginnings of her career. \u201cIn the past 20 years, I have had amazing opportunities to work with varying groups of dancers, in the context of performances, festivals, site-specific creation, music videos and more. I am especially passionate about choreography. I love investigating movement through the lens of our own physical limitations and strongly believe in the power of sharing ideas, concepts and questions through sharing movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newman said she \u201cgrew up with many cultural connections to Judaism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have many fond childhood memories of Chanuka dinners of endless latkes, Passovers with friends and Shabbat dinners at my grandparents\u2019 house,\u201d she shared. \u201cOnly in the past few years, having moved away from my family and many of these rituals I took for granted, have I become more cognizant and questioning of this identity \u2013 how do I want to bring Judaism into my own life? On this journey of exploring my own Jewish heritage, I had the amazing opportunity to join in the gift of Taglit-Birthright on a 10-day trip to Israel in May of 2014. The trip was eye-opening, thought-provoking, inspiring and pushed me to continue investigating how Jewish culture fits into my life as young adult \u2013 a question I\u2019m still answering.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also exploring dance, of course, and its manifold permutations and meanings.<\/p>\n

\u201cCon8 is a play on the word \u2018connate,\u2019 meaning existing from birth and uniting to form a single entity,\u201d she explained. \u201cGina and I feel these definitions truly encompass the collective\u2019s artistic values \u2013 we strive to constantly explore through an innate creativity and unite the collective\u2019s collaborators to make a stronger body of work as one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also embraced the idea of a \u2018con,\u2019 meaning a confidence trick. Throughout our choreographic process, we often explore physical games, tricks and rules that lead to very specific movement choices and rhythms, leading to secrets within the performance that the audience will never see.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong many similarities,\u201d she concluded, \u201cwe share the same birthday \u2013 May 8.\u201d<\/p>\n

Con8 leans toward \u201cextremely detailed and stylized pedestrian movement that has been brought into the framework of dance performance,\u201d said Newman. \u201cTight unison, rhythmical timing and a playful attack to serious movement exploration complement this movement vocabulary.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cVanilla to the Touch<\/em> began months ago as a radically different idea. With each new process, Gina and I use rehearsal space as a blank slate \u2013 in the beginning of a process, no idea is knocked down and, in a few minutes, we\u2019ll be tossing out ideas one after the other as fast as we can. This process leads to hours of ultimately discarded material, many physically impossible and improbable proposals, and the usual bruises and bumps. We feed off of the other\u2019s energy so hungrily, every rehearsal feels like play. In the midst of this process \u2013 around late February \u2013 we realized we had about four hours of movement to mold into 12 minutes, thus beginning the second phase of trying on, molding or discarding existing movement as we narrow our vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Vanilla to the Touch<\/em>, as we are both performing the entire time, we relied on the eyes of collaborators for their outside perspectives and questions. Through the constant process of cutting, reconstructing and questioning, each movement has a meaning and each phrase was chosen with an exact specificity in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Newman, fellow Jewish community member Brand didn\u2019t start dancing at a very young age.<\/p>\n

\u201cI danced a bit recreationally and in my teens was a part of a dance group run by a contemporary dancer who focused on modern dance and contact improvisation and got us choreographing on each other,\u201d she explained. \u201cI didn\u2019t take a ballet class until I was 18 and so I often feel that I came to dance technique late.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy interests in dance have always been diverse. A mentor of mine instilled in me early the importance of having a wide range of skills in order to increase your chances of being successful in the art form and so I have pursued dancing, performing, choreography, teaching and writing in order to have many avenues. I attended the dance program at the University of Calgary, where I earned my BA and an MFA in choreography, and where I also taught for a number of years after graduating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally from Toronto, Brand said, \u201cI grew up with a secular Jewish identity. I recognized early on that a disproportionate number of artists, writers and progressive thinkers that I admired were Jewish, and that there was a connection between Jewish culture and creative thinking. My parents raised me with very strong values for learning, encouraging me to ask lots of questions and be curious, and also for social justice, family and community, values that I attribute to Judaism. These are values that have permeated my work as a dance artist. I try very consciously to make work that speaks to the relationship between the individual and the community. In my teaching practice, I encourage students to be inquisitive and inclusive, and use dance as a metaphor for how we could be in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brand moved to Calgary when she was 19. After 10 years in the city \u2013 where she was a recipient of the 2012 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation\u2019s emerging artist award \u2013 she said, \u201cI was looking for a change, new opportunities and challenges, and so I relocated to Vancouver in 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Naomi Brand\u2019s Re:play<\/em>. (photo by Chris Randle)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For 12 Minutes Max, Brand is presenting Re:play<\/em>, performed by Walter Kubanek and Hilary Maxwell. It is described as \u201can intricate duet that looks at action and reaction in the space between two bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to being a choreographer, Brand is a writer, as well. \u201cI think that my process in writing and in choreographing are very similar,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of my training has been as an improviser and so I am most comfortable in the initial stages of generating ideas, jotting things down and spewing material out. Both choreographing and writing are about problem-solving to me. Once I have material to work with, it is about piecing things together, arranging, rearranging and searching for some kind of logic in what I have created. It\u2019s like figuring out a puzzle, when at first you see a perhaps incompressible mass of ideas, words or moments and, then, through playing around with it, a structure or logic reveals itself. I rarely know what exactly it is that I want to say until it is made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brand is also on the board of the Training Society of Vancouver, which has as its focus the quality and sustainability of contemporary dance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe field of dance is changing just as culture is changing,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat it means to be a professional dance artist today is completely different from previous generations, where the company structure was pervasive. Nowadays, everyone has to forge their own path and, in Vancouver, I see many fabulous examples of dancers with tons of drive pursuing their work and making their own opportunities. I have always been interested in being connected to dance from numerous different angles, as a performer, teacher, choreography, writer, advocate and administrator. For me, this diversity keeps me interested and engaged and able to keep perspective on my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

12 Minutes Max is at the Dance Centre, 677 Davie St., on June 12, 8 p.m. Tickets ($28\/$22) are available from Tickets Tonight, 604-684-2787 or ticketstonight.ca<\/a>. For more information on all the performers and works featured, visit thedancecentre.ca<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dance Centre\u2019s 12 Minutes Max features works from five\u00a0up-and-coming\u00a0choreographers on June 12. Pictured here is Con8 Collective: Charlotte Newman, left, and Georgina Alpen. (photo by Andy White) An abundance of riches. Scotiabank Dance Centre\u2019s 12 Minutes Max on June 12 showcases the talents of five up-and-coming choreographers \u2013 three of whom have Jewish community connections. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[3906,1824,3908,3909,3907,3404],"class_list":["post-12925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-12-minutes-max","tag-caitlin-griffin","tag-charlotte-newman","tag-con8-collective","tag-naomi-brand","tag-scotiabank-dance-centre"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}