MEET THE ARTIST: BLOOM producer Sierra Megas

MascallDance welcomes BLOOM guest producer Sierra Megas to the team.

Photo: Sierra Megas

Welcome to MascallDance, Sierra - great to have you aboard! How did it come about that you’re producing BLOOM 2023?

My friend and mentor Erika Mitsuhashi, who was a resident choreographer in the previous edition of BLOOM, connected me, then Jennifer reached out. I’d sat in on some of Mardon + Mitsuhashi’s December 2021 BLOOM residency and attended the performances. It was my first time seeing BLOOM. The condensed format – a mini residency and a short piece – was exciting to me. I think constraints and containers can help us dial into the work. The accouterments of BLOOM - a comedian, and a sommelier - felt interesting because I hadn’t seen performance presented like this in Vancouver. It’s quite sensorial, it’s also short and sweet - everyone’s along for the ride, there’s room for surprise!

Is producing dance an important part of your practice?

Producing/curating is a fairly recent interest. Last spring, through Erika, Francecsa Frewer and Antonio Somera Jr., I was involved in helping put on Here For Now vol. 3, an interdisciplinary performance series held in unconventional spaces. Here For Now was my first chance to really shadow and assist with producing. I enjoy being an audience member, and I think a lot about how and where work is presented and how audiences take things in. There are so many possible configurations for presentation, and how you put something together can totally change the experience of witnessing – that feels pretty exciting to me! I'm interested in interdisciplinary presentation – ways different artistic communities might crossover a little more. In Vancouver, I feel like a lot of our artistic communities are so close, existing side by side, but are sometimes not fully enmeshed. It’s fun to see performances or be in spaces where there's a diverse range of art forms and audiences interacting. That was at the heart of Here For Now, and I see it in BLOOM. I also work with EDAM Dance, and that ethos is there in the history of EDAM and Western Front, who have been fostering this in Vancouver for years. Western Front turns 50 this year! Those are the spaces and types of producing and curating that I'm interested in. It's still very new for me

Do you make dances?

I’m starting to. I'm not sure if they are dances yet. My practice lies somewhere between visual art and dance/movement. I'm working on moving with materials - making improvised sculptures. I’m using an inquiry-driven format that’s sometimes used in dance -  alternating between moving and talking/writing - but I’ve replaced the talking/writing with quick hands-on sculpting. I use soft-sculpture materials like wire and fabric, small portable things that I can bring to the studio on my bike. I always have to destroy or dismantle the sculptures when I leave the studio, so I see these sculpture-sketches as an extension of improvised dance - they’re ephemeral too.

Where's the impulse coming from?

I’m not sure… I've always been interested in materials and having them in the space.

I have a background in visual art and I'm curious about bringing visual art closer to dance/movement/performance. I see a lot of artists in our community working in multi-disciplinary ways. I enjoy witnessing this type of work and I imagine this is an influence too. Thinking from a grant-writing or application-based perspective, many of the structures/models currently in place require checking a box saying you are a certain type of artist - a visual artist or a dancer - which can feel tricky.

I think there’s also an impulse to resist this. I try to think of my practice as neither one-or-the-other, but that visual art and dance actually exist at the same time… as being both at once.

So it’s valuable to shed the categorizing, labeling…

I'm interested in eliminating that one-or-the-other thinking, yes. I'm not at the point of presenting my own work yet, but I wonder: Could we present dance in a context where you don't actually see any dancers dancing? Would that still be dance? What would it look like to present a work where dancers work with a score, moving intentionally with materials, to create improvised sculpture, but where the audience only views the sculpture? Maybe the sculptures are presented in a traditional performance setting, maybe in a gallery, maybe somewhere else. Can we still see or feel the dancers’ movements? What happens to the dancers’ choices and intuitions in this type of work? I would like to consider this dance. These ideas are slow-moving and new for me. I don’t have a formal background in dance, so I feel like I’m figuring it out as I go. For the past four years I've been working on a self-directed pathway through dance - taking classes, working with dancers, learning from friends. I’m grateful that the community here is so welcoming. I've been very lucky to have generous peers, colleagues and mentors, like Erika.

How has Erika’s practice influenced you?

There is so much! The first thing that comes to mind… a horizontalizing approach to making and being as an artist really resonates with me. Seeing someone put this into practice allows me to imagine how this way of working might exist - both artistically, with materials and collaborators, and in producing or administration.

Everyone has something to offer, everything has something to bring. If we can approach making and working in this horizontal way, it is potentially richer. Allowing each part to have its own space to breathe, rather than determining exactly what it is. Again, removing the boxed-thinking. That type of nurturing is really interesting to me. It suggests that we already have what we need. Of course we can grow and expand, but we do not need to get to the next thing right away or be in a constant state of improvement for the work to be full. Thinking about that, seeing it in practice and experiencing it alongside Erika and her collaborators has been really eye-opening.

Not having gone through formal training and not being connected to community or ways of working that might come more organically from training, there are many pieces to dance-making that I don't know about because I simply haven't seen them yet. So, the past year, shadowing some of Erika’s work, listening and watching, has been huge for me.

Really getting to observe how dance artists work, and understanding the things you need to think about when making performance, and finding the spaces to be in, and knowing where to look for resources – this has all helped me think about how I might approach my own practice, and now, how I might produce.

I've recently been thinking about the relationship between being an arts administrator and being an artist. I used to see these things as two different parts of myself. I would differentiate my time between a job and a practice. Now, bringing these practices into alignment is what I'm trying to move toward. More recently, I’ve been gravitating towards this type of administrative work because I’ve been able to learn so much through it - it is allowing me more time in the practice of it all.

I’m starting to see my artistic practice and my work supporting artists as one and the same. Working with artists influences my practice because I get to see how other artists are making and thinking. And having a practice deepens my capacity to help artists because I am able to better understand what is needed and how I can be most useful. I guess it’s about what it means to bring art into the world and that participating in it is valuable.

What else are you up to? And what’s next?

It’s a full winter and spring. Alongside BLOOM, I have a handful of commitments coming up. I’ll be working with Western Front as a performer/guide for an exhibition featuring material from Western Front's archive. It opens in January. I’m working with New Works on an artist support program that pairs dance artists with mentors in XR (extended reality). We'll host a sharing of the artists' research and work when the program concludes in March. And, I’m working with EDAM Dance to grow our community offerings and expand our jam programming. EDAM’s Choreographic Series will happen in the spring too!

After BLOOM, I’m planning for some rest and down time. My studio practice is going to slow down in March, so I would love to spend more time in April getting back into creating. Spending time with friends, seeing shows, taking classes. And then… we’ll see!

Thank you so much for talking with me – and good luck with BLOOM, I’m really looking forward to this BLOOM permutation.

Thanks! Me too.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
MascallDance presents BLOOM 2023:  Three shows only at Left of Main  Thursday, March 23, 2023 | Friday, March 24, 2023 | Saturday, March 25, 2023