Giving Tuesday Now, May 5, 2020

DAY # 53 BC SHELTER IN PLACE ORDER:

VOICES FROM ZOOM REHEARSAL

“Zoom? very dislocating and provoking! The practicalities are so exasperating - it’s disconcerting. So is working with a stranger I’ve yet to ever physically meet!

“It’s harder not to have met in person but very interesting. We began right in the very beginning of the lockdown – checking in, processing the new situation. and more open and vulnerable than otherwise, entering the moment in time together. “

“As a somatically based dancer, zoom is upsetting on many levels. There is so much to process - time lags, sound or visuals cutting out, seeing yourself - this one particularly grates, as I take pains to work in rooms that are without a mirror. It’s exhausting and disjointed.”

“This process has been incredible - open, generous interactions, and what the choreographer is bringing in terms of the work. I’m listening, hearing in new ways.”

“Well, for someone like me, who loves to work, this rehearsal period is transformative. The assignments let you percolate, return with homework. Our studio is struggling - we’re offering virtual classes - so grateful for the loyal clientele! So I’m scrambling on the fly for renovation work - with our second baby coming very soon! This work, which is meditative, therapeutic, open-ended and full of realizations, does much to balance the intensity of my situation.”

“It’s a strange time. I am finding it incredibly useful. There is so much I do that I would never have time for in my regular life, and I find so much of it very worth doing that I wonder what I was doing before. It’s a completely different sense of time and it is going to really change the work we do.

“A lot of time to think. That’s good and bad!”

“It’s inspiring; but the ZOOM process is not the same as time lived in the work. That’s largely absent. How do we ensure enough physical time lived in the work? After all this choreographer has work processes that arc over several years, with some of the best dancers in the world! I want to be steeped in this work.”

“The Zoom work is accompanied by with conversation one-on-one – lovely.  Am always so curious in making any work about what actually wants to emerge or what emerges from people that I can never really predict.  What stories, images these artists have shared with me from their lives!”

“There’s something potent about the time - and distance - lag.   Making dances is close work. Then you’d have a very different perspective - at some point in the gestating of ideas, a deeper focus emerges, or some event takes place and gives a pivot point to the work. Time together in intimate communion then time apart where process continues. And funny odd things - like I discovered that Facetime allowed for more direct feedback than in person…!”

“My problems are so small and the world is in such big crisis. I can’t complain about anything, only look for ways to make it better.”

“Things have changed since we started. I think for a lot of the time we sort of didn’t look ahead too much, or go into our deeper feelings. Now there’s a shift. For me, about three days ago I finally let myself feel the grief and fear part. For the world. For my work. What will happen to all my cancelled gigs - works I have poured myself into? Will they even see an audience? What is left of them? Will they even be relevant, if and when they do? It is a lot. ”

These comments were woven through glimpses of the challenging contexts the artists are also facing - from geographic separations, babies arriving, to financial collapse, isolation, health crises etc.!

March 20, 2020

Notes from the pandemic:

Our company, like all workplaces internationally, is in the process of re-inventing and re-arranging how we can conduct ourselves as we all try our best to “flatten the curve”. Here we are re-posting an exemplary letter written by Ziyian Kwan to the Canada Council for the Arts (with her permission). It articulates superbly the particulars of the “gig economy” on which our work rests. The artists with whom we work are falling through the economic cracks in the recent crisis, and we are seeking all avenues of advocacy possible.

To Whom It May Concern at The Canada Council for The Arts,

I am writing to advocate for independent dance artists and project-based dance companies who like our colleagues with operating organizations, are impacted by closures, cancellations, and rescheduling due to COVID 19. 

I read that The Canada Council is planning measures to assist artists who experience loss of income. Thank you for this consideration.

I’m concerned that it will be difficult to measure the losses of independent artists and project-based companies, whose activities are not supported by operating capacity, infrastructure or resources. 

By way of example, I’ve contracted three artists for a June 2020 project. The partnering venue is implementing a shutdown of indeterminate duration and therefore, the project might be rescheduled for a later date. The artists are contracted for Mar – June but I will not be able to compensate their loss of employment because funds are reserved for project fruition, whenever that will be. 

Moreover, because it is a self-presentation without guaranteed fee, there is no room in the budget to even offer partial compensation.

So I am in the terrible position of putting three artists out of work, employment that enables them to pay their living expenses for three months. Without an operating budget that has a contingency reserve, I’m unable to pay my colleagues. And without an operating salary, I’m also unable to pay myself. 

In talking with a Vancouver dancer who is part of the ‘gig economy’, another reality is that even if projects are rescheduled, the dancer may not be available for a later iteration of the contract. The way most independent dance artists carve a living is through juggling many contracts, so it is often impossible to reschedule.

Another concern is access. If resources are available to independent artists, it’s imperative we have access that is based on our independent estimations of loss, to correctly assist compensation calculated by employers.

There is currently a survey in circulation from the BC Alliance for Arts and Culture and GVPT but in completing the survey, I realized that it does not capture the realities of dance employment. 

So I’m wondering if there is voluntary work that I and other dance artists can do, perhaps in co-ordination with organizations such as CADAWest, Made In BC or The Dance Centre, to help funding bodies assess the situations of project-based dance companies and independent dance artists. 

Perhaps we can gather information, facts, and figures to compile a dance specific overview, one that gives on the ground details of what is happening for independent dance artists and project-based companies in Vancouver?

Thank you for reading this email. I hope that you will reach out to me if there are ways in which I and the community can support The Canada Council For The Arts in its efforts to help Canada’s dance community in these uncertain times.

Sincerely,

Ziyian Kwan, Dance Artist

February 23, 2020

TALKING STICK BLOOM

BLOOM 2020 is presented in partnership with the 19th Annual Talking Stick Festival (February 18 - 29 Vancouver), and Bloom artists-in-residence are in studio, preparing work for two showings:

February 25, 5:30PM at Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie.

March 5, 6:30PM at the MascallDance Studio, 1140 Jervis.

Watch this space! It’s our pleasure to be introducing you to the Artists in Residence, here:

garden dances, MascallDance (image 1) Simone Kingman, (image 2) Kira Schaffer, (image 3) Susan Kania, (image 4) Ron Stewart / Susan McKenzie

December 13, 2019

Rauschenberg summed up the muscle of art and how it manifested in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company: “All of us worked totally committed, shared every intense emotion and, I think, performed miracles, for love only.”

Abigail Sebaly

The Muscle of Art: How Cunningham and Rauschenberg Inspire Us to Flex

So many of us who’ve been part of the art of dance recognize our experience in these words. Abigail Sebaly, the archivist who quotes them in an article for the Walker Art Centre Magazine, practices the extraordinary art of distillation, clarifying and sustaining the materials of artistic activity for us and the future.

Sebaly has brought this work to MascallDance, where she and Jennifer Mascall have voyaged together through accumulated historical materials of Mascall’s 40 plus years in the field and archiving them.

The process has to date been entirely funded through donations from supporters. Please join them and allow this work to continue.

Excerpted from conversation with Jennifer Mascall (JWM) and Abigail Sebaly (AS) as they archive, December 2019:

AS In an archival process, the presence of the artist isn’t a given. In my experience the artist is seldom present; they are not available for various reasons, and sometimes not eager. This is a unique situation, an exciting one.

JWM An example – I just opened a box filled with issues of SPILL (a 70’s periodical)..and to my great surprise it turns out I wrote articles in very many of them. Here I am, reading my writing. All of the ‘70s, it transpires, I wrote. I wrote articles, I wrote dances. When I came west and EDAM began, this just vanishes. It’s remarkable to see this and now I yearn to write. The process reveals how my memory of the world silences and overrides as the years bring new things. The process of archiving has taken me aback – here are written dances I don’t remember writing and correspondence so rich in detail and information, allowing all kinds of comparisons and insight into the changes in thinking, then to now.

AS I witness this process of discovery and the resulting connections - through-lines in work that are often not otherwise realized.

JWM The process is revelatory. And exhilarating… I think of that first day when Abi said “We can do this!” I love coming to work.

Abi, do you advise creators to partner with archivists along the way, not only in the late stages of a career?

AS Definitely. Being an archivist during such an unstable time in the world makes me keenly aware that freezing something in the past can’t be relied upon as a guiding principle. It is an enlivening and energizing process to archive a creative life. For researchers, archivists, creators and the public, it is not a dead and frozen form, but very much a generative and regenerative one.

Tell me about how you are working.

AS There are a total of 45 boxes, which we are dividing into 20, concurrently consolidating boxes.

Is there an interview component?

AS Each item is labelled, and I constantly ask Jennifer questions, trying to record details in the note section of inventory.

JWM There’s a shift in our rhythm this week I notice. Before, I’d say “look at this!” and Abi would immediately take a photo with her phone and record it. This week we are silent, throwing out paper, focussed. It’s very introspective; each item offers details that bring information flooding back, and throw me into a different place/time/relationship and so forth. Then I pick up the next item and hurtle into a completely different and equally detailed place, much if not all of which I’d forgotten or haven’t thought of for many years.

AS The approach we’ve made is influenced by the fact that the organization has had so many different administrative workers over many years. There’s a lack of consistency in how information is ordered and many miscellaneous boxes. Traditional archival theory and practice has you maintain the original order, assuming that it may be the closest to a chronology, whereas in this case there’s a need to bring more consistency.

JWM That idea suggests a reverence for an instinctive knowing on the artist’s part that strikes me as not reflecting how very random many of us artists are, forging ahead, seldom looking back, wasting nothing. Emily Carr used to use her old paintings as wrapping paper.

What else distinguishes this particular process, Abi?

AS The AV materials in this collection. The breadth of materials from pneumatic tapes to films to mini-cassettes, CDs, DVDs, etc is different than most. We don’t know either the contents or their condition, and we can’t check, which complicates matters.

JWM Yesterday, Abi took out a box full of mini CDs and CDs and arduously labelled each item individually.

What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve unearthed to date archivally?

AS Over the years, I guess it was finding John Cage’s astrological chart. It was wild, I couldn’t quite understand the symbols it was written in. Unexpected.

For me in this collection, it has been very powerful to look at the period in which Jennifer produced Footnotes, seeing connections with people in that project who transect with my own world and work like Carolyn Brown, etc. There was a sense of the interconnectivity of it all.

About Abigail:

Abigail Sebaly is currently pursuing a dual Master of Archival Studies and Master of Library and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her extensive professional background in the arts began as a dancer. She served as an administrative assistant to the choreographer Merce Cunningham and the director of special projects for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in New York. More recently she spent 3 years cataloguing and undertaking collections research on the Walker Art Center's Merce Cunningham Dance Company Collection of over 4000 sets and costumes. In Canada, she has performed archival work for Jennifer Mascall, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery on the UBC campus, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity's archives, where she processed the 1982 Canadian Everest Expedition Collection

She holds an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, a Graduate Certificate in Performance Curation from the Institute for Curatorial Practice at Wesleyan University, and a B.A. in English and B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Michigan. She also received a Fulbright scholarship from the U.S. State Department to spend a year in Melbourne, Australia studying performing arts festivals.

November 20, 2019

 Join us for BLOOM at the ZAGAR, in OFF-Dance in Vancouver

5:45-6:30 this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Get your tickets!

The Performance Research Program with Lesley Telford is showing

“Influence” in progress.

Susan McKenzie: Tell me an influence on your work’s direction in general.

Lesley Telford: What’s influencing me right now is how we move each other… transecting, say, the person you pass at the market…how from one person to another, our gaze changes. We don’t operate independently. How sensitive we are to one another.

SM In keeping with BLOOM, do you have a favourite wine?

LT Rioja!

SM You’re showing an excerpt from “Influence” at BLOOM. Tell me about your collaborators.

LT They’re a group of emerging professional dancers who I work with every day in the Performance Research Program of Arts Umbrella. There will be 12 dancers in that small space (the Zagar studio)! Talk about influence!

SM What’s the last thing you remember laughing about from the bottom of your soul?

LT I can’t remember exactly - a flash of something ridiculous like a sideways look - with my partner and my daughter - the kind of humour that’s layered with us knowing each other so well.

SM What’s changed in your art through becoming a parent?

LT Oh, my daughter teaches me so many things. She’s a really good art critic, and if I can keep her interested, I know I’m on track. She’s eleven now and she’s my consultant, giving me great advice.

SM Your most recent read?

LT “Wonder”, with my daughter.

SM Your art hero?

LT Anne Carson; and of course Jiri Kylian is always going to be right up there; and Bill Viola.

SM What is your choreographic pet peeve?    

LT Moving. Too much movement!

SM What do you most value in a performer?

LT Honesty.

SM What’s the one word your best friend would use to describe your dances?

LT Impulse.

SM One thing no one knows about you.

LT Bit of an open book, really, everyone knows everything about me – I can’t think of an answer to that!

SM What is your choreographic mantra? 

LT Don’t jump ahead in your timeline – be in the moment so that you can be surprised by yourself.  In one word, “unprecipitated”. 

SM The one thing you’re most proud of?

LT My daughter.

SM Who would you most like to have dinner with?

LT Well, my art idols - but mostly, my daughter, and I am lucky because I get to do that every single night! 

SM Your idea of happiness?

LT Gardening.

 SM If you could go back, what would you tell your twenty-year-old self?

LT There’s time. And there’s no time.

SM Something surprising you’ve discovered about making dances?

LT That when you make make dances the things you couldn’t bring out - which were there in your subconscious - reveal themselves. 

Also, understanding people.  We all get to know each other better by making dances.