PuSh Play – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Gabrielle Martin chats with Andrea Peña, whose work, BOGOTÁ, will be presented at the 20th PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. You can catch her show on January 31 and February 1 at the Vancouver Playhouse, in association with New Works.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Andrea discuss: 

• What does the choreographic practice require?

• What is the future of choreography from today forward?

• What does it mean to democratize the choreographic process and how is that different from the norm?

• What are the sociopolitical questions in the work?

• What does it mean to make a work about the anthropocene?

• What do you mean by the container-state?

• What does the word “queer” mean to you, your practice, and Bogotá?

• What does it mean to queer the baroque, especially in the body?

• How do you capture both past and future notions of the industrial and industrial society?

• How does it feel to return to Vancouver with this work?

About Andrea Peña and Artists

Andrea Peña and Artists (AP&A) a millennial company that believes in the possibilities of crafting new imaginaries in choreographic and performing arts. Returning, individually and collectively, to our essence as humans. As an upcoming generation of artists, we feel we have the responsibility to reflect on the values that shape us, our decisions, reflections, work, to focus beyond our actions and return to our essence. 

AP&A merges the universes of choreography and design; a multidisciplinary company that creates performative universes that challenge notions of a sensible humanity through political yet abstract creations which transform conceptual research into theatrical larger ensemble installations. The foundations of Peña’s work is to create rich choreographic systems that reveal the point of view of the performers. Negotiations can take the form of frames, concepts, athletic constraints, to reveal the individual and collective point of view, as much as the choreographers.

As a bi-cultural artist, our works bring forward interwoven Latin American philosophies and inclusive values to carve space for the futuring of finding unity through our complexity and diversity, thus perpetually encouraging collisions between heterogeneous fields, disciplines and individuals. We aim to democratize the choreographic process as public sources for experimentation and collective knowledge creation.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Andrea joins the conversation from Pittsburgh, ancestral lands of the Seneca in Pittsburgh and Sharpsburg, Adena culture, Hopewell culture, and Monongahela peoples who were later joined by refugees of other tribes (including the Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, and Haudenosaunee tribes, who were all forced off their original land and displaced by European colonists.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabriel Martin, director of programming at the Push Festival, and today's episode highlights grotesque liberation, death and resurrection, bodies of labor, and more.

 

 00:21

I'm speaking with Andrea Pena, choreographer of Bogota, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 31st and February 1st, 2025. Visceral and transgressive Bogota constructs a brutalist landscape from choreography inspired by Colombia's political and spiritual heritage.

 

 00:40

This raw physical experience of mutation and resurrection explores embodied origins, inherited mythologies and mortality, honing the rebellion of deviant bodies and paying tribute to resilience within the post-colonial era.

 

 00:56

Interested in the depth of human individuality that breaches from a personal disposition as a bi-cultural artist, Pena's approach is known for its difficult choreography as a highly intricate, vulnerable, and somatic raw physicality that engages in deep encounters between the physical body and a highly conceptual research approach.

 

 01:16

With a background in industrial design, her work borrows from visual art practices and spatial qualities of creative making, questioning the body as a material existing in relationship to space and time.

 

 01:28

Here is my conversation with Andrea. There is a JGB beside me, but I am actually on indigenous territories. I'm on the unceded traditional and ancestral territory of the Coast Salish peoples, so the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh.

 

 01:45

I am a settler, and I've been, you know, a part of the being a settler is a responsibility to learning and engaging with learning about indigeneity and engaging with contemporary indigenous. issues affecting Indigenous people today.

 

 02:03

And one way that I've been doing that is through the Yellowhead Institute, which you'll hear me plug in quite a bit. And so I'm working through their red paper land back course, which is really encouraging settler folks to reflect on what it means to be living in accordance with Indigenous law and to enact land back by supporting front lines.

 

 02:24

And one thing that really stood out in the lesson, one of the recent lessons from this course is they just put it so clearly that if we really want land back but do nothing about it, we are upholding the liberal fantasy, a belief that you can change the world by simply feeling a certain way.

 

 02:44

And I just think that's really to the point. Andrea, where are you joining the conversation from today? Hello. So I'm actually currently in Pittsburgh. So I'm a bit in transit, stepping out of Montreal for a few days.

 

 02:58

I'm here on the ancestral lands of the people of Adena, Hopewell, Morengohala, and Seneca people here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. Thank you for that. And usually you're in Giorgia, Montreal. Giorgia, Giorgia, Giorgia, Montreal.

 

 03:20

And so you describe AP&A or Andrea Pena and artists as a millennial company. What does that infer for you? Yeah, I think for me it was really important to situate, you know, AP&A in terms of the fact that it is millennial.

 

 03:39

I mean, you know, I'm in my 30s. A lot of the artists that we work with are also within the same age range. And I think there's something that is social, politically cultural specific to our generation and to the sort of desire or lens or perspective.

 

 03:55

And so I really wanted to kind of, you know, be frontal about that and kind of situate ourselves there. I think in the word millennial or in how I connect to the word, I think I, you know, see myself as a sort of new generation of artists, a new generation of thinkers, of creators, where for me it's really not just about the work, but the how.

 

 04:17

So not just what are we creating? What is the work about? What is the art about? But like how is it being made? I think for me, you know, the choreographic practice is something that really requires a lot of reconsideration and deconstruction.

 

 04:31

And I would go as far as saying like decolonializing the practice itself. I think it's a practice that has certain hierarchies embedded to it, certain ways of seeing. And I and what we're trying to do with APNA is sort of take the responsibility to reflect on what does it mean to do choreography today?

 

 04:50

What does it mean to gather people, to lead people, to build these things? shows? What do the shows talk about? How do they talk about them? What is at stake inside of a work? And then, more importantly, like, how do these people come together in community to build these pieces?

 

 05:08

I think what we're trying or what I've been trying to do with an AP&A and, you know, first it started as something utopic and a goal and little by little, it's reframed itself. But it was really important for me to kind of approach choreographic works from a different lens.

 

 05:24

I mean, I used to be a professional dancer and I think it was important to both bring Bring my own values as somebody who's Latin American Colombian who has indigenous Latin American Backgrounds to bring some of those values into not just how we make her work, but what is a company today?

 

 05:43

so everything from bylaws internal communication things that try to kind of make us reframe and rethink what does Company and leadership mean as well Obviously these things are not always easy because having a company There are certain structures framework systems that you operate under But I think for me that millennial aspect is sort of giving space for those internal tensions to exist and also to reflect on You know,

 

 06:12

what is the future of choreography from today forward? What do we want to build as a community? what do we want to build as a practice for each other for Publix and Yeah, and and kind of what that looks like so it's it's really an amalgamation of a lot of those questions and reflections I think that are simply situated in that word Millennial is like it's today meaning we're looking at the past the history of Choreography in the past the history of companies in the past and trying to reimagine like what do we want this to look like?

 

 06:43

In the future. Yeah, I get it. So excited hearing you speak about this and I remember in one of our first conversations Almost exactly a year ago at par cordonce in Montreal we we thought we had a conversation and you spoke a bit about this as well like how you're How your company is working and how you're thinking about?

 

 06:59

democratizing the choreographic process and as you referenced you've danced with ballet BC and other Other high caliber technical Great. Thank you. Yes Company is with you know, like a more classic hierarchical environment It's quite, you know common as you're mentioning that These companies operate in a certain way.

 

 07:27

So I would love to just hear a little bit more about democratizing the choreographic process like, how does that differ from the norm? And what is the impact on the work itself? So maybe like, what does that look like in the studio and a rehearsal process?

 

 07:41

And is that translated into the finished work? Yeah, I mean, I think for us that kind of, it's a bit twofold. The notion of democratizing is kind of both internally for us as a team, but also externally in terms of community and our public.

 

 07:58

For me, my kind of first goal is how do I de-center the choreographic role? There's a really amazing book that I forget her name. She's a Spanish author and she talked about everything that is the sort of tension between the periphery and the center.

 

 08:14

So, embodiments of the peripheries versus embodiments of the center and the sort of boundaries that lie between the periphery and the center. And I think that's just always something that's kind of, you know, you know, as someone who's immigrated Latin American in Canada, it's tensions that I've always had.

 

 08:31

And so, yeah, I think I became really curious about how do I de-center the choreographic role? I think the choreographer or choreography is sort of this like role that is often put on a pedestal as something that is mysterious and amazing.

 

 08:47

It's like, no choreography is just a lot of trial and error and a lot of failure. And you happened to choose some ideas that you feel like works in community with your people and you put a show, you know?

 

 08:57

But it's often, very often do we talk about the fact that it's just trial and error and that it's not that mystic, you know, or like genius. And so, yeah, I kind of was fascinated to like, how do we de-center that role?

 

 09:12

And, you know, we're not a collective. AP&A is not a collective. There's companies that work as in a collective infrastructure. For us, we're not a collective, but I see myself sort of as like a facilitator, team leader.

 

 09:26

For sure, I'm proposing a project or a concept or a research idea that I'm bringing to the table of my collaborators. But what we've realized that we've been doing kind of little by little through time, I would say is to de-center the choreographic process.

 

 09:43

One of the things we've done is sort of democratize the dramaturgical practice. I've been working with the same sort of group of artists, both from designers to performers for many, many, many years.

 

 09:56

And together, we've sort of been building these sort of hybrid practices that allow all of us to hold a dramaturgical key in what we do, meaning that it gives us like codes, information, angles to kind of each one of us, them, also to bring the sort of own agency to the work, questions, point of views, perspective.

 

 10:20

A lot of the times, the dramaturgy, which is the sort of internal thread or like overstating. structuring intelligence or network of information of a piece is really between the choreographer and the dramaturge.

 

 10:32

And we've sort of tried to sort of evenly, not evenly, but like spread that reflection across the team, meaning that we really prioritise like, you know, even if sometimes we're a team of 25 people, hour and a half conversations after rehearsal to make sure that this the sort of conceptual frameworks, ideas, political standings, questions, reflections are shared across everybody and that those conversations are,

 

 10:57

yeah, like approached from a very collective point of view, even with our designers as well. So I think it allows, I call it like a sort of ecosystem. When we create works, it allows the sort of ecosystem to create a work together, specifically building Bogota.

 

 11:16

I remember saying to the team, I really want to build a piece from the back door. And everyone's like, what the hell does that mean? I was like, I don't know. Just metaphorically, it feels right. Like, how do we build a piece from the back door?

 

 11:28

How do we build a piece from the bottom up? What does that mean? What does that look like? And through two years of research, what we did was we realized that together we were sort of building tools, systems, language, putting words onto things we've done for years to help us understand the sort of tools that we've been co-building together.

 

 11:49

And so in order to do that, you know, we, I mean, specifically for Bogota, we had about two years of research before we actually started Bogota or knew that that's what we were doing. It was about two years, year and a half of trying to research practices and methods that would allow us to be all equipped with tools that gave the team agency and the ability for everybody to kind of bring in their point of view.

 

 12:17

I don't know if you heard me what I was saying about trying to create a piece from the back door, from the bottom up. And so it was how do we, what are those tools? What are those practices? What are those methods in order for us to build a piece from the back door or from the bottom up?

 

 12:33

And, you know, intrinsically, some of that stuff may have looked like, you know, having like prioritizing time for conversation. That's something we do a lot, is that the dancers and the artists, performers are very much in tune in line with everything that's happening in the production side from conceptual choices, artistic choices, materials choices.

 

 12:53

There's a lot of conversations that we have as a team where we share, you know, what is at stake in the work? What are the sort of social political questions of the work? How do people feel? I think for myself as well, I realized that if for me to build a work and be this facilitator as a team leader, I also had to get really comfortable with being vulnerable.

 

 13:16

And I think that sometimes the choreographic role were expected to be the with the answers and it's often that I come to my team and I'm like guys I feel really overwhelmed we're making work about the Anthropocene what does that mean who are we to make a work about the Anthropocene like and to share those vulnerabilities um those discomforts those insecurities places where I don't have answers I have no idea so that together we can find answers and together we can build uh doesn't have to be a homogenous point of view but build a common language and a common understanding to have a direction together that holds a space for multiple points of view so yeah we've been building different practices um we work a lot on trying to use language it's strange but like we work a lot with Post-its a lot with like not just about the creation itself but trying to name how we work so that we're all aware of what are the tools we've been developing together can we put language on those tools so that um Yeah,

 

 14:20

people can feel empowered, like here's this random tool that we're using, but this tool means this to me, even if that means something else. But we have a common understanding. So trying to build ways that we can share, I think, choice making.

 

 14:33

Can you give an example of a tool? For example, I think one thing that will help make sense of that is so I finished my master's last year. It's a master's in design and it's a master's that looks at how the choreographic practice is actually situated within the everyday built environment.

 

 14:53

So like for me, a chair, a handle, a car, anything that is the built environment is the sort of choreographic proposition that our body has to interact with. And I realize that a lot of the times our bodies are interacting with the built environment, but they're not necessarily in a negotiation.

 

 15:11

And so a lot of my work, choreographically, are these tools are about putting systems of negotiation in place, which for me means the position for two people, two things, two entities to propose their own point of view and actually have a sort of push and pull, meaning a negotiation or where we're not just interacting or interpreting or receiving or reacting, but there's actually a negotiation.

 

 15:34

So, for example, some of those tools we call it like an example of a tool is like a container state that comes to mind. So where we use a lot of words in creation. So, for example, the container could be a word like.

 

 15:53

I'm trying to find a reference like grotesque and the state is maybe liberation. And so the body is in a container of grotesque and the individual is trying to find a state of liberation. And so what we're trying to do is we kind of put these two words together and the artists are exploring what does it mean to be in a container of grotesque and in a state of liberation.

 

 16:14

That doesn't for me or we play with these sort of tools because. creates a sort of language that we understand what we're playing with, but the interest is not the succession of that. It's not how well is it received, how well is it literal, it's just kind of being able to see a person in negotiation with these two elements and the point of view that is brought forward.

 

 16:37

We also have things like we've named it like all supports one, one supports all and those are just like tools where we know okay whatever situation we're in choreographically, what does it mean to be in a situation where one is supporting all or all are supporting one.

 

 16:51

So trying to name sort of bigger picture tools where it's vague enough that there's room for interpretation and for a situation to guide what is happening in that moment, but clear enough I think in what we're just in our own comprehension together of these things so that we can move forward in a direction.

 

 17:12

So a lot of the works are built with these sort of larger picture tools that were yeah trying to find language for. Thank you that's really fascinating to just get a little more clarity about what that means and it's like so rich already with imagery.

 

 17:30

You describe Bogota as queering death or that one aspect of the work is queering death and when we met and had our conversation last year you also introduced me to Sarah Ahmed's queer phenomenology and I'm wondering if you can talk about what queer as a verb means to you, to your practice, to Bogota specifically.

 

 17:55

So I think in that notion of you know both also millennial artists the APNA is the team is predominantly queer doesn't mean everybody has to be your is queer but there's a big part of from the people that work in production to designers to the performers to our grand writers are people who identify as queer which for me means without defining it because we always say like who are we to define what queer it is what is a queer aesthetic that's not the goal like it's queer it for us is more of a lens a point of view like glasses that you put on that that you see the world in a certain way so definitely we use a lot the term queering in APNA.

 

 18:36

I was recently talking to Jonathan Sosier designer and he's like you know every time I'm thinking about the sonography I feel that the way I think about the materiality is how am I on the edge or how am I queering this materiality what does it mean to queer that materiality it's a very metaphorical metaphysical word but I think we try to approach from lighting to sonography to costumes to our writing like how do we queer and in Bogota specifically and in the notion of like looking at death I didn't know we were going to make a piece about death or I didn't know that was going to be what I was going to propose to the team but I started being fascinated with death as a notion of like cycles of transformation and deaths outside of maybe more western notions of death like the end of life,

 

 19:27

but rather looking at death as like the multiple deaths and rebirths that we have in our lifetime, like in a human lifetime here on this earth, and other alternative notions of what those cycles mean.

 

 19:42

So that was kind of a way of queering that question. And then specifically, somehow, this notion of death and life cycles brought me back to Bogota, my hometown, and I've never made a work that is super rooted in my culture in such a tangible way and my ancestors and the place where I was born.

 

 20:06

But I realized that a lot of the history of Colombia is rooted in these notions of different cycles of life and from the colonial era, you know, like the colonization and taking a lot of our ancestral heritage to contemporary notions of life and death, to the way we mythologize life and death.

 

 20:28

I don't know if you've heard of magical realism, but in Colombia, magical realism is both in literature, but it's like extremely rooted into everyday life stories and ways of living. And through this mythological research, I became fascinated with what I found out is the Latin American Baroque or the Andean Baroque.

 

 20:55

And Baroque paintings are all about the Renaissance, death, rebirth, resurrection, all of these European perspectives on the notion of death. And in Latin America, when Latin America was colonized, a lot of churches and paintings, obviously all of this infrastructure came with, but a lot of the craftsmen and artisanal people of Colombia who were building these things, not just Colombia, but other countries in Latin America,

 

 21:26

started to hybridize a lot of these Baroque architectures, paintings that were being imposed by infusing them with Latin American ancestral, I would say, aesthetics, qualities, and narratives. So for example, in Bogota, you have a small church that is super Baroque, extremely exaggerated, covered in gold, but all the paintings of these religious Catholic saints that the local people painted are actually painted in the backdrop of the Amazon.

 

 21:59

So you have these religious saints that are coming from colonization, but they're being painted in the Amazon. And so you have these sort of tensions between what is local and what is being imposed and the subverting of the Baroque by the Latin American people.

 

 22:15

So this was really fascinating for us. realize that the Baroque is not just something European but it was something that was subverted subverted many many years ago and in that we were thinking wow well what does it mean to queer the Baroque as well like a lot of the times the Baroque representation and everything that is religious is obviously has a long-standing history with queer bodies and notions of body so we also took a lot of these paintings and we tried to queer those paintings so find ways of representing hinting at playing with these hybrid Baroques but through the queer body what is it i mean we have a movement called the Double Gate Jesus and it's two men on top of each other like back to chest in a sort of Jesus position in this really beautiful tender embrace so trying to kind of subvert these notions through queering of image of like images that are so embedded in our social cultural history and I think Colombia in particular a country that is sort of highly influenced by Catholic culture,

 

 23:25

Catholic religion and how that's intention in the country itself. To imagine this sort of queer landscape and when we talk about death you know you're asking me about queering death Bogota is also this sort of we call it a sort of post-human and post-colonial space where we're trying to imagine you know what does it mean what is the future of of a colonial I don't think we're in post-colonial times at all but like our role as artists is to imagine what this looks like and imagine these sort of places so we're using I always say Bogota is a piece about Bogota but it's not about Bogota Bogota I'm using it as a sort of trampoline that is very personal to me my culture my ancestry to talk about like post-colonial landscapes and what that looks like and how do we queer those imaginaries by how bodies inhabit each other in space and for us to queer some of that stuff was also like there's a lot of chaos and complexity in Bogota and it was important that we create visual aesthetic choreographic spaces that make space for complexity and non-uniformity and non-homogeneity so that we as people I think society is not really comfortable with complexity we really like order and we like to understand and so for us as artists like how do we make space for us to sit with complexity on stage as a way of building different visual landscapes that become part of social culture After Push Balibisi will be presenting choreography they've commissioned from you and I would love to hear you talk about the through lines of your choreographic inquiry so if people see Bogota and then your work with Balibisi what might they see as an ASIMS that carries through?

 

 25:17

I think it's a really good question. I mean, you know, I'm really excited to work with Ballet BC. It's like coming back to like one, a place where I started working. So it's like a massive full cycle and we've never been to Vancouver and Vancouver was my home for such a long time.

 

 25:30

So I'm so excited for all of this. I think it's wonderful that the artists of Ballet BC can come see APNA, you know, because we work on a piece for three years, we're able to build practices, methods, kinship and ecology that helps us dream of these other universes that are pluriversal and complex.

 

 25:53

And that's like in the, it's in the ecritsir, like it's in the choreographic writing. Of course, bringing that to Ballet BC is a challenge in five, six weeks, but that's the goal is like, how much of that point of view can we bring to a company who does repertoire?

 

 26:10

How much of those ways of working and seeing can... Can I transfer and bring into conversation with the artists of Bali, BC? I think in particular, one of the things that really excites me and we were talking with Mehdi about this the other day is I think this notion of negotiation for me really comes from my design background.

 

 26:32

So we were trying to imagine how can I bring a sort of design, let's call it loosely intervention or a design situation that allows for the work that we'll do at Bali, BC to have some form of negotiation.

 

 26:48

So that's kind of what we're thinking about is trying to imagine, I call it loosely a design intervention not to give too much away because it's there but I don't know if I'm gonna go in that direction but something that allows for the choreographic work at Bali, BC to be a negotiation between these people.

 

 27:03

The goal is to make a piece on the full company so it's a lot of performers to transfer some of those ideas over. But yeah, I think that would be it. My goal is to sort of transfer these notions of negotiation and also the sort of hybrid practices between design and dance movement.

 

 27:23

I always say for us, sonography is not, I never call it sonography. Usually I call it more like landscapes of interaction because it's important to see how the body is in dialogue with its environment.

 

 27:36

So we're trying to find what's possible to do with Bali, BC in that regards. And with regard to design, because yeah, you've mentioned you're a design artist and that's a big part of your practice. And in Volkata, you reference Baroque which we've spoken about, brutalism.

 

 27:56

Are these aesthetics thematic to your work or are those really specific to Volkata? No, actually they're really, it's interesting we were, there's currently actually a research group at UCAM, the University of Quebec Amor et al that is studying like AP&A practices.

 

 28:16

So it's really interesting from like a ecological sonography from a decolonial dramaturgy with Angelie Rilke to two students in the theatre department. There's a sort of research group that is meeting for a year to understand the sort of decolonial and design practices of AP&A and what are like you asked me to name some tools it's like we're trying to name these things so that we can also democratize like the things we create to like build discourse around practice like what are artists making today in 2024 and what is choreography and how can we also make some of those thoughts tools trial and error available at large.

 

 28:58

So there's a an interesting group working on that at UCAM at the moment and they asked me, they were like, what do you mean by industrial? And me, Ugo, the lighting designer in Jonathan, the sonography were like, whoa, we've never, we just take that word for granted, because we've been working for so long together.

 

 29:16

And it was interesting, because I said, for me, the industrial refers to the past and the future. And it's a word why I'm trying to encompass both past and future notions of the industrial, where obviously the past is like the industrial revolution and the industrialization of humanity, where like, you know, we live in a very industrialized society, whether we're aware of it or not, you know, from everything from cars nine to five,

 

 29:42

like the industrial revolution really affected the sort of mechanized lifestyle of humanity. And everything that is industrial, we call that also the body of labor. So in APNA, we name different bodies.

 

 29:55

So we have bodies of mythology, bodies of labor, bodies of like bodies of anthropology, bodies of non-human, like we try to name different bodies. So those are also just to insert the tools. And this notion of bodies of labor for me really comes from Colombia, like a lot of the countries that exist in the peripheries, right, countries that are not the center like North America, but a lot of countries of the periphery,

 

 30:21

you see a lot of bodies of labor, right, you have a lot of industries that are still active, even in Quebec or in Canada, like the moment you step out of Montreal and you go to Rimsky or like these outside cities, you see industry and you see these bodies who through industrialization, they become bodies of labor.

 

 30:39

So for us, the word industrial hints at this sort of body of labor, and also the resilience and the humility of most of those bodies of labor that exist outside of the center or the city center. And at the same time, now for us, the word industrial also is sort of hinting at everything that is the artificial.

 

 30:58

So let's call it like the post-human and thinking about the digital environment, the digital era, artificial. intelligence we just did a piece called replica that looks at the sort of notions of replication of body through time and because i was quite quite fascinated with like how we represent bodies in the digital sphere today with the metaverse and tiktok and all this stuff um so yeah the industrial sort of teeters between everything that is this body of labor that comes from the industrialization and things that are maybe most more post-human or artificial or artificial intelligence um in terms of digital digital culture thank you andrea we are very blessed to have you coming you and apna the artist you work with coming to share this work with us here i am so thrilled i'm so excited um and i imagine that our listeners are too after hearing you paint this rich picture of the kind of influences and tools that you're using to devise this work no we're super excited i mean i think for me coming back to vancouver like i mentioned is It's quite precious.

 

 32:05

There's a community there that I still feel connected to. We haven't been to Vancouver yet. And I think, again, just to be in conversation through practice, I think is really, really interesting for all of us.

 

 32:20

You just heard Gabriel Martin's conversation with Andrea Pena. Her show, Bogota, will be presented at the Push International Performing Arts Festival on January 31st and February 1st, 2025 at the Vancouver Playhouse.

 

 32:34

The festival will run from January 23rd to February 9th. I'm Ben Charland, and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Trisha Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

 

 32:53

And for more information on the 2025 festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca. And on the next Push Play.

 

 33:09

When I was little, I thought that one day I would feel like an adult, but that day never came. I'm just I'm still the same person. I just have a little bit more of responsibilities than when I was 11.

 

Gabrielle Martin chats with Mirko Guio, whose work, All That Remains, will be presented at the 20th PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. You can catch All That Remains on January 23 and 24 at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Mirko discuss: 

• Where are you from and why is that important?

• What does it mean for your show, All That Remains, to be an “urgent call to consciousness”?

• How does being onstage affect people’s internal responses?

• How do you work in the devising process?

• What does it mean to be in a state of “sensitive listening”?

• What did your collaboration with a sculptor, Soren, entail?

• What are the parameters you offer your students based on Soren’s work?

• What is your practice of local collaboration?

• How does “All That Remains” fit into your larger practice?

• How do you devise “systems of responsiveness”?

• What is the place of your own body in your current artistic practice?

About Mirko Guido

Mirko Guido (b. Italy) works with dance and choreography between theatres, art galleries/museums, and public spaces - spanning over performances, installations, intra-disciplinary research projects, and publications. All works are a continual negotiation of boundaries — between body, space and materialities, between individual and collective experience, between certainty and ambiguity. Each project operates as a physical, material and intellectual inquiry into choreography as a system of responsiveness, guiding the attention towards the co-existence of multiple processes and materialities. As a dancer he worked in several dance companies, including the Cullberg Ballet, and with a great variety of choreographers, whom have provided him with a wide range of embodied perspectives on dance, from Mats Ek, Crystal Pite, Johan Inger to Deborah Hay, Benoît Lachambre, Cristina Caprioli and Tilman O’Donnel, passing by Paul Lighgoot & Sol Leon, Itzik Galili, Alexander Ekman, Rafael Bonachela, Jo Strømgren, Stephan Thoss among many others. As a choreographer Mirko he has toured his productions across Europe, including Athens dance festival (Greece), Festival La Becquée (France), Festival MAP/P E-motional (Portugal), Teatri di vita (Italy), Dance Station (Serbia), Weld and Dansens Hus (Sweden), Bora Bora and ARoS Art Museum (Denmark), SPEL - The State Gallery of Contemporary Art, Nicosia (Cyprus) among many others. His artistic processes have been supported by major choreographic centres such as Summer Studios Rosas, Work Space Brussels; Uferstudios Berlin; PACT Zollverein; MDT Stockholm to mention but a few. Mirko holds a master’s degree in New Performative Practices from DOCH / Stockholm University of the Arts, and today he’s based in Aarhus, Denmark, and is an in-house artist at Bora Bora – Dance and Visual Theater.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Mirko joins the conversation from Denmark.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's director of programming, and today's episode highlights spaces of liminality and devising systems of responsiveness.

 

 00:18

I'm speaking with Mirko Guido, artist behind All That Remains, which is being presented at the Push Festival, January 23rd and 24th, 2025. This choreographic work unfolds across a stage scattered with industrial debris and organic matter, where performers engage with their sculptural surroundings in a corporeal topography that collapses the boundary between inner landscapes and external realities.

 

 00:43

A richly textured work at the crossroads of dance, installation, and sound performance, this piece asks us how we, as a species fallen out of sync with our environment, can open up new potentialities of relation and becoming.

 

 01:00

Mirko Guido is an in-house artist at Bora Bora Dance and Visual Theatre. He holds a master's degree in new performative practices from DOC, Stockholm University of the Arts, and is a former dancer with the Kalberg Ballet.

 

 01:14

Mirko Guido's distinctive choreographic lens, shaped by a diverse history of working in theatres, galleries, and public spaces, brings to the fore a dynamic engagement with today's anthropocentric existential dilemmas.

 

 01:27

Here's my conversation with Mirko. Just before we hit record, we were acknowledging that it's so easy to get caught up in discussions around all the logistical pieces, so it's nice to actually, in the lead-up to the festival, sit down and really get to talk about the work itself and your practice, which is a real treat for me, and I know it's a treat for our listeners as well.

 

 01:50

I really appreciate it, because I think, as you were saying, we get so sometimes overwhelmed by the practicalities, and that you... and their organization of making this happen. So to give space and time for us to connect on another level and talk about the practices and the work and also give the possibility to people to have another entry to the work.

 

 02:19

I think it's a great initiative. So thank you. Thank you. And we're going to get right into it shortly. I do want to acknowledge that I am in this conversation today on the stolen traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

 

 02:34

So these are the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. I am a settler on these lands, and part of my responsibility as a settler is ongoing thinking about the implications of that. And those who've been listening to this podcast series will have heard me reference the Yellowhead Institute, which is an incredible resource for thinking indigenous perspective on policy and perspectives on policy that are affecting indigenous peoples today.

 

 03:05

And they have a wonderful online course around Land Back and their red paper on the Land Back movement. And I think it's really important that just to talk about the roots of the Land Back movement, and this is something I'm educating myself on right now, and just really being clear that despite reconciliation rhetoric of contemporary politicians that Canada is still a colonial country.

 

 03:34

And that over the years through policy, law, and interpretation, indigenous people and their authority have been attacked by land tenure and economic systems meant to benefit non-indigenous Canadians.

 

 03:49

And each time indigenous people challenge the state of affairs, for example, with land defense actions, they are met with violence and criminalization in the name of public interest. And so I think that I'm just really appreciating the clarity with which this is articulated in the Yellowhead Institute's red paper.

 

 04:13

Mirko, where are you joining the conversation from today? I am calling from, or I'm in this call from Denmark, which is in Europe, in the Scandinavian region. And I live here, I've been living here for the past three and a half years, more or less.

 

 04:34

And Denmark is a land that has been mostly inhabited by various Germanic peoples since the ancient times. But I... I am Italian, before living in Denmark, I was living in Sweden for many years and also in Germany and Switzerland.

 

 04:59

And yeah, but specifically I come from Lechke and I actually think, which is a small town in the South of Italy. I don't know if you see the boot Italy that looks like a boot then at the end of the hill in the South part facing, facing the East towards Greece, basically.

 

 05:24

There is this small town called Lechke, which is in ancient times was called Terra d'Otranto or Salento, Salento or Terra d'Otranto. And so from that perspective, I'm actually, I'm routed to Mesape, which is the...

 

 05:44

the first people, let's say, from the Terra d'Otranto and Salento. But I also have to acknowledge that we're also inextricably rooted to Greeks and Byzantines and many other populations that have passed by the Salento over the centuries.

 

 06:11

And this is quite striking because it's something that you can notice in the language, in the culture, in the crafts, and even in the people's feature. So from that perspective, it's a very rich and diverse land.

 

 06:30

And I wanted to acknowledge, because I was thinking about this, that among the various populations that have passed by, there are also the Normans, which the Normans were intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and locals from West France.

 

 06:50

And so perhaps there is an older connection that runs through me with Scandinavia. And also, as you can see, people cannot see it, but you can see that I have red hair, which is not exactly a typical hair color in the Mediterranean area.

 

 07:14

So yeah. So this is some funny anecdotes also that I'm sharing with you now. Yeah, thank you. I think it's always fascinating to think about the layered history of peoples. I mean, unfortunately, often in the context of conquest, sometimes just in trade.

 

 07:37

But this is like the layers of cultural exchange and then sometimes cultural exchange. domination but like just how layered that history is in any one place if we go far enough back in time and in some places in the world more than others in terms of the different types of peoples who've come and settled over generations.

 

 08:01

Thanks so much for sharing that. We're going to talk about all that remains. So you've described all that remains as not just a performance but an urgent call to consciousness. Can you elaborate on that?

 

 08:14

Yeah, thank you. Well, we live in times in which the conditions around ourselves, environmental conditions, social and political conditions are changing very drastically and also at a very fast speed.

 

 08:44

So I think we just need to pay attention. That's my idea, that's my thought. We need to pay attention to the changes that are happening and not only an attention towards that, but also an acknowledgement and awareness that we live in a mutual affect with our surrounding.

 

 09:14

And these ideas of attention and presence and the knowledge in this mutual affect is exactly the principles upon which all the tremendous is built in the way that the performers work with their bodies in relation to the sculptures, in relation to sound, in relation to the lights and how they attend the moment and the present moment and how they are in the space of listening and fluctuating between how their internal landscapes and external realities,

 

 10:01

they co-form one another. And in a way, I would say that that's also what the performance, what all that remains wants to do towards the public, towards the audience. It is asking also for the public to be present and to pay attention and to, not only to what's happening on stage, but also how that affects their internal, emotional and physical responses.

 

 10:38

Yeah, you've spoken about your work being in dynamic engagement with today's Anthropocentre. existential dilemmas and I really feel that that's the call of this work for me how it speaks to this kind of anxiousness or tension you know you spoke about the wider context of the global upheavals that we're experiencing but this is through the body the fact that it's it speaks to this without words and so while there are bodies humans on stage as the main actors the fact that they're expressing in a way that feels very unmediated and for me interpreting the work so not heavily informed by a specific dance technique you know for my eye anyways that they're in relation to their environment in a way that kind of brings them into a more like animalistic context or like de-centering or the ways that humans have existed in nature that have created the Anthropocene as we know it feels like it is deconstructed in some way on stage.

 

 11:49

So I'm really curious how you talk about the internal realities of the artist on stage, the bodies in conversation with the external environment. Can you talk a little bit about the devising process?

 

 12:05

How do you get to that place with the artist? What was the creative process like when exploring that? There was a moment in the process when we started to work with all those objects and we had even more objects that we spent with the performers.

 

 12:23

We spent a lot of time. So we were working on a very long open scores, we will call them, in which we would have some basic principles that were crucial for our research. But we would not know how we would structure the time and the events, we were calling them events inside of that score.

 

 12:52

So basically what I'm talking about is that we would do like a two, two and a half hours open score in which we would work with some themes and some principles of relation with the objects, relation with the space, relation with one another.

 

 13:08

And that formed very much for us a particular experience of time and a particular sensitivity to expectations of resisting the desire for certainty and for immediately producing a form and resolving something and rather stayed more into a state of...

 

 13:44

of sensitive listening that is not only perceptual or somatic, it's also material, it's special, it has many, many layers. And that process formed very much a particular tone and attitude in the work.

 

 14:06

So it wasn't pre-decided how we were going to, let's say, how we were going to look and how we were going to move, right? It emerged throughout this experience of staying in the space with those objects for a long time and then, of course, being driven by some themes and some choreographic ideas that we had, such as that of creating sanctuaries or diving in pooling into our internal landscapes, almost creating a small ritual of reconnecting with our ancestral forces,

 

 14:49

and then bringing those forces back in the space, right? But we were doing this for like a space of two, two and a half hours without exactly knowing where something was gonna happen. And that was the devising process.

 

 15:07

And then later on, then we started to have to make decisions because we had to bring it on stage within a certain amount of time and so forth. But that experience, I think it's very crucial for how the work came into being.

 

 15:27

And I would like to add something important about this space of waiting and staying with the moment and staying with the listening. Because at that time, I had come across a fantastic lecture by Joakim Olafeh.

 

 15:51

And he's a philosopher, a writer and activist. Yes, big inspiration. And actually, I'll just pipe in that last year, it was on one of our artists, Cherish Menza, who introduced and actually mentioned him on this podcast and introduced us to his work.

 

 16:08

Yeah, amazing. It was a fantastic lecture, very inspiring. And like it really like it's not just inspiring, it really moved something for us in the work. Like it became a crux that turned and redirected many of our intentions.

 

 16:25

And the lecture, I want to read the title because the title, I think it's beautiful in itself and is the spirituality of cracks and the gift of failure at world endings. And And in this lecture he proposes a notion of the wound not as something that is to be immediately repaired so that we can go back to what it was, right?

 

 16:52

So that we can ignore that something drastic has happened, something violent in some way for the body, for the flesh has happened, right? And then we just close it and go back and we repair it. But in that moment he proposes the idea of the wound rather as a phenomenon that is trying to make us notice that something is not functioning.

 

 17:19

And so perhaps we need to linger in there. We need to wait a little bit longer and try to sense what other directions we can take, what other possibilities are there, what is the space of the wound, right?

 

 17:33

And... And so for me, in that moment, the space of the wound was physically the space in which we were, in which we were like, was the space in which we were working in with our bodies and with the objects.

 

 17:51

Thank you. And you talk about objects. So you combine an advanced physical practice with meticulously curated visual, spatial, material, and intellectual context. In all that remains, you collaborated with sculptor Sorin Engsted.

 

 18:08

Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yeah, that's correct. Okay, Sorin. And you also collaborated with Sorin on your piece once again, Sisyphus. Can you talk about that collaboration? How did you come to work together and what direction the research took specifically for all that remains, the evolution of the design of the sculptures?

 

 18:28

Yeah, so actually, when Sorin and I worked together for once again, Sisyphus, we were already planning to work on all that remains. But at that moment, I was working at Aros Art Museum, which is a museum here in Aros.

 

 18:48

And I was working on a durational performance called The Longest Gap. And at that time, I invited, so we were already talking with Sorin about all that remains, and I invited him to just hang around in the atelier there at the museum.

 

 19:08

And so the once again, Sisyphus came about rather spontaneously. He made this giant inflatable ball covered with aluminum foliar. And I was carrying this, you know, I have to say that the Aros Art Museum is made like a many different floors that go, I don't know maybe it's like five or six floors and there is this like beautiful staircase, a spiral staircase that runs through the middle of the museum that it really gives this like sense of like a spine of the of the building and but also is made with a very typical Scandinavian Danish architecture where the space is very open you can see all this like the directions of the space are very visible a lot of crossing directions of each of different floors but it's also quite open so you can also see through different floors from balconies and so forth and then I was I was basically going from the bottom floor all the way up with this with this giant giant pole and I think that I was I was disrupting in some ways the flow of people moving.

 

 20:41

And, you know, like when there is a lot of people at the museum, they're going, they go through the museum from one place to another in a very consumption driven way of seeing artworks, right? From one gallery to another.

 

 20:56

And then all of a sudden there's this guy with this giant ball that has to pass. And so it's like kind of disrupting their flow and it's redirecting their attention. And it's also regathering attention in a different and unexpected way while I was in some ways like in Sisyphus being punished to repeat this action over and over and then bring up this aluminum board.

 

 21:27

But Sorin and I, we knew each other already. We met earlier. By chance, because our daughters were going to the same school, in the same class. And then I first met his wife, Diana Baldon, which was the director at the time of the Ors constelles.

 

 21:50

And then I met him and I came across his work. And at that moment, I was already working and researching for all that remains, but I was more in a phase in which I was more busy just with the idea, with the concept of the space of liminality.

 

 22:13

I was very intrigued by this like being between the before and after. But then meeting his work, I was particularly struck by one of his installation work, which is, it's called if the future. isn't bright, at least it's colorful.

 

 22:42

But what it did for me, meeting his work and talking with him about it, is that in that moment of the process, it really like situated in a different way, in a more concrete way, what that space in between was for me.

 

 23:02

And in a very concrete terms, it was a space among remnants, rests between a world that was before and a world that is yet to come. And so, and that actually, before earlier we were talking about the lecture of Bayou Como Lafe, which happened in...

 

 23:31

in almost in the same period. So those two elements, those two encounters, have really directed the work in a specific direction. Yeah, and Sorin, maybe I have to specify, because Sorin's sculptures, he's working with material coming from industrial waste, and he makes like hybrid assemblages that are like this kind of like a, I mean, it's not only industrial waste, it's also working with different kind of like a found objects.

 

 24:08

And that then he transforms through craft interventions. And we have a really exciting collaboration taking place for these Vancouver performances of all that remains. So fourth year students of Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts production and design program will create artistic responses to Sorin's work re-imagining and producing the sculptures for these local performances.

 

 24:37

So this experiment reflects your ecological and socio-cultural approach to sustainability, because it was, you know, you who kind of brought this idea forward as a possibility. Can you talk about, well, I would actually like to hear a couple things.

 

 24:53

First, let's talk a little bit more about the parameters that you are offering these students. So based on Sorin's work, you know, you talked about hybridity, what are kind of the things that the, yeah, the fundamental parameters that you're offering these students.

 

 25:10

And then afterwards, I want to talk a little bit more about your practice of local collaboration. One of the things that is very important is that the materials that they are going to work with. And yeah, I also have to mention that it's a very exciting a collaboration for me because it speaks to this notion and practice of responsiveness on another level.

 

 25:44

And of course, it also brings some kind of like a level of uncertainty, but I think it's also a lot of potentiality. And that's what it is exactly to stay in that or to create even the conditions to experience that and to work with that.

 

 26:06

And this is a very concrete situation. And I'm really enthusiastic about this. And so go back to the parameters. So there is something about, of course, the type of materials that they use. And this is also, again, exciting, because instead of coming with our objects from Denmark to Vancouver to perform, instead, what are the found objects there, the locally found objects, and what is the the perspective of industrial waste material combined with other synthetic and natural materials,

 

 26:57

right? Like there is some elements that Soren worked with that are like, for instance, coming from the sea, like there is a piece of driftwood, which is fantastic, or there is like a sea sponge and other such elements.

 

 27:14

But so this is one important thing. And then there is another aspect that it was, for me, very important in the way Soren approached the work. Soren is a visual artist, so he has a strong sense of the object, the object that is self-standing because it is exhibited and people are going to experience it, right?

 

 27:40

And but this is like, there is something that is important for me in relation to that, because in the choreographic environment, for me, these objects, they need to be, they need to have their own integrity, so that so that we can activate the responsive level.

 

 28:00

So they're not just objects that are there for us to be manipulated. Not at all, they have they have objects that they have, they need to have some kind of energy and they need to have to be self-standing and have particular textures, particular colors, shapes, weight, and different type of materialities, right?

 

 28:19

And there is something that I always love to quote Sorin for this, that when we went around to find some of the objects that Ben was going to work with, he calls it going for cherry picking, which is a funny, funny term when we go in, in this like recycling, massive space for industrial waste, right, because you have all these materials, but he's going there and he's like picking his cherries.

 

 28:46

And that basically means that within like he really finds these ready mains. So within like hundreds of pieces of the same type of material, he really picks the one that somehow has a form or as an energy that that it's it's it's speaking in some ways and then he carries it and and he works with them with craft intervention that can be from coloring to inserting other elements and to create this hybrid,

 

 29:18

hybrid sculptures and and another element that that is important that I'm trying to communicate then with the with the student review of the universities that this concept of hybridity is for me it has to do with again this state of a state of a space in between right over in this case perhaps it's like it's formal but it's also temporal right it's like we can kind of understand and grasp what the object was or but but it is in a process of transformation it is becoming something else but we don't but that transformation is not completed yet and so I think there is something very beautiful and even poetic poetic about about that there is something about that in the process with with Sodom it was interesting how he himself was surprised by how those sculptures will transform in relation to the to the to the bodies of the performers or in the how that even later on how the whole space will transform and then also the experience of the sculptures will change and and he was surprised in a good in a good way but also it was challenging for him because he's he was not so used to have people handling the objects in that way so there was also a process of like securing and and figuring out what is too dangerous or what it needs to be a little bit more stable and so forth so these are these are notions that are also gonna be transmitted to that to them to the students and at the university and and also an invitation for them to experience them physically so to not only look at the sculpture for how it appears but also to how it feels in their hands and on their bodies because then that that can suggest something to the development of the objects.

 

 31:24

Yeah, I'm so excited for this project. And the dance department students will have a chance to work with you and the objects as well to kind of understand your devising process. So super, I want to be in the room.

 

 31:36

I'm going to sneak in. But so yeah, this also, you have a practice of working in collaboration with local communities in different ways, at least with your previous project Museum of Tellers. So I'm curious about, yeah, how this fits in with your your practice.

 

 32:03

Yeah, I'm like, for me, my choreographic work, I, I became more and more aware of my needs through my own. I don't know if it's a need, it's a drive. probably, to move through different contexts. So I work in between theaters, but also art galleries and museums and public spaces.

 

 32:30

And I have different practices that go from physical practices, but also interdisciplinary or interdisciplinary projects and even publications and participatory practices also sometimes. So I work with people, with local people or non-professionals in different ways.

 

 32:59

And this drive for me to move through different contexts has to do with an interest that I have in understanding in every different space, how can I myself understand what can choreography be and what can choreography do in different contexts and in different situations.

 

 33:26

So I'm always working on how to devise system of responsiveness. So that's my, let's say, bottom part of the work. So that preconceived notions and conventional structures, they are replaced or interrogated at least.

 

 33:56

And my own view on the relation between the materials that exist within a choreographic environment, it's more of the coexistence of multiple processes. And how are these processes talking to one another?

 

 34:14

When working with participatory practices, This is then you were mentioning the Museum of Tellers and that was a project that was very dear to me but it was also heavily affected by the COVID. It happened in times of COVID and the pandemic and later on by the fact that I was moving from Sweden to Denmark.

 

 34:44

So initially that process was focused on a small city in the South of Stockholm and in Sweden. And the idea was to make an intergenerational work. So to bring into dialogue young kids with elderly people.

 

 35:04

And the interest there for me was because Soderthali was one of these like small towns that exist outside of the capital are becoming everywhere what they call sort of a parking, a parking town. And that means that basically people are just like staying there for a little while and then they leave.

 

 35:27

And it's becoming more and more something, places like that are growing. So there is like a kind of disconnection between the elderly and the youngs and then for me was an idea of bringing them together.

 

 35:44

So the main practice that I was proposing there was through interviews, practices of interviews and conversation. But I also have to say that the work has transformed because to do an intergenerational work in times of COVID was really a bad timing.

 

 36:04

So that over time it transformed into another type of form. But that even that transformation going from an intergenerational participatory work into other forms and finally becoming what we called a participatory audio poem, even that transformation is exactly this, it goes in line with this way of working of trying to understand and trying to relate to the circumstances, the conditions and how do we respond and reform under those situation and what can we affect and how do we become affected by.

 

 36:57

Yeah and it's clear that social inquiry is such an important part of your work or the themes that you're working with are much bigger than yourself, looking at the anthropocene and existential questions and in the context of.

 

 37:15

global crises and just to name a couple of the things that have come up and how you describe your own work. But your body is also sometimes part of your practice. So you're a dancer, you've been a member of renowned companies such as the Kalberg Ballet.

 

 37:32

I worked with a variety of choreographers, Deborah Hay, Benoit Le Chambre, who has been informative for my own practice, having trained as a dancer in Montreal. Crystal Pite, of course, you know, everybody here knows Crystal's name, and we'll be excited to know that.

 

 37:52

Alexander Ekman and many others. So, and you were part of the original cast of All That Remains. So I would love to hear about what is the place of your own body in your current artistic practice. Yeah, I mean, it's been really like a great, great variety of choreographers that have informed and provided with a wide range of embodied perspectives on dance.

 

 38:24

And each one of them like a very specific angle and perspective. But part of the process for me in this, like, of this body that accumulates all this perspective, it's also being a space of disorientation, right?

 

 38:44

Because they're so diverse. When we move, like when we talk from like crystal pie to the wallachamp, or from Debra Hei to your one in gear, or, or my check or even more classical forms and tense the author and experimental forms, right?

 

 39:01

And it does create like a sense of disorientation in some ways. But then perhaps that's also what at some point I decided to embrace. And, and, and, and to rather, you know, Umberto, Umberto Eco, there is a passage in one of his one interview from Umberto Eco, where he calls disorientation, a cultural moment, in the sense that disorientation is the moment in which we have to rewire our directions,

 

 39:38

right? So something else becomes understood. So we have to give up something and we have to, we acknowledge something else and we redirect ourselves, right? And, and I guess there is something that about that that's profoundly speaks to me, perhaps even on like, on a personal, on a personal level.

 

 40:00

And, and so that's, I guess, what I embraced in my own physical practice that of like, what I was mentioning before, resisting the compulsion for certainty, and cultivate spaces of temporary disorientation and reorientation.

 

 40:19

And so that has allowed me to bring the given forms and formats and the known formats and their scrutiny. So I think whatever I do right now, I still dance sometimes, a bit less. And as you said, I was, you know, I was part of the, I was on stage for, with all the females.

 

 40:48

And now I'm not, but Even though I'm more dedicated to the development of choreographic practices and the position I take right now is that to think out on fault, this choreographic devices. For me, I'm still working from a movement perspective, right?

 

 41:19

And not that of a pure designer perspective. And so for me, it's still very embodied the way, I think, the systems of responsiveness within the mechanism of the choreographic practice and also the working with the very physical practice, of course.

 

 41:41

But it is more of a position of facilitation, you know, like of a listener, because when I work with so many different mediums and also collaborators, it does become a space of listening and finding ways to calibrate that dialogue, but also to accept that I would like to calibrate also what I can control and with what I cannot control.

 

 42:10

And that's kind of the basic mantra also of my practice. But I think it's still like a very embodied and sensible space that I work from. Thank you so much, Mirko. It's been such a pleasure to speak with you today.

 

 42:30

Thank you, Gabrielle, for giving me the opportunity. It's also been such a pleasure for me. And I look so much forward. You just heard Gabriel Martin's conversation with Mirko Guido. All that remains will be presented at the PUSH International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver, B.C.

 

 42:50

The festival will run from January 23rd to February 9th. and you can catch the show on January 23rd and 24th at the SFU Gold Corp Center for the Arts. I'm Ben Charland and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Trisha Knowles.

 

 43:08

Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on the 2025 festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music, and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca.

 

 43:29

And on the next Push Play. Specifically building Bogota, I remember saying to the team, I really want to build a piece from the back door. And everyone was like, what the hell does that mean? I was like, I don't know, just metaphorically, it feels right.

 

 43:42

Like, what do we how do we build a piece from the back door? How do we build a piece from the bottom up? What does that mean? What does that look like? And through two years of research, what we did was we realized that together, we were sort of building tools.

Gabrielle Martin chats with lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer Itai Erdal.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Itai discuss: 

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• What inspires the effects and choices in your work?

• What is the world of international touring like?

• What was the genesis and process of How to Disappear Completely?

• What is Soldiers of Tomorrow and why does it need to be told today?

• What is the role of the lighting designer?

• What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

About Itai Erdal

An award winning lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer, Itai is the founder of The Elbow Theatre in Vancouver, for whom he co-wrote and performed in Soldiers of Tomorrow, Hyperlink, This Is Not A Conversation and A Very Narrow Bridge. 

Itai has designed over 300 shows for theatre, dance and opera companies in over fifty cities around the world. Some of the companies he worked with include: Arts Club Theatre (16 shows), The Stratford Festival (11 shows), New Victory (Off Broadway), The Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Playhouse, Bard on the Beach, The Electric Company, National Arts Centre, Soulpepper, Tarragon, Factory, The Citadel, MTC, The Segal Centre, The Jerusalem Lab, Haifa Theatre, Tamasha, Box Clever and Teatro Villa Velha in Salvador, Brazil. 

He worked with such choreographers as: Crystal Pite, Nigel Charnock, Noam Gagnon, Robert Hylton, Serge Bennathan, Kate Alton, Chick Snipper, Noa Dar, Susan Elliot, Idan Cohen and Toru Shimazaki.

Itai has won six Jessie Richardson Awards, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Winnipeg Theatre Award, the Jack King Award, a Guthrie Award, Victoria’s Spotlight Choice Award and the Design Award at the 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival. He was shortlisted to the Siminovitch Prize in 2018. 

Itai’s first one-man show: How to Disappear Completely (The Chop, directed by James Long), premiered in 2011 and had 25 remounts in 21 cities. It won the best director award at the Summerworks Festival in Toronto, and was shortlisted to the Dublin Fringe Award, the Brighton Fringe Award and the Total Theatre Award at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  

Soldiers of Tomorrow received Summerhall’s Lustrum Award and was nominated to an Offfest Award at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:23

Today's episode features Itai Urdao and the 2023 Push Festival. Itai is a local lighting designer, playwright, and performer. He is the artistic director of the Albo Theater. His first play, How to Disappear Completely, has toured to 26 cities and won the Directional Award at the Summer Works Festival in Toronto.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:42

His latest play, Soldiers of Tomorrow, won the Lustrom Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is touring today. Here's my conversation with Itai. I am here with Itai Urdao, and we're gonna be chatting about your relationship with Push.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:59

You've been involved in many capacities as a lighting designer on some really iconic shows that we've already spoken about with some of our other interviewees. Also, Push's co -commission of one of your works in more recent years, but I just wanna start by acknowledging that we are here on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh,

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:23

and we are incredibly privileged to be on these lands. And in so -called Vancouver, yeah, we are in your home because we went to a cafe to shoot on a patio, but it was raining and loud and... Here we are.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:36

Yes, here we are. So just to, yeah, recap. So your relationship started with Push from the very first festival. So you were a lighting designer on the Empty Orchestra of Theatre Replacement for 2005.

 

Itai Erdal 01:51

Yeah, it was 2005, the first one, I think maybe it was the second.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:54

So the series, the performance series, started 2003 and then officially it became a festival in 2005.

 

Itai Erdal 02:00

Yes, yes.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:03

And then you were also a lighting designer on Crime and Punishment, New World.

 

Itai Erdal 02:07

Both of them iconic shows, really, because Empty Orchestra was the very first show that Theatre Replacement has ever done. And I designed the set on that and lights. We did it at the dance center and then on the dance center was the director.

 

Itai Erdal 02:21

And it was really a fantastic show. Michael Bayamomoto and James Long were both very young. They were both in it and they were singing. The show Empty Orchestra means, and that's what karaoke is called in Japanese.

 

Itai Erdal 02:34

It's an empty orchestra. So it was a show kind of about karaoke and it was a very dark apocalyptic play about people falling in love in very dark, futuristic, environmentally disastrous future where Vancouver was all covered in snow.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:51

So we've talked to Jamie about this, Jamie and Micah, but I say, yeah, but Jamie, because, uh, I think that was the project that, or maybe it was Micah who was saying that, um, you know, at one point they had an early version of the work in Darren was really unimpressed and made them go back to the drawing board.

 

Gabrielle Martin 03:07

And so it was a, a process. I mean, I guess as any first works, uh, uh, the creative processes for, you know, your first works, it's bound to have those kind of, uh,

 

Itai Erdal 03:18

It's funny you should mention that, because I just talked about Kathleen Oliver, who was the publicist for the show. And we saw an early version that they did at the Russian Hall, and they asked us to come, and Kathleen and I loved it.

 

Itai Erdal 03:35

And then they went and worked with Darren for a few weeks, and then asked us to come back. And we looked at each other, and we were like, we thought it was better before. And Darren said, oh, I'm sorry I ruined your show, and we were like, no, no, no, that's not what we meant.

 

Itai Erdal 03:49

We tried to take it back, but it was too late. But then they went back to the drawing board, and they changed a bunch of things, and they sort of got back some of them. But it was a very tumultuous process, yeah.

 

Gabrielle Martin 03:59

So it wasn't Darren's fault, it was just an awkward stage in the process.

 

Itai Erdal 04:04

Maybe, maybe, yeah, but it was very interesting to be asked to watch the piece so early and then give our feedback. And also, I was very young and new to the collaborative process and maybe didn't know how to speak about the work in progress, and so it's possible.

 

Itai Erdal 04:24

So I was also a very fresh new immigrant to this country and, you know, as an Israeli, I have such different sensitivities and sensibilities than Canadians, and in retrospect, I was probably insensitive.

 

Itai Erdal 04:39

But I loved the final show. I did love the final show.

 

Gabrielle Martin 04:44

And you were also working on crime and punishment, and we've also spoken to Kamiar about that project and just what a kind of colossal ambitious project that was and

 

Itai Erdal 04:53

That remains one of the best shows I've ever worked on in my life, Crime and Punishment, and a big fan favorite. People still bring it up all the time. James Fagan Tate was just a genius in adapting these novels, these huge stories on the stage with Julissa Pankanya, who wrote the music and performed it live.

 

Itai Erdal 05:13

And so there was 20 chorus members, and we painted, and the set by Brian Pollack was also stunning. There was a square, like a grid for each chorus member to stand. And so there was like 20 people. There was 20 people, and then principals, and then the musicians.

 

Itai Erdal 05:33

So there was maybe 26, 27 people on stage in total. And Jimmy takes these epic novels, and with music, and with those little chorus members singing, beautifully singing, and simple choreography that Jimmy did that was so effective.

 

Itai Erdal 05:47

And that was the first of many shows like that that we did. We did The Idiot, and The Life Inside, and with the same team.

 

Gabrielle Martin 05:59

were doing the lighting design. Yep.

 

Itai Erdal 06:01

For all of them, yeah, yeah, we did at least 10 shows together with the same team of Mara Gottler doing costumes, Jelisa doing sound, Brian Dinsett and me doing lights, and then Jimmy kept hiring us and adapting these big novels.

 

Itai Erdal 06:15

But Crime and Punishment was the first, it's not the first time we worked together, but the first time that it was this huge, ambitious project that sort of the whole world saw what a genius James Fagan Tate was, and everybody wanted to do that kind of theater.

 

Itai Erdal 06:32

It was physical theater that was driven by music and that had simple, beautiful, super effective choreography and the choreography and the music and the lighting. All the design elements were so naturally intertwined together, were so organically combined that that's why I still, to this day, when I put a portfolio together, I always put pictures from Crime and Punishment because it was also my first time when I sort of dared to do a show only with sidelighting.

 

Itai Erdal 07:03

I didn't have any front lights almost at all.

 

Gabrielle Martin 07:07

choice, what inspired that choice, or what was the desired effect.

 

Itai Erdal 07:10

Well, it was a very dark play in a way, and side lighting highlights the body more than the face, you know, and front lights is great to get the tingle in the eye that everybody loves in musicals and in children's play, but it flattens everything, and side lighting makes everything three -dimensional.

 

Itai Erdal 07:31

And so by lighting everything from the side, we gave everything depth, and then they would just, it was very easy for somebody to just completely disappear into the darkness, and we really wanted that.

 

Itai Erdal 07:47

And the side lights were all open white, which is very, very warm, so it felt like candlelit a little bit.

 

Gabrielle Martin 07:56

You're making me want to see it. I mean, of course I would love to see it, but the way you're pretty into life.

 

Itai Erdal 08:00

There's an archival. You should watch it. I don't know why nobody produced it after. I mean, there was talk. BAM wanted it in New York and Soul Paper wanted it and I think it was very close to going to some places, but it ended up not going anywhere, which is another reason that it's such an iconic production because so few people got to see it.

 

Gabrielle Martin 08:18

So was that the beginning of your relationship with Push in the 2005 festival, or were you already working on some of the projects of the series?

 

Itai Erdal 08:29

That was my first time.

 

Gabrielle Martin 08:30

men armor or katina done

 

Itai Erdal 08:32

I did work with Katrina and Norman before, but that was my first time. And I remember when the whole push started as a reading series between TuxyTone and Rumble.

 

Gabrielle Martin 08:50

So yeah, you've referred to the many productions that you were involved in as a designer over the years Namely with new world after that first year. No, whatever

 

Itai Erdal 09:00

Everybody really, so many people, so many shows they did were, ended up being part of Push that were like not, yeah there was a show I did from Manitoba Theatre for Young People, about Rick Hansen that ended up being part of Push and there was other shows with Jimmy but then were not New World and then theatre, other theatre replacement shows I'm pretty sure Broiler was also part of Push, I'm not 100% sure but other theatre replacement shows that I've done but also Norman had these breakfasts that he would invite you to come and meet other artists and so for a few years whether I was in the festival designing or not I would get invited to just meet with artists from around the world and that was just a fantastic thing to do and I met some Argentinians and Germans and I remember Limini Potokol came for a few years in a row and Gob Squad and Sishi Pop are all from Berlin and I speak German and so but we spoke English but I got to hang out with them and then go and see their shows and those are some of the best shows I've seen in my life,

 

Itai Erdal 10:16

really. Some of the shows that those companies that I mentioned, those three companies from Gob Squad is half England but these are the two are Berlin companies, oh no, not Berlin, Limini Potokol is somewhere else in Germany but Sishi Pop is Berlin, I've done some of the strongest work I've ever seen, same with La Maria from Argentina.

 

Gabrielle Martin 10:38

We spoke about with Boca de lupo, but yeah that 2011

 

Itai Erdal 10:43

That's the first time that I met these guys and we became friends and then I ended up seeing them in a lot of other festivals around the world. Because then I would travel with how to disappear completely and I would see the same people that I met at Push in other places and you realize the world of international touring is actually very small.

 

Gabrielle Martin 11:02

And these breakfasts were just at a cafe or at somebody's house.

 

Itai Erdal 11:07

No, it was always, Norman had his famous favorite place was La Bodega and it was always at La Bodega. Sometimes it was breakfast, sometimes it was late night, it was always paid for by push, which was really nice.

 

Itai Erdal 11:18

But it was just in, it felt so privileged to be invited to meet with artists from around the world. And I always loved how the festival wasn't just for us to see what the world has to offer, but they also wanted the world to see what we have to offer.

 

Itai Erdal 11:33

And so I feel like, yeah, working with those people has opened me up as an artist and inspired me. I ended up taking a workshop with Gop Squad, the theater replacement did. So I've worked with them for two weeks and let some of the most eye -opening and inspiring work that I've ever done that maybe want to write and perform and do other things.

 

Itai Erdal 12:00

And I met them through the push festival. So I think the first kick show I saw of theirs was Kixen.

 

Gabrielle Martin 12:07

What year, do you remember what year you did that workshop?

 

Itai Erdal 12:10

don't. It was at least 10 years ago. Maybe 10 years ago. So you had already created atmosphere completely? Yeah.

 

Gabrielle Martin 12:16

Okay, so you were already working as a director. Please no.

 

Itai Erdal 12:22

So, performer and writer, yeah, James Long directed How to Disappear, and then Anita Rochon has directed all my shows since, I've never directed them, but I've been writing and performing, and How to Disappear was also heavily influenced by Push, even though it was not at the Push Festival, we were in the very first Push -Off, which Theatre Replacement did, it wasn't even Theatre Replacement then actually,

 

Itai Erdal 12:44

no, it was Joyce, and yeah, it was not Theatre Replacement, I'm sorry, it was Joyce, and I forget who else, Joyce was the dance person, and there was a theatre person that they did Push -Off, and they asked me to do 10 minutes, and our show wasn't finished, we barely had, we had 10 minutes, but maybe we had half an hour of material, and we just chose 10 minutes, and I think we did the first 10 minutes of the show,

 

Itai Erdal 13:08

and the College Lab, which was also a brand new venue at the time, and that first Push -Off, the artistic director of On the Boards in Seattle was there, Lady Coplinski, and he immediately fell in love with the show, and came to me after, and I said, I want this show, and I'm going to tell my friends in Portland, and then the Portland People TBH Festival ended up taking it too, and the other person was there was Ken Gass from Factory Theatre,

 

Itai Erdal 13:38

and the same thing, he booked it on the spot, so even though the show was not even finished yet, because we did it at Push -Off, you got booked to Toronto, which led to many other gigs, and you got booked to Seattle and Portland, which was just a phenomenal experience to be able to take the show to the US, and I would have never gotten these producers to see the show if it wasn't for the Push Festival,

 

Itai Erdal 14:01

so Push has been instrumental in my career, like you said, on many, many different capacities, and many different, yeah.

 

Gabrielle Martin 14:09

from your artistry, had that opportunity over many years. And so How to Discipline Completely was my introduction to your work. I didn't get to see it back when it had just been premiered, but you shared an archival with me in 2021 when I had just started to push.

 

Gabrielle Martin 14:25

And that really made me interested to read the script that you were working on at the time for Soldiers of Tomorrow, which was incredibly powerful, jumped off the page. It was really a compelling read.

 

Gabrielle Martin 14:38

And we were in a position where we were able to come on board as a co -commissioner. And the work was presented at the 2023 Push Festival was premiered. Yeah, which and it was a we had great audiences.

 

Gabrielle Martin 14:49

And you also have such a community here because you know, your work has been prolific. And it was really just beautiful to follow that process and to see it realized, just you know, by very established artists, you know, you and Nita, artists who really like you know what you're doing and just to to benefit from the treatment that you gave the script was incredible.

 

Itai Erdal 15:17

Thank you. It was, again, I cannot tell you how Instrumental Push Festival was in creating that show because as a company, the album, my company, we're not on any operating funds. We just write project grants.

 

Itai Erdal 15:30

And so we just, we come up with a project, we write grants for it. We've been, thank goodness, pretty successful so far in getting those grants, but the grants are very limited in scope. You can only use them for what you said that you would use them for.

 

Itai Erdal 15:41

And therefore, it's always like barely scraping together enough money to do what you need to do. And creating a piece like this, and that's part of my company's mandate, is that I was determined to give things enough time.

 

Itai Erdal 15:54

I've seen so many shows do work that looks like it's a great workshop, but it's not ready. And so I was determined, also I'm a lighting designer, I don't need this as my livelihood. I have other means of income.

 

Itai Erdal 16:05

So I was determined to give the shows enough time and enough workshops until they're ready. And because we were commissioned by you and we got the Canada Council grant and not just one of them, we were able to do several workshops and work on it and work on it and work on it until it was ready.

 

Itai Erdal 16:20

And that's what made the show good, the time that you bought us by commissioning the piece. Because when you work with the money that is commissioned, I don't, the Push Festival didn't ask me, what did you do with every cent?

 

Itai Erdal 16:34

You just gave us the money and we could move it around. And we can choose to spend it on a musician, and we can choose to spend it on more rehearsal time. We can choose to spend it on anything we wanted to spend it.

 

Itai Erdal 16:45

And it shows, the show is tight because we had enough time and enough money to do it properly. And so I can't thank you enough for commissioning it and for believing in it.

 

Gabrielle Martin 16:57

So tell us about what is soldiers of tomorrow for those who are listening, watching who don't know what it is.

 

Itai Erdal 17:03

Soldiers of Tomorrow is maybe the story that I've been wanting to tell my whole life because I feel so so strongly about it and it's about my military service, I'm from Israel and You know military service is compulsory in Israel And I was sort of a leftist before I went to the army I always knew that the Palestinians deserve to have a state and when I went to the army I was determined to be the good soldier and my mother said to me You know if we leave the military to all the right -wing fanatics then then If all the people like you don't go then we'll be leaving the army to all the crazy people and we should balance things out And so I went to the army trying to do good And I did sort of my best effort to do good,

 

Itai Erdal 17:46

but while I was in the army, I realized that You cannot Wear a uniform and and not be an oppressor that the Palestinians who saw me all they saw was you know A guy in uniform. They don't care if I'm a nice guy or if I root for them or if I don't root for them I was still there oppressing them and so During my military service.

 

Itai Erdal 18:05

I had a real sort of realization that I felt like I was lied to and cheated to by by my country by my Education system by the media and you know all the a lot of the massacres that happened in 1948 and in 1967 I'm not mentioned in any of the history books in Israel and so when I left Israel I was determined to tell the world what is happening in Palestine.

 

Itai Erdal 18:28

I felt a really strong moral obligation Of course now the shit has hit the fan and things are sort of the worst nightmare scenario that we have right now with this horrible genocide that is happening in Gaza, but Before that when I started writing the play and there was a feeling that a lot of people And just don't understand what's happening there And and just we're afraid to take sides and I wanted to make a play that helps people take sides and to say look I am a proud Jew Everyone that I love lives in Israel if I can criticize Israel and so can you and it felt I felt a real strong moral Obligation that I feel today even stronger and to be that voice because I know what I'm talking about And I've been to Gaza as a soldier and I can tell you how horribly wrong it is And so it's really a play that that covers the entire history of the conflict.

 

Itai Erdal 19:24

There's a lot of information I think Anita and Colleen Murphy who wrote the creator to play with We're really smart in finding a way to to transfer a lot of information without it ever being didactic without being a lecture It's a very entertaining piece of theater It's a very compelling piece of theater, but it really does explain the entire conflict from beginning to end And it's an attempt of me to take responsibility for my action and As a soldier and to try to make a better future for Palestinians anyway

 

Gabrielle Martin 20:00

And the work went on to a long run at Summerhall at Edinburgh.

 

Itai Erdal 20:05

We won an award in Edinburgh and we got a lot of five -star reviews and the last term award. The last term award is the award that they give for innovation. But also more than the awards and the five -star reviews, it was the reaction of the people.

 

Itai Erdal 20:23

I've had many, many Palestinians and Jews, but a lot of Palestinians come to me after the show and saying, we've never heard an Israeli, we've never heard a Jewish person speak like this. We, in fact, never heard anybody speak like this or iterate those thoughts in a play.

 

Itai Erdal 20:41

And so many people came to tell me how important they feel their work is. And so being able to go to Edinburgh, it just opened me up to thousands of people who saw the show who would have never seen it in any other way.

 

Itai Erdal 20:59

And now there's a lot of interest for next season and we're hoping to do a Canadian tour. There's companies who want it in Calgary, in Toronto and in Montreux, sorry, in Ottawa. And I really hope that the show is going to have a long life.

 

Itai Erdal 21:17

And again, we were able to do that also because of your commissioning money also allowed us to take really good documentation of the show. When we did it at Bush, we filmed it, I wore a lavalier and we had three cameras and we got a really good quality recording of the show that now can help sell the show.

 

Gabrielle Martin 21:37

it's such a relevant and masterful piece so I really hope that it has a long touring life. Can you talk to us about you know those early days when you were lighting designing for the empty orchestra for crime and punishment up until now your work on Soldiers of Tomorrow and then and you have new works in creation as well.

 

Gabrielle Martin 21:57

How has your artistic practice developed, grown over this period?

 

Itai Erdal 22:02

Well, even as a lighting designer, I always felt that I was a storyteller, that I was part of the storytelling, and I think that's what made me a good lighting designer, is that I wasn't just confined to my own thing, but I saw how it affects the entire storyteller.

 

Itai Erdal 22:18

So people think it's a huge stretch from being a designer to being a performer, but in my mind I was always telling stories. But having the opportunity of having this thing happen to me with my mother and having all the video that I have, and having friends like James Long and Anitha Roshan, who wanted to create a show with me, made me realize that there are no blueprints for a career in theatre or in the arts,

 

Itai Erdal 22:44

that you can try different things, and if you go to this, then you can do this, and if you go to this, you can do that, and so the success of that show, How to Disappear, opened me up to the possibility of being a performer and a writer, and I realized that those are the most rewarding things that I can do.

 

Itai Erdal 23:01

How to Disappear completely, we did in 26 different cities. I've had thousands of people come to me to tell me about losing parents, about finding love, which is another theme in the show. Many people told me that they learned more about lighting in an hour of watching that show than in 20 years of directing theatre.

 

Itai Erdal 23:21

And so being able to connect with people is the most wonderful gift that performing and writing has given me, and I would say that's what's changed. I've realized that I can do a lot of different things.

 

Itai Erdal 23:38

I've started my own theatre company, so I'm not dependent on other people to hire me, and I can produce my own work, and I can do work about things that I think are important. I also believe in the peer system that we have in this country for various public funding, that if you can articulate your ideas into sentences, and if you're articulate, I suppose, then you can raise money from the government to create art.

 

Itai Erdal 24:04

And so I'm very thankful for that, and I don't take it for granted, and I think that's the main way that I've... I still love designing lights, I've got to say, I don't imagine ever stopping designing lights.

 

Itai Erdal 24:15

I can't imagine retiring. I think I'll design lights when I'm 80. And I love designing lights, but I also love being creative in a lot of different ways. I like taking photos, and I like writing, and I like performing, and it's such a wonderful thing to have a balance of being able to do all these things together.

 

Gabrielle Martin 24:35

Do you have any final words on how you perceive, uh, what you perceive to be the cultural context of push and pushes significance to Vancouver, to your practice? I mean, you've spoken about that to your career quite a bit.

 

Gabrielle Martin 24:47

Um, and you've also spoken about, you know, how meaningful it was to have these artists, breakfasts or late night gatherings, bringing together international and local artists. Um, yeah. Any last words on?

 

Itai Erdal 25:01

I think, yeah, I spoke about the significance for myself, but for the city, I think when you travel around the world as much as I do and you go to festivals, when you mention the Push Festival around the world, people's eyes open up.

 

Itai Erdal 25:14

They're like, oh, I'd like to go there. It is considered, Vancouver has this allure as a very beautiful place, and the Push Festival has this reputation of a festival that brings great works of art. And I think, like I said, the names of the companies that I mentioned earlier that I've seen are some of the best people in the world.

 

Itai Erdal 25:36

I've met Castelucci, and I've met, you know, Consco Quartet, and I've met, like really, some of the most amazing artists, not just in North America, but in Europe and around the world. And I cannot overemphasize how important that is to our theatre community and to our art scene to be exposed to the world and to have the world exposed to us.

 

Itai Erdal 26:02

And that's a symbiotic relationship that goes both ways and enriches ourselves as artists and enriches the city. And so, yeah, I think Push is absolutely crucial in raising the bar of the work that we see here because if somebody goes to see a great piece of art at Push, they don't care that it's from some of the best companies.

 

Itai Erdal 26:25

That's what they want to see. And so it pushes us all to do better work, and it inspires us all to try to create works like some of the best theatres happening around the world.

 

Ben Charland 26:39

That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

 

Ben Charland 26:56

A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

 

Ben Charland 27:15

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review.

 

Gabrielle Martin chats with composer Njo Kong Kie.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Njo Kong Kie discuss: 

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• What was the process of presenting work at PuSh?

• How do you interpret and react to the source material?

• How did you pivot to digital work during Covid?

• How does the work transition back to the live stage?

• How has your artistic practice grown over time?

About Njo Kong Kie

Njo Kong Kie (composer) is a composer for dance, opera and theatre. His works include music for the play Infinity by Hannah Moscovitch, the same-sex rom-com opera knotty together (with Anna Chatterton), and the music theatre work Mr. Shi and His Lover (with Wong Teng Chi) - the first ever Chinese language production at SummerWorks, Tarragon Theatre and the National Arts Centre English Theatre.

Long-serving music director of La La La Human Steps in Montreal, Kong Kie has further worked with choreographers Anne Plamondon, Aszure Barton, Shawn Hounsel and others, providing original music to their productions for companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet National de L’Opera du Rhin, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Singapore Dance Theatre and Ballet BC. His soundtrack for TV documentaries includes Fisk: Untitled Portrait and China Rises.

In development: The Year of the Cello, a play with solo cello music set in Hong Kong in the 1920s (with Marjorie Chan); The Futures Market, an opera exploring the complex moral dimensions of the trade in human organs (with Douglas Rodger) and I swallowed a moon made of iron, a song cycle set to the haunting poems of Chinese poet Xu Lizhi (Canadian Stage, May 2019).

Kong Kie is the artistic producer of Music Picnic. More at www.musicpicnic.com.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (Toronto), on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and play with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:23
Today's episode features Neo -Conkey and the 2022 Push Festival. Born in Indonesia of Chinese heritage, Neo -Conkey is a Toronto -based musician and composer who creates and produces music theatre works in various forms. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:37
Here's my conversation with Conkey. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:43
I'm here with Nyo Kanki, good morning. Good morning. Yeah, and we are here in Takaranto, which is the home of many, traditional home of many First Nations, including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:00
And today is also the home of many other nations, including the Inuit and the Métis. And we're also at the Theatre Centre on the garden patio. 

Njo Kong Kie 01:11
yes wonderful yes my my neighborhood theaters well center of theaters i guess and also a favorite cafe in the neighborhood yeah so we are here in the rooftop of the theater center 

Gabrielle Martin 01:23
Yeah, thanks for recommending this place. And we'll talk about this neighborhood a bit more in a moment because it's your home where you've shot the digital version for the 2021 presentation of I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:36
So that's the project that was presented by Nyo at Push. But I just want to rewind a little bit and talk about how your relationship with Push began. Can you take us to the next thing? 

Njo Kong Kie 01:48
Um, I'm like, yeah, I've, I've known about the push festival, of course, sometimes like before I even started creating work, you know, and, um, just, and I've met Norman a number of times through, um, at receptions or, you know, performing, uh, performing arts platform and arts market, those sort of situations that I've kind of always known about the festival. 

Njo Kong Kie 02:11
And I've been to Vancouver with a lot of human stuffs quite a few times in the past, uh, as, as performer, uh, or musicians. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just to distinguish, I'm not quite a dancer, not at that level anyhow. 

Njo Kong Kie 02:24
And yeah. Uh, and so, so I think our paths, I, yeah, I've crossed paths with Norman quite a few times and yeah. But, uh, and, uh, when I first started sort of making work, of course, that that's kind of one of the first, uh, festivals that jumped out as we'd be. 

Njo Kong Kie 02:40
Okay. This might be a possible collaborators in the future for some of the work. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:46
Why is that just because of the kind of conversations you've had with Norman? 

Njo Kong Kie 02:49
the kind of work that the festival has been presented or interested in, you know, I met Michael Green at the time of the high performance rodeo in Calgary and so, you know, through conversation and push, it's never really far away from the conversation, you know. 

Njo Kong Kie 03:08
And often, I think in past you have done a lot of collaborations or co -presenting between the two festivals in the past, right? Yeah, yeah. So, that's kind of like, it's always in the conversation. And then when I made a work called Mr. 

Njo Kong Kie 03:25
She and His Lover here at the Theatre Centre, actually as part of the Summer Works in 2016, and Franco Boni, who was then the artistic director of the Theatre Centre, really, I think he recommended to Norman that he should come and see the work while he was still here. 

Njo Kong Kie 03:42
So, then we began a conversation actually about that piece of work going to a push, but it just never came to be. Yeah, so then, you know, in 2019, when after I made the ice roll of Monomaid of Iron, Franco again saw it and then, yeah, during the time that he was at the push festival, if he wanted to program this work, yeah, so that's how it came to pass. 

Gabrielle Martin 04:10
Okay, so can you just tell us about the work I swallowed and made of iron? Can you just talk to us a little bit about what it is and the process of realizing it for the festival? Because you presented it in both 2021 in a digital version, because this was our very small mid -COVID festival. 

Gabrielle Martin 04:26
And yours was one of a handful of pieces, and you were able to kind of pivot it to this beautifully realized digital version, and then also the in -person version in the 2022 festival. So yeah, you can just talk about that. 

Njo Kong Kie 04:40
So essentially, I Swollen Moon, made of iron, is a song cycle. It's set to the poetry of a contemporary Chinese poet, who was a worker at a factory in Shenzhen, China, by the name of Xu Yizi. So during his short life of 24 years, he produced this body of work, of poetry, that spoke to his experience, especially as a migrant worker, from the rural part of China into the new city, so to speak, seeking his work and his way of survival. 

Njo Kong Kie 05:19
So through his poetry, he talked about his own experience, but also, in a way, it is reflective of a larger group of populations that go through the same similar experiences. So I was very touched by his poetry and also, there is an instinctive connection, perhaps in some ways, because of the language as well, because it's all written in Chinese, obviously. 

Njo Kong Kie 05:47
And so at the time of his death in 2014, I immediately thought, OK, I really would enjoy the privilege of being able to set these words to music. So it took a while before we were able to make that happen. 

Njo Kong Kie 06:10
And at the time in 2019, in 2018 and 2019, I was an artist slash company in residence at the Canadian stage here in Toronto. So this is the second piece that we presented in the May, yeah, during that residence in May 2019. 

Njo Kong Kie 06:27
It has actually gone through quite a few iterations in terms of format. We decided as a stage show, essentially, yeah, rather than a music recital. I can explain how you... 

Gabrielle Martin 06:41
See the difference of those two things. 

Njo Kong Kie 06:43
Yeah, so I guess, in a way, I could perform this sound cycle in a concert setting, I suppose, with just me and the piano, with nothing else, it could work, yeah, and I actually have done it also. But because I have, although I'm a musician, I work mostly with other artists, like whether it's dance or theater people, and so I have quite a few, I guess, influences coming from those practice. 

Njo Kong Kie 07:16
And so when I wanted to put this on stage, the first thing I thought of, like, how can I realize it in a more theatrical setting? So I guess, in that sense, I think of that the onstage performance is more like a theatrical experience beyond the music. 

Njo Kong Kie 07:36
I have collaborated in videos, in lights, and I had some coaching in movement, and obviously I had to sort of like get some coaching on my own performance, my SS as a singer. I didn't set out to write it for myself to sing. 

Njo Kong Kie 07:53
It has always been thought that in the early part of the development, I always thought that I would play the piano and somebody else would sing it. But as we got into this staging part of the process, it became a little bit more evident to us, the people in the room, working on the work, it's much more impactful to have just one person. 

Njo Kong Kie 08:19
Then even though I didn't set out to sort of embody the poet himself as a performer, but people read it anyhow, right? So while I wasn't trying to, but just because there's only one person on stage and he's talking about the solitary life of the poet and experience. 

Njo Kong Kie 08:39
So I think it's as cleaner as a theater experience, and people can sort of get into it a lot more. So that's kind of ultimately what we decided to do, I guess maybe through the first couple months of starting to write the songs. 

Njo Kong Kie 08:55
I came to that realization and then of course I had to sing. 

Gabrielle Martin 08:58
I'm so glad you did. Like, I know for me, I discovered the project. I started it with Push in 2021. And as you mentioned, you'd already been in conversation with Franco. This is a project that had kind of been on the table, but then we were in a bit of limbo in the organization and Jason Dubois brought it to my attention at that point. 

Gabrielle Martin 09:15
And I remember watching the video and just being so touched. It was so the emotional, the haunting emotional quality just jumped right off the video, which is hard to do from video. But it was really clear to me that this is such a special work. 

Njo Kong Kie 09:31
think that the words, you know, speak volume, you know, by itself. And like, as far as for myself, my starting point is to how do I interpret or I guess, react to them in my own way. When I send an invitation to my collaborators to participate in this project, so I always just tell them we should all react to it in our own way, in our, through our own medium. 

Njo Kong Kie 10:02
Yeah. And then we can put it together. So the process is a little bit, I would think that is quite organic as everybody jumps in with their contributions and then we collectively kind of shape it to the form. 

Njo Kong Kie 10:16
It is so, so it didn't really start from, yeah, I guess I didn't like, maybe for all the creations the same, like you don't really quite know where you're going to end up. And this is where we end. 

Gabrielle Martin 10:26
And then for 2021, was it you who made the suggestion, oh, well, why don't I do this? Okay, you know, we're in the middle of the pandemic. I can't perform it live at Push. Why don't I shoot it in my living room? 

Gabrielle Martin 10:37
Or was it somebody at Push who recommended that or how did that? That version of that. And how did it end up being in your living room? Yes. 

Njo Kong Kie 10:47
In 2020 May, I don't know if you remember that the National Arts Center has put out an initiative to invite artists to live stream from home. So I was one of the projects that got the support from that platform. 

Njo Kong Kie 11:04
And it was this song cycle that I performed. But I mean, it was obviously more, not obviously, but I mean, we stripped it down to just the core element, which is basically the song. So the format we use is like a steady cam on me sitting on the piano. 

Njo Kong Kie 11:23
I talk to the audience about each piece of poetry and how they relate to the timeline in his life and what they talk about. And I'm not quite sure. I don't even remember whether we have subtitles or I just read the poetry. 

Njo Kong Kie 11:39
I think I might have just read the poetry both in the Chinese and the English translations. And then let the audience experience the songs themselves like that. So it's a very basic presentation. That kind of got us, kind of like me and my collaborator, who is already at that time back to Macau because the team is made of people from Canada, Macau and Hong Kong. 

Njo Kong Kie 12:04
So they were already back there. So I think I got a lot of help from my technical director who is in Hong Kong in terms of how to stream. And then how to set the angle and all those kind of things. So I think it was just a straightforward experience that way. 

Njo Kong Kie 12:19
So to the very last minute, we were still thinking that I think I remember trying to because once the pandemic hit, there's a lot of travel restrictions. Up till November, I think we were still trying to see if we can get a special exemption for my collaborators to come into the country from Hong Kong and Macau. 

Njo Kong Kie 12:43
And so there were some artists who were from Germany or something. I remember the conversation vaguely that they seemed to be able to come in, but then they couldn't. And so ultimately at the end, we abandoned that possibility. 

Njo Kong Kie 12:59
And then I'm sure I think probably once Jason and whoever else might be at the office at that time decided, well, we just need to do a digital festival. So I think everything pivoted to that. 

Gabrielle Martin 13:14
integrate the visual elements as well. 

Njo Kong Kie 13:16
Exactly. So once I had that opportunity, then it begs the question as to, okay, do we do a live stream of the stage performance? Because that seems like an obvious... But then you get into the restrictions of not being able to have too many people in the room, even time, even performance or technician thing, there was still a limit. 

Njo Kong Kie 13:40
I can't remember exactly. 

Gabrielle Martin 13:43
It's a bit different than Vancouver as well. 

Njo Kong Kie 13:45
Exactly. So here's a bit different. And then, you know, we still have the fine venue and it was very last minute. And obviously a lot of venue was empty at that time. But it's just the fact that if I couldn't get the technicians, the technical help, then we can't really do the stage performance. 

Njo Kong Kie 14:02
Work. So even if we could... Yeah. So one of the venue I thought of was here at the theater center, but then even if we could get the... Could we get the technicians in and can we sort of like get all the elements to come together? 

Njo Kong Kie 14:15
So that seemed to be a little bit too complicated also. So then ultimately, okay, what is the alternative venue? So then of course we remember the experience of doing the National Art Center live stream that was also in my place. 

Njo Kong Kie 14:31
So we thought, well, why don't we just do it in my place? But since we have already done that version, we can't really just do the same version, right? So do we include the theatrical element? 

Gabrielle Martin 14:44
Because I think people will hear, if you haven't seen it, then you'd imagine, okay, live streaming, or streaming this, rather, shooting it and then streaming it from, you know, a set that is somebody's living room might be very reductive or overly simple. 

Gabrielle Martin 15:01
And it was simple, but it was still, you know, you had a lot of these elements of the work that made it. 

Njo Kong Kie 15:07
more than yeah yeah yeah so I think that's a kudos to sort of like to my both the lighting design Naira and then the technical director uh who is also often uh co -produce my my my music theater works anyway uh so Eric and Gabriel yeah so so we ended up sort of like thinking okay if we're going to do this uh by then we have also seen a lot of digital works right yeah can learn from that we want to see if we can somehow use this medium to its own advantage then do things that we cannot do on stage yeah so that's always kind of at the back of our mind and leading guard leading the process so so we kind of like ultimately decide okay what are the elements visual elements of the show that we can incorporate we in the in the live show we have a square screen and because the poet one of the poems talked about you know living in in a small square room and so we thought okay we're going to just crop everything into a square right so that's how the visual is a square not a long rectangle screen right yeah so so we we did that and then we actually and we wanted to use a simple uh uh simple equipment that we can find so all the we had four cameras they're all iphones so that has some connections to the poetry because ultimately he he worked at a factory that produced iphones yes yet yet he could not own one right yeah but anyway so we thought okay that would be uh the equipment that we want to use so i call a lot of my neighbors that anybody have an extra old iphones that is not being used because i need for a week to test and everything so we ended up with four and then we once we decided where to put things and then basically we clear out my my my my i live kind of in the semi loft situation so there's really not the divisions of living in kitchen and everything i just clear up one everything of the main room let's say i move the position the piano at a certain place that we want and then you know put the uh the cameras wherever we could find and then you know and um and so that's kind of how we came to frame so all you see is just the piano very close up and myself so so there are several angles and then we were able to to bring back some of the uh movement elements not all of them because there's no space yeah yeah and then 

Gabrielle Martin 17:35
But in some ways, you're talking about, but when you talk about the work and the content in the work and what the poetry talks about, solitude, there's a reference to living alone in a square box. This piece really landed itself very well to shooting it or realizing it in this way, and I'm curious then. 

Njo Kong Kie 17:56
we kind of lucked out in that situation, yeah. But we also, I mean, one thing that I find the most, well, we were able to, as I was saying earlier, we wanted to see if we can introduce some technique that's only possible in the film, rather than on stage, because one of the poetry talked about, the ending poetry kind of talked about sort of like, I guess, disappearing from this world, so to speak. 

Njo Kong Kie 18:26
So then we were able to, my technical director came up, the idea that we could actually, we filmed, we could make you disappear. 

Gabrielle Martin 18:32
Yeah. 

Njo Kong Kie 18:34
you know, and on a graduate and in a very subtle way then so I think those moments were came about only because of the film. 

Gabrielle Martin 18:43
So then, because you did present it at Push 2022, in person, at the Waterfront, it was a very memorable experience and I'm so glad we got to have that version as well. But for you, was there something missing then? 

Gabrielle Martin 18:57
How was the relationship going back to the stage in terms of how the medium communicated content of the work? How was that transition? Yeah, I think... 

Njo Kong Kie 19:11
I've recently been sort of like working at the Stratford Festival for Salesmen in China. I don't know if you have heard about that. That work that's going to be premiering. And they're... What's your role? 

Njo Kong Kie 19:23
No, but my role is I will happen to be a roommate of one of the actors. That's the extent of my role. But then, you know, and they were saying, oh yeah, we have seen the digital version. And then, so when the live show came around, they thought, well, we have already seen it. 

Njo Kong Kie 19:41
So they didn't come. But other folks came, right? So the people that I talked to, you know, I always like doing a live show. You always, you know, sometimes you get to talk to the audience, where it's like with the digital. 

Njo Kong Kie 19:54
I think we may have a window for people to engage afterwards a little bit. I remember talking to a volunteer, a long time volunteer of the festival, who is of Chinese heritage. She was very moved by the fact that there is a Chinese language work that she was able to catch in Canada. 

Njo Kong Kie 20:19
But she said, well, yeah, it seems like I have been sort of like waiting for it. Yeah. But she has, you know, she's an avid supporter of, like, has been volunteering for the festival a long time. Elsie, was it Elsie maybe? 

Njo Kong Kie 20:30
I can't remember her name exactly. But yeah, and then there are also some students from the mainland China who had not heard about this poet before. I mean, they have been living abroad for some time as well. 

Njo Kong Kie 20:47
But anyway, so there are also those kind of connections. I don't know if they I don't know if they would have clued into that. There was a digital version or not. Maybe I think there is something live that still draws people in. 

Njo Kong Kie 20:58
Absolutely. Yeah. And and and and and so sort of the life. 

Gabrielle Martin 21:01
singing too, there's something about experiencing, I mean, I would say about experiencing any performing art live. I think I have to say that. But with singing there's something, I think, yeah, having that live, feeling that residence in the space just communicates, the emotional power is communicated that much more. 

Njo Kong Kie 21:22
Yeah, yeah, no, and it's always kind of like, we always hum and hum about sort of technical setup and everything, but at the end of the day, when we travel, we put up a show at a different venue and then it's always, inevitably it's always quite a rewarding experience working with the local people, right? 

Njo Kong Kie 21:42
They have that connection, whether they're technicians, whether they are administrators or whatever, just so there's that context as well, you know, and prior to that we had just, you know, performed in Kelowna, a few shows already, so we were quite ready to do the work, but there were still other technical challenges that had to be met, and that they see people coming together and solve the problem. 

Njo Kong Kie 22:03
Yeah, yeah. It's always good. 

Gabrielle Martin 22:04
But there's a special community that is built through realising creative projects. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that project started in 2018 with the residency at Canadian Stage. And so since then, how would you say that your artistic practice has grown? 

Njo Kong Kie 22:20
mm -hmm to till now yeah um so what are your I don't know I always feel that I haven't grown that much so it's hard for you to say yeah yeah I guess um yeah I'm still interested in making uh to finding like ways to present music in a theatrical settings or way so there are a few other things so I'm continue to make work that involves music and text and theater so I'm currently working on a piece for young audience with the liberties from from from this area Liza Balkan and that's it's for young audience so that's new to me okay so I'm sort of trying to develop that we are developing a an operatic web series so that's came out of the experience of doing all the digital work and there's a VR projects on an earlier show based on an earlier show and so I guess there's a bit more digital yeah seems to come into play yeah and and there's another song cycle that that we are developing or there we made a short film for so based on the story of uh uh who was a long time vancouver resident yeah 

Gabrielle Martin 23:47
I was going to say, it seems like there's also a theme around being inspired by biographies. 

Njo Kong Kie 23:52
Yeah, yeah, so the past yeah, I know I think by by by all accounts I lived you know a fairly privileged life here in you know in Canada and you know artists You know livelihood may be a little bit kind of haphazard to another people's mind But nonetheless we make work and we get to sort of like, you know, we're not going hungry. 

Njo Kong Kie 24:13
We are not like You know suffering from war and all those You know traumatic experiences. So so by so it's kind of like I don't know I kind of feel for myself There's not much from my own experience I can draw from You know that that that sort of like yeah and then and so so I'm always kind of feel more inspired and empathize or you know with other other people's experience and sense so so so I guess that kind of 

Gabrielle Martin 24:48
So you said you're working on one project now that is inspired by an artist who is based in Vancouver. Yeah. 

Njo Kong Kie 24:54
I guess he wasn't an artist. He was a medical student in Shanghai, but then he met a German sexologist in the 1930s by the name of Magnus Hirschfeld. So they had a relationship. But the discovery of that relationship is quite interesting in itself because when he passed in Vancouver, he left a lot of suitcases. 

Njo Kong Kie 25:23
This is documented by Story in the Extra Magazine in a number of years ago. But anyway, so his luggage was left outside in a garbage dump basically of his apartment complex. So then the superintendent found it and was curious to see what was inside. 

Njo Kong Kie 25:44
So it was discovered from among that collection, there is a lot of old documents and also a death mask of somebody he did not know. So he, through some sort of like research and inquiry, he found out that it was the death mask of Magnus Hirschfeld, the scientist, yeah, himself. 

Njo Kong Kie 26:06
So years later, somehow the post that he put online was discovered by the Institute in Germany that is dedicated to the preservation of the work of this scientist. So all of that just to say that then when my collaborator John Grayson was recommended by another filmmaker friend to read this article, he passed it on to me. 

Njo Kong Kie 26:38
So that kind of triggered their conversations and about, is there something that we can highlight in this story of this extraordinary encounter in the 1930s, between a Chinese man and a German, and how their travel sort of like speaks about the early studies of sexuality or and then racism to sort of dynamic between an older man and then the sort of age difference between the two of them and all those kinds of things that are that jump on immediately as to sort of like it kind of like calls for an inquiry in terms of, 

Njo Kong Kie 27:26
but yeah, so we're kind of still in the process. We have made a short film of it, which is called Death Mask. And so it is, I guess it's going around in the festival circuit at the moment and we're hoping for more screening and so on. 

Njo Kong Kie 27:43
So I think it was shown here at the Real Asian and it was actually made it to the, I think it was, and yeah, come to think of it, premiere in Vancouver at the Vancouver Film Festival. Great, okay, so we'll keep our... 

Gabrielle Martin 27:54
eyes open to more from you. But I do want to just comment on how you know you mentioned that you've been interested in other people's stories and I think a lot of artists you know create because there's a need to tell their own stories which is important and at the same time there is something really important to these stories that you're talking about are you know it's so important to honor the histories of these people whose experience has been erased or almost erased and I think that work of that like artistic work and yet there's the work of the historian as well yeah 

Njo Kong Kie 28:29
I think I'm in obviously both a good starting point for sure for our own practice just as for myself I tend to veer that way maybe I'm a bit more an introvert so it's much easier to talk about general that rather than something that's specific to myself so I think that may be part of the reason too yeah 

Gabrielle Martin 28:55
Well thank you. It's been really nice to speak to you. It was so nice. It's such a strong memory I have from the 2022 festival. Working with you, hosting you, it was so great to get to meet you in that context and it's been a while. 

Gabrielle Martin 29:11
I think we saw each other a year and a half ago and New York was the last time and I think that was before the premiere of this film Death Mask. So it's just nice to hear about your work. Thank you for taking the time of chatting with me. 

Njo Kong Kie 29:23
Yes, absolutely. Hope to be back. 

Tricia Knowles 29:28
That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run January 23rd to February 9th, 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival. 

Tricia Knowles 29:49
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. Push Play is produced by myself, Trisha Knowles, and Ben Charlton. A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabrielle Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. 

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality for this episode is not at the usual standard for PuSh Play.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Fay Nass, Artistic and Executive Director of the frank theatre and Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Fay discuss: 

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• How do we explore the relationship between form and content?

• What is the importance of public and private spaces for performance?

• How has your artistic practice grown and evolved?

• Why is the concept of exchange important in theatre?

• What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

About Fay Nass

Fay Nass is a community-engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer and educator. They are the Artistic Director of the frank theatre company and the founder/Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre. 

Fay has over 17 years of experience in text-based and devised work deeply rooted in inter-cultural and collaborative approaches. Fay’s work often examines questions of race, gender, sexuality, culture and language through an intersectional lens in order to shift meanings and de-construct paradigms rooted in our society. Fay’s work celebrates liminality and trans-culturalism, and blurs the line between politics and intimate personal stories.

Fay’s work has been presented at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, SummerWorks Festival, Queer Arts Festival, the CULTCH and Firehall Arts Centre. Her readings and experimental work have been presented at various conferences and artist-run galleries in Spain, Berlin and Paris. Their co-creation project Be-Longing was part of the 2021 New York international Film Festival, NICE International Film Festival and Madrid International Film Festival.

Their most recent credits include: co-creating Be-Longing (the frank theatre), co-directing Trans Script Part I: The Women (the frank theatre and Zee Theatre at Firehall Arts Centre), directing She Mami Wata & the Pussy WitchHunt (the frank theatre at PuSh Festival 2020), co-directing Straight White Men (ITSAZOO productions at Gateway Theatre), and dramaturgy for Camera Obscura (Hungry Ghosts) (the frank theatre & QAF). Fay holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University. Currently, they are doing the Artistic Leadership Residency at the National Theatre School of Canada.

As an artistic leader and a practitioner, Fay has deep and involved relationships—both creative and organizational—with a wide spectrum of artists across generations and stylistic practices. As an educator and facilitator, their philosophy and pedagogy are rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we are revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:23
Today's episode features Feynas and is anchored around the 2020 Push Festival. Feynas is a community -engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer, and educator. They are the artistic director of the Frank Theatre Company and the founder artistic director of Ophotic Theatre. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:40
Feynas has over 17 years of experience in text -based and devised work deeply rooted in intercultural and collaborative approaches. Established in 1996, the Frank is the oldest professional queer theater company based on the occupied stolen lands of the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh First Nations, collonially called Vancouver. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:01
It's one of the few theater organizations in the country led by a gender -queer immigrant woman of color and collaborates with a large community of 2SLGBTQ -plus artists and arts workers. Ophotic Theatre is committed to creating vital and innovative performance. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:16
With an emphasis on developing new plays written and or created by women, women of color, queer, queer trans people of color, its approach is distinguished in prioritizing who tells the story and what story they want to tell. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:30
Here's my conversation with Feynas. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:35
We are here in the stolen and traditional ancestral territories of the post -anish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. It's an absolute privilege to be on these islands and in so -called Vancouver we are downtown, we are close to where you live, close to the push offices and we're going to be in conversation about your relationship with push and you have a relationship with push in two capacities as artistic director of the Frank Theater and as artistic director of the aquatic theater. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:07
So we're going to kind of anchor the conversation around the cafe which was a co -production with push actually that premiered finally in 2023 and I say that because that was a journey that began before my time at push but also the Frank Theater presented duets for misunderstood in 2016 or rather push presented duets for misunderstood of shank theater in 2016 and in 2020 when you were at the Frank Theater push presented with the Frank Shumami Wata and the Pre -V witch farms and and since 2022 we've been collaborating because you've been the curator of one of the club push nights wearing your Frank Theater hat. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:50
That's right and and and also a co -presenter of Sully Locio which is a festival favorite performance of 2023 by Tiziano Cruz. So a lot of a lot to talk about so let's just go back to the very beginning how did your relationship with push start? 

Fay Nass 03:05
So, I started my leadership at the Frank in 2018 and before that there was already a partnership between the Frank and Push under Chris Kachallian and under Norman's leadership. But in 2018, when I started my leadership at the Frank, one of my major focuses was like to focus on these stories of BIPOC queer artists and also to look at the relationship between form and content in a way that is not just, 

Fay Nass 03:32
you know, queer BIPOC stories, but in a way that's like the form breaks the Eurocentric framework of storytelling and to show different modes of storytelling and that hasn't very much part of the programming that I have been excited about. 

Fay Nass 03:46
So, when the B. Young contacted me and they said that they're interested for me to direct Jim Amiwata the Pussy Witch Hunt, first of all it was a huge honor because I'm a huge fan of their work but also I was like okay so where would be a venue that can kind of hold space for a piece that's really the script is fluid, the form is fluid, it's really questions colonization through a very exciting Jamaican lens as well as like you know it's a sexual cabaret queer wonderful piece, 

Fay Nass 04:20
you know. 

Gabrielle Martin 04:21
But I know to be young, and I've heard so much about this work. It is like an iconic show that people talk about to this day. I feel like I saw it because I've heard so many people. 

Fay Nass 04:32
Yeah and you know it was fantastic like I pitched it to Norman Armour originally and he loved the idea and then Joyce got on board and Joyce and I started talking and it was just like a very beautiful smooth process you know and to be has been always wanting to collaborate with Push. 

Fay Nass 04:51
So it was just like a really fantastic opportunity for all this group of people that been thirsted for this collaboration to come together. But also what was exciting is because the script is alive and Ruby is an amazing energetic human who kind of goes with the energy of the audience. 

Fay Nass 05:06
Sometimes the show was like 90 minutes and sometimes it was 100 minutes and I have to say as someone who's worked with many festivals the fluidity and flexibility of the festival to allow that was something really beautiful which kind of led me to wanting to continue to collaborate with a festival that understands that one of the notions of decolonization is recognizing that we are not working within this like in a very rigid Eurocentric framework which means that 90 can become 98 if we want to honor a Jamaican artist who is breaking those you know patterns. 

Gabrielle Martin 05:41
talk to us about the cafe. What was the cafe and what was the process of realizing for the festival? 

Fay Nass 05:46
Yeah, so The Cafe was a project that I started writing about and imagining it in 2008 when I was writing my master thesis, which is really about the idea of proximity in a site -specific show with different audiences. 

Fay Nass 06:00
The concept of it came to me as a margin from Iran and a lot of time public spaces like coffee shops were spaces that people had the most political conversations in before and after the revolution in Iran. 

Fay Nass 06:12
And yet these are not private spaces and so I wanted to look at the mosaic of Vancouver and the intersections of identity and stories and the conversations that happened in a coffee shop and yet people can eavesdrop and then yet there is a hidden first wall in a sense. 

Fay Nass 06:33
But the way that the project would work was really commissioning artists from different voices, I wanted to hear different languages in the piece. So for many years I talked about the project when most organizations were like, it's a really expensive project, at the end we were commissioning 9 playwrights, 14 actors, site -specific pieces means 30, 35, 50 audience members max, right? 

Fay Nass 06:56
So financially it's a very challenging thing to do, especially in Vancouver with the ticket prices that we have. So it's as you actually got excited about getting on board and they have a huge history of site -specific work. 

Fay Nass 07:11
Apartic Theatre, the company that I found and I'm the artistic director of, focuses on stories of women, immigrants, LGBTQ, BIPOC, but also kind of site -specific and more experimental work. So the two companies came together but we were like, okay, where can we show these pieces, right? 

Fay Nass 07:26
And again, we talked to Joyce Rosario and I remember sitting outside in a sunny day with Sebastian Archibald and Joyce and Joyce was like, I love the idea, why not? And really until that time, I haven't seen a lot of site -specific pieces. 

Fay Nass 07:41
And so it was like really amazing to get the exact push. And so it was really exciting for Joyce to get excited about it, right? And then, so we started working on it, commissioning, going through the development. 

Fay Nass 07:56
And then the pandemic happened, you know, and it was just like really, and then transitions happened, that push. So it felt like, oh, this project, it took me like 10 years to finally get people excited. 

Gabrielle Martin 08:07
conversation with Joyce happening in what year? 

Fay Nass 08:10
It would have been 2018 -2019, right? Like 18, yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin 08:15
we got a conversation about it in 2021 and I remember we were supposed to present it in 2022 and the Omicron would happen at the pandemic and I remember being on the phone with you and like trying to figure out how we could still make it work for 2020 until I really tried to find as many creative solutions as possible but it was just because as you mentioned it's uh at intimate it's meant to be experienced in an intimate way and there's a large cast it was just very complicated. 

Fay Nass 08:43
almost like opposite of what the health, you know, adversary was, right? And so, yeah, it already got canceled once in 2021, right? Yeah, because like we had to last minute be like, we have 14 actors, we can't put people in that close proximity. 

Fay Nass 09:02
And then, and I said the project is over. And I was really excited that when we, you and I talked and you're like, we can still support the project through development fund for to not die. And to also be able to, you know, pay the artists and to actually focus on dramaturgy, because we never work in a way in Vancouver, that is kind of a European style of like, having this duration of time to allow the scripts to actually settle, 

Fay Nass 09:26
right? So in some strange ways, where we cried, and we were heartbroken with the support of first and you know, your enlistment in the development of the piece, we could actually keep going and do more dramaturgy, change them with actually some of the script change based on the pandemic, you know, having stuff with like, you know, like hand sanitizer or mask, we added those things for it to become relevant. 

Fay Nass 09:47
And the piece was always supposed to be a piece that we can see in a contemporary coffee shop as a relevant piece, right? So yes, then it finally happened in 2023, right? And that was like, just dream come through, you know, and I was like, also like, really fantastic that we had, I think a huge support from Push in development and actually cool productions, which we have never done. 

Fay Nass 10:09
It has always been Push being a presenting partner, but in this case, Push was like a huge contributor to the project happening. So thank you. 

Gabrielle Martin 10:17
I mean it was an awful much pleasure because it's I think those are the type of pieces that people remember the most. The pieces that are intimate, the pieces that are in non -preventional spaces and I feel like this is a piece that would really adapt like it's built to be adapted and to grow in in its different environments. 

Gabrielle Martin 10:39
I would love to see this piece again in another in another space and also because like it's a bit of a choose your own adventure so you get little snippets of conversations here and there which is really fun in terms of like changing the dynamic of the spectator, a little more agency in terms of like the narrative that you experience. 

Gabrielle Martin 10:59
And so now like that year also we co -presented Soliloquio and that year also well no 2022 we started the collaboration with Club Push with the Frank, the Frank curating a bigger Club Push which continues this will be its fourth year in 2025. 

Gabrielle Martin 11:16
So can you talk about the growth of your artistic practice since you know you first came into relationship with Push in 2020 with Shunami Wata and Deepa Simcha. 

Fay Nass 11:29
Yeah. You know, I think that's one of the things that has been very exciting is like this, like, I have always been interested in this idea of exchange and fluidity. And I think, you know, as a producing company and as a new artistic director, I came to push in 2018 -19 with the pitch of Shimami Wata for it to happen in 2020. 

Fay Nass 11:51
And it's like, okay, we're a producing company breaking for Shimami Wata happens. Then it's like, okay, now we can be a little bit braver. And what if we pitch something that is not even within the confine of theater and it's in a coffee shop. 

Fay Nass 12:05
And then we pitch, you know, the cafe and, you know, then the cafe happens and then you reached out to us, to myself and the enable us and about the international presentation of soliloquy. And I think in that way, that was like the exchange of like, you know, that kind of collaboration of like, okay, like, well, we are the presenting partner, but we can also reach out to communities that they have the network, 

Fay Nass 12:31
they have done the work with the LGBTQ communities, and we don't need to do this alone. And we can share this spotlight and we can also benefit from like, you know, their knowledge and their access to the community. 

Fay Nass 12:42
So I was really excited to get that email to be like, do you want to partner with us? You know, and, and we have been very interested in, you know, international representation. So, so that happened. 

Fay Nass 12:53
And then also, you know, you contacting us about claw push, because one of the things that we do is like, you know, very much like subverting that like relationship between what is the art in the theater spaces versus underground performances, and the excitement of the LGBTQ BIPOC community through drag performances, dance movement, that is not necessarily within the legacy of theater, and that's something that we've been doing, 

Fay Nass 13:20
and we're good at, and something that we have like, very strong ties and connections with. So being able to do claw push and highlight the voices of, especially BIPOC, LGBTQ community, within the legacy of push has been exciting both, I think, through the eyes of presenters that are like, oh, this is the texture of the fabric of Vancouver that we don't necessarily see. 

Fay Nass 13:42
And also for the artists that they've been wanting to have those platforms in order to showcase their work. So I feel like there are all these different layers that's, that's exciting, both in like, I would say progression, but also in a circular notion of exchange, you know, that is like in a while is like, you know, moving forward, but it is also actually starting from the same place of intention, 

Fay Nass 14:04
which is pushing the boundaries, trusting and believing those relationships, and believing that progression is actually has like a circular movements, you know. 

Gabrielle Martin 14:13
Well, I personally have benefited very greatly from our relationship growing and just to be able to discuss work with you, you know, whether it's here or in Montreal. And I feel like there's a lot of shared interest and value we have. 

Gabrielle Martin 14:26
And I really enjoyed those conversations. And so I'd just be curious to hear your perspective on push the cultural context of push and the significance of push within the local artistic ecology within the city for Frank Peter for a father. 

Gabrielle Martin 14:42
Whatever I want to speak to, I would encourage that. 

Fay Nass 14:47
I think Pusha is, in my opinion, one of the most important festivals, not only locally, but in Canada. And I think that everything that we just talked about is really about bringing that excitement. I mean, sometimes I personally feel like, oh, Vancouver, but it's just like I look forward to February because it's about that pulse, that exchange. 

Fay Nass 15:09
We can all kind of stay in our own silos and not really know what's happening in the world, but also not knowing what's happening in our local community. And I think the cultural context of Pusha is really that awareness of these intersections between what is important in terms of a thriving community locally, but it's also that exchange that happens with international partners. 

Fay Nass 15:33
To not be afraid, I think we're in this cultural moment that we all want to do well, but it's also about pushing the boundaries that aesthetic and art forms are speaking for themselves and to not be afraid that things that are other than or the things that we don't know are maybe too much or risky and trusting that our Vancouver audiences and our international audiences are ready for material that may be challenging. 

Fay Nass 16:00
And I think with all of those kind of the trust that Norman had in my work and then Joyce and yourself, that is to me the legacy of Push and I think there's intentionality around culture means, exchange by culture means also the fluidity that things are constantly shifting and we need to speak about them, we need to be brave about them and we need to kind of challenge each other in order to benefit in this kind of ecology that we existed. 

Fay Nass 16:32
And I think that's something that Push has the power to do and I also think that it's an organization that can be innovative in order to move those conversations forward and I think, yeah, I mean, I hope that it just continues to do so, you know, under your artistic leadership I feel very confident that it will. 

Ben Charland 16:58
That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles. 

Ben Charland 17:15
A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival. 

Ben Charland 17:34
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. 

 

Gabrielle Martin chats with Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic director of Toronto’s why not theatre.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Miriam discuss: 

• What was the process of creating Prince Hamlet and bringing it to Vancouver?

• What does it mean to create work with and for those hard of hearing?

• How do you take a huge show that isn’t built to tour on tour?

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• What was it like to collaborate with David Suzuki?

• How do you work with performers who don’t have professional experience?

• How did why not theatre’s artistic approach evolve, and how did your own artistic evolution fit into that?

• How do you incorporate stumbling into live art?

• What have you brought to why not theatre that has informed its direction?

About Miriam Fernandes

Miriam is a Toronto-based artist who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre-maker around the world.  Acting credits include Jungle Book (WYRD/Kidoons), Animal Farm (Soulpepper Theatre), Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre), Dinner with the Gods (Wolf and Wallflower, Sydney AU), The Snow Queen and A Sunday Affair (Theatre New Brunswick),  The Living (Summerworks Performance Festival), and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre).  She has trained with the SITI Company, and is a graduate of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris.  Directing and creation credits include Nesen, (MiniMidiMaxi Festival, Norway) The First Time I Saw the Sea (YVA Company, Norway).  She is currently in development for a few new pieces that she is co-creating including an adaptation of the Mahabharata, Three Pigs, and a new play called Partition.  Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize.

About why not theatre

When a well-respected global performer couldn’t get an audition in Toronto, we knew it was time for a change.

Ravi Jain moved back to Toronto after building a career in theatre in New York and London. After years of growth and creativity, his ambitions came to a standstill when traditional companies wouldn’t welcome his voice. When adversity pushed, Ravi pushed back and launched Why Not.

Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Ravi was later joined by Owais Lightwala and Kelly Read, in a unique tri-leadership team that was key to Why Not’s success. Today, this leadership structure is being further expanded into a more collaborative model, with Ravi, Karen Tisch, and Miriam Fernandes at the helm.

Together, we are forcing doors open, inventing, encouraging and building a creative community, welcoming stories that look and feel like Toronto, and sharing it all with the world.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (Toronto), on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:23

Today's episode features Miriam Fernandez of Why Not Theatre and is anchored around the 2019 Push Festival. Miriam is a Toronto -based artist and Why Not Theatre co -director who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre maker around the world.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:39

She has trained with the Citi Company and is a graduate of École Automacional de Tiâtre Jacques Le Coque in Paris. Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalfe Performing Arts Prize.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:55

Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Its mission is to make things better through art, to reinvent how stories are told, to inspire new ways of thinking about creativity and civic engagement.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:12

Here's my conversation with Miriam. And we are in Tkaranto, which is the traditional home of many First Nations, including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Wendat, the Chippewa, and the Haudenosaunee.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:30

And it is currently also the home of nations, including the Inuit and the Métis. And we are also in the backyard, Miriam's backyard. Yeah, and your new backyard, because you just moved here a couple weeks ago.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:43

And so today we're gonna be focusing on Prince Hamlet, which was one of the Why Not Theatre works that has been presented at PUSH. So this was a 2019 PUSH presentation, but Why Not Theatre has also been presented at PUSH in 2014 with a brim full of asha, and in 2020 with what we won't, what you won't do for love.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:04

But let's just jump right in. I would love to know about Prince Hamlet, about, if you could tell us a bit about this project, and then maybe how, what the process was for bringing that work to Vancouver.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:18

Yeah.

 

Miriam Fernandes 02:19

So, Prince Hamlet is a show that we built actually in 2017 for the first time. It premiered at the theatre centre, where you were earlier today, and it was a completely deaf and hearing, fully accessible production.

 

Miriam Fernandes 02:34

So it's Hamlet basically remixed, and it centers a deaf performer, Don Janne Burley, at the centre of the show. Don plays Horatio, who's Hamlet's best friend, who's really the only person left living at the end of the play.

 

Miriam Fernandes 02:49

And so Hamlet, if you know the play, in his dying breath, he says, Horatio, tell the world my story. And so our production begins at the very end, with Horatio recounting the story through his memory.

 

Miriam Fernandes 03:02

And so, it was the first time that we at Ynot had ever worked with a deaf performer, and Don was really a ferocious champion around, Don is a third generation deaf person and an artist, and was really ferocious about creating a production that was completely intersectional, so that it wasn't about hearing people, including a deaf person, in the show.

 

Miriam Fernandes 03:26

It was actually really truly for both audiences. And so the entire show is bilingual, the whole show is both being signed by Don all the time. So she signs for like three and a half hours, as she's narrating, it's pretty remarkable.

 

Miriam Fernandes 03:40

And also the hearing act, the rest of the cast is hearing. And so the scenes kind of, it's kind of like two plays in parallel, that are intersecting throughout. So we... Super ambitious.

 

Gabrielle Martin 03:52

It was super ambitious. And that's why it's so memorable, too. It's an iconic piece of pushes that I've heard so much about.

 

Miriam Fernandes 03:59

You know, and it's funny, like most why not shows, like we don't know what we're making when we're making it. And so when we made it in 2017, we had no, it wasn't really built to tour, but it was clear.

 

Miriam Fernandes 04:10

Like it, it was so exciting that the audiences that came to see the show were truly mixed. It was like deaf and hearing audiences together. Most deaf audiences have never experienced Hamlet before because it's not, it's not accessible.

 

Miriam Fernandes 04:25

Why would you go to the theater if you can't, experience your language? And so John's translation of Hamlet was also like super beautiful and poetic. She is like a real master with, with language. And so she translated Shakespeare basically to a heightened poetic ASL.

 

Miriam Fernandes 04:44

And so, for deaf audiences, they were experiencing their language, but like in a really beautiful heightened way for the first time on stage like that in Hamlet. Audiences, so many people mentioned that it was like the first time that they experienced Hamlet like that, even though they'd seen the show a million times, but the visual component was like, it just brought a whole new dimension.

 

Gabrielle Martin 05:06

And I remember that I wasn't there, but I've heard so much that she also gave the keynote speech of the industry series because, or address of the industry series. And I think that choice, you know, reflecting on it is probably because of just how progressive and innovative and original this adaptation was.

 

Miriam Fernandes 05:29

Yeah, I mean Dawn, so Dawn is a Canadian artist who lives in Finland right now. She kind of lives between Canada and Finland because Finland has so much, it's a way better place to be deaf because you actually have access to interpreters and, um, work and there's national deaf theaters in Finland and Norway and Sweden.

 

Miriam Fernandes 05:49

And so Dawn has actually been a real champion for bringing a lot of that work back to Canada and we've been supporting her in creating her own company over the last few years, which people should check out, 1S1 Theater.

 

Miriam Fernandes 06:00

Um, she has a new show coming up this fall, which you can see on the website. Um, but it really, it all started out of Hamlet. So in 2017, we created Hamlet without any real idea that we were going to tour it.

 

Miriam Fernandes 06:11

And there was such a, an interest in the production and clearly like all of this conversation around like equity, which had been bubbling for years, like all of this language around diversity and equity and inclusion, um, it was really kind of like at a breaking point.

 

Miriam Fernandes 06:28

And so I think the interest in Hamlet and for, and for us, it was also like, it's not, it wasn't about inclusivity. It was actually an innovation in form that it was an artistic innovation. That's that, that's why the show is, is special.

 

Miriam Fernandes 06:42

And so there was a bunch of interest to tour it and we really wanted to tour it across Canada and push. I think we're one of the first folks that came on board.

 

Gabrielle Martin 06:50

And you said it wasn't really built to tour is that because it was 17 people on the road or the cast

 

Miriam Fernandes 06:55

So the cast was nine people, plus we had a stage management team of two or three, plus we have two interpreters who travel with us, and a producer, and then touring a show like Hamlet, which is intersectional, we went like, you can't just tour the show like you tour a regular show, like we have to be in contact with the box office, like the whole experience has to be accessible for deaf folks who never come to the theater otherwise.

 

Gabrielle Martin 07:19

that mean that you brought more people on the road or that you just had more conversations with the presenters leading up?

 

Miriam Fernandes 07:26

So the two interpreters we definitely brought on the road with us, but they were really Dawn's interpreters. And then each venue, basically it was a deeper conversation with each presenter. So each venue had front of house interpreters who were there to welcome deaf folks as they came into the theater.

 

Miriam Fernandes 07:43

There were, the way that we marketed the show was like completely different. Like it was something that hearing people would never think about, but like all of the print language was for a lot of deaf folks, English is not their first language, sign language is their first language.

 

Miriam Fernandes 07:59

And so having people spread the word through videos, through vlogs, like that's how the word spread. And like there were people, people drove from Saskatoon to Vancouver to see the show because there was so much demand.

 

Miriam Fernandes 08:11

You don't see that show across Canada. So it was really special to like have so many people show up in Vancouver to see the show.

 

Gabrielle Martin 08:18

And you had just started with why not at that time and you were the associate artistic director at that time And now you're the co -artistic director And so this was that your first tour then with the company?

 

Gabrielle Martin 08:30

Yeah, it was actually okay. Yeah, and so what was it like? Coming to push. What was your how did your relationship start with push? What was your perception of the festival when you were there?

 

Miriam Fernandes 08:40

No, it was really, really awesome. I think, uh, as someone who was born, who's from Toronto, like my point of references are like the Minato and Tiafah, and, um, kind of stuff that happens on the East coast of the States.

 

Miriam Fernandes 08:53

So, uh, having the chance, it's funny, even in Canada, like we were talking today about how East and West Toronto don't mix, it's often in Canada too, like East coast and West coast don't. It's, it's a big country.

 

Miriam Fernandes 09:06

Um, but going out to push was so awesome because I got to, uh, like meet so many Vancouver artists, which was really beautiful. We were performing at UBC, which was gorgeous. Like I'd only ever heard of UBC before.

 

Miriam Fernandes 09:19

Um, and like the audiences, it was clear, like the energy in the city was like all around push and it was such a big deal. I was there for the industry event because Dawn, uh, Dawn was the keynote, which was great.

 

Miriam Fernandes 09:31

And like, I met so many international presenters and also to like understand geographically, there were so many presenters and like artists from like Asia Pacific or Australia or New Zealand who were coming to Vancouver.

 

Miriam Fernandes 09:44

And I was like, Oh yeah. Like we in Toronto, we get like Europe kind of Europe and the States kind of coming up to Toronto, but it was so cool to be like, Oh yeah, there's like a whole, the other half of the world actually comes to Vancouver for push.

 

Miriam Fernandes 09:57

So it was great to meet people and yeah, hear what people are working on. And then.

 

Gabrielle Martin 10:02

In 2020, you came back, so just the next year, with What You Won't Do For Love. And that project is a collaboration with David Suzuki and David Suzuki's partner, Tara Cullis. And did you meet them while you were there then?

 

Miriam Fernandes 10:22

It's funny actually, when we came to push for Hamlet, the week before we did Hamlet in Vancouver, we spent a week with David and Tara just roughly researching this idea.

 

Gabrielle Martin 10:36

At that point, what was the idea for people who don't know?

 

Miriam Fernandes 10:39

So Ravi had reached out to David actually saying, Ravi had wanted to make a show about the climate and he had worked with a woman named Elena Mitchell on a show called Seasick, which is now Tour of the World.

 

Miriam Fernandes 10:51

And Ravi was saying, I want to make another piece about the climate and who else would you make that with than David Suzuki in Canada? And so he reached out to David in an email and David, originally the idea was for David to play Galileo in Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo.

 

Miriam Fernandes 11:06

And David was 84 at the time and he was like, hey, like I've never done a play. I'm super flattered. You asked. I would love to, but I don't think I'm going to memorize all of these lines. And so Ravi was like, okay, maybe that's not the right one.

 

Miriam Fernandes 11:20

Like let's like, if you're interested, let's try to like, see if we can make something. So over the time, David was also like trying to retire. He was 84, but he's like, he's never going to retire. He kind of retired now.

 

Miriam Fernandes 11:33

Anyways, he spent a lot of time talking about his wife, Tara and his kids and his grandkids. And so Ravi said, look, what if we, what if we actually try to make this show quality time with your wife and we try to make something with you and Tara?

 

Miriam Fernandes 11:45

And so everybody who knows David and Tara knows that David's kind of like the front of camera guy and Tara's doing everything in the background. Like she started the foundation. So, uh, we said, like, let's just, let's just spend some time.

 

Miriam Fernandes 12:00

David said, if you can convince Tara to do this, like it's, she says, yes, we're it. And so Tara, so we spent a week that, uh, before we did Hamlet, we spent a week with them at the DSF in Kitsilano, just kind of like exploring what this play could be.

 

Miriam Fernandes 12:18

Again, we had no idea what we were going to make. We didn't know what the form was going to be. We just knew it had to do with the two of them. And so we spent a week in a boardroom, listening to their stories and going through a bunch of pictures.

 

Miriam Fernandes 12:30

And then from there, we kind of, we gathered a bunch of stories, but we're still completely lost, but we're like, okay, it's clear that Tara's story, Tara's the center of this thing, which everybody knows David, but so few people know Tara.

 

Miriam Fernandes 12:43

And she's like a force of nature. She, she's so amazing, so inspiring. She was the executive, she started the David Suzuki foundation, was the executive director for many, many years. Like, uh, one of my personal heroes, she's amazing.

 

Miriam Fernandes 12:59

And so we knew that the show was going to be about the two of them, but really highlighting Tara. And so we just needed time to develop and then push was really awesome. So Franco was, uh, taking over push at that time.

 

Miriam Fernandes 13:12

And Franco said, well, why don't you come back and just, and develop this for a little while. And so, and then you can do some kind of sharing at push, which is really how we as a company develop work.

 

Miriam Fernandes 13:21

We're kind of we're company of divisors. Revvie and I both come from a Rekok background. And so iteration and reiteration is like just how we work. So we're like, great. We have like this idea of David and Tara and their stories.

 

Miriam Fernandes 13:34

And we have three weeks in a rehearsal hall, and then we're going to have a show to, we're going to present something.

 

Gabrielle Martin 13:40

In those three weeks, we're in Vancouver.

 

Miriam Fernandes 13:41

They were in Vancouver, they were in the Russian hall. And Push, so Push helped us organize the space and everything. And we had an amazing time. And it was actually during those three weeks that we kind of cracked open what the show was going to be.

 

Miriam Fernandes 13:56

Which was a conversational piece of theatre between David and Tara. And at the time it was Ravi and I sitting with them.

 

Gabrielle Martin 14:02

Mm -hmm and is that the version that you did?

 

Miriam Fernandes 14:04

in 2020. That was the version we did in 2020. So it was David and Tara and Ravi and I having a dinner party, like a kind of quote unquote dinner party. And we had a Vancouver design team, Jamie Nesbitt, Meg Rowe.

 

Miriam Fernandes 14:18

And it was really beautiful. We captured all their stories. I scribed them all because we were like, there's their stories.

 

Gabrielle Martin 14:27

incredible lifetimes.

 

Miriam Fernandes 14:28

crazy. Yeah. You could spend months sitting at this table. Yeah. But I started kind of scribing them and then we cut and we were, we shaped the piece like that basically in our like Airbnb for over three weeks.

 

Miriam Fernandes 14:40

We were up to like two in the morning every day just trying to put it together. But it was, it was so awesome to not only have the space to like develop over three weeks, but have a presentation in a festival like that at the end of that.

 

Miriam Fernandes 14:54

I feel like um, that was really, it was really important for them. Sure.

 

Gabrielle Martin 15:00

And it's not, that's a more rare kind of engagement that Push has in terms of hosting artists in residency. You know, it's something that has been done, but just the nature of being a present, an organization focused on presentation, not having our own space, makes it a little bit more complicated to host artists in that way.

 

Gabrielle Martin 15:19

So yeah, I'm so glad that why not was able to develop this work? And then you ended up doing a version that was a digital version after that, because then the pandemic hit. And I remember just side note experiencing that work, which was a wonderful introduction to Tara and also to this idea of thinking about climate and also contextualizing it in relationships and kind of having that micro to macro relationship where those two conversations happening simultaneously through the work.

 

Gabrielle Martin 15:52

And I remember also you brought up questions, I believe you brought up questions about kind of the implication of having children in this time. Yeah, and now I have a two year old and you will soon have.

 

Gabrielle Martin 16:03

Nine months pregnant. Maybe, so questions that maybe we're still reconciling.

 

Miriam Fernandes 16:10

Well, the thing is funny actually being, because before I got pregnant, I mean, it's, I feel like for, for me, it really was a question. Like, how do you think about bringing more people into this world?

 

Miriam Fernandes 16:20

Uh, but David and Tara, like they're so, the, the central question of the play really is if we could love the planet, the way that we love the people who are closest to us, would we change? Cause we would do anything for the people that we love.

 

Miriam Fernandes 16:32

We would do anything to protect them. And so David tells us great story about, uh, his daughter, Savran, who says like she has, who has two kids who now runs the DSF, she's the new executive director.

 

Miriam Fernandes 16:45

And she says, my kids are my commitment to the future and your understanding of the future and the generations to come is actually just becomes visceral as soon as you have kids. And so that really stuck with me.

 

Miriam Fernandes 16:58

And like the conversations that we had that we unpacked was, uh, really powerful for me as like, as a person and as an artist, but also just thinking about like, uh, the power of love. Like, actually, if love is as Kara says in the play, like love will make us do impossible things and this climate crisis right now is impossible.

 

Miriam Fernandes 17:20

So we have to fuel it with something more than just science. It's the statistics are not doing it for us right now. So.

 

Gabrielle Martin 17:27

And what you won't do for love, obviously you're working with folks who don't have a professional performance practice, and that wasn't a new thing for you. So, A Brimful of Asha was the work that was presented in 2014 at Push.

 

Gabrielle Martin 17:43

I understand there was a similar theme there. Maybe you could talk to us about kind of the evolution of Why Not Theatre's artistic approach over these years, and how your own artistic approach fits into that mix.

 

Miriam Fernandes 17:58

So I would say, so Brimful of Asha was the first show that Why Not Brought to Push, like you said, in 2014. It was a show that Ravi Jain, who's my co -artistic director, did with his real -life mother.

 

Miriam Fernandes 18:10

And they tell the story, the true story of how Ravi's parents tried to arrange his marriage in India and it went very poorly, but it's a very funny story. And Ravi's mom is somebody who's never been on stage before.

 

Miriam Fernandes 18:21

She spent her whole life raising kids, cooking, like taking care of them. And so, but she is hilarious and completely steals the show. And so when Ravi was making the show, he said, he thought like, if we're going to tell this story about arranged marriage, both of our perspectives actually have to be part of it.

 

Miriam Fernandes 18:41

And so they crafted the show. It's actually very, it inspired what you want to do for love in a lot of ways in that it's a non -performer who's on stage. So how do we create the container around that person to make them the most comfortable so that they can shine?

 

Miriam Fernandes 18:56

And so if you ever, anybody who's seen Brimful, it's toured around the world for like 10 years now. It's great. It's like set in Ravi's mom's kitchen and they're sitting at the kitchen table and they're trying to convince the audience who's right, if it should be a love marriage or if it should be a arranged marriage.

 

Miriam Fernandes 19:13

It's very, very funny. Mrs. Jain is very convincing. And so I would say like that work, that was one of the first like major works that why not created. That work kind of set the stage for a lot of the way that the company has developed and Ravi's work and by extension, the work that we've made together, we just really all it has to do with like who is in the room, the people in the room creating the project will determine what the product is.

 

Miriam Fernandes 19:41

So in a similar way with Hamlet, because Dawn was there and because Dawn is who she is and who was fighting for the deaf audience to have the exact same amount of access to the language and the story as a hearing audience.

 

Miriam Fernandes 19:56

We made that show what it was because of Dawn. It would have been a completely different show if it was somebody else. And so in creating What You Want To For Love, which was again, we were looking at a show with non -performers, people who are not used to being on stage, Tara, especially like David's used to being in front of a camera and speaking in the script, but Tara has never done that before.

 

Miriam Fernandes 20:18

And so we basically wanted to create a container that would showcase her and support her. And so we sit at the table. We don't, we have our scripts with us in front of us and we tell the audience, we kind of make a joke of it at the beginning because David says, I don't want to, I'm not going to memorize lines.

 

Miriam Fernandes 20:35

And we say, great, we won't memorize any lines. We'll just read off the script. And so those kinds of like little tools, which not only support the performers, but they also kind of like open up a vulnerable relationship with the audience that started to become a language that became really successful in that work.

 

Miriam Fernandes 20:57

Because then we're all, we don't, we're not actually pretending, we're like, we're all here together. We're, we're. It's honest. It's honest. Like we are who we are. David and Tara are David's 80, 88 years old now.

 

Miriam Fernandes 21:11

Like you're still doing the show. David's 88. I won't say how old Tara is, but like there will be moments where we stumble and it's okay. It's like, it's where it, it actually is the thing that we do in theater that's live.

 

Miriam Fernandes 21:25

And so I feel like, yeah, the evolution from Brimful of Asha to another show that we did made called like mother, like daughter, which is similarly inspired by Brimful of Asha to what you want to do for love.

 

Miriam Fernandes 21:39

There are even bits of it in Mahabharata, which is our newest and largest show where there's a meal in between the two productions. And there's a meal that's basically myself and Sharda Ishwar, who's a community storyteller.

 

Miriam Fernandes 21:53

And so we sit at a table while everybody's having a meal and we have our scripts with us and we speak about the show. And it's, again, it's crafted, it's scripted. It feels improvisational, but it is very scripted.

 

Miriam Fernandes 22:05

And it's again, a way to like highlight a non -performer in a setting that they're comfortable in that lets them shine and that where the whole audience can kind of just like relax their shoulders because we're not pretending.

 

Gabrielle Martin 22:19

All right, and had you been working in this way before joining WhyNot in 2018?

 

Miriam Fernandes 22:26

No, uh, 20, yeah, 2019, 2019, not, not so, um, not so specifically, I, yeah, no, not so specifically. I think it's a pretty unique way that why not because it is very difficult and time consuming, but it's worthwhile.

 

Gabrielle Martin 22:44

how did your artistic practice match and meet the company's work and how did you end up with why not in this role and what you what either were kind of underlying interest that you shared or something that you brought that has in informed its direction so

 

Miriam Fernandes 23:07

I come from a theatre -making background, so I studied at a school in Paris called Le Coq, the name of Jack Le Coq. And so for me, I think the way that Ravi and I make work is very similar in that it's a very iterative process.

 

Miriam Fernandes 23:27

And so it's tricky because you never, you're just going on instinct. Sometimes we start with the script, sometimes we don't start with the script. A lot of the time it's just, it's impulse. So for what you want to do for love, we're like, we think there are love songs.

 

Miriam Fernandes 23:44

So we spent a bunch of time with the whole creative team just gathering everybody's favorite love songs and listening to them and getting into the mood. We're like, we think it's about love and the planet.

 

Miriam Fernandes 23:57

And so we're just kind of following that impulse and provoking with questions.

 

Gabrielle Martin 24:02

I mean, that's a great answer. I just threw that at you, the sort of genuine curiosity in the moment. But I think you're speaking to it, you know, that just the process of devising and clearly you and Ravi have a similar language and kind of trust in following your intuition.

 

Gabrielle Martin 24:24

And I would imagine that there's some affinity between your intuitive impulses.

 

Miriam Fernandes 24:29

Yeah, there's definitely like there there are things where we both completely agree on and then there are other ways where we just pull each other in different directions and sometimes he's right and sometimes I'm right, but it's like it's the trust to know that like, okay, I'm going to let this person lead me and then I'm going to lead and then we're going to find a way together.

 

Miriam Fernandes 24:46

Mahabharata was kind of like the, the biggest process. We were writing it together for five years. Wow. And so it was really hard, but also really amazing to be in a process for that long and trying to, and both of us trying to follow our impulses together and find our way through this huge maze of stories.

 

Gabrielle Martin 25:07

Well, it's been so exciting to follow the development of the company. And this project, Mahabharata, has been a national creation fund supported project. So the scale of the work has grown, the international acclaim and distribution, the company's capacity.

 

Gabrielle Martin 25:28

And I should also mention that I was a 2021 This Gen Fellow. So part of the cultural leadership stream, a mentorship program of why not. And I was paired with Marcus Yousuf. It was an incredible long -term mentorship, which has continued since then.

 

Gabrielle Martin 25:48

So that's how I first met Miriam and Ravi and was introduced to your work. Thanks so much for chatting with me and providing us with a little bit more context and insight into your relationship with Push and into your practice.

 

Gabrielle Martin 26:03

Thank you.

 

Tricia Knowles 26:06

That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run January 23rd to February 9th, 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

 

Tricia Knowles 26:27

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. Push Play is produced by myself, Trisha Knowles, and Ben Charlin. A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabrielle Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Gabrielle Martin chats with performance artist Ralph Escamillan.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Ralph discuss: 

• How did you come to know about PuSh and get a commission for Hinky Punk?

• How do you elevate the performer into the visually iconic?

• What is Hinky Punk?

• How do you embody aspects of queerness in one performer?

• How do you work with restriction?

• What role can costume play?

• What is the value of ballroom culture in other artistic practices?

• How do you find your place in society like you find your category in ballroom—and then transcend it?

• Does the collective community ethos of ballroom translate into your other work?

• What does it mean to have a true open door with the community?

• What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

• How do we continue building bridges between the different artistic communities?

About Ralph Escamillan

Ralph Escamillan is a queer, Canadian-Filipinx performance artist, teacher and community leader based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations - on so called Vancouver, BC.

Starting at age 14, Ralph trained first in Breakdancing then explored a multitude of other street dance styles such as HipHop, Popping, House, Waacking and Locking. His passion for dance expanded to include training in Vogue, Ballroom, Ballet, Modern, Jazz and was a graduate of Contemporary Training Program Modus Operandi in 2015. 

Ralph has worked/toured with Vancouver companies: Company 605, Co. Erasga Dance, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, Out Innerspace Theatre, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance, apprenticed with Kidd Pivot in (2014) and and was a guest dancer with Ballet BC (2020). 

In the commercial industry, he’s worked with choreographers including AJ Aakomon, Luther Brown, Kenny Ortega, Tucker Barkely and Mandy Moore as well as artists Victoria Duffield and Zendaya Coleman, and was a guest dancer for Janet Jackson’s “Unbreakable” tour in 2015. 

With his company FakeKnot he creates work that strives to understand the complexities of identity using sound, costume, technology and the body. Ralph is currently premiered his all philippine cast work inspired by the queen of Philippine textile Piña in Vancouver May 4-6 2023 (Co-Presentation with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and The Dance Centre). 

Ralph ‘Posh’ Gvasalia Basquiat has been in the Ballroom Scene since 2014, founding his own Kiki House of Gvasalia in Vancouver and joined the Mainstream House of Basquiat in 2021. The founder and Artistic/Executive Director of the non-profit organization VanVogueJam, Ralph shares his passion for Vogue/Ballroom culture at his weekly pay-what-you-can classes and vogue balls, acting as a beacon for the queer dance/culture in Western Canada. 

Ralph was recently awarded the Inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary fund at the DCD Hall Of Fame in October 2022 in Toronto, aswell as the Inaugural RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:23
Today's episode features Ralph Eschimulen and is anchored around the 2018 Push Festival. Ralph, aka Posh, Visalia, Basquiat, is a queer, Canadian, Philippine ex -performance artist, choreographer, and teacher based in Vancouver. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:40
As the Artistic Director of Fake Knot, he develops collaborative performance works that have been presented both nationally and internationally. His work questions notions of identity, tradition, and clothing, and the influence of pop culture in a globalizing world. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:54
Ralph is a recipient of the inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary Fund at the DZD Hall of Fame in October 22 in Toronto, as well as the Inaugural National Arts Centre RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:11
Here's my conversation with Ralph. I have been acknowledged that we are here on this stolen traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:25
I am unbelievably privileged to be on this land. And we're downtown, we're close to your offices. 

Ralph Escamillan 01:33
and new offices, and also close to where I used to grew up. I actually grew up in downtown Vancouver. I went to school at Lord Roberts Elementary and came to secondary, grew up in Chinatown. So this is, I'm a Vancouver kid, for real. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:47
urban experience. Yes, yes, yeah. OK, so yeah, we're just going to dive right into it. 2018 Push co -commissioned, or maybe it started earlier, you can let us know, Push co -commissioned Hinky Punk, which is a work by you through the company Fake Knot. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:05
And then it was presented as part of Club Push that year in 2018. And I had the privilege of seeing it in 2021 at the Vancouver International Dance Festival. You saw the report? That's what we met. You saw it in person. 

Ralph Escamillan 02:18
right you saw the little small because he did it online right he got you came in okay 

Gabrielle Martin 02:30
Okay, so just take us back to the beginning of your relationship with push shredded it start have the conversation start 

Ralph Escamillan 02:35
with this work specifically with HIKI PONK, correct? Or just like, what do you want to do? 

Gabrielle Martin 02:39
come to know the festival and then yeah and then how did the conversation start around commissioning hinki fun 

Ralph Escamillan 02:46
Yeah, truthfully, I feel like my relationship to Push when I was younger was actually quite nebulous. I was still really learning, even until my first performance with Push, I was like, what was it? Because my training didn't come entirely from contemporary or ballet first, and like that kind of dance, kind of making world, and it was more street. 

Ralph Escamillan 03:08
But I think one of the first shows I saw might be, I think it was Hiroki Omeda. 

Gabrielle Martin 03:14
Oh, yeah. 

Ralph Escamillan 03:15
During Push, that was in maybe 2017, maybe, or even earlier. I remember that show, I think, was such a great introduction to the festival in that it was this really groundbreaking performance work and that embodied the values that Push has till today, I think, and like, in pushing. 

Ralph Escamillan 03:40
You know, where performance can be and live and that show really, I think, transfixed to me even now and actually, I think, did penetrate into that first work in some capacity. And yeah, that was, I guess, my introduction. 

Ralph Escamillan 03:56
And then learning more about it and seeing the breadth of programming, I think it's really exciting to think that it's still here, it's still in the city, and how much work that takes to maintain something as a behemoth as Push. 

Gabrielle Martin 04:15
And we'll talk about that a little bit later, like your work with Vancouver Vogue Jam because you're, Van Vogue Jam, Van Vogue Jam, because you are artistic director of multiple companies, so you have a sense of that and, you know, but today we're gonna focus a little bit more on the fake not work. 

Gabrielle Martin 04:29
So, did you approach Push with that project or did Push approach you? 

Ralph Escamillan 04:33
Yeah, so how it worked, how Higgipunk worked originally was a commission for the Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse that happened, I believe, in 2016, around 2016 -2017. And they were doing like a kind of retrospective of queer art making, and Paris's Burning was one of the documentaries they featured during that, and Joy Cesario was actually the guest curator for the programming that time. 

Ralph Escamillan 05:02
And she knew I was kind of into voguing, into ballroom, and commissioned me to make something in response to Paris's Burning, which is easy because it's like it's just make something about ballroom. And I had, like the initial thought, because I was so new to ballroom still that time, was like my experience of battling, of being a walker, being in competition, and me and the sound composers I was working with at the time, 

Ralph Escamillan 05:33
we were both really heavily entrenched in this ballroom thing. And we wanted to build this solo that kind of showed the inner workings, or the thought process, and the fear, and the grandeur, and the extremes. 

Ralph Escamillan 05:51
And doing it in the gallery, when it transposed into the gallery, we actually ended up performing with all the Andy Warhol prints. Originally the rotunda was the thought, but a way for us to get the audience enveloped into the work is also a quadraphonic soundscape. 

Ralph Escamillan 06:11
And the rotunda made it really hard to do a quadraphonic sound, because it's beautiful, but sonically it's really hard to control. So we wanted just a room, and we ended up working on a 4x4 plinth, which became, actually moved forward into the premiere of the work as a way to really specify the performative space, but also elevate the performer to transform them into an iconic image, or a structure, 

Ralph Escamillan 06:41
and visually, from an audience perspective, put them lower to the character. 

Gabrielle Martin 06:47
Could you just talk a little bit more about, yeah, just continuing on this stream of thought? What is the word? What is in Kefunk? 

Ralph Escamillan 06:55
Yeah, Hankypunk, from that point on after, as we got time to develop it and research it to like my first grant that we got, leading up to the push, the club push shows, we leaned into the iconography of, of like what that is found in queer culture. 

Ralph Escamillan 07:12
These images are these like superhuman characters that exist that kind of define a lot of queerness. How we communicate in queerness is like, is through these icons, through these names, through these, these brands of people. 

Ralph Escamillan 07:30
Yeah, so the solo really became this idea of embodying these hyper mask and hyper feminine figures found in the media. And I think someone, and it being a solo, and my fluidity in my own gender, I think really lends itself to that transformation within like the hour of time, and working with restriction to, which is something that I carry on in my work now is like, how, and which I think is an extension of being a queer person of color, 

Ralph Escamillan 08:04
feeling the boundaries that you're able to take up. But also making use of that and what does that mean to not seeing it as like a negative, but also more like acknowledging the parameters and what can you do with them. 

Ralph Escamillan 08:21
I find that like the four by four cube, we really exhausted the capacity of what that cube could do. 

Gabrielle Martin 08:28
And I really appreciate having seen Paris as burning this, at least the seed of it being in response to that, and I think that that's really important, that framing, and literal framing, and then a reference to the social parameters, specifically for queer folks of color. 

Ralph Escamillan 08:50
And then the introduction of some video, new media design, projection design with Schmerich was really exciting because I wanted to incorporate more images into the work that I couldn't do just with the body. 

Ralph Escamillan 09:04
Not saying that the body can't do that, but at that time I was really ambitious and I wanted projection, I wanted a hologram. And we ended up buying this like crazy like pepper scram from like Belgium or something that, and then I got this set design made by Underground Circuit. 

Ralph Escamillan 09:23
Wait, Underground Circuit is Peter. So I was kind of leaning into like some circuit stuff. All of this work, like this piece came at the end of my graduation of coming from Out of Modus. So I had a lot of like big ideas and I look at the piece now and like it's beautiful. 

Ralph Escamillan 09:41
It's really crazy that we did so much. It's insane. 

Gabrielle Martin 09:45
Incredible like debut. I mean, I know that you've been performing before but would you say that this is kind of like your Dave you choreographic work Yes, I would say yeah 

Ralph Escamillan 09:53
Yeah, for sure. This was the debut of the work I did with Fake Knot, and it foreshadowed the work that I do now, I think, still, and it was really an accumulation of all these ideas and all these experiences I've already had as a performing artist, as working with other people, but also my aspirations of where I think performance can transform into. 

Ralph Escamillan 10:14
I'm learning now that I'm like, wow, that was so ambitious to also do it at the Fox, because this wasn't even a main stage show in a way. This is really meant to be, because Club Push historically has been this like, oh, it's a show. 

Ralph Escamillan 10:27
Just come in and do your thing. Of course, with varying degrees, but... 

Gabrielle Martin 10:33
because it's a bar. 

Ralph Escamillan 10:35
So after there's all the like the bigger shows too like later in the evening and That I really took the opportunity of like getting extra grant funding on top of that to build this like pretty big show in a way Was pretty wild and I think even Joyce I remember was like surprised It was like so I didn't think you were gonna do all that And I think that's always like my hope is like you almost like surpass the expectation. 

Ralph Escamillan 11:00
Yeah And like and it was genuine is really of interest and I think early on to this idea of costume played a role because I love the color blue and the blue sequin costume became the motif of the whole work and I worked with like a costumer and local customer at the time and say I want these sequins and But we couldn't afford like all the beautiful finishing So like the inside of the costume like like sharp sequins like I have a scar and it's first week years performing this piece just from like the sequins and I know but it was so beautiful and like and then also the ability this what sequins are able to do in the history of sequins But with glamour and like pomp and and like camp just lent itself Additionally to the concept of the work and then also how we use light to transform it to just like basic LED colors like you can change the blue like it just shifts so much and Yeah, 

Ralph Escamillan 11:53
it was this idea like how do you pull that one thread? Like how do we keep pulling pulling pulling from that one idea of iconography of the image? Yeah, I'm still super excited and proud of it And I don't think if I were ever to redo it now it would I would want to remount it in someone else Because it's such a hard work 

Gabrielle Martin 12:14
Um, an hour solo 

Ralph Escamillan 12:16
So on a little cube, on a four foot high, four foot cube. It's pretty insane. Like it's like. 

Gabrielle Martin 12:22
Your face is covered. 

Ralph Escamillan 12:23
covered all the motifs are still in my work now it's like it's funny it just transformed 

Gabrielle Martin 12:29
That's what I was going to ask you about. So that was 2018. We, I mean, it was a little sneak peek, but we are collaborating with Dan Vogue Jam, where Push is going to co -produce the winning ball for 2025 Push, which we're very excited about. 

Gabrielle Martin 12:43
And so, but also, you know, you've continued to create work with Bake Not. You have a curatorial practice. Can you just talk about that moment with Hinky Punk, premiering it at the Fox Cabaret to now, where, how your artistic practices go? 

Ralph Escamillan 12:59
Yeah. What's exciting, I mean, what's cool is like tracking that time too with Push, with like, with HinkyPunk, was that's when I started teaching classes in the city, the free buy donation. That's kind of when DBJ started, it's 2017, 2017 -ish. 

Ralph Escamillan 13:13
And we, in tandem with the classes, the community also has grown so much since that time. And for me, one way that I've articulated, at least through the funding bodies, and people that don't really understand what ballroom is, is that in my kind of practice of wanting to show the value of ballroom culture in other artistic spaces, is that like, it has its own codes, it has its own forms of curation and artistic practice that parallel, 

Ralph Escamillan 13:47
if not even go over a lot of the Eurocentric art practices that we know today. And in the idea of how its way of making is not only individual, but it truly is like a community practice, which I think is a really, especially at a time now where I think a lot of people are longing connection and forms of community. 

Ralph Escamillan 14:16
I'm really inspired and happy to be a part of a community that is actually community -based first, focus first, but because of that, the art that comes out of it through the balls and what's put on the runway is just so much more invested in every way. 

Ralph Escamillan 14:37
There's so much care and wanting to constructively one -up themselves and one -up each other, which I think it's like... 

Gabrielle Martin 14:48
Do you find that to be true across ballroom, in ballroom culture, nationally, internationally? Do you tour internationally with this work and with this practice? Or would you say that's particular to Vancouver? 

Ralph Escamillan 15:03
I think it's ingrained in the ballroom culture in general, right? Because I guess the history of ballroom, of course, is coming from the Black, Latinx, the trans -queer communities of Harlem, and the ballroom, these balls are a space for people to really explore and become things that they're not allowed to yet in society. 

Ralph Escamillan 15:23
And what I think is exciting is that now that tool of the faking is becoming realized. These people that are dressing up to look like executive realness are actually CEOs of huge companies, or people that are making best -dressed garments, or are actually designing for celebrities now, like the transition, and that social shift, and that tool that you learn about, I think the most important skill you come out of ballroom is, 

Ralph Escamillan 15:55
how do you find your place in society and understand it to a point where you transcend what it can be? And in ballroom, it's like finding your category. How can you find your category, make moments in it, and transcend it, and push it forward, which I think is so cool and exciting, and it creates a sense of past -present. 

Ralph Escamillan 16:20
We have to acknowledge the past, too, and we honor that through shouting them out through being inspired by them bringing them forward. There's all this intergenerational knowledge that is shared, because our experiences and how we exchange in ballroom is through the balls, is through showing what we put on the floor. 

Ralph Escamillan 16:38
That's how we shout out. And it's through participating. It's not just writing or building within your own practice. It's like you have to put it forward in order for it to be remembered, to be physicalized, to be valued. 

Ralph Escamillan 16:56
This idea of being seen becomes so important. 

Gabrielle Martin 17:00
And it seems like the creative process is often also done in community and collaboration. I mean, I know traditionally in contemporary dance practice, like there's a lot of choreographers who are working in their studio by themselves, but my sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's a lot of ideas being workshopped in the collective. 

Ralph Escamillan 17:23
Yeah, collectively, but all the time. And what I was saying recently, we just had a ball in the city recently, and I feel like, and it's a similar in street dance, the work is a continual one. So every time you walk on a ball, you're adding to your story, you're adding to your narrative. 

Ralph Escamillan 17:42
And so people will remember what you did the ball before, the ball before that, and if you're able to build that storyline, like the idea of it is a continuing it, and how do you continue to build upon it. 

Ralph Escamillan 17:53
And so it's almost like a continuous work. Like, so it's not just like a piece, every ball is like a piece, but your whole career in ballroom is a performance. It's a whole performance, which has been really cool to be able to encapsulate. 

Gabrielle Martin 18:09
And would you say that also for your work with Fake Knot, that there are themes that you're exploring through every piece? Also, you're speaking about community and you've been really central in establishing this ballroom community in Vancouver, or at least facilitating it. 

Gabrielle Martin 18:25
Does that community ethos, communal ethos, ethos of collectivity, does that also translate into your work with Fake Knot? 

Ralph Escamillan 18:35
Yeah, wholeheartedly, yes, I think. More so now, I think I'm understanding it more now. Because I thought that they had to be separate. Because I don't see that want of... I think there's efforts of people wanting to build community and contemporary practice in the contemporary community, but it just hits a wall, because how esoteric contemporary practice can be. 

Ralph Escamillan 18:56
And it's like, I don't know, girl. But I'm just like, oh, actually, it's not about just the practice, but it's also the environments we make for people to be together, which I think I'm learning is actually community. 

Ralph Escamillan 19:10
To me, it's not just about the sharing practice. So even, say for P &Y, my most recent work I did with Pineapple Fiber, building, having the fiesta piece in the beginning of the show, and having exhibits and webinar, auxiliary programming as ways to connect to the work, I feel like we found a little small community through there. 

Ralph Escamillan 19:31
And that was maybe a starting point of, oh, how can I involve, not just community, but also the educational piece into the practice, into my work. And I feel with my newer work, which is about ballroom as well, My House, which is very, very new, which is kind of like a coming back to ballroom through Fake Knot, and almost like an extension of the work that we did with Hinky Punk, actually, I would say. 

Ralph Escamillan 19:57
I'm really questioning, how do we bring ballroom community into practice? And I think I'm proposing is like, including it opening the doors for rehearsal from the beginning of the process. And what does that mean to have an open door kind of policy for people from the community to come observe and watch and learn and or question and have dialogue? 

Ralph Escamillan 20:22
Because for me, bringing ballroom into on the stage, and maybe any forms that aren't meant to be on there, or weren't originally made to be on stage, what does it mean to bring our culture there? What does it mean to bring our community there? 

Ralph Escamillan 20:35
And also understanding that it's gonna be, it's different. We can't just put a ball on a stage. Like, when we're with Push, that's not what we're gonna be doing. What's happening is like, Push is supporting the ability of putting a ball together. 

Ralph Escamillan 20:49
It's like, the ball is in a piece, is what I'm trying to explain. And I think which is a very, it's a hard, I guess I'm learning from some artists and presenters in the country. Like, there is this like, not inability, but it's hard to understand what a ball is because the way we see work is like fixed in some sense. 

Ralph Escamillan 21:15
I feel there's a fixedness. Whereas ballroom is so like random and like gorilla -like. And it is actually steeped with so much other threads that connect to it, politically and, I mean, politically, even within the scene, like politically and, but yeah, sorry, tangent. 

Gabrielle Martin 21:37
Yeah, no, I mean I think that that is something that Push has valued from early days, you know, work that is not necessarily conventional piece there. And there are a lot of sit -downs, theater works, but like I think fundamentally there's an interest and an excitement to Push form, to play with form, and to honor like different types of artistic experience within the festival. 

Ralph Escamillan 22:06
What I would add, though, maybe just to lean into what does make it curatorial, like what makes a ball a curatorial place is, I guess, whenever anyone's putting a ball together, there's always a theme or a concept or an idea, and all the different categories have different effects or costume proposals that are really prompts for people that are walking to explore. 

Ralph Escamillan 22:33
So I think there's curation in that practice. There's also curation in the panel, the judges that you bring in, and also curation in the programming that's surrounding it. So the workshop series that surrounds it, or like a potluck or like a barbecue, you know, like they're, and so that's how I've been framing what curation means to me in context of ballroom and which I'm excited to explore with a push, 

Ralph Escamillan 22:58
like how does that, how does it change when we have a festival that has this reputation of pushing, you know. 

Gabrielle Martin 23:06
Stay tuned. Stay tuned. And so, you have this artistic practice in ballroom. What does fake knots serve you? Or how does it serve you in regard to what your artistic needs are? Why create work outside of the context of ballroom? 

Ralph Escamillan 23:31
Oh my gosh. It's interesting, I think, so originally Fake Knot really was, I want to find a moniker for my work where it wasn't my name first, it wasn't about the Ralph. I mean ironically all work is about autobiographical, so it's like I didn't know that until I guess later after. 

Ralph Escamillan 23:53
So yeah, I guess I can't really take the work away from the person who makes it, but I think for me it still becomes a container for the multiplicity of ideas that I have that transcend not just ballroom but also like contemporary ideas and what I'm learning though is like BBJ and Fake Knot, like they are, like they have this like interesting relationship like that can overlap and like cross through, 

Ralph Escamillan 24:22
but I like being able to delineate my practice into two separate kind of world, I mean many, many, many hats and I feel it helps me create boundaries for a creative process, but they definitely feed into each other and I think what I'm learning with Fake Knot is that at this moment it's been a container to explore like textile and fabric and clothing as ways to create choreographic narrative and I don't think I yet, 

Ralph Escamillan 24:53
I understand how that overlaps with my ballroom persona, but I'm still interested in seeing how I can contain it on a staged space and I also understand the value of me taking up those kind of spaces still through Fake Knot. 

Ralph Escamillan 25:11
So yeah, maybe there's a world where they'll like become one. No, they don't need to, I like thank you for sharing. 

Gabrielle Martin 25:18
And so, we're very honored that the Van Woon Jam has honored us with the opportunity to present the Winter Ball with you, because it is going to be an iconic moment, I think, within the history of the festival, and it's our 20th anniversary, and it's a special festival. 

Gabrielle Martin 25:36
And so, yeah, I'm wondering if you could reflect on why you're interested in that partnership. What is the cultural context of push in your eyes, and the significance of push, either within the city, or with regard to the work that you're doing? 

Ralph Escamillan 25:51
Well, for me, I think what's exciting about Push is one, the audience that it brings. And I think it has a cult following of people that want to see weird and new stuff. And I feel like even though we've been doing ballroom in this city for the last eight years now, people still don't know about ballroom. 

Ralph Escamillan 26:17
And I'm hoping that this ball with Push becomes an opportunity for people to learn more about what ballroom is, more than just the Vogue Madonna video or Paris is Burning or what we see in mass media, but actually see the complexities and the value of it. 

Ralph Escamillan 26:35
And I think aligning it with Push gives that opportunity. And it also takes up some space that I think Push is wanting to offer, and it's part of the ship that Push is wanting to see, I think, is how do we include these communities that are already making art somewhere else. 

Ralph Escamillan 26:54
It's really just like, here's the space to do it. Here's the resources to do it, which I think is the conversation we want when it comes to forms of reconciliation and also forms of building trust back to these communities that maybe would never watch a Push show because they never thought that they were allowed to or they knew what to expect. 

Ralph Escamillan 27:14
So for me, I think my whole practice that transcends everything that I do is really like, how can I continue building bridges between the different artistic worlds and not just Vancouver, but within the country and hopefully further out into the world? 

Ralph Escamillan 27:31
Because I think once we value more of each other's practices, the stronger a community we can become, and the more informed we can be, and excited, and passionate, and supportive. So I think that's what I've noticed in my whole career and still now is this like, it's like closing off. 

Ralph Escamillan 27:57
And I think a lot of it closes off because people are afraid. People are scared. But I really offer people to go outside, just go outside and see what's out there in the world and be curious, not just like in your own practice, but in other people's practices with respect, with respect. 

Ralph Escamillan 28:19
And find those connections. So I think those connections, at least for me as someone who does like wonderful Manko now, finding all these new connections, it's so inspiring and excites me and keeps me passionate and keeps me wanting to learn more about my body and what dance means to me and why I even perform. 

Ralph Escamillan 28:38
It keeps me pumped. So I hope to share that with other people, that there is value in putting yourself in a place of risk or challenge. 

Gabrielle Martin 28:50
I love hearing you speak about this because that speaks to me and what I feel excited about with regard to push and the space it occupies and what it can be possible with regard to just creating a sense of impossibility, challenging our assumptions of challenging how we see the world and therefore also how we understand ourselves with the world, whether it's as individuals, as artists. 

Gabrielle Martin 29:21
Thanks so much, Ralph. I'm so excited for 2025 and beyond. 

Ralph Escamillan 29:26
No, it's not that far away. 

Ben Charland 29:31
That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles. 

Ben Charland 29:48
A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival. 

Ben Charland 30:24
And if you've enjoyed this video, please like, comment and subscribe! 

Gabrielle Martin chats with Owen Underhill, Artistic Director of Turning Point Ensemble.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Owen discuss: 

• How did your relationship with PuSh begin?

• Why was interdisciplinary work important?

• What was Norman Armour’s role in the early stages of Turning Point Ensemble?

• How did the company evolve in terms of process, practice, points of interest and project choices from its inception until now?

• What are the benefits of partnering with PuSh?

• What is the cultural context of PuSh and its significance in Vancouver?

• What are you excited about with upcoming projects?

• Of all the Turning Point projects at PuSh, of which do you have the fondest memories?

About Turning Point Ensemble

Founded in 2002 by its musician members, Turning Point Ensemble (TPE) is a large chamber ensemble (16 instrumentalists and conductor) with a mandate to increase the understanding and appreciation of music composed during the past hundred years. The ensemble has built a strong reputation for outstanding musicianship and linking seminal 20th century repertoire to contemporary works through thoughtful programming and innovative presentations. Uniquely and flexibly sized between a small chamber ensemble and a symphonic orchestra, TPE presentations offer a symphonic palette with a chamber music sensibility. In addition to its concerts, tours and recordings, the ensemble has regularly mounted innovative interdisciplinary productions including operas, and collaborations with dance, theatre, visual art and moving image.

Turning Point Ensemble has released six CDs and one DVD on the Artifact, Centrediscs, Atma Classique, Redshift Records, Orlando, and Parma labels. We have presented a diverse range of repertoire, commissioned and performed works by Canadian and international composers, and partnered with a number of community and cultural organizations.

In 2010, TPE was awarded the Rio Tinto Alcan Award for Music 2011 – the largest production prize for music in Canada for its presentation of FIREBIRD 2011, resulting in 4 sold out performances in March 2011 at The Cultch in Vancouver.

Other significant large-scale interdisciplinary projects include Flying White -飞白 which was co-produced with Wen Wei Dance for the 2020 PuSh Festival with three sold-out performances and the premiere of air india [redacted] (5 performances November 2015). We have also had two major partnerships with Ballet British Columbia, and several projects with live music and moving image.

We are proud to have presented a diverse range of repertoire, commissioned and performed works by Canadian and international composers, and partnered with a number of community and cultural organizations. A highlight is our ground-breaking cultural collaboration with the Westbank First Nation in the Okanagan for an outdoor presentation of Barbara Pentland/Dorothy Livesay’s 1954 opera, The Lake at Quails’ Gate Winery, the original homestead of Susan Allison and her family.

The central artistic vision of the TPE is to bring to the public extraordinary music for large chamber ensemble written from the early 20th century through to present day. We draw audiences to this music through outstanding performances, and intelligent programming that creates a lively context for the music. We seek to create links from the music of earlier times to new music, to explore relationships and connections between composers and their music, to perform significant large-scale works from the Canadian and international repertoire, to collaborate with multiple art forms in extraordinary ways, and to establish meaningful long-term relationships with some of Canada’s most talented composers through commissioning and multiple performances.

Turning Point has toured internationally in 2018 to Asia and the Czech Republic, in addition to two Canadian tours. We have performed in many festivals and series including the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, New Music Concerts Toronto, ECM+ Montreal, groundswell Winnipeg, New Music Edmonton, MusicFest Vancouver, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Sound of Dragon Festival and the Modulus Festival.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:23

Today's episode features Owen Underhill of Turning Point Ensemble and is anchored around the 2017 Push Festival. Owen Underhill is a composer, conductor, and programmer who has been active in new music in Vancouver for several decades as the Artistic Director of Vancouver New Music, 1987 to 2000, and in his current role as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Turning Point Ensemble.

 

Gabrielle Martin 00:45

From 1981 until his recent retirement, he was a faculty member in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Turning Point Ensemble, founded by its musician members in 2002, is a collaborative large chamber ensemble committed to the performance and production of music of the 20th and 21st centuries in flexible and innovative contexts.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:07

Intersecting with multiple art forms, crossing genres, working with diverse communities and partners, engaging with ideas of contemporary relevance, and inspiring and enlivening local, national, and international audiences.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:21

Recent tours have included Montreal, Zagreb, Belgrade, Santander, Taipei, Beijing, and Singapore. Here's my conversation with Owen. We are here on Victoria Drive, just off Commercial Drive, in so -called Vancouver, which is on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh.

 

Gabrielle Martin 01:49

It's a place that both of us call home. You're just up the street.

 

Owen Underhill 01:55

Yes, I've been in the commercial drive area for quite a few years. Love it here.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:00

and I grew up here as well. This, we're just across from Victoria Park, where I spent a lot of time as a kid. So in a feeling very comfortable in the neighborhood and happy to be having this conversation here and grateful to be on these indigenous lands.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:15

Turning Point Ensemble has a wonderful, long, rich history with the Push Festival. We're gonna definitely be talking about the 2017 production that Push presented. Zappa meets Verez and Oswald, the present day composer refuses to die.

 

Gabrielle Martin 02:33

But there are also so many other projects that Push presented, so we're gonna get a chance to talk about some of those. Yeah, let's actually go right back to the beginning. Would you just talk to us about how your relationship with Push began?

 

Owen Underhill 02:50

Well, I've known Norman for many years and so witnessed the start of the push and from the beginning with Turning Point Ensemble we really wanted to be more than just a chamber ensemble and to also explore interdisciplinary work with theater and dance and with film and so we started looking at the work that Push was doing and thinking that it would be fit in very well some of the projects we had in mind to propose them through Norman.

 

Gabrielle Martin 03:34

And you knew Norman very well from the 80s.

 

Owen Underhill 03:39

Yeah, from the 80s. Yeah, Norman came to the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, and I just come there also as a faculty member, as a composer, and we were starting a composition -based music program there.

 

Owen Underhill 03:58

And...

 

Gabrielle Martin 04:00

my dad went to.

 

Owen Underhill 04:01

which your dad went to, yes. And my colleagues, Mark Diamond and Penelope Stella were great in theater. They were great colleagues to also collaborate with. So from when I first started going to, or being part of faculty there, I started working on projects, including plays like Sam Shepard's Suicide and B -flat, which I wrote music for.

 

Owen Underhill 04:37

And Norman was lead actor in that. And so, and he was already doing fantastic work there. So I got to know him as kind of a partner in productions rather than as a teacher, because I was teaching primarily in music.

 

Gabrielle Martin 04:58

And so the first well actually when was when did you co -found turning point ensemble at your site?

 

Owen Underhill 05:06

We co -founded in 2002 and our first concert was in 2003.

 

Gabrielle Martin 05:11

OK. And then in 2008, Push presented Dual Eclipse Orchestra of Two Worlds. And then, you know, in 2012, presented Trené Point Ensemble's Colorful World. In 2013, Cinema Musica. The Zappa meets Verraz and Oswald in 2017.

 

Gabrielle Martin 05:31

Radio Rewrite in 2018 and Flying White, which was also a project with One Way Dance in 2020. But how did the conversation, how did Dual Eclipse end up being part of Push 2008? Why was it such a great fit?

 

Gabrielle Martin 05:46

How did that come about?

 

Owen Underhill 05:49

Well, the Dual Eclipse project was with Balinese Ensemble, which they had at UBC. And we were doing works with dance. Jennifer Mascow was choreographing some works for that production. So it was, first of all, a cross -cultural project.

 

Owen Underhill 06:14

And secondly, it involved dance. So those were the kind of productions we worked with, with Norman, tended to be the ones that were more interdisciplinary and also included original work.

 

Gabrielle Martin 06:32

than Colorful World, how did that, you know, did Norman just kind of invite the next project that was interdisciplinary, or did you end up kind of pitching that work? How did Colorful World end up being part of?

 

Owen Underhill 06:47

The Colorful World project was more of a concert that included some new commissions. I know we did a piece of Rodney Sharmn there. So we tended to, I tended to pitch projects to Norman every couple of years that I thought would be of interest to them and also, you know, we're a large chamber ensemble, I should say.

 

Owen Underhill 07:14

So we're in between a small chamber ensemble and an orchestra. We usually have at least 15 players. So they were, you know, we tend to do quite major works, major scale. And so those that were a good fit for push were a lot of those projects that involved other disciplines.

 

Gabrielle Martin 07:46

Talk to us about what was Zappa, Mitzvahrez, and Oswald, the present -day composer refuses to die. I mean, first of all, it has an incredible title. Can you just explain this project a bit?

 

Owen Underhill 07:59

Yeah, sure. Well, the present -day composer refuses to die, I remember, as being written on a Frank Zappa Mothers of Invention album. It's written there. And then I found out that that was a quote from the avant -garde composer, Edgard Varese, who was active in, originally from France, but active from the 1920s in New York and in the US.

 

Owen Underhill 08:32

And Frank Zappa, even as a teenager, was really interested in contemporary music and he really appreciated Edgard Varese, who was really an adventurer in sound. And so that quote always stuck in my head and so because Turning Point Ensemble works towards making connections with the past to the present day, we often would like to pair maybe a composer or some innovative music of the first half of the 20th century with something much more recent.

 

Owen Underhill 09:16

So that was an idea we had and actually started talking with Norman about that in 2014. So we worked on that one for a while together. And is that...

 

Gabrielle Martin 09:29

because Push was involved as a co -producer or because you were just like developing the concept and keeping Norman in the loop.

 

Owen Underhill 09:37

Push was, well Norman really liked the idea of Res from the start, but he was very interested in getting a new work written for that show by a Canadian composer, and so we developed that one actually as a co -commission project.

 

Owen Underhill 10:01

So we discussed who to include in that, and eventually proposed John Oswald to him from Toronto, who worked a lot on his plunder phonics, where he sort of plundered the work of Michael Jackson even, he had to withdraw that because Michael Jackson thought about him, and he did Grateful Dead, so he was very involved in pop music as well as contemporary music, and when I threw that out to Norman, he said,

 

Owen Underhill 10:49

ah, killer suggestion, and John Oswald, so it was a go, so that became a really exciting program for us and for Push, and we also commissioned some dance for a couple of those pieces because we did the sort of large arrangements of Zappa that were done by Ensemble Muldern in Munich while Zappa was still alive, like in the last years before he passed away, and Edward Locke, the dancer, had actually done some dance,

 

Owen Underhill 11:35

which they did on those productions, so we decided that we would also bring some dance element to it, and so that's what we did also.

 

Gabrielle Martin 11:50

Do you remember who were the dancers or who supported choreography?

 

Owen Underhill 11:55

Yeah, it was Rob at my colleague at SFU. Oh yeah, okay, Rob Kitsos? Rob Kitsos, yes. And so he did, you know, it was sort of set up as a concert, but he had the dancers in the front, which is the way Edward Locke had done it, and they were actually right behind me and going very quickly, and right, I could feel the wind of them when they were performing.

 

Owen Underhill 12:22

So we did that as well, and that was a very popular show. It brought out all the Zappa fanatics, which there are many. Okay. So we did three shows, and I don't know what it was. What venue was this? You're right.

 

Owen Underhill 12:40

It was in the Wong Theatre at SFU Woodward, so there were about 350 people at each of those shows, but it was a good show for Bush, and it was certainly a good show for us.

 

Gabrielle Martin 12:54

Great, and did you, um, did Question, Turning Point, Ensemble, Commission, other projects of all the ones that were presented in the push years? No.

 

Owen Underhill 13:03

We talked about it, but that was, I think, the one time that Norman really wanted to get involved with a sort of commission that we would jointly do.

 

Gabrielle Martin 13:16

Great. And then, yeah, as mentioned there, after that project, Radio Rewrite was presented Flying White with One Way Dance. How would you reflect on the evolution of the company, like let's say from Dual Eclipse in 2008 right up to Flying White in 2020?

 

Gabrielle Martin 13:38

And then now, has there been an evolution in terms of process, practice, points of interest for projects?

 

Owen Underhill 13:49

Yes, I mean, we got more and more adventurous over the years in doing ambitious interdisciplinary projects, for one thing, and so Push certainly helped us with that because we always knew that if we were part of the Push Festival that it was a great way to bring in theater, dance, film, you know, a much more diverse audience, I guess.

 

Owen Underhill 14:27

And another thing we did, which was in the Flying White Project, was we worked with Chinese traditional instruments, and so some of the performers that are here in Vancouver. So we also became a little more cross -cultural in the projects that we have done, you know, when we saw the opportunity and the partners approached us as well.

 

Owen Underhill 14:59

So those were some of the things that we were able to explore more fully with the support of Push.

 

Gabrielle Martin 15:08

And your role in the projects, is it, are you sometimes composer, sometimes more producer? Does your role shift across these projects?

 

Owen Underhill 15:20

Well, I'm the conductor of the ensemble, so I am a member of the ensemble, but I did compose Flying White.

 

Speaker 3 15:29

project because I'm a personal and pristine body for Chinese traditional instruments and

 

Owen Underhill 15:36

And so I was, and also Dorothy Chang was involved with that as a composer. So sometimes I'm involved as a creator as well, but the projects that we've done like that are tend to be so original that, you know, you feel a little bit like an artistic director of the project as a whole.

 

Gabrielle Martin 16:02

Yeah, yeah. And so you kind of mentioned that one of the benefits of partnering with Push was to bring in different audiences and that it was kind of a good home for those more interdisciplinary projects.

 

Gabrielle Martin 16:20

Yeah, how do you see, I'm curious, you know, having had a relationship with the festival since the early days, how you see the cultural context of the festival and its significance in Vancouver.

 

Owen Underhill 16:31

Yeah, well I mean push brought in from around the world like leading innovative cutting -edge projects that otherwise would never have come to Vancouver. But they also had a role with local artists and helped, you know, integrate them with other artists from around the world.

 

Owen Underhill 16:58

So it was, push has definitely had a fantastic impact over the

 

Speaker 3 17:08

you know, past 20 years or so.

 

Gabrielle Martin 17:11

What are you what are you excited about now with a turning point ensemble?

 

Owen Underhill 17:15

Working next year, we're doing a production of Kaya Sarajajo's music. She just passed away of a Finnish composer and her music is so colorful and beautiful and hardly ever done in Vancouver because it's for very large ensembles and so that's the kind of thing we'd like to present up close to Vancouver audiences and we're always working on recording projects so we just did a recording project of Nova Han who's a local composer of some large work she wrote for us and so that's just been released and we're trying to dream up some more dance projects but usually those take two or three years to

 

Gabrielle Martin 18:13

Okay.

 

Owen Underhill 18:14

put in the hopper. Yeah.

 

Gabrielle Martin 18:16

It sounds like you're very busy, which is exciting, working on all sorts of collaborations and new projects. Of all the projects that were train point ensemble projects that were presented at Push, what would you say is like your most dear project, the one that you have the fondest memories of?

 

Owen Underhill 18:38

Well, I have fond memories of several of them. Definitely the Zappa, Varese, and John Oswald projects, one of them. The Radio Rewrite was some ways a similar project because it involved the music of Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead, who most people know that he's written for film and so on.

 

Owen Underhill 19:03

But he also is interested in unusual instruments like the And Martineau. It's a bit like the Theremin and the music of Olivier Messiaen. The similar way that Zappa was interested in Varese, so that Radio Rewrite project included Johnny Greenwood's music and so we were able to have a bit of a connection with him through his publisher and also we had on that program a couple of newer works involving And Martineau and a big piece by Steve Reich.

 

Owen Underhill 19:50

Which is called Radio Rewrite, which is actually based on a couple of Radio Ants songs. And I guess the sort of genre busting, if you could say, projects like that, where it seemed a really natural ones to do with Push.

 

Owen Underhill 20:14

And those generally did very well also with audience and interest, local interest.

 

Gabrielle Martin 20:24

Thanks so much, Ellen. Oh, you're welcome.

 

Ben Charland 20:30

That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run January 23rd to February 9th, 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

 

Ben Charland 20:51

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. Push Play is produced by myself, Trisha Knowles, and Ben Charlin. A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.

 

Gabrielle Martin chats with Dana Gingras of Animals of Distinction.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Dana discuss: 

• How did the relationship with PuSh start and develop?

• The personal meaning of Dana Gingras’s work for Gabrielle

• How was “Monumental” a culmination of previous work?

• What does it mean to have a performing band’s live energy in rehearsals?

• How did these collaborations evolve with artists in different media?

• How do you make dance like going to see a concert?

• How do we deal with and manage progress in our artistic practice?

• How is the process of research changing?

• How do you perceive the cultural context of PuSh and what has that meant for your work?

• What is the power of being a creator on the outside of things?

• What is liminality and why is it a powerful feature of your work?

• Why is messiness an important part of developing work and the creative process?

• Why was Monumental such a big step for PuSh?

About Dana Gingras and Animals of Distinction

Animals of Distinction (AOD) is the multimedia dance company of renowned choreographer and dancer Dana Gingras. Through AOD, Gingras has fostered the creation of numerous cutting-edge works that have involved innovative collaborations across diverse mediums and artistic practices, all shaped by the possibilities of new technologies and cultural shifts.

At the centre of the work is a belief that we can obtain critical knowledge from engagingwith the physical and emotional risks inherent to dance andmovement. It is through thebody and choreography that this element of risk can be employed to explore a vision ofthe world that is larger than our individual isolated experiences. The goal is to stimulateaudiences to become more aware of the elements ofcomplexity, connectivity, andcomplicity within our physical, social, and emotional lives.

AOD’s work has been presented nationally and internationally across diverse platformsincluding live performance, film, design, visual art, and new media. In 2016,under thedirection of Gingras, AOD produced The Holy Body Tattoo’s last work, monumental(2005), with Godspeed You! BlackEmperor playing live. This expanded version of thepiece premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver as part of the PuShFestival in January 2016. Since then, monumental has been performed at the AdelaideFestival in Australia, Montreal’s Place des Arts, Grand Théâtre du Québec, as part ofLuminato at The Hearn Generating Station in Toronto, the Edinburgh InternationalFestival in Scotland, BAM’s NEXT WAVE Festival in New York, theROMAEUROPAFestival in Italy, MONA FOMA in Tasmania, Australia and, mostrecently, at London’s Barbican Centre.

In 2018 Gingras joined forces with group A, a Berlin-based Japanese avant-gradesynthwave duo, and Sonya Stefan, a Montreal-based media artist. Together, theycreated anOther—a hybrid production, with performance, installation, and a liveconcert. anOther premiered at Agora de la Danse and made its international debut atMONA FOMA in 2019.

Free Fall/Chute Libre, her new immersive dance film, was created through a residency at the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT). Using the Satosphère’s full-dome theatre, the work focuses on stimulating viewers’ senses in unexpected ways. 


In 2017 Dana Gingras/Animals of Distinction was granted a long-term residency at the Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV) in Montreal’s Place des Arts. Through this residency, Gingras/AOD produced a new large-scale work entitled FRONTERA with scenography by London based United Visual Artists and a live score by newly reformed Fly Pan Am. Recipient of support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund, FRONTERA premiered in Quebec City in November 2019 and has since been performed as a part of the Danse Danse season at Place des Arts in Montreal, at the Sydney Festival, Berlin’s CTM Festival, the PuSh Festival in Vancouver and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Dana Gingras has collaborated with cultural icons like William Gibson and Jenny Holzer . Musical collaborators include underground legends like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Tindersticks , Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three , The Tiger Lillies , Roger Tellier-Craig (Fly Pan Am) , Le Révélateur , and Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Multimedia works have been co-created with 3D animator Josh Sherrett, with animators and programmers James Paterson and Amit Pitaru , and, for her work on Arcade Fire’s award-winning Sprawl II video , with directors William Morrison and Vincent Morriset.

A registered non-profit society, The Animals of Distinction Arts Society is directed (in its activities and mandate) by artistic director Dana Gingras. AOD is produced and represented by international agent Sarah Rogers.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on ton the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:22
Today's episode features Dana Jenkra and is anchored around the 2016 Push Festival. Dana Jenkra is a choreographer, filmmaker, performer, and teacher. Her 30 -year career has moved across mediums and artistic practices and has established her as a game -changing, boundary -pushing artist. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:39
As the co -founder of the Holy Body Tattoo in 1993, Jenkra and company changed the landscape of Canadian dance and earned numerous awards and honors for their stage and film work. In 2006, Jenkra established Animals of Distinction in Montreal, a cutting -edge company working at the intersection of dance, film, music, installation, and technology. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:01
Through the direction of Jenkra, Animals of Distinction has premiered innovative collaborations with artists and performers such as Group A, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am, and United Visual Artists. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:13
Here's my conversation with Dana. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:18
Hi, I'm Gabrielle. I'm the director of programming at the Push Festival, and I am here with Dana Gengras today. Thank you for joining me in conversation. No, of course. 

Dana Gingras 01:26
such a pleasure so good 

Gabrielle Martin 01:27
see you again. Yeah, and we are in Montreal, Giorgé, and this has long been a meeting place of First Nations, including the Kanyan Kahaka, the Anishinaabe, the Wendat, and the Abenaki. And this is also your patio. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:46
It is, yes. And here today we're gonna talk about your work with Push Festival, and its place within your wider practice, and so I just want to start by understanding your, your, how the relationship with Push started and how it developed. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:02
Yeah. 

Dana Gingras 02:02
The agent that I've worked with for many many years and is the managing producer of Animals of Distinction, Sarah Rogers, has a very long relationship with push and Norman. Norman presented, I believe it was Marie Broussard's peep show in the first festival and Sarah was working on that. 

Dana Gingras 02:28
So she's had this long relationship with push that way and I guess we premiered this expanded version of Monumental in 2016 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre with push and that came into being many conversations with Norman. 

Dana Gingras 02:56
It was actually David Sefton from UCLA at the time when we presented the original Monumental choreography with Noam Ganyon and myself for Holy Buddy Tattoo. David's dream was to see Monumental with live music and at the time Godspeed You Black Emperor were not together so it was just not going to be possible. 

Dana Gingras 03:21
And so they got back together I forget what year maybe 2011 and David Sefton showed up again and by now I think he had moved on to the Adelaide Festival and was like okay the band's together what about this version of Monumental with the band? 

Gabrielle Martin 03:39
Yeah, can you just take us back a little bit when was monumental first premiere the original version? 

Dana Gingras 03:44
2005. Yeah, yeah. Stayed here. 

Gabrielle Martin 03:46
Her push officially started. 

Dana Gingras 03:48
Oh yeah, it toured Canada and then the final show of it was in 2006 at UCLA. 

Gabrielle Martin 03:54
and Godspeed You Black Emperor was a Vancouver -based. 

Dana Gingras 03:57
No, they're Montreal -based band. Very, very Montreal, yes. So there was like years of conversation, and Norman was part of those conversations about getting this show up and running again with Godspeed You Black Emperors. 

Dana Gingras 04:18
So eventually there was an agreement. The band was like, okay, we're in, and everything started to move very quickly. So Adelaide was on board, and then Norman came along and said, how about we do a residency at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre? 

Dana Gingras 04:36
Wow, okay. So he offered us, I think it was three or four days at the Queenie to get the piece up and running, and then Animals of Distinction produced this expanded version of the piece with live music. 

Dana Gingras 04:51
So the band composed more music for the show, visuals were expanded, we had a whole new cast of dancers. And it was really that piece, being able to have that residency at the Queenie, thanks to Norman, that made it all possible. 

Gabrielle Martin 05:10
I didn't know that piece of history, that's really nice, because I didn't actually share my relationship with your work, and your work has been very profound for me as an artist. And also, just speaking about your work in the context of Push, both Monumental and Frontera, which we'll talk about in a moment, were Queenie projects, which are like feature Push projects. 

Gabrielle Martin 05:33
Push usually would only do one of that a year in the Queenie, so it's really exciting the scale of those projects and what that meant for Push. And I know that that different or newly imagined version of Monumental was really anticipated for many people like myself, it was an original version, and it was just incredible to see that piece, that profound piece, come back with these additional elements. 

Gabrielle Martin 05:59
And I will add one more personal anecdote, which is that taking your contemporary dance workshop at the Cult as a youth is really what started my lifelong passion. Oh, that's so great, that's so great, you're probably rolling. 

Dana Gingras 06:18
around on the floor a lot and falling 

Gabrielle Martin 06:20
a lot. It was great. And I remember you also shared the video of our brief eternity with the students or you know the youth participants at that point and it just blew my mind as I know it did for many people. 

Gabrielle Martin 06:31
Super exciting for me to be talking about that and I figured I should definitely mention that. But just yeah getting back to your work and it's so nice to know that Push was also able to support that realization and then went on to tour. 

Dana Gingras 06:45
Yes, yes. I think it was the first time there was a push show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, so that was kind of the launching of that, which I think continued for the next five years. And then we were back in 2020 with Frontera, so Norman had been part of those conversations, and then by 2020 he wasn't part of the festival anymore, but Joyce saw it through and we presented Frontera then at the Queen Elizabeth. 

Dana Gingras 07:16
Yeah, 2020, yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin 07:18
And so you've spoken a bit about monumental and the process of realizing for the festival which involved this technical residency and getting the band on board and waiting for the perfect timing to do that. 

Gabrielle Martin 07:31
And then with Frontera, can you talk a little bit about that project and then maybe also how your practice evolved in that period? Well, if you want to start with monumental version 1 or 2, it's up to you. 

Dana Gingras 07:51
Well, Monday Mental, when we premiered that in 2005, for Noam and I, that was really a culmination of, I think, a decade, you know, decade's worth of work. And it was really a culmination of our partnership and, you know, all of these intense pieces we made together, like our Brief Eternity, Poetry and Apocalypse, Circa, Running Wild. 

Dana Gingras 08:15
So it was really the first time that we had both stepped out of work, we weren't in Monumental, and worked as choreographers, directors on the outside. The expanded version of Monumental, the choreography wasn't really altered at all, there was like some little details maybe that were, you know, fleshed out, but really it was more about making it a Godspeed, You Black Emperor project so that the music beginning to end was all Godspeed because the original version had some sequences in it that was using found sound as well, 

Dana Gingras 08:55
so it was like a real collage. So I felt like the expanded version really became, I don't know, it really became something else with this fully realized, fully performed score by the band and having the band's energy there. 

Dana Gingras 09:14
I remember the first rehearsals at Taplaste Czar here with the band and the dancers and when the band started to play, the dancers who were all on these pedestals for three quarters of the work, the live music almost knocked them off the blocks. 

Dana Gingras 09:30
Like they had such a jolt of energy, I was like, like I was so worried because you could just see how it kind of like it, it just ignited this energy that is so different than having a kind of pre -recorded soundtrack. 

Dana Gingras 09:45
So and I think for the audience receiving it at the Queenie and other places that we perform just having that, you know. 

Gabrielle Martin 09:54
I experienced it at Place des Arts and like I remember I remember the show very vividly. It was very powerful Yeah, incredible experience. Yeah 

Dana Gingras 10:04
So that, I think that viscerality is something that's kind of continued through into my work. And with Frontera, that was created through a long -term residency. It was the first one at CCOB from 2017, yeah, 2019 Central Vertigo. 

Dana Gingras 10:22
So that was created at that residency. And that was my first partnership with United Visual Artists. And so they did a sonography with lighting. And I've gone on to make two more projects with them, Creation Destruction and Ensemble, which is an installation that was part of their 20th anniversary show last year in London. 

Dana Gingras 10:46
So that started a whole new kind of, I think, phase of work. 

Gabrielle Martin 10:52
Yeah. I mean, I know your work with the Holy Body of Tattoo was very visual and you use things like projections. And but I was reading about how you describe your work with Animals of Distinction and this, you know, commitment to the possibility of new technology and cultural shifts. 

Gabrielle Martin 11:11
It's really makes sense for the work of Animals of Distinction that I've seen. And is that, did that kind of evolve also from this different, the second version of monumental and that collaboration, closer collaboration with artists of a different medium? 

Gabrielle Martin 11:30
Is that, or had you already been working in a really cross -disciplinary way? 

Dana Gingras 11:37
I think since the beginning of my career, I've been working in a cross -disciplinary way because I was always interested in being able to bring dance to audiences maybe outside of the dance milieu because to me the dance milieu is very small and I didn't want to just make work for For people that already loved dance. 

Dana Gingras 11:58
I wanted to try and draw people in from You know like say people that were more interested in music or film you know digital cultures, so And that was the interesting thing with with monumental and with many of the works Is that we had people coming to see dance for the first time at the Queenie? 

Dana Gingras 12:21
Because they were coming to see Godspeed and then we had dance audiences that discovered Godspeed for the first time because they came to see a dance show. So I like that kind of the electricity the the kind of energy that kind of happens when audiences come together that are you know, just more there's more cross kind of pollination and Yeah that's all this excited me and Like going to see music shows has always been my passion So I'm like, 

Dana Gingras 12:55
I want to make dance like going to see a concert from from day one That was like my my interest so I think with animals, I've just put a little bit more emphasis because now we're more in a technological age and Everything's advancing so quickly that these questions about progress Which were always there since our brief eternity with Noam and I like where are we going? 

Dana Gingras 13:21
How how are we changing? What is the speed of progress? How do we keep up with this? Where is it taking us which is really? kind of post capitalistic You know Inquiries like it's like really like what are what are we doing? 

Dana Gingras 13:36
Like, you know, we're all running so fast You know and here we are come out of the pandemic. We all had time and boom It's like faster than ever and it's just exponentials. So it's a theme. I think that Continues to to inspire me and even with new work. 

Dana Gingras 13:54
I'm researching it's all around AI and just going through The process of research in the last eight months. It's like changing all the time. It's crazy how fast it's happening I'm just like, okay Lots of material for research Translate yeah. 

Dana Gingras 14:12
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah 

Gabrielle Martin 14:15
I'm interested also in how you perceive the cultural context of PUSH and how that context, you know, how that was meaningful for the presentation of your work. I know you were based in Vancouver for a long time. 

Gabrielle Martin 14:27
So I think you have more insight than a lot of artists who came to PUSH to present their work. Just, I'm just curious about, yeah, maybe your relationship with Vancouver, your relationship with PUSH in that sense. 

Gabrielle Martin 14:39
Did you know Norman when you lived in Vancouver? 

Dana Gingras 14:44
Oh yeah, I've known Norman, I mean, you know, from the time, yeah, he was in, just started Rumble. I remember the taxi piece he did with Harvey Mellor. Oh wow, okay. Because Noam and I were in Vancouver in the late 80s, we were dancing with Edam, that's where we met. 

Dana Gingras 15:06
So, you know, I had some history already, late 80s with Vancouver, and yeah, I knew Norman, like then I knew of him. He was quite, you know, the figure in the community. And then I moved to Montreal for a while, then I moved back to Vancouver, and Noam and I started Holy Body Tattoo there in 93. 

Dana Gingras 15:28
And thing, what Push did is like Vancouver, we always felt isolated in Vancouver. Like we always felt cut off by the mountains. And so we'd come out to Montreal and we'd perform, you know, at the time it was called the FIND Festival, the Festival Internationale de Nouvelle Dance. 

Dana Gingras 15:45
And that. 

Gabrielle Martin 15:47
Actually, is that the root of Festival Transamerique? No, Transamerique. 

Dana Gingras 15:51
was a whole other festival, but fine finished and then the FDA ended up kind of programming dance. And so I think that what Norman did with Push was he started to bring Vancouver into a relationship with international artists coming in, but then international presenters coming in and I felt like he put Vancouver on the map that way and that was really exciting. 

Dana Gingras 16:21
Because it felt like there was just this possibility, like things were becoming more porous, you know people were coming to the city to see work, to present work and you know that's it's great like Push continues and now there's other sources of that happening in Vancouver like Dancehouse, but at the time there was there was nothing so yeah it was exciting. 

Gabrielle Martin 16:47
And you maintain you've maintained a relationship with Vancouver I know at least for many years you're working with some of the artists or Vancouver based dance artists. Yeah in your projects Yeah, so I guess I just interpret your work as being very your collaborations being you know working at a national or international level and Why has that been important to you and continue to work with artists that aren't just where you're based? 

Dana Gingras 17:16
Yeah, I don't like borders and I don't like being contained or I don't like identities that are fixed. I like fluidity and so for me, it was always important to kind of, you know, keep my connection with Vancouver and have this fluidity between Vancouver and Montreal and yeah, I like being a little bit more on the outside of things. 

Dana Gingras 17:44
So, that kind of keeps me in movement, keeps things harder to define. Same thing with what I do as a creator or collaborations, you know, they're harder to define sometimes than just this is a dance show and again, I like that just kind of, liminality is really interesting to me because it's kind of like where you can be the most creative where you can kind of, you know, break rules and, you know, 

Dana Gingras 18:16
have a little bit of what I call an unruly attitude towards, I don't know, the forces that want to create, you know, status quo. So, I like to push against that a little bit and, you know, I was born in Canada but I never grew up in Canada so I came back after high school so for me also, Canada, I'm not kind of bogged down with the history of Canada in the same way. 

Dana Gingras 18:48
I mean, my grandparents, great grandparents were Quebecois and they moved out west and so I just like this kind of messiness that allows for a kind of communication to flow back and forth and get across those mountains. 

Dana Gingras 19:12
Yeah, so, yeah, really nice relationships with Vancouver dancers over the years, specifically 605 Collective and yeah, I just worked with Josh recently on a new piece. Last year, he was a duo and yeah, so that was, it was great to have that connection again. 

Gabrielle Martin 19:32
nice to have that piece of history to understand just how significant monumental was and Frontera, you know, but monumental being that first like Queenie piece. Yeah. That's a big step for the festival. 

Dana Gingras 19:44
Yeah, it was a big step. But really, you know, these conversations go on for years. And so the conversation to get it to that place was, you know, a lot of toil and staying in contact with how things were developing. 

Dana Gingras 20:01
And so I know Sarah Rogers and Norman really, you know, kind of kept at it. I think they would keep finding each other in different parts of the world. And it was like, hey, so what's happening with Monumental? 

Dana Gingras 20:13
But really, Norman, the piece that he brought to it, this residency at the Queenie is what clinched it and actually really pushed it over the edge in order to make it happen. Because otherwise, we couldn't have remounted that piece without having time in a theater and bringing all the visual elements, the video that William Morrison created for the work, the live sounds, the staging, because it was a new staging as well with the band. 

Dana Gingras 20:41
It was just so many details, new cast and, you know, the lighting, as you've seen, like the lights are coming through these podiums, the dancers are standing on it so they're blind half the time, turning. 

Dana Gingras 20:54
You know, the risk is there. Yeah, the risk is there. You know, we had some, you know, few dancers. It was like their first real professional show. And this was like their debut. And I was like, okay, please, please, we'll all be good. 

Dana Gingras 21:09
We'll all be good. It was amazing. It was like a night to remember. 

Ben Charland 21:17
That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles. 

Ben Charland 21:34
A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival. 

Ben Charland 21:53
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. 

Gabrielle Martin chats with Sylvain Émard of Sylvain Émard Danse.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Sylvain discuss: 

• How did your relationship with PuSh begin?

• What was the impact and legacy of the show, Le Grand Continental?

• How do you organize and prepare for a truly large project like Le Grand Continental?

• How does line dancing fit into the origins and creation of the show?

• How does a challenging project translate into a rewarding production for creators, crew and audiences?

• What is the result of the fusion of popular and contemporary art?

• How do you succeed in having the right representation of the community in the cast?

• How is the context of PuSh and Vancouver significant to the work when brought to that community?

• Why was the interaction of people in each cast of Le Grand Continental like a dream in its encapsulation of the world?

• How has your artistic practice evolved over the past ten years?

• Reconnecting with the sheer pleasure of dancing

• What happens when the spectator is in the choreography, not outside?

About Sylvain Émard

A prolific and internationally respected artist, Sylvain Émard created his own dance company Sylvain Émard Danse in 1990, quickly establishing a reputation for a very original style. Highly theatrical at first, his work soon evolved into a more formal approach to dance. Ever since Ozone, Ozone (1987), his first solo, up to Rhapsodie (2022), he has been exploring the territory of human nature through the force and strength of the body. His repertoire now includes over thirty original pieces that have had a resounding impact all over the world.

Renowned for his refined style and precise movement, his presentation in 2009 of Le Grand Continental® at the Festival TransAmériques must have come to some as a surprise. Inspired by line dancing, this unique piece has featured 3,000 non-dancers in several performances across Canada, the United States, Mexico, South Korea, New Zealand, Chile, Germany and Austria, attracting some 125,000 spectators. In September 2017, Le Super Méga Continental boasted 375 dancers in Montréal to celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary in a monumental fashion.

Sylvain Émard’s unique style has led to invitations to work as guest choreographer in theatre, opera and cinema. These collaborations include his joining forces with Robert Lepage in 2005 to work on the opera 1984 by Lorin Maazel, presented namely at Covent Garden in London and at La Scala in Milan. At the behest of theater director René-Richard Cyr, Sylvain Émard is creating the choreographies for the musical Demain matin, Montréal m’attend at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.

Sylvain Émard has received numerous prestigious awards, such as the Jean A. Chalmers Choreographic Award (1996). He is also co-founder of the Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded in what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:22
Today's episode features Sylvain Emmer and the 2015 Push Festival. Internationally celebrated Montreal -based choreographer Sylvain Emmer created his own dance company, Sylvain Emmer Dance, in 1990, quickly establishing a reputation for a very original style. 

Gabrielle Martin 00:39
His repertoire of more than 30 unique pieces has been praised for the diversity of its choreographic vocabulary, which swings between extremes of generous fluidity and taut control. Renowned for his refined style and precise movement, his presentation in 2009 of Grand Continental at the Festival Transamerique must have come to some as a surprise. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:02
Since then, this skillful blend of line dancing and contemporary dance has won over amateur dancers and audiences around the world. Here's my conversation with Sylvain. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:15
I just want to start by acknowledging that we are gathered here in Jojage, or Montreal, which has long been a historic meeting place of different First Nations peoples, including the Konyan Kahake, the Wendat, the Abenaki, and the Anishinaabe. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:31
And we're also in front of the Festival of Trans -American Headquarters, which is really nice. We're a festival hub, because we're gathered during the festival here in Montreal, Jojage. And I would love to ask you about your relationship with Push. 

Gabrielle Martin 01:44
And how that started, how did you end up in conversation, and what was the beginning? 

Sylvain Émard 01:50
Well, the beginning was, well, we knew Norma, who was directing the festival at the time, and also Joyce, and we just happened to, I mean, we just happened to run into Joyce once, here at the FTA, actually, and we started to talk about the Grand Continental because she's been hearing about it, because we've been doing it, we had like four different editions at the FTA of the Gallant Council. 

Sylvain Émard 02:22
Yes. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:23
it premiered, I didn't say this, but just to give more context even, it premiered in 2009 here. And it was maybe a surprise to some because it differed a little bit from your previous work for its kind of skillful blend of line dancing and contemporary dance. 

Gabrielle Martin 02:38
And then since then, you know, amateur dancers and audiences have just loved it across the world. But okay, so did Joyce or Norman see it? 

Sylvain Émard 02:46
no they didn't see it at that time at that time they didn't and then we well we had videos so we sent them videos and they got really interested and i was really uh excited about the idea of doing it in vancouver which i mean it's a city i really like but i don't have many opportunities to go to go there so that i was really happy of the invitation but it took a while to organize everything because those are i mean the gun concern of that is a big project to organize i mean you have to be really well prepared ahead 

Gabrielle Martin 03:24
So can you get into that now, just for our public, to really understand what is Ligon Contenta and how was it realized for the Push Festival? 

Sylvain Émard 03:32
So Le Grand Constantin is, I'd say, a fusion of line dancing and contemporary dance. So it's kind of, the source of it is probably my obsession about line dancing, because as a kid, that's the very first form of dance that I did. 

Sylvain Émard 03:52
Okay. In a basement of the church of my parish at this part of Montreal. 

Gabrielle Martin 03:58
Was that popular? It was popular. As a part of a faith practice at the time? 

Sylvain Émard 04:08
had nothing to do with religion. Okay. No. It was just like, it was very popular. Line dancing was everywhere in the 60s, 70s. And so I thought, you know, I don't know why, but I always was interested in watching people doing line dancing, even when it's boring. 

Sylvain Émard 04:32
I don't know, park, public places that really touches me. Yeah. And I don't know, I always like stop and stare and watch for, you know, long. 

Gabrielle Martin 04:47
period of time. Just was this the first piece that you'd done out of a conventional theater space? In a public space? 

Sylvain Émard 04:56
I think so. I think it's, yeah, I come from a theater background also, so we did theater, you know, out in public spaces, but then snow. And so, and I decided that, you know, I would share that dream with the director of the FDA, Marie -Anne Falcon, just like that. 

Sylvain Émard 05:19
And she said, oh, I love the idea, let's do that. I said, wow, are you serious? This is like a big thing, you know. First edition, with 65 people, and then it kept growing. 

Gabrielle Martin 05:29
So, and this is not just professional dancers. 

Sylvain Émard 05:34
Oh no, it's mainly on professional platforms. So we recruit people in the community. So we do like auditions, which actually are like information sessions. So we explain to the people, you know, what the project is about. 

Sylvain Émard 05:51
So we kind of select people, but actually we kind of accept almost everyone because we know that at the beginning of the process, many people are going to withdraw because they're. 

Gabrielle Martin 06:05
so hard on them to get everything exact. 

Sylvain Émard 06:09
It is a very demanding project because it's kind of a three -month 

Gabrielle Martin 06:13
I was joking, but maybe it's closer to the truth. 

Sylvain Émard 06:17
it is even for that because there's a team of professional dancers that help to teach and to support the non -professional and even the professional dancers things it's difficult so um yeah the so this you know the the it's it's a challenge for everyone 

Gabrielle Martin 06:37
We want and this is the challenge is because of the amount of material to memorize or because it all has to be a you Know information with everybody and 

Sylvain Émard 06:46
It's a 30 -minute choreography to remember. 

Gabrielle Martin 06:50
It's a lot for amateur dances. 

Sylvain Émard 06:54
People do work a lot during those rehearsals, but we also provide them with learning videos so that they can work at home, and they do work at home day. And so it's a very intense, but fun project. So the idea is to give the people, as much as possible, a glimpse of what is a professional dance experience. 

Sylvain Émard 07:21
And so the standards are high for them, and it's a challenge. So, and I think this is why the project works so well. It's because it's challenging. 

Gabrielle Martin 07:36
Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's nice when you assume people can do more than they even think they can do. And I think people, it's very rewarding for people when they have that challenge and then they're in a supportive environment and they rise to that challenge. 

Sylvain Émard 07:51
Yeah, they're very, I mean, proud of themselves to achieve those challenges. And, but there's always, you know, it's a 30 -minute choreography. We use like popular music of different style, but every music is being remixed or reworked by a contemporary composer, because even in the music I want that fusion with popular art and contemporary art, so that the people can see that popular, being popular and contemporary, 

Sylvain Émard 08:27
I mean, there's a fine line sometimes, and it depends on how you approach it. And so, so, yeah, so, but the thing is that, yeah, you were... No, no, no, no, no. Because I can't, I can't speak for hours about this project, so you just stop me. 

Sylvain Émard 08:46
And so we're using a different style of music. So sometimes in different cities, because this project has traveled a lot on four continents, so sometimes we do like specific sections for a host city. 

Gabrielle Martin 09:10
So can you tell me about realizing it for Vancouver? Because it came a year after premiering here at FDI, it came to push. And was there anything unique about realizing it there? Did it also have 65 people in it? 

Gabrielle Martin 09:24
Did you go to Montreal for months of rehearsals? Or how did that process go? 

Sylvain Émard 09:30
So, for Vancouver, what we did, it had 65 people in the cast, and what was interesting about the cast in Vancouver is that it was very diverse. We had a very, and that's what I like about that, is when we succeed in having the right representation of the community in the cast, and I found that was the case. 

Sylvain Émard 09:59
For the very first time, I was content with the result of that, so that was great. So 65 people, but the project works, so I'm the only one travelling. So I go to the city, in this case Vancouver, I go there, and then I choose a team of local professional dancers, and I teach them all the material, and I do the audition, then I leave, and the professional dancers keep rehearsing with the non -professional, 

Sylvain Émard 10:36
then I come back in the middle, because at first we start with two groups, so that the people are not getting too overwhelmed by the size of the thing, so at one point we merge the two groups, I come back and then do some rehearsal, then I leave, and then I come back at the end. 

Sylvain Émard 10:57
So it's kind of a, I try to give as much as possible the whole thing to the community, professional and non -professional, so that they take it, and they make it happen. 

Gabrielle Martin 11:10
And what space did it end up being performed at in Vancouver? 

Sylvain Émard 11:13
It was performed in Queen Elizabeth, in front of the Queen Elizabeth theater. The Playhouse, Queen Elizabeth, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin 11:23
right by the push offices. Yes! Those are your dates. That is impressive. I've yet to really, you know, I shy away from the outdoor performances but they're so impactful because you also get the public that just, you know, stumbles upon the performance which is really nice. 

Gabrielle Martin 11:39
Did it rain during the performance? 

Sylvain Émard 11:42
it rains so much 

Gabrielle Martin 11:44
Unsurprisingly, but, unfortunately. 

Sylvain Émard 11:48
cold actually but it really rained and actually for me those are the best performances when it rains and and the the dancers you know when they saw the rain they were you know waiting inside I said are we going to dance are we gonna I said for sure you're going to you're a professional 

Gabrielle Martin 12:08
I couldn't be better than that. 

Sylvain Émard 12:10
So, and I told them, after this, you always want to be dancing in the rain. And they said, come on, come on. And after they said, are you right? You're right. It was so much fun. You know, it's like dancing in the rain. 

Sylvain Émard 12:25
And the audience gets really excited about that. You know, about seeing those brave people dancing in the rain, no matter what. So, we did dance in the rain, and then the last day, it was so beautiful. 

Sylvain Émard 12:38
That sunshine, really warm. So, we had, we were just missing the snow. It was a nice arc. Yeah, yeah. We had everything. 

Gabrielle Martin 12:48
And so I'm curious about the how you perceive the cultural context of Vancouver and well of the push festival Which is in Vancouver on the? unceded squamish Musqueam and say with tooth patient land and How that context is significant for? 

Gabrielle Martin 13:07
Your own your own work or for the presentation of this work So being a Montreal based artist and bringing the work to push. What does it mean? What does that mean and how is it to realize this work in that community? 

Sylvain Émard 13:20
Well, this is a good question because the interest for me is since the project is being re -created with the local people, for me the interest is to see how the work is going to be transformed by the fact that it's going to be like a different community, a different culture. 

Sylvain Émard 13:55
But I mean, it's more in the process than in the result of the work. The result is the same as you have like Vancouver people, Montreal people, New York people. The result at the end is like a beautiful human being dancing and sharing and it's good. 

Sylvain Émard 14:18
It's more in the process that I learned from the people. I learned, like for instance, as I said, this cast was very diverse and so for me it was interesting to see and encourage to the dance the interaction between the people and it was for me a real kind of a dream. 

Sylvain Émard 14:56
It looked like you had, among the 65 people, you had a representation of the whole planet, almost, you know. So it was very special for that. And also there's, of course, there is, which I didn't realize at the beginning of the origin of the project, that that project will impact people so much. 

Sylvain Émard 15:24
And as Vancouver was no exception. We had like people coming to me and saying to me, you know, this experience made me realize that I should quit my job. So I quit my job. 

Gabrielle Martin 15:47
life -changing yeah 

Sylvain Émard 15:49
And because, again, we don't realize how much, you know, because we, as artists, we're in that world since, you know, so many years, so that we take it for granted that this is normal, what we're doing is, you know, that's our life and we don't see how privileged we are. 

Sylvain Émard 16:16
Even though sometimes it's kind of a tough life, but we're still, I mean, privileged to be doing what we're doing. And those people, they discover that work and it's, for some of them, it's life changing because they see that, you know, there's other things than the day to day routine that they're being kept in for so many years. 

Sylvain Émard 16:45
With no nothing ahead, or I don't know. And, but, you know, I could write a book about all the Tim Wang Ash. 

Gabrielle Martin 16:59
testimonials. Yeah and I think there's also something really powerful about the relationships or the social experience of a creative process of going through that journey together and especially as you talked about if it's something that invites them to step into their bodies or onto the stage in a way that they haven't been able to do before that that empowering experience I think can really transfer to other areas of people's lives and it sounds like it did. 

Gabrielle Martin 17:26
Has your work been presented in Vancouver outside of the push festival? 

Sylvain Émard 17:33
Before or after yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been Maybe three or four times before that I presented to my work in Vancouver. Yeah 

Gabrielle Martin 17:44
Can you talk about your artistic practice and how it's evolved since then in the last 10 years? 

Sylvain Émard 17:53
Well, since we're going to the continent... 

Gabrielle Martin 17:57
Since this moment in time, yeah. 

Sylvain Émard 18:00
Well, what I can say that it's always difficult to tell exactly how something has impacted you or influenced you. But for sure, I knew that Le Grand Consonantel was something special because it has, as you mentioned at the beginning, you know, like people didn't expect me there because, you know, I'm more known as being like a very, I don't know, contempt. 

Gabrielle Martin 18:32
...precise movement, vocabulary... 

Sylvain Émard 18:37
to have an approach more, I sometimes experimental at some point, and the fact that I was going with non -professional, using popular music, line dancing, but that's me. So I just shared that with the people, and I think what it had done to my work is that it reconnected me with this very mere pleasure of dancing. 

Sylvain Émard 19:16
And this is something we lose track of as professional dancers because we're searching or being very serious about things, which is okay. And so you're thinking technique, blah, blah, and you know, when I proposed to the professional dancers to assist me for the project, I thought, you know, they're going to go like line dancing, they'll probably do it because they need money. 

Sylvain Émard 19:49
But then they kept saying, if you do it again, I want to do this again. I want to do this. This is so much fun. And they all said that to me too, is that while just being there and seeing the people reacting to this, to the fact that they are simply dancing and they're so happy and joyful and so communicative, that's so nourishing. 

Sylvain Émard 20:13
So I thought, you know, that's true. This is like, you know, the strength of that piece. And I think that the last piece I did with professionals, with the cast of 20 dancers, which is called Habsudzi, is the result of all that. 

Sylvain Émard 20:35
It's like, it's a piece about ritual, the ritual that surrounds dancing. Why do we gather to dance? Why do we gather to see people dance? Simply that. And so that the piece was, I think, very much influenced by the whole experience. 

Gabrielle Martin 20:54
piece that has also evolved into a digital form or an immersive digital and like because I think I saw you talking about the project at Parkwood Reynolds last fall. 

Sylvain Émard 21:05
Rhapsody was first started, the process started before the pandemic, and then pandemic arrived, so everything was stopped. And so I didn't want to have the dancers, the 20 dancers, without work. So I found some money to keep dancing and do a piece, an outside piece, with two meters between the dancers. 

Sylvain Émard 21:35
And for me, the challenge was to, despite the fact that we're not allowed to meet together, we're going to do a piece about gathering with two meters between people. So let's see what will come out of that. 

Sylvain Émard 21:50
And so I did a piece, the piece you're talking about is a circular choreography, because the gathering form, natural, organic, is when you gather, you make a circle, so you see everyone. So the whole choreography is in circle. 

Sylvain Émard 22:13
So, and then we presented in different cities. And then I decided that it would be a good piece to transform it into an immersive experience. So it's called Natka Choir, and it's a big, big structure, circular structure, quite big, that you get in as a spectator, you get in, and you're being surrounded by 12 dancers doing this circular choreography for 15 minutes in loop. 

Sylvain Émard 22:56
And I like it very much. 

Gabrielle Martin 22:59
And I hear the theme of Grassemblumont gathering in both Le Grand Continental and Rhapsody. 

Sylvain Émard 23:08
again and and what it provides to the spectator is a very particular point of view because spectator is in the choreography not outside so it's kind of anyway so Rhapsody has given birth to a different I'd say version of different pieces 

Tricia Knowles 23:37
That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run January 23rd to February 9th, 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival. 

Tricia Knowles 23:58
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. Push Play is produced by myself, Trisha Knowles, and Ben Charlin. A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.