Seven dancers each weave a fragment of conversation into a dance; each interpret that fragment differently but always work and move with one another in an integral whole.
That was the premise for a new dance piece choreographed by the dancers themselves with the assistance of Sara Coffin and Laura Hicks, workshop leaders at a Sunshine Coast Dance Society program, Moving Voices, last week.
This marks the fifth annual Dance Society residency program held at the Heritage Playhouse at the end of summer. This year, two dancers, Coffin and Hicks, were selected to work on a new performance piece together during their week of residency, and they featured their dance in an evening show on Sept. 6, co-produced by the Society and Caravan World Rhythms.
They also led a group of local dancers to explore movement together in a program that several of the students reported as both challenging and stimulating."We pushed them," said Hicks later. Hicks and Coffin worked 12-hour days themselves, including their breakfast planning meetings, during their residency to seize the chance to utilize the theatre space and advance their art. The result of their collaboration was seen in the finale of last Saturday's show, Dis Chord, developed with the help of the workshop participants.
It was pure movement -the two dancers on stage together, their weight and energy counterbalanced. Sometimes they moved as one; sometimes they contrasted. Since both have studied contact improvisation, the piece incorporated many improvised details.
"We spent time before going on stage getting into each other's space, each other's breath," said Coffin. It was performed using the frenetic piano music of Edwin Dolinski, who could not be at the performance that night. Dolinski had recorded the music beforehand after watching their rehearsal; its composition was also largely improvised. The recording ran on the theatre's computerized piano which could be seen at the back of the stage emitting glorious sound from a phantom pianist. The overall effect was chilling.
Hicks hails from Toronto, but now lives in Vancouver where she frequently performs and teaches. She has completed an internship with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in Washington, DC, using ground-breaking dance methods in their approach to making art.
She performed a solo of her own creation, Fragments and other leftovers, a piece that built slowly through a range of movement to the irritating accompaniment of static radio sound and half-heard whispers that continued the overall theme of conversations.
Sara Coffin, who hails from Nova Scotia, has completed her BFA in dance and kinesiology from Dalhousie University. She has experience in choreography and her work has been presented across Canada. Her solo piece, I've been here before, was a study in form and she demonstrated great power in her performance.
The success of the annual residency is heartening for the Dance Society. President Maggi Guzzi said the group, now in their 15th year, will honour their founding members at a celebration of dance in November. Some of the original members, including Verity Purdy, Paul Blakely and Canada's first prima ballerina, Lois Smith, are among the founders. Dancers will perform old work and new, with the old work brought back to life by the Society especially for this celebratory performance.
