craft | costume | choreograph | (c)repeat
I am buried in the costuming job that I mentioned last post. I’m having so much fun! Miles of thread have been wound and stitched and the cuteness continues to reveal itself. Here are some of the finished pieces so far.
I’m working myself silly on a fantastic costuming gig for Movement Lab dance studio in Toronto. I’ve known the director Ann-Marie Williams through the dance community for years, our paths crossed as students and professionals dancing and administrating our favourite art form! So when she asked me to do all the decorating pieces for the basic tutus and bodysuits she had for her show I jumped at the opportunity.
No frilly, nauseating princessy-ness here, no ma’am! All the pieces are being made from felt, glorious felt! Wherever possible, the pieces (like the gold fish above) will be attached to a brooch pin or a barrette or a headband so that they can also be used afterward, separate from the costume.
I’m off to a good start and will have some finished pieces to share next week. Now back to the machine with me!
I am going to bypass my usual Rearview Fridays post (where I look at an old craft/dance/sewing/you-name-it project of mine) and simple offer up my absolute love for dance. Because on Sunday, April 29th, before I blog again, it’s International Dance Day!
This is a picture of me in a solo I performed during the last year of my college dance program at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Titled The Illegibility of This World, the work is by eminent Canadian dancer/choreographer Julia Sasso. She created this solo on me. It was a fabulous, physical, performative challenge, I revelled in each intense performance in December 2001. photo is by David Hou.
Below I’ve posted this year’s International Dance Day message by Flemish Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. It’s thoughtful, beautiful message that encompasses all that I believe to be true of dance.
I encourage you, as you’re passing through your weekend, to add a little skip or gallop into your walk to the park, to stop for a kitchen dance party or just break it down old school styles in the grocery aisle — make a scene, celebrate dance!
Message of the 30th Anniversary of International Dance Day: Celebrate the never-ending choreography of life
Through time, through the ages, what endures is mostly art. Art seems to be everything humankind leaves to its heirs – whether through buildings or books or paintings or music. Or movement, or dance. In that sense, I think of dance as the most current, the most up-to-date history lesson, as it is in a constant relationship with its most recent past and can only happen in the present.
Dance also, somehow, does not acknowledge borders in the same way as many other arts. Even when certain styles try to limit themselves or work within a frame; the movement of life, its choreography and its need for flux: these take over very quickly, allowing certain styles to mingle with other. Everything engages with everything, naturally, and dance settles only in the space it belongs to — that of the ever-changing present.
I believe that dance may be one of the most honest forms of expression for us to cherish: because when people dance, whether in a ballet performance, a hip-hop battle, an underground contemporary show or just in a discotheque, cutting loose, there are seldom any lies deployed, any masks worn. People reflect each other constantly, but when they dance, perhaps what they reflect most is that moment of honesty.
By moving like other people, by moving with other people and by watching them move, we can best feel their emotions, think their thoughts and connect to their energy. It is, perhaps, then that we can get to know and understand them clearly.
I like to think of a dance performance as a celebration of co-existence, a way to give and make space and time for each other. We tend to forget this, but the underlying beauty in a performance is that it is primarily the convergence of a mass of people, seated one next to the other, all sharing the same moment. There is nothing private about it; a performance is an extremely social experience. All of us assembled for this ritual, which is our bond with the performance, our bond with the same present.
And so, in 2012, I wish everyone lots of dance. Not to forget all their problems of 2011, but on the contrary, to tackle them creatively, to dance around them, to find a way to engage with each other and the world, to engage with life as part of its never-ending choreography. Dance to find honesty and to transmit, to reflect and to celebrate it.”
This post is in praise of the dreamers and creators. The brave ones and silly ones who still play house and superheros and make mud pies when they’re adults. It’s also a little love story to 2 great friends of mine …
I am fortunate to be surrounded by folks who are bursting with imagination, the kindred spirits that Anne of Green Gables was always keeping an eye out for. There are 2 such friends with whom I am having a most excellent, ongoing “practical-make-believe” adventure — Christa Couture and Lindsay Zier-Vogel, wonderful women and artists in their own rights, musician/designer and writer/book-maker respectively ( check them out, they are extraordinary).
And what is our awesome practical-make-believe game? We have a “company” called Veggie Vag. It sounds just rude enough that it makes us giggle, hard.
We even have a logo that Christa, in a fit of procrastination, sass and hilarity, used her graphic design skills wisely (?!) to create a few months ago:
Veggie Vag started about a year ago. You might ask, is it about vegetables? Or, is it about vaginas? Both would be fair questions. Veggie Vag is not really about either, other than the fact that we’re all ladies. And we do like veggies. It’s really mostly about editing. And being friends across miles of space and life. And being hilarious to ourselves.
We were all busy with applications, building websites and so on (the usual) around this time last year and were often editing for each other, enjoying getting the value of 2 perspectives on our work. We started to joke that we were like a collective. Then we decided we were a collective, which meant we needed a wicked acronym. Christa came up with both, she’s the most clever of us, hands down. VEG was first, it stands for “Virtual Editors Group,” which was funny and accurate. But then she said wouldn’t it be more awesome if we were authors — well, Lindsay actually is an author — then we’d be the “Virtual Authors Group,” ahem, VAG, which was infinitely more funny than veg. Put them together and we are really, virtually (as it were) the unstoppable Veggie Vag!
The cool thing is that between the 3 of us we’ve edited grants and “About” pages and difficult emails and cover letters. I got an amazing logo by being a member (thanks Christa!) and we’ve all had a lot of success with the things we’ve edited for each other. Not only do we have this ah-mazing faux company together, we are quite useful to each other. Keeps us in regular contact too, which is brilliant!
Here’s what my co-founders have to say about Veggie Vag:
Lindsay Zier-Vogel: The Veggie Vag is an editing machine, a sounding board, a safety net and cheerleading squad. It’s a place to daydream and blue-sky and hammer out details. Every grant and proposal and project description that passes through these diligent hands is all the better for it. It’s a thoughtful and hilarious editing collective that keeps three of us closer than I ever could’ve imagined. Whoopi, Cate and Julianne should be so lucky to play us in our biopic …
Christa Couture: What started as occasionally asking friends for editorial advice grew into a collective, not quite formal, but steadfast and dedicated, of three women supporting each other’s work. My own work is better for the input of the Veggie Vag, and I love being up to date with, if not also being helpful to, the work of my co-Vag-ers. The Veggie Vag is friendship and artistry combined — a team of writers, thinkers, brainstormers, schemers, planners and best of all cheerleaders … cheerleaders in yellow pant suits and berets. Or spandex. Depending.
[IMPORTANT ASIDE: With “yellow pant suits and berets” Christa’s referring to Je M’appelle Steve, a brilliant YouTube clip we at Veggie Vag like to watch over and over til we cry with laughter. The more you watch it, the funnier it gets.]
Veggie Vag even has an assistant! His name is Dane. Dane Joseph McKellen. He’s fabulous. He’s shower fresh even at 4pm. He anticipates our needs. Dane shows up with a latte just before you realize you need one. Dane reminds you of impending deadlines and copies all the grants. Dane keeps extra mascara and tampons in his desk drawer. Dane orders Thai when you’re working late. Dane put fresh flowers on your desk and clears the boardroom air with aromatherapy.
I could go on and on about Dane, he’s a gem. Dane even has a twitter page, of course, @daneofalltrades. If you’d like to check him out, drop him a line to tell him he’s doing great or ask for some wardrobe advice, do it! But don’t try and lure him to your company, he’s ours and is as loyal as the day is long.
I got mugs made for our 1st anniversary this month. Dane reminded me that it had been a year since we named ourselves and signed the lease on our excellent, 2,800 square foot downtown Toronto loft offices. He suggested that mugs would be particularly classy. I agreed. And every morning I drink tea and think of my Veggie Vag ladies, standing by should I need some extra eyes and perspectives. Or a laugh. Or commiseration.
I am a dreamer. I love imagining and make-believing and creating — so much so that artist and creator became my profession, it seemed inevitable and obvious to me from a young age. I choreograph and dance, I make and inhabit worlds and ideas of my choosing and construction. I sew and craft, imagining and creating what I hope or suspect might work in fabric or paper.
I also spend a few hours teaching creative dance to wee kids each week, which allows me to gallop as a horse, swirl as a wind storm, dart as a fish. It’s a space to remember the fantastic, immense imaginations we are born with. That we have the capacity to believe the impossible into all-sorts-of-possible at our start, but often squelch or embarrass or forget that faith right out of ourselves.
Cheers to make-believing, even, or perhaps especially when you’re an adult. That’s it for this Veggie-Vagger, over and out.
Today I think it’s time to share another knitting project for Rearview Fridays, 3 dimensional internal organs! I made them as costume pieces for a dance I choreographed last year called Organ Stories. The story of the dance itself will be one for another Rearview Friday, I have to upload some video and want to give the dance it’s due here. And these organs deserve their stand-alone own entry.
This first shot is of The Uterus, with me and dancer Krista Posyniak getting organised for a rehearsal in June 2011. I was super-duper pregnant with Gene!
Inspiration: The Heart
In 2009 I knitted an anatomical heart for my husband for Valentine’s day, which he thought was weird, but I also like to think he secretly loves that I do such things! I sought out a pattern online since I didn’t really know where to start and was amazed at all the anatomical patterns people had come up with. Here’s the heart pattern I used, it’s by Kristin Ledgett of The Knit Cafe in Toronto.
I also knitted a heart that year for a wee boy named Ford, my friend’s son who was in hospital with complications from Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Sometimes when I’m at a loss when those I cherish are in a hard spot, making something is the only way I can think of to show my deep love. I pour my thoughts and goodness and hope into my hours of work, and I hope, I believe, that the object carries the weight of that love. Ford is no longer alive, but I’m glad my knitted heart sat beside him and his mom, who is so dear to me, for a while. So this piece is especially tender for me.
The Lungs
I chose 4 organs that I’d make short solos about. The dancer spoke about facts and emotional associations of each organ and then danced a little organ-specific solo — like a lecture-demo on physiology through dance!
Here are the lungs, they tie around the neck and have super-strong earth magnets on the back that stick to a blouse with magnets sewn into it. I developed my own pattern from a few different ones I looked at online, but I didn’t write it down since I modified as I went, argh! Ah well, there’s next time.
The Uterus
This one made me giggle as I made it. And it was great when people would ask me what I was making, particularly because I was obviously pregnant while I was knitting! It was a highly appropriate organ to be knitting in my condition. I worked directly from a lovely, easy to follow pattern on Knitty by MK Carroll. I’ve also made this as a gift for my midwives, the lovely ladies that saw my boys into the world. Best midwife or obstetrician gift ever!
The Brain
The Brain I concocted myself. I used a great little Blue Whoville Hat Pattern as a base, though I modified a lot of things, made it bigger, alternated knit and purl for the earflaps so that they’d be more smooth than the original and did away with the ribbed band in the original.
Then I made miles and miles and miles of i-cord that I sewed onto the hat like a brain. It was fun to tell people that I was knitting my brain, have them look at the looooooooog cord, scratch their heads and walk away wondering about my sanity … but my plan worked! Here it is:
And lastly, I leave you with a shot from the performance of Organ Stories in July 2011. Here’s the slightly frazzled Professor Posyniak with her spectacles on and her Judy covered in organs. You can see the magnets sewn onto her blouse that the organs stick to for each solo. She was just finished lecturing about the brain and was about to dance it, which as mentioned before I’ll share in video form on another day:
This photo by Andréa de Keijzer, the dancer is Krista Posyniak.
Happy Friday everyone, hope that you’ll never look at your organs the same now that you’ve made it through this post …
I was talking about dolls with a friend last night and my mind wandered in it’s dusty reaches to recall some of the dolls I’ve made in the past. I think it’s time to share these little ladies for today’s Rearview Friday!
I made them, wee versions of us, as a gift for my co-choreographer Lindsay Zier-Vogel on the premiere of our dance work Edith and Eliza in the spring of 2006. The dolls are based on Waldorf dolls (that’s right I was a Waldorf kid! And I have a deep sentimental fondness for these little dolls with the simple faces). If you want to know more about Waldorf dolls, I found a lovely how-to here by Amber Dusick, who also happens to be the brilliant lady behind Parenting. Illustrated with Crappy Pictures. I am a big fan. You probably should be too.
Anyhoooo, back to the dolls: in addition to sort of looking like Lindsay and me, the dolls are dressed in tiny versions of costumes from 2 of our collaborative dance projects, seen in full size and context below. As you can see they each have an envelope. This is because part of our creative process for Edith and Eliza was to actually write and post letters to each other as “Edith” and “Eliza”, fictitious war brides we created to develop a story behind the dance. Some of the text from these letters was woven into the soundscore as a narration. Each letter snaps onto the dolls hand and actually has a wee letter in it. Because I am awesome. And obviously humble. But seriously, it was a really fulfilling creative process. The the doll making was a cherry-on-top project in the fun department.
The dances that the doll’s costumes were made to honour:
And lastly, our lovely selves with the dollies. Just before we went into the theatre for the premiere. Edith and Eliza and the costume dolls were the last major dance and crafty-sewing projects I worked on before becoming pregnant and a mommy. Feels like a lifetime ago, but not in a bad way. Just a “huh” way. Life was so utterly different then!
Cheers to art, all kinds of it, making our lives so full. Happy Friday folks.
A late afternoon session at my sewing machine, buried in piles of netting, finishing the costume for my current dance project Semaphore:
I’m excited to be presenting this new wee solo Semaphore tonight and tomorrow, at a coffee house presentation put on by students of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre (my Alma mater). I’m friends with Megumi Kokuba, one of the current graduating students there, and we decided it would be fun to work on something together for her last student coffee house. We settled on Semaphore Flag systems — in both English and Japanese — as an inspiration point.We choreographed together, Megumi is performing and I’ve made the costume and set, comprised of giant paper airplanes (it was fun learning how to fold them online. I was never a big on making paper airplanes as a kid, so I had to look ’em up, now I’m hooked).
Megumi models the costume in studio B (I have spent many hours of my life in this room, taking class, rehearsing, teaching class, choreographing, sigh):
The work literally uses Semaphore Flag positions to spell out the words “remember” and “solitaire” in English and Japanese. We created choreography using the flag symbols as a starting point, tracing their lines through the space. We also walked the points used in semaphore flagging across the floor. Megumi and I worked fast (we spent just 3 hours in the studio together, yikes!) due to mad schedules for both of us and I’m really pleased with the result. The music we used is by Buck 65, a fantastic Canadian artist. Both his music and lyrics in the song Paper Airplane speak to me of longing and reaching across space and time. A beautiful, lilting song, it felt like the right fit for this dance.
Check out a 3 minute clip of Semaphore I’ve compiled on vimeo. It was filmed during the tech run, first time under lights and with the “living set” of 3 dancers that walk with paper airplanes across the space and around the dancer throughout the work.
Rudi and Gene (3 1/2 years and 6 months respectively) both came to some of our rehearsals and also sat through the technical and dress rehearsals — they are superstars with focus and patience that belie their years and months. They actually enjoyed sitting in the dark theatre (for the most part, Rudi was a bit freaked by the super-dark between dances and the cheering from the fellow performers attending rehearsal) and watching the magic unfold under the theatrical lighting. Rudi’s quiet little wonderings were so charming, “Where’s the music?” (a legit question, oh contemporary dance in silence!), and “I see ghost shadows!” (oh massive shadows thrown by theatre lights!). As a mom it’s so rewarding to still be able to practice my craft and involve my wee kids in what I do. I love that they won’t remember the first time they attended a theatre event, it’s just part of their lives.
Well, as we say in dance before the show, merde (instead of break a leg, that’s for the theatre folk) and may your weekend be gorgeous.
—
Click here for details on the show Coffee House: Dark Roast.
I am starting today with 2 things I love: soup making and contemporary dance. Food from the ground and feet on the ground — with consciousness and artistic purpose. A lovely way to enter the week.
I’ve got a pile of beautiful organic root veg (here they are enjoying the March sunshine!) begging to be made into soup. I shall oblige …
… and a deadline to have a wee solo completed for a performance this weekend. I’m working on a dance for Megumi Kokuba, a graduating student from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre‘s Professional Training Program. We’re collaborating on this solo for her, using both English and Japanese Flag Semaphore as a starting point for choreography. A dress is in the making and there are 3 huge paper airplanes as the set. I hope to share some video of the work later this week. In the meantime, feet-at-the-ready for final choreographic touches, which may or may not get settled on in the kitchen while soup making, just sayin’:
As per my post last Monday, I’ve spent the past week working on being conscious and present in the task at hand. Embracing or finding the simplicity of a job, a moment in time. And while soup-making and dance-making may seem disparate partners and dividers of attention, I think the cooking will provide some contemplation space for choreographic editing since the dance really is done, I just need to consider finishing touches, the editing of the movement and structure. And I think it’s working, this being present business; I seem to be a happier, more satisfied, less yell-y/cranky, exhausted and sad version of myself both as a momma and simply(!) as a being human. Happy week to all!
Today’s Rearview Friday is my paint sample art — a piece I made to brighten our bedroom wall last year. I’d found a stash of leftover paint samples from another project (which I describe below) and the muse woke up!
It’s an quick and dirty way to make a beautiful (if I do say so myself!) piece of art. I think I’ll make a how-to for it soon, so stay tuned!
Now why did I have a stack of paint samples tucked away? Press on …
When I present my dance work, I like to make unique program inserts, something to treasure, a little piece of art that supports the dance. In the spring of 2008, I created a dance about Achromatopsia (colour blindness). I used paint samples as my program inserts and put a quote from Dr. Oliver Sacks on the backs of them, a teaser to whet the audience’s curiosity. I’ll eventually include a Rearview Friday post about the dance, a piece called A|Chromatic.
The quote is awesome, I’ve gotta share it too:
“What, I wondered, would the visual world be like for those born totally colour-blind? Would they, perhaps, lacking any sense of something missing, have a world no less dense and vibrant than our own? Might they even have developed heightened perceptions of visual tone and texture and movement and depth, and live in a world in some ways more intense than our own, a world of heightened reality – one that we can only glimpse echoes of in the work of the great black-and-white photographers? Might they indeed see us as peculiar, distracted by trivial or irrelevant aspects of the visual world, and insufficiently sensitive to its real visual essence? I could only guess, as I had never met anyone completely colour-blind.”
Dr. Sacks wrote about Achromatopsia in his book Island of the Colorblind, a fascinating read. I was drawn to explore the idea of colourblindness — black and white vision — in my dance project because my mother and aunt were both born with Achromatopsia. And in spite of literally growing up alongside someone so close to me whose eyes see so differently than mine, I was/am hard-pressed to imagine what the world is like through a constant black and white lense.
In August of 2001 I had my first professional gig as a dancer. Freshly minted from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Program, I felt a 50/50 mix of apprehension/excitement about life in dance. The choreographer and employer was my dear friend and regular collaborator (to this day!) Lindsay Zier-Vogel. [ASIDE: you should check her out, her writing and crafting and sheer verve are intoxicating. I’m sure she’ll come up on this blog often! Her Love Letter Project is particularly awesome.] The piece was called Cedar Stories.
I costumed Cedar Stories, resulting in some of my favourite original costume work to date. Lindsay actually still wears one of the dresses around socially!
We found some fantastic fabric that stretched in all directions but was somehow not spandexy. It was dark green on one side and light on the underside, which was fun design-wise. I measured and drew and patterned up a storm. And the costume-faeries were with me because they worked like a charm, timeless.
Cedar Stories was performed in fFIDA (aka the now defunct Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists). I shared the stage with 2 fellow students from The School of TDT, Jennifer-Lynn Crawford and Kate Holden (centre and left respectively in the above shot) — both women who have gone onto active, inspiring careers as dance artists. The music was live, a cellist named Rachel McBride. Her skills were remarkable and haunting, it was magic working in studio and on stage with her.
Lindsay and I got to know each other at The School of TDT. I actually remember her choreography at a student coffee house before I really remember her. It may or may not have been to Ani DiFranco! She’s got a rare choreographic sensibility. I still remember running backwards in a big arc in this work, feeling rather kamikaze, imagery — such as a hand gesture mimicking the way Chestnut leaves fold down. A pair of my Fluevog shoes also featured in Cedar Stories, I think I had to toss one behind my back, and I may or may not have clocked another dancer at some point *ahem*.
I’m not sure if there is video footage of Cedar Stories available, 2001 being the dark ages before little digital gadgets with more memory than I can conceive of were readily available. I don’t even think we have photos from the actual performance. But I do have these backstage pics. And great memories.
Oh, 2001 was also the summer I met and fell in love with a boy named Adam. Now I’m married to him. Still in love, actually way more than I was at first blush. ‘Twas a good summer!