Feb. 27, 2013 - Issue #906: Tegan and Sara - Pop goes their world

REcollection: part 1 / Withheld

'The dance scene here has picked up speed," Tatiana Cheladyn says. "Something has really sparked here, and a lot of people are making really interesting dance work. For me, as an emerging artist just finished school, a lot more opportunities are presented than maybe would be in a bigger dance community."

She makes her case in point: having just graduated from Vancouver's Simon Fraser University in April, landing the sort of month-long residency that Mile Zero Dance is offering—with Cheladyn now ready to debut a work in a double-bill, alongside another Artist in Res, Alida Nyquist-Shultz of the Good Women Dance Collective—would be much less likely of a possibility anywhere else.
Even simply that fact that a long-established company like MZD would offer itself as a developmental platform for the rest of the dance community (these residencies have been going on all season long) suggests a scene trying to cultivate itself as a whole.

That lends the artists involved the freedom to flesh out ideas; the work Cheladyn's premiering, "REcollection: part 1," is a solo she started developing while still at school, testing out an early version of it at What's Cooking back in April.

"Originally I was interested in the contrast," she explains. "What's making a cup of tea versus this high leg kick I can do? What's the connection? They're both things that, myself as a a dancer, do very often. But I think it's become more of a personal journey. It's turned into defining the space for myself, and also defining the dance for myself. It's very being present in the moment. It doesn't really matter if I'm making a cup of tea or putting my hair in a ponytail versus doing all this string of dance of movement. "

Cheladyn's been working with musician Evan Osinchuk, whose score draws on similar contrasts between the everyday and the uncommon; nature sounds meet more musical choices.
During her overall process, she notes,  the idea for "RE:Collection" has simplified somewhat.
"I started with five different small ideas of movement that I built the original solo on. Then I, from the time in-between What's Cooking and this residency, I whittled it down and decided on the things I liked most. There are three things that I kept from those five, and I ran with those. "

In contrast to that solo work, Nyquist-Schultz's "Withheld" is being created and presented with a small corps of dancers, altogether exploring the ideas to be pried from its title: what it means to withhold from someone, and how that can impact movement.

"It's been about a year since I last choreographed something, so I was feeling like it was time," Nyquist-Schultz begins, noting that her main draw to the residency was getting to pick the brains of MZD staff Gerry Morita and Katrina Smy.

"Most of the time I choreograph in a pretty isolated environment, so I don't have too many outside eyes coming in to give me critiques or give me their feedback, and I just really feel like in this point at my development as a choreographer, that that is what I need right now, to push me into new areas and delve further into what I'm already investigating."

And, perhaps most importantly, Nyquist-Schultz notes the residency is an opportunity for just that: investigation. "I'm taking this time to really explore, more to explore a movement vocabulary than come up with an end product, and that's kind of a luxury that a residency like this allows for."
 

Thu, Feb 28 (7 pm)
Presented by Mile Zero Dance
Studio-E (9533 Jasper Ave), $10 – $12 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus