dance central july august 2013

continued on page 2

The Most Together We've Ever Been

Dance CentralA Dance Centre Publication

Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin are two choreographers who have

been collaborating since 2003, in addition to their solo careers, under

the Public Records performance umbrella. This July, they will be present-

ing their work The Most Together We've Ever Been at Scotiabank Dance

Centre as part of the 2013 Dancing on the Edge Festival.

AK: The Most Together We've Ever Been is a work that has reconfigured

itself with each new presentation and performance venue. What is the

strategy, especially in respect to how the audience experiences the space

that you and your collaborators create?

AH: It is a piece that brings out different values with each presentation,

depending on what the interest of a presenter or an audience member

is. For example, during a recent presentation at a festival of duet-based

works in Ottawa, we discovered a lot about how this piece provided us

as collaborators with a way of investigating our relationship, both to each

other, and to the act of performing. We noticed how these two things

become collapsed in this project, since we had worked together a lot, and

were looking to re-frame that relationship and to find a way of working

on something that was co-created and co-performed. For me, the work is

is mostly a playful interrogation of the act of meeting an audience, of the

stage as a ground to suggest an encounter, but we work on holding off on

'developing' that encounter, so that the question keeps getting raised over

and over again. This might seem conceptual and somewhat tedious, but it

is actually quite lighthearted and funny, because of our dynamic with each

other and the rigour we use in making these aborted attempts.

AK: The audience is being invited into a space that is usually off limits; it

is rare for us to be invited to wander onto the dance floor, especially in

the context of large theatrical presentations, with a proscenium stage and

moat. The piece breaks these conventions, and creates a deliberate trans-

gression, but in such a way that the encounter is controlled and maintains

separation in the frame.

AH: I wold say we don't break these conventions but reiterate them, in or-

der to invite the spectator to consider their role in that framing. In general

A conversation with Ame Henderson

Content

The Most Together We've Ever Been A conversation with Ame Henderson

A Note from the Executive Director Mirna ZagarPage 4

Dancing on the Edge CalendarPage 6

Thinking Bodies: Tara Cheyenne FriedenbergPage 10

July/August 2013

2 D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3

Welcome to the July/August 2013 issue of Dance Central.

Welcome to the July/August issue of Dance Central.

We are pleased to feature a conversation with Toronto-

based choreographer Ame Henderson that focuses on

questions that she and her collaborator Matija Ferlin

explore in their upcoming production of The Most

Together We've Ever Been at the Dancing on the Edge

Festival.

The 'Thinking Bodies' series features a portrait of inter-

disciplinary performer and choreographer Tara

Cheyenne Friedenberg, who speaks about her experi-

ence working between, among, and across disciplines,

about the relationship between text and movement, and

the challenge of defining one's work at the intersection

of disciplinary boundaries.

The Designing Dance Series for this issue was to be a

conversation with costume designer Nancy Bryant, but

the demands of a busy schedule and her work at Bard

on The Beach conflicted. We wish her all the best for the

upcoming projects and will be featuring that conversa-

tion in the September/October issue. As always, we

thank all the artists who have agreed to contribute and

we welcome new writing and project ideas at any time,

in order to continue to make Dance Central a more vital

link to the community. Please send material by mail to

[email protected]. or call us at

604.606.6416. We look forward to the conversation!

Andreas Kahre, Editor

continued from cover

I tend to think of the projects that I make as focused on the codes

or conventions of performance, so that we might consider how we

might depart from them or renegotiate them, in a gentle provoca-

tion of the rules that we all follow in theatre. What we are really

encouraging is for everyone to do their part but more fully: For the

spectator to continue to project their own imaginations onto what

they are looking at even when we are absent, to think about the

nature of the entrance, and to be aware of one's own gaze.

AK: Do you ever encounter surprises in how people behave?

AH: We get spectators responding in all sorts of delightful ways

to the ending of the piece, but during the performance —because

there are all these gaps when we are outside for a long time—I

always wonder what they are they doing in there. We try to level

the expectation so that both spectator and performer ask: "What

is going on, really?" I have no idea what has transpired while I was

away, which is kind of a terrifying state to be in as a performer, but

I realized that this is always how it is: You don't know what people

are thinking while you are performing, and this just heightens

those realities.

AK: Considering how much theatre has become infused with the

technology of control and surveillance, where stage management

routinely uses infrared cameras to observe performers and audi-

ence even when they are in the dark, it is an interesting choice to

deliberately cut off communication during the performance, and

to avoid setting up cameras to look at the audience while you are

outside.

AH: I hope I won't be accused of being anti-technology, but what I

find exciting with these projects is to explore the old technologies

of what the theatre can be as a meeting place, with very simple

elements, which is why we try to strip the theatre down to be able

to see the walls, and to understand it as an architectural space that

then gets transformed into a more theatrical landscape. What is it,

really? It's just a room where people gather, where we can follow

rules that people have been following for a really long time and

perhaps discover something new, and maybe we'll just re-state

our allegiance to those rules...

A conversation with Ame Henderson

The Most TogetherWe've Ever Been

D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 3

continued on page 5

AK: You say 'these pieces' that brings up the question, in the

context of your long-standing collaboration whether this

piece has a particular connection to your previous works?

AH: Indirectly it does, since Matija and I have been collabo-

rating for about ten years. Both of us have an individual body

of work as choreographers, and he has performed in several

of my creations over the years, so there is a shared language

about performance between us, and shared questions about

dancing and choreographies that one could probably trace in

the parallels between our work, but this is the only piece that

we have made and performed together. We are planning a

second duet which we will start working on next year, so it is

definitely the beginning of a new kind of relationship.

AK: Is there a conceptual or thematic connection, apart from

being a duet, or is it a new opening in that way, too?

AH: I think this piece is quite distinct in its aesthetics, but there

is a theme or a set of questions that I have been working on

through several projects, linked to togetherness and collabora-

tion. This work was designed specifically as a way of developing

methodologies to work on the notion of togetherness, and one

where we started with our artistic relationship. We sat together

in an empty room to come up with something, in a process

which was very much inspired by the fact that we knew each

other as friends and colleagues. This is a reversal of the ways

that I have worked at other times, where I have had an idea first,

and then determined who I wanted to work with. Starting with

a relationship, a connection and a desire to make something

together was another way of exploring togetherness and col-

laboration. As such, the piece is its own universe, and we talk

about it in terms of what happened when we met and tried to

find a shared language between the two of us.

Photo: Chris Randle


Dance CentralThe Dance CentreScotiabank Dance CentreLevel 6, 677 Davie StreetVancouver BC V6B 2G6T 604.606.6400 F [email protected]

Dance Central is published every two months by The Dance Centre for its members and for the dance community. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Dance Central or The Dance Centre. The editor reserves the right to edit for clarity or length, or to meet house requirements.

Editor Andreas KahreCopy Editor Hilary Maxwell

Contributors to this issue:Ame Henderson, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Mirna Zagar

Dance Centre Board MembersChair Andrea WinkVice Chair Gavin RyanSecretary Ingrid M. TsuiTreasurer Roman Goldmann

Directors Barbara Bourget Susan ElliottMargaret Grenier Anndraya T. Luui Josh MartinSimone Orlando Jordan Thomson

Dance Foundation Board MembersChair Michael WeltersSecretary Anndraya T. LuuiTreasurer Jennifer ChungDirectors Santa Aloi, Linda Blankstein, Grant Strate

Dance Centre Staff:Executive Director Mirna ZagarProgramming Coordinator Raquel AlvaroMarketing Manager Heather BrayServices Administrator Anne DaroussinDevelopment Director Sheri UrquhartTechnical Directors Justin Aucoin and Mark Eugster Accountant Lil ForcadeMember Services Coordinator Hilary Maxwell

The Dance Centre is BC's primary resource centre for the dance profession and the public. The activities of The Dance Centre are made possible by numerous individuals. Many thanks to our members, volunteers, communi-ty peers, board of directors and the public for your ongoing commitment to dance in BC. Your suggestions and feedback are always welcome. The operations of The Dance Centre are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.

Dear Members,

And here we are: Summer is finally upon us and our fis-

cal year-end is fast approaching. While we have officially

closed our season, summer is usually quite a busy pe-

riod here at The Dance Centre, as we finalize the details

for the fall season and host partnering projects.

This year, we are especially pleased to be partners to

the 25th celebration of the Dancing on the Edge Festi-

val which will be under way when this edition of Dance

Central reaches you. Congratulations to Donna Spencer

and her team!

We are also very pleased to host here at Scotiabank

Dance Centre MACHiNENOiSY as well as Ame Hender-

son and Matija Ferlin as they return to Vancouver with

their work The Most Together We've Ever Been which has

been touring Eastern Canada to critical acclaim.

I would also like to use this opportunity to thank all of

our generous volunteers for their contribution to our

success, and to thank all who have contributed to a most

successful Shall We Dance event which was held in May

at the Vancouver Club. Without the help of our commu-

nity and without each of your individual contributions we

would not be as inspired to reach new heights. To all our

members and friends – here is wishing you an enjoyable

summer. We look forward to seeing you all back in the

studios and on the stages as a new Season unfolds in

September! Until then, happy dancing!

Mirna Zagar, Executive Director

From the Executive Director

D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 5

From the Executive Director

continued on page 16

Next:

Dance Central September/October 2013

Proximity: a conversation about future projects

Thinking Bodies: Alvin Erasga Tolentino

Designing Dance: Nancy Bryant

and more...

AK: I noticed in looking at video footage that there is some-

thing both presentational and pedestrian about the entrances,

and about the frame of the 'mini dramas' that constitute the

work. To what extent is it choreographed?

AH: It is pretty constructed. The improvisatory side is largely

a matter of timing, and how to play or display these miniature

entrances, but we mostly do exactly the same thing in every

performance. Some performance elements are relational. For

example, at one point Matija goes close to one of the largest

objects in the set, in one of the rare moments that he makes

reference to the set. That changes from location to location,

but we'll find that in tech rehearsals and will then repeat

that exactly for the rest of the run. The work is quite struc-

tured, because that is one of the things we were interested

in exploring. We wanted to know where the spaces are, and

what goes on between these elements, and we wanted, more

than with our other works, use a rigorous, formal approach to

what is a fairly stripped-down movement language. We are

on our tiptoes for the whole piece, which dictates what we

can and cannot do directly.

AK: Do you have a sense of how audiences react in different

places, or are you just staring into the blinding footlights?

AH: The gaze is weird, because we have sunglasses on, so we

can see everybody, but there is a kind of social construct that

it is almost as if looking at the somebody wearing sunglasses

gives you the illusion that they can't see because you can't

see their eyes. We can see everyone staring at us, and they

forget that we can see them. So even though we look like we

are protected by these glasses, we are actually subjected to

quite an open gaze by the public, and we have realized that

we just don't know how to read these gazes, and that we can

never make any sort of judgement about what people might

be thinking.

It depends on the audience more than the place, just the

quality of a certain grouping of people and how they encour-

age each other, or not, to find things funny— sometimes there

will be one person who cannot stop laughing for the entire

piece, and of course that sets a certain kind of tone, and

people join or are disoriented. So there are all kinds of micro-

performances going on among the public, some of which we

witness and some we hear about after =wards, but I would

say it changes more with audiences than place. A full house

is a very different thing than a partial house because it seems

that people become more self-conscious of their role when

there are fewer people, so sometimes a half full house feels a

continued on page 14

D a n c e C e n t r a l S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 4 3

Schedule of Events, July 4 - 13, 2013

Thursday, July 4, 2013

12:00pm 25 Gestures for Dancing on the EdgeCo.ERASGA DanceSite-Specific - Gastown Historic Steam ClockFREE

7:00pm DUSK DANCESTara Cheyenne FriedenbergJulia Aplin w/ Tiger Princess Dance ProjectsEury ChangCarmen RomeroKate Franklin | Meredith ThompsonVancouver's Carnival BandCRAB/Portside ParkFREE/By Donation

9:00pm of good moral characterLara Kramer | Lara Kramer DanceFirehall Arts Centre

Friday, July 5, 2013


7:00pm DUSK DANCESTara Cheyenne Friedenberg

Julia Aplin w/ Tiger Princess Dance ProjectsEury ChangCarmen RomeroKate Franklin | Meredith ThompsonVancouver's Carnival BandCRAB/Portside ParkFREE/By Donation

7:00pm EDGE OneConstance CookeJosh MartinEdmond Kilpatrick | Karen JamiesonFirehall Arts Centre

9:00pm of good moral characterLara Kramer | Lara Kramer DanceFirehall Arts CentreBUY TICKETS9:30pm EN3: Community CirclesColleen Lanki | TomoeArtsChinatown Night MarketKeefer & Main StFREE

Saturday, July 6, 201312:00pm 25 Gestures for Dancing on the EdgeCo.ERASGA DanceSite-Specific - Gastown Historic Steam ClockFREE

7:00pm DUSK DANCESTara Cheyenne FriedenbergJulia Aplin w/ Tiger Princess Dance ProjectsEury Chang


Carmen RomeroKate Franklin | Meredith ThompsonVancouver's Carnival BandCRAB/Portside ParkFREE/By Donation

7:00pm BAMBOOZLEDDelia Brett & Daelik | MACHiNENOiSYScotiabank Dance Centre

9:00pm EDGE OneConstance CookeJosh MartinEdmond Kilpatrick | Karen JamiesonFirehall Arts Centre

9:30pm EN3: Community CirclesColleen Lanki | TomoeArtsChinatown Night MarketKeefer & Main StFREE

Sunday, July 7, 2013



7:00pm EDGE TwoJolene Bailie | Gearshifting Performance WorksNigel Charnock | Vision ImpureFirehall Arts Centre


Monday, July 8, 2013


1:30 - 2:30pm Field House Ensemble presents Joe Ink’s Move It…(Slowly)Joe InkStrathcona Field House 857 Malkin Avenue (at Hawks)Free (bring something to trade)

7:00pm EDGE ThreeAmber Funk Barton | the responseVanessa GoodmanTomomi MorimotoFirehall Arts Centre

The 25th Annual Dancing on the Edge Festival


9:00pm EDGE TwoJolene Bailie | Gearshifting Performance WorksNigel Charnock | Vision ImpureFirehall Arts Centre

Tuesday, July 9, 2013


12:15pm1:15pm wobble topsSandra BotnenSFU Woodwards AtriumFree


7:00pm EDGE FourJames Gnam | Plastic Orchid FactoryArash & Aryo KhakpourMeredith Kalaman & Sophie YendoleFirehall Arts Centre

9:00pm EDGE ThreeAmber Funk Barton | the responseVanessa GoodmanTomomi MorimotoFirehall Arts Centre

Wednesday, July 10, 2013


12:15pm1:15pm wobble topsSandra BotnenSFU Woodwards AtriumFree


7:00pm EDGE FiveWen Wei DanceFirehall Arts Centre

9:00pm EDGE FourJames Gnam | Plastic Orchid FactoryArash & Aryo KhakpourMeredith Kalaman & Sophie YendoleFirehall Arts Centre

Thursday, July 11, 2013


12:15pm1:15pm wobble topsSandra BotnenSFU Woodwards Atrium , Free



7:00pm The CubeW&M Physical TheatreFirehall Arts Centre

8:30pm The Most Together We’ve Ever BeenAme Henderson & Matija Ferlin | Public RecordingsScotiabank Dance Centre

9:00pm EDGE FiveWen Wei DanceFirehall Arts Centre

Friday, July 12, 2013



7:00pm EDGE SixTania AlvaradoJennifer Mascall | Mascall DancePamela TzengFirehall Arts Centre


9:00pm The CubeW&M Physical TheatreFirehall Arts Centre

Saturday, July 13, 2013



9:00pm EDGE SixTania AlvaradoJennifer Mascall | Mascall DancePamela TzengFirehall Arts Centre

"I am also good at Math."


through movement...", and then when I am hired as a dancer,

it is usually by someone who wants what I do, like Conrad

Alexandrovich, who will want me to move and make ridicu-

lous sounds. I find that I am a bit of a negotiator between the

two things. When I go into a project as a choreographer, like

I am currently doing with Bard on the Beach, to tease out the

dancer in the actor, I find we do ourselves a disservice when

we insist that dance needs to be at a particular level techni-

cally, especially in the theatre milieu. Everybody has a body,

and everybody moves, and that mode of expression is vital.

I consider it as part of my meaning to get that out of actors

and to get them to be comfortable in their own movement,

because once they are, they have a whole other language

and even if they are not 'dancing' per se, they are expressing

themselves with their whole body, which makes it so much

easier for the audience to participate.

AK: Do you observe a difference between the different

generations of performers working in Vancouver work, given

how the different training institutions approach movement?

TCF: Very much. The young contemporary dance artists

coming out of training in Vancouver seem to realize that they

probably should know a bit about using text. They also seem

to recognize that they should know how create their own

work in some way because they are not necessarily going to

get a job with a company. This is something that many of us

had learned early on, and sadly, many people just stopped

because they weren't getting a job. Still, even though dance

theatre, or talking and dancing, has been going on for a long

time now—Denise Clarke was trailblazing that in the eighties,

along with Nigel Charnock and DV8— it is still kind of 'fringy',

even though so many choreographers are using text. Some

"I am also good at Math."AK: Given how many different things you do as a performer, do

you identify primarily as a dancer?

TCF: I guess I do, because that's how I started. When I was about

two and a half, I demanded to go to ballet class, to the horror of

my poor feminist mother. As a being, I identify as a dancer, but

as an artist, I identify also as an actor, as a choreographer, and as

a kind of 'movement designer', because choreographing a dance

is a completely different animal than going into the tent at Bard

on the Beach and choreographing a bunch of actors to convey

something dramatic. I come up against the question all the time,

however, and have to justify myself in those ways. When I write

grants—for the dance section mostly because that's where I have

been most successful— I am always thinking 'how do I spin it so

it is 'dance', I can and have written grants for the theatre section,

and it remains a frustrating thing to have to justify my work in

one medium, because I make performance and I perfom it, and

when I am performing, I don't separate the dance from the text,

the acting from the dancing. It's all the same thing, including the

design.

AK: When you deal with people in theatre, where you are per-

ceived more as an actor, and don't have to work in the concep-

tual confinement what constitutes 'dance' and its different styles,

is it an easier question to negotiate?

TCF: It depends on who you are working for, or with. Certainly

in dance, and to some extent in theatre as well, there is a sense

that 'the pie is only so big; therefore we can't have anybody who

is not 'purely dance' going for a part of it, because perhaps they

can go somewhere else'. In this city, most people know that I am

a multidisciplinary person, but I find that when I am in a purely

theatrical milieu and I am acting, I do have a tendency to move

the work towards the point of saying "Oh, but we could do this D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 1 1

THINKING BODIES | Portraits A conversation with Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg

D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 1 2

astute young dancers understand that they maybe should take

the voice intensive, or acting workshops here and there to

get that basic technique. There is nothing worse than a great

dancer who opens their mouth and out comes something like

"nnnnggghnyyy" You want the performance level to match. I

also do think there is a move towards more interdisciplinary

approach among young artists. It is almost as if we are going

back toward the turn of the century (the previous one), where

people in opera, for example, sang and danced and acted, and

half of them probably painted a set, where people were able

to navigate multiple places and mediums to say what we want

to say.

AK: Do you find that your own work is conceived as inter-

disciplinary from the beginning, or does it proceed from a

conceptual centre? In other words, do you work from an idea

outward and then incorporate what you need or do you cre-

ate with a discipline in mind?

TCF: I usually start physically, but that may fall away and the

text may take over. I usually start from a completely sensory

place of what feels interesting in my body. That might be the

voice of some goofy character that I am experimenting with,

and then the theme will get woven in there, and I may want to

use whatever elements serve that. My work is largely charac-

ter-driven, and I will use whatever discipline best serves the

story of the character. Sometimes text will contradict move-

ment, and movement will contradict text, and I find that I

need both of those things. You can't just have a great voice on

a character and no physicality. As the work develops, the as-

pect of the visual design becomes a really strong current, and

I am getting more and more interested in how we perceive the

design of the world that characters live in as a whole.

AK: Do you design your own work?

TCF: Yes, but usually in conjunction with a collaborator. When

we created Highgate at The Cultch, we involved a lot of the

IGNITE youth, and passed it off to them saying "It's got the be

Victorian funerary; go..." and they came up with fantastic thing

.

"Sometimes text will contradict movement, and movement will contradict text, and I need both of those things.."

AK: IGNITE is The Cultch youth program. How did you get in-

volved with it?

TCF: I was asked to be one of the mentors. When Corbin Mur-

dock was running the youth program, he asked dance people,

theatre people, spoken word artists and songwriters, and over

the course of a months we mentored this group. I adore this

work, because it reminds me of why I am doing this. They are so

fresh and they want it so bad, and they are just developing their

choreopgrahic voice, so I got the idea that these youth could be

a great addition to Highgate, because I wanted to turn the whole

building in to a Victorian funeral home. They were amazing, and

creepy, standing that entrance in costume.

AK: I was struck by the idea of a Victorian theme for a Dance

work, in that the body is so obscured and reveals itself mostly

by what is hidden. How did you come to think about the theme?

TCF: It began with my visit to Highgate cemetery in London, and

with thinking about the Victorians, who were so shut down and

controlling, but also—and because of that— completely whacky

people. A people perpetually in mourning, since Queen Victo-

ria was in mourning for 60 years, was fascinating to me, along

with the question how to translate that into movement. I loved

the resulting contradiction between control and what spills out

the edges, between what is said, and what is not said. What do

you see, what is the chiaroscuro? It started as an experiment

for a short piece, but it got more and more involved. I was also

fascinated by the costume, which is quite accurate, except that I

didn't wear a corset. I tried one on and got instantly crabby.

AK: What will you do next?

TCF: I am working on a new solo, with the working title Porno

Death Cult. Something subtle, which is of course what I am

known for. The seed of the idea came when my husband and

I walked the 800 kilometer Santiago pilgrimage trail across

Spain in 2010. It is a long walk, and not everyone who walks it is

catholic, myself included, but the big bloody sexy Jesus in each

cathedral along the way made me think 'This is a porno death


"Sometimes text will contradict movement, and movement will contradict text, and I need both of those things.."

cult. The title stuck with me, and I find that so many things about

our culture are porno death cults. I am starting with an individual

character, and will premiere the work at the Firehall at the begin-

ning of March 2014. Speaking of crossing disciplines, Marcus Youssef

is my director, and we have started to work together. It is a very

interesting collaboration, because he us such a writer, and political

thinker, and he is challenging me in ways I have not been chal-

lenged before, which I welcome with open arms.

AK: Going back to your training, you said you wanted to go and take

ballet classes when you were two and a half. Did you?

TCF: I did. I wore my mother down, and danced from then on, until

I went to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School as a teen. That's when I

realized "Hm, I could end up as dancing wallpaper if I do this." Your

chances of becoming the Primaballerina are slim, and in those days

it was said your career as a dancer would last until you were 27 and

then you were done. I didn't like that, and my mother kept pointing

out that I was more interested in making the other little girls laugh

than doing the triple pirouette. I really value that training, just as I

value the fact that then I started to do contemporary dance and

gymnastics, and more theatre training, which probably saved my

body from early hip replacement surgery. I still find that ballet tech-

nique is a really good basis in the body.

AK : How did you train in theatre?

TCF: I did the theatre program at the University of Calgary, and then

got a Dance degree at SFU.

AK: Do you work collaboratively most of the time, or do you also

work alone, or with outside eyes?

TCF: I always work with somebody. I spend a lot of time in the stu-

dio by myself, and try to work almost every day, although now that

I have a toddler that's hard, but I always have somebody else in the

creation of the work, like now with Marcus and my director Sophie

Yendl who directed and dramaturged Goggles, Nick and Juanita

and Banger, and is just coming back from maternity leave, so she

will be a creative instigator. I will also have Susan Elliott and Justine

Chambers come in as dance outside eyes. I think it is impor-

tant not to be working in isolation.

AK: Some years ago, when we worked together on Bush of

Ghosts with Theatre Conspiracy, I was struck by the degree to

which your characterizations read as complete interior worlds.

How do you do research?

TCF: I always stare at people — and get into trouble for that. I

also draw on movement, and on trying to feeling it authenti-

cally, textured, and layered. I find that really fun.

AK: How does that compare to the days of ballet where form

is largely imposed from the outside?

TCF: Ballet, like Graham or Limon technique, are all about the

shape, but once you master the technique to a certain degree

it is all about sensation: You can tell when it feels right, when

it clicks in—what some people call the 'gadget'. You can see it

with dance technicians, but it applies across art makers in all

disciplines. You know when it's there.

AK: Are you a good administrator?

TCF: Yes, I have to be. I am also good at math. In the studio,

when I need to take a break, I do long division to give the other

half of my brain a rest. It relaxes me.

AK: If you had been anything different, what would you have

done?

TCF: I like coaching people, so I might have been something

like a career coach. I also like design. At one point, I thought I

would be an architect.

AK: Which is where shape, structure and mathematics merge

in a multidisciplinary form. Many thanks!

D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 1 4 Lighting and Photography by Itai Erdal

"It is very strange, what we do; and I don't mean weird, I mean we make

strange these ordinary things, and that includes our own identity.

"Ame Henderson

little more tense or anticipatory. I have just resigned myself

to not knowing anything about what audiences are do-

ing or thinking. I think what we are working on is realizing

that we are individuals looking at a whole bunch of other

individuals and what is getting created is about all these

different viewpoints coexisting.

AK: I was curious about the costuming choices and the

casual sense of being gendered in the piece, unlike the

heightened or diminished sense of gender that often ap-

pears in modern dance where the costuming tends to ei-

ther strip away or overexpose something of that aspect. Is

that casual presentation part of the intention, given that the

movement language isn't gendered, but your presence is.

AH: I imagine we are trying to be as we are, heightened in

some way; that we are gendered but also ourselves. We

are performing these strange roles, not as characters, but

through the strange behaviour we perform, we become

characters. We are not trying to leave gender out of what

is being discussed, but by being casual about presenting

ourselves, but also by making very particular choices to

heighten our positions somewhat‚ like I am wearing these

spiked heels

AK: Exactly...

AH: As part of this work I can wear heels without that be-

ing a strange character choice —unlike if Matija wore them.

They both accentuate and make more difficult the task I set

myself out to do, which is to tiptoe though the whole piece.

It is as if we are using our own identities and then figure out

how to push them to accentuate the tasks. Perhaps that is

true across the board in the triangulation between ourselves

as emerging characters and what we may be representing

in terms of gender and other aspects of identity. I hope that

because it is so stylized it feels like we have made choices,

and what you see makes sense. It is very strange, what we

do; and I don't mean weird, I mean we make strange these

ordinary things, and that includes our own gender identity.

AK: It does appear that way. All the elements are re-contex-

tualized; it alienates from what appears ordinary, like seeing

the world under a black light bulb. Everything has some kind

of difference built into it, and while it is gentle, and doesn't

seem intended to appear freakish, it does destabilize all re-

lationships. There is nothing you can accept without a sec-

ond take, so for an audience that will try to learn the rules of

this universe, gender will be one of the aspects they may be

interested to understand the role of. You were saying at the

beginning that this piece relates to your collaborative work

as artists. What got you interested in working together in the

first place?

D a n c e C e n t ra l J u l y / A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 1 5 Lighting and Photography by Itai Erdal

"It is very strange, what we do; and I don't mean weird, I mean we make

strange these ordinary things, and that includes our own identity.

"Ame Henderson

AH: We met when we were both students at the international

school in Amsterdam, and we did some work there, but then

I came back to Canada and invited Matija to come to Toronto

to work on a project in 2005.

There was something about the beginning about this interna-

tional artistic relationship that felts very easeful, because he

would come here and I would go there. It continued because

it was easy. It felt like we met each other at a moment when

we were both really curious about what we could offer each

other; and we just chased that curiosity. I was an indepen-

dent artist in Toronto at the time, and it didn't seem probable

or possible that I could invite international collaborators to

come here and live here for several months and make work,

but somehow with Matija and a couple others, there seemed

to be a will there to continue the conversation that dissolved

all the other distances. I believe that if you feel that kind of

solidarity it's worth pursuing, so we just continued to find

ways to collaborate.

The invitation to make The Most Together We've Ever Been

was really important, because it was Matija offering an invi-

tation for me to come into his context to work. He created

a situation where we could go to Vienna, where he had a

residency already to make another work, for a month, and be

in a context where we didn't have to provide any kind of ex-

planation to anyone about what we were doing. It was a very

rare creative space. I realize more and more that usually we

have to talk so much about what we're going to do before

we do it, and almost fulfill our own grant applications and

proposals in a way that isn't always bad, but becomes a

kind of pattern of creating that I am starting to question

more and more.

This was a chance to work differently, with someone in

whom I trusted very much, and who was able to draw me

into the inner workings of my own creative world. That is

why it became so vital and also challenging. Matija was

someone that I knew really well who was able to take me

somewhere I had never been before, and that has contin-

ued to feed me. We made the work in 2008 and pre-

miered it in 2009, and it has continued to be a touchstone

for me in my other endeavours—thinking about my own

role within my work, how I position myself as a collabora-

tor, and how I can share a language with people that I am

working with. I learned a lot about the process of working

from doing this piece, and it is interesting that it also cre-

ated a finished work that stands on its own.

AK: Does it still change, or get adjusted?

AH: The last time we got together it had been some time

since we had done it, and Matija came with a proposal that

we should try to replace some entrances, since we had

made twice as many entrances as we actually perform in



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the work before arranging them in an order and selcting which

ones to keep. He proposed that we should revisit the structure

and when we tried to do that we realized that the whole thing

was going to fall apart if we started to change it.

The most interesting thing about revisiting a work that is now

five years old is to actually stick with what we decided before

and having to meet our former selves in dealing with these

strange constructions that we made and asking ourselves "why

did we do this in the first place and how can we continue to do

it?" was a more interesting question than how can we change it.

Another aspect, that is outside of or control is our age. When

my partner saw the work again this past winter, he pointed out

that we have aged and that our age changes the quality and

tone of the work, He found it much sadder, not because aging

is sad but because the youthfulness that especially Matija had

several years ago has transformed into a different kind of matu-

rity on stage. Perhaps that also goes back to the questions

about gender. It is about who we were when we were six

years younger and what it is going to be like to continue to

do this minimal and revealing work as our bodies change.

How long can we do it before it transforms into something

completely other?

AK: Thank you!

dance central july august 2013

Documents

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