OIS stop 1: BANFF

After a busy last week of rehearsals, Out Innerspace hit the road with Vessel to our first stop: the beautiful Banff Centre.  We comprise a motley crew of nine, including artistic directors Tiffany and David, dancers Laura, Josh, Renee, and Lexi as well as the 'lighting wizard' James, 'projection king' Craig and 'manager extraordinaire' Heidi. 

Banff welcomed us warmly with this extraordinary view of the mountains.

The crew loaded in, Tiffany and David nestled into the theatre, and us dancers had some time to experience this charming town nestled amongst the spectacular Rocky Mountains. Naturally, we were drawn into the multiple confectionaries and candy shops, but also managed to find a pool table and a rooftop patio where we played and relaxed after our day of travel. Here we decided that our time off would be spent on something special: Project David's Birthday Dance.  

Renee and Laura. We are plotting master-plan: "David's Birthday Dance"

The week residency allowed Tiffany and David to continue working on the dance and projection components of Vessel; we rehearsed in the studios and the theatre, both of which were just steps from our residence hall. Also just a few skips away was the Sally Borden Centre, where we ate our delicious buffet meals and had access to the rec centre's pool, gym and steam room. 

While the technical team, Tiffany and David usually worked late into the evening, ending their day with some munchies at the Maclab Bistro, us dancers were holding secret rehearsals at the residence hall. Two nights allotted to composing the sound score (thanks to Josh's garageband and disc-jockey skills) and one fully devoted to choreography: 3.5 minutes of 80's inspired dance steps. Our plan was well underway. 

Looking for an adventure, this hike brought us to the icy shore of the Bow River. So refreshing!

The Banff Centre's theatre complex 

Show day arrived, along with a fresh blanket of snow, to cushion our performance jitters. Without spoiling the show for anyone hoping to see it in Burnaby, this run (coined a 'showing', not a 'show') went relatively well, however, was accompanied by a few technical glitches, all to be expected considering the projection component and it's complexity.  A group of spoken word artists and high-school music students from Saskatchewan, among many others in our full-house of an audience, all contributed to a constructive, insightful post show talk back.

-Lexi, Laura and Renee

Week One: Journeying to Vancouver Island

Before catching the ferry to Vancouver Island

We spent 4 days mounting the production in Vancouver, which included running the narrative cues, the acting segments, each of the dances, lighting cues and more…

Soon we found ourselves on a large white ferry heading across the water to Vancouver Island. Miguel, the guitarist and I braved the winds on the upper deck and took photos. I was ecstatically happy, watching the rushing water, the diminishing landmass, the view of mountains meeting sea, combined with the sharp contrast of sun and crisp cold wind. 

Upon arriving in Nanaimo, we got settled and then went to the “Dancentre” where we had an inspired run-through, filled with the bubbling excitement for our first performance.

Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant, where Angelita charmed the staff by singing in Japanese (something she picked up in her extensive travels to Asia). Angelita is radiant, loves social gatherings and her humour “tells it as it is”. We join her as well in singing some of the silliest verses or melodramatic traditional songs “Me voy a hacer un rosario, con tus dientes de marfíl” (I am going to make a Rosary, made of your ivory white teeth). Something we now sing in harmony, followed by laughter. The raucous clapping from the group also spontaneously arises wherever we go and announces: the Flamenco performers are in town!

We are infectiously noisy!

The Cast

Victor Kolstee & Rosario

So, I should introduce you to the rather gigantic performance cast! 7 sisters and Rosario, another dancer who plays the younger version of Rosario and 4 musicians who are on stage from the moment it starts until the absolute end.

At rehearsal - Nanaimo, BC

Victor Kolstee, Rosario’s husband and artistic partner, is a driving musical element in the show and plays guitar alongside with Miguel Ramos, from Cádiz, Spain. Miguel is extraordinarily musical, solid and inexhaustible. The sound of the 2 guitarists interweaving and conjuring up waves of

Alvaro & Angelita

rhythm and sound is the basis for all of the dance features. Angelita “la del Lito” is the singer. Her voice is dynamic, full of rough textures and piercing passion. Alvaro Rubio is our percussionist, multi-talented as he alternates cajón (box drum) with Tablas; moving from dry rhythms, to punctuated melody.

Instantly, the kinship in the group of sisters was evident. Our personalities blend, we laugh, joke and annoy each other in friendly ways (Marien is always pinching me and

Me & Marien

stealing bits of my food). We are sharing rooms, our meals, exploring cities and building bonds that have started with the family of Mis Hermanas, but will undoubtedly extend far beyond this tour.

Lupita/Katherine getting ready

As I mentioned, I am the eldest sister, followed by Marien Luevano from Mexico (playing the mambo-loving Rosalba), Melanie Meyers from Vancouver (playing the ethereal beauty Rebecca), Katherine Oliveri from Montreál (playing the sword-fish killing Lupita), Christina Trembley from Chicoutimi,

Angelita "La del Lito" - Flamenco Singer

Québec (playing the rebellious Marisela), Juliana Pulford from Ottawa (playing the delightfully spoiled and cheeky Titi) and Deborah Dawson from Vancouver (playing the sensitive painter, Alejandra). 

Together we form a boisterous and passionate representation of the Ancer sisters.

“MIS HERMANAS” & Flamenco Rosario – Meeting again on Alma street

Mid-March.

First week of rehearsals

I boarded the plane very early in the morning for Vancouver, suitcase weighted with shoes and rehearsal clothes, crossed the Rockies and soon found myself again at Centro Flamenco. There in the studio on the aptly named “Alma” street (soul), I re-united with musician friends and was overjoyed to see Rosario and Victor (the creative team behind this very personal work) and very soon Centro Flamenco filled with all the new artists for the 2013 tour!!!!

I play the eldest sister in Mis Hermanas, Anadelia: the elegant, imaginative and talented sister who wanted to be an Opera singer. It is a role I am reprising, having been a part of the production since it’s inception in 2008. Since then we have performed several times in Vancouver and toured to Mexico, an experience which has made Mis Hermanas even more tangible, bringing forth nostalgia and a rooted connection, since it all begins in a small town in Mexico.

Mis Hermanas is the personal story of Flamenco dancer Rosario Ancer, a beautiful dancer and a matriarch in the Vancouver flamenco community. I see Mis Hermanas as her life’s work – a culmination of her

Rosario Ancer (photo Adampwsmith)

artistic experience, integrating her personal story with theatrical vision, voice-over and multimedia. She has collected photos from her childhood, and from her experiences in Spain where she met her husband/flamenco guitarist Victor, as well as a touching collection of photos from the family and each of her 7 sisters. The photos form a backdrop to the narrative and help shape the character of each dancer.

This production is poignant, rich with artistic talent and heart-warming. It brings together Canadian dancers from across the country along with artists from Spain and Mexico in a large, cohesive and brilliantly accessible production that has filled the audience with tears and brought them to their feet, every single time.

Some of the cast backstage - Port Theatre, Nanaimo

Flamenco Rosario and Out Innerspace have hit the road

Both Flamenco Rosario and Out Innerspace have begun their BC tours.  Keep your eyes on the blog:  dancers Lexi Vajda, Renee Sigouin and Laura Avery of Out Innerspace, and Fiona Malena of Flamenco Rosario, will all be filling us in on their tour highlights. Take it away, dancers!

The Last (cardboard) Stand in Courtenay

Saturday November 3

This is it. Today is the last show to wrap up Homewerk Tour 2012! We’re staying in a Best Western on Cliffe Avenue, which coincidentally is the same street where we find our Courtenay performance venue, the Sid Williams Theatre.

Courtenay...how to describe it? A bustling little big fishing-town island.  I suppose when you’re stationed in Vancouver, every town seems like a “small town”. What I have learned on this tour is that the size of a town is correlated with its number of big banks. CIBC? BMO? Yes, we’ll find dinner. I even happened upon a live jazz trio at a café at 9pm on the first evening.

While falling asleep last night to Darcy serenading me on her ukulele, I decided I’d wake up early and go for a run. However, in the deep darkness that was our hotel room this morning, that didn’t quite happen. Call time was just around noon so I got some stretching in before we headed off.

It was a pretty full day in the theatre, so photos are severely limited, I’m afraid.  The theatre is beautiful even though the stage is certainly the smallest we’ve performed on yet.  Tech was as per usual, except for one big thing—our cardboard tables were missing. Loading into the theatre yesterday we were stunned to find that a part of our set didn’t make it. And so Bruce, Jennifer and Darcy had the fun task of hunting someone down in Vancouver who would be willing to haul three large cardboard set pieces onto the ferry and over into Courtenay. The winner? Jennifer’s husband, John, who heroically threw open the backstage doors at around 4pm with our boxes in tow.

As we did tech,  I realized this was the first (and I suppose will be the last) time I got to hear the Nail to House lecture in full. I think it really is an incredible journey into Jennifer’s mind and creative process. I love what she says about contact improvisation bringing dance from a visual art back into a physical art, about what stories we choose to tell on stage, about collaboration and about how the audience provides form with content. Prior to the show, Jennifer delivered each of us gifts, a package of homemade cards with an image on the front of our cast performing at the Russian Hall!

The show itself was a tricky one with my sprained hip flexor and as we battled our cardboard partners on the small stage. At one point Lexi and my cardboard got jammed between the stage’s floor panels at the exact same time. It was so perfect I nearly burst out laughing. We had a wonderful Q&A session with a curious older crowd who asked some nifty questions about choreography, improvisation and the history of the work. Questions like, what is your favourite moment with the cardboard? really made me think about the relationship I had developed with these cumbersome things. Someone else asked, do you miss home? And funny enough, I do.

The afterparty we took to a posh little restaurant where, over margaritas, we reminisced jovially about all the things that went wrong with the cardboard that evening. With daylight savings time on our side, no one was particularly rushed to depart from celebrations.

Back at the hotel, I went hunting for ice in the middle of night, when I bumped into a woman stretching in the hallway. Turned out it was our videographer from this evening!  We spoke for what must’ve been almost an hour. She works in film but a part of her wishes she had chosen dance as her career path. She urged me to get in touch with her daughter in Vancouver, an avid recreational dancer. She asked me about what this tour had been like, why I dance, how I started and what now?  It was a fitting conversation to end this epic cardboard adventure. I hobbled back to the room to be serenaded by Darcy’s ukulele and pack for home, for the last time. 

Kitimat quake!

Many have requested that I blog a bit about what it was like to be performing during the earthquake that hit the Queen Charlottes so I thought I’d speak about that a bit.

October 27, 2012

It was our last day in Kitimat, and an incredibly lax day at that. It began with a brunch that I could not be more excited about, Ruth’s homemade salmon quiche with pumpkin lentil soup and baked foccacia. AND  baby cheesecakes for dessert (that  had found her working on last last night). Afterwards, Alex, Karissa and I trekked off on a nature walk through some of the Minette Bay Lodge property, bear spray in tow.

 

We were off for the Theatre at 4 30pm for notes, class and an 8pm show. I don’t know how we could’ve been that lucky, but we were running a couple of minutes late come show time. At 8:02pm, we were about to begin when…

Jennifer was in her own dressing room preparing for Nail to House when she felt her knees sway under her and a wave of vertigo. She thought maybe she was really getting nervous about this talk... Or maybe these were sure signs of a stroke? Jennifer then noticed water sloshing about in the bottles on her dressing room table and thought “…well that’s not normal…”.

Out on the stage, Karrisa and Alex had been all ready to go. The ground beneath them began to move and the lights hung were eerily shivering about. Karissa, certain we were all going to die, grabbed Alex in a desperate embrace.

Lexi was out in the cafeteria at a table surrounded by a chatty group of young girls, set up to start the  Homewerk comic book colouring workshop. The table seemed to be moving all about and Lexi figured it was one of the girls kicking. She looked underneath and when she saw no one was doing any kicking, it occurred to her what was going on. When she uttered the word, “earthquake”, the girls shot up in a panic.

It really took me ages. I was sitting in the audience at the far back, waiting to usher kids into the Homewerk comic book workshop. I started feeling my entire row of chairs start swinging and figured someone was kicking the seats, but it was only an elderly man in a wheelchair behind me! I turned around and just sat there, feeling this very bizarre lurching of the space around me when all three hundred people in the crowd stood up and started exiting. People shouted, “ORDERLY!” and I thought it quite impressive how calmly everyone filtered out. I waited for everyone to leave before running up into backstage to check on the crew, who were leaving through the backdoor.  It was snowing, as the crowd waited outside for the fire department to alert us to the kind of damage that had occurred around the town and whether it was safe to head back inside.

It was at that point we were hearing, 7.1, 7.7… Apparently, about one-fourth of the audience headed home at that point to check on their houses and their family. I was already texting  family and friends to tell them of the latest adventures of the Mascall Dance tour, and that we were all safe. And that, the show must go on!

Forty minutes later, with no obvious aftershocks and with the safety of the building cleared, we all headed back inside to begin. But first! A Front of House speech about emergency exits in case of emergencies...which definitely got laughs from the crowd. I admit the piece felt differently that night, especially a section where we build up the cardboard sets two stories high and have them all come crashing down in a big “explosion”. The piece is about where and what is home, and what happens when our home or house is destroyed. It felt all too relevant given the circumstances and I wondered about how it was affecting the audience.

Flash forward to 11pm. Of course the earthquake had delayed the reception, but we finally found ourselves wining and dining at Anne Marie’s (our Kitimat host) beautiful house with dozens of members of the Kitimat Concert Association. They recalled the Mascall Dance White Spider cast doing some musical acts for them...so I hope they didn't expect us to do the same! The organization has been promoting and presenting performing arts to Kitimat for fifty years! The snow was really coming down then and it kind of made the whole night all the more surreal.  The evening ended off with loving food and loving people brought together by art and an earthquake.