

SHED | knowing each other as different and the same
Choreographed by Pam Tzeng (Calgary)
June 3, 2022 – 8PM MT
June 4, 2022 – 8PM MT
Orange Hub, Black Box (10045 156 St NW)
$15 MZD Members/ $20 General
Livestream on Friday at 8PM
Register for On Demand recording here.
Under the bright yellow glow of SHED, time suspends for an alchemy of movement, sound, animate costumes and light.
Featuring a collection of time-based moving portraits, SHED | knowing each other as different and the same holds space for the multiplicity and humanity of bodies of culture*. The immersive performance invites pause. A slowing down and an enlivening into presence for an otherworldly experience.
a seeing
a feeling
a being with
a sensorial unravelling
a conjuring of ancestral love and grief
a shedding of what holds us from knowing each other as different and the same.
SHED is an invitation to notice the subtle ways our bodies perceive, receive and relate to an “other”. To witness the assumptions and imaginings that consciously and/or unconsciously colour our experience of difference. To remember that every body inhabits an internal life as vivid and complex as our own.
This Mile Zero Dance presentation features a duet created and performed with experimental musician FOONYAP and solo portraits created for, with and danced by Cory Beaver, Alèn Martel and Mpoe Mogale. Sound, costumes and light manifest as energetic extensions of the body, spirit and land. The design elements of each work emerged from tender and nurturing exchanges with sound designers FOONYAP, Jiajia Li, NUM and Darren Young, costume collaborator Alison Yanota, sodium light designer Nicolas Brunet-Beaulieu and lighting designer Jonathan Kim.
Each portrait draws from the intimate and vast inner landscapes of the performers’ embodied values, memories and lived experiences. Each exists as a testimony of the beauty and resilience of bodies of culture.
Footnote:
- From Pam: I replace the language and idea of “People of colour” with “Bodies of Culture” as reclamation of the inherent wisdom of the body and the pieces of the experiences of racialized people that have been stolen, stripped away, and invisibilized by white body supremacy. Bodies of Culture comes from my practice in Somatic Abolition guided by the work of author, therapist and racialized trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem.
ACCESSIBILITY
SHED is a multi-sensory performance. It is brightly lit by yellow monochromatic sodium light fixtures and is an immersive sonic experience. Earplugs and sunglasses will be available for those who are sensitive in sight and hearing.
May 10, 2022
This Season, MZD has commissioned poets to respond to the work created by dance ...
CREDITS
Ideation and Choreography
Pam Tzeng
Portraits created for, with and performed by
Cory Beaver
Mpoe Mogale
Pam Tzeng
FOONYAP
Poetry writing and recitation
Jordan Baylon
Sodium Light Design
Nicolas Brunet-Beaulieu
Lighting Design and Technical Direction
Jonathan Kim
Costume Design Collaboration
Pam Tzeng
Alison Yanota
Sound Design
FOONYAP
Jiajia Li
NUM (Milad Bagheri Torbehbar and Maryam Sirvan)
Darren Young
Music Mastering
Krzysztof Sujata
Premiere Co-Production
Dancers’ Studio West Artist in Residence Program (2019-2022)
The New Gallery 2022 Main Space Program
Made possible with the support of
Canada Council for the Arts
Calgary Animated Objects Society
Calgary Arts Development
Alberta Foundation for the Arts
Mile Zero Dance 2022 Dance Crush Series
Plastic Orchid Factory 2022 adaptives series
Project Management Team
Pam Tzeng
Bianca Guimaraes de Manuel
Kris Vanessa Teo
Special thanks to:
SHED collection soloists Cindy Ansah and Kara Bullock.
Melissa Avila, Loretta D’Antuono, Sylvie Moquin and Jamie Tognazzini for their contributions to the initial research stages of this project.
Ping Tzeng, Aldona Barutowicz, Thomas Geddes, Katie Green, Sasha Ivanochko, Ashley King, Michael Vincent Tan, Xstine Cook and AZMA Digital for their invaluable support.
The Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Theatre Encounter, Inside Out Theatre, and The Grand YYC for offering affordable spaces over the development of SHED.
Featuring

Pam Tzeng
Pam Tzeng (曾小桐) is a second-generation Taiwanese-Canadian choreographer, interdisciplinary performance maker, movement educator and arts worker based in Moh’kíns’tsis Treaty 7 Territory. Pam takes pleasure in extremes to craft honest, visceral and animated performances about the politics of the body with objects and costumes. Her practice and aesthetic imagination is coloured by her training in contemporary dance, mask, clown, puppetry. Led by her embodied curiosities, she graciously traverses charged thematic territories to reveal and empower unseen truths.
Her solo and ensemble works have been presented across Canada and through the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Past works include: “A Meditation on the End” Jo-Lee, “SHE and he…” By Jo-Lee, That ch*nk in y/our armour commissioned by CanAsian Dance KickStart Festival 2018 (Tkaronto) and Cheers & Tears: A Journey Into Whiteness commissioned by Good Women Dance Collective (Amiskwacîwâskahikan).

FOONYAP
FOONYAP is a classically-trained violinist showcasing a sound that swings between fragility and explosive dynamism. Drawing comparisons to Björk and Tanya Tagaq, her work navigates her sheltered Chinese-Catholic heritage and the intense music training of her childhood. Marrying brittle melodies with classical deconstructionism, she explores the multiple identities that children of settler families face.
FOONYAP has toured extensively throughout the UK, Europe and Canada, garnering acclaim from publications such The Fader, The Line Of Best Fit, and the Toronto Star. Her current projects explore the history of Calgary's Chinatown and its role in the cultural ecosystem.

Cory Beaver
Cory beaver is a performer, and a dancer from the Îyarhe Nakoda First Nation. Cory was self-taught growing up and later started training after high school. Since then, he has had a tremendous journey with opportunities to train in L.A, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Banff, Alberta as part of a program called the Indigenous dance residency in 2015. His repertoire includes hip hop, a bit of jazz and a curiosity of ballet and contemporary. Cory has an array of experiences performing on stage and on television locally, and nationally with indigenous artists such as “The halluci nation” among others.

Alèn Martel
Alèn Martel is a dancer, scholar, university educator, and performing arts centre professional working in Moh-kíns-tsis, Treaty 7 Territory (Calgary, AB). His research includes methodologies in creative process, pedagogy in dance history, including its decolonization, and dance and technology. He has his Bachelor of Arts in Dance from the University of Calgary in Canada and his Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick in Ireland. As a dancer, he focuses on play and improvisation.

Mpoe Mogale
Mpoe Mogale (they/them) reigns from Lebowakgomo, South Africa and splits their time between amiskwaciywâskahikan and moh’kínst’sis, in the colonial state of Canada. They hold a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Political Science, and a wealth of expertise in community-based research, facilitation, and arts administration.
Mpoe’s primary artmaking form is dance, with a curiosity in the place of Blackness in spaces that deny it, as explored through several projects including "What (Black) Life Requires" (produced by Mile Zero Dance and Azimuth Theatre). Mpoe’s current artistic imaginations have centered the brilliant, mundane, and joyous aspects that foreground the lives of Black folks.

Jiajia Li
Classically-trained flutist, improvisor and sound creator Jiajia Li is being praised as "one of the city's finest and most adventurous flautists”. Since finishing school in Germany and moving to Calgary in 2014, Jiajia has forged her identity through musical experimentation across a wide range of genres and traditions. A keen and passionate collaborator, the Beijing-born flutist has contributed to numerous projects in music, dance and arts communities.

NUM
NUM is a multidisciplinary duo formed by Maryam Sirvan and Milad Bagheri in 2010, in northern Iran. NUM’s concentration is on electroacoustic music and audiovisual performances where they can manipulate and transform natural materials (sound and image) with the help of digital processing. The duo moved to Calgary, Alberta, in late 2021.

Darren Young
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, music director, and educator Darren Young is an exciting artist with a diverse palette. His music spans a wide array of genres, including classical, post rock, prog, shoegaze, electronic, noise, and jazz. A classically trained guitarist and double bassist, Darren’s music has received international press coverage from Prog Magazine, Metal Hammer, Classic Rock Magazine, and the CBC. Recent compositions by Darren include commissions from Cloudsway Dance Theatre, Project InTandem, and Swallow-A-Bicycle Theatre. He is thrilled to be a part of the SHED team!

Nicolas Brunet-Beaulieu
Nico, Nicky, Nic.. have your pick. Designer/fabricator/ visual art installer and performance art accomplice. Always wanted to be an artist yet unable to get over his pragmatic side, he found himself at the crossroad of helping creators and their creative ideas come to be. Sometimes called a colourful character, here you can blame him for temporary stealing all colours away for this performance. Karma Chameleon!

Jonathan Kim
Jonathan Kim, better known as Jono, is a Jessie nominated lighting designer based in Vancouver, BC. He is a graduate of SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts - Theatre Production and Design program. Jonathan is a member of ADC (Associated Designers of Canada) and Chimerik 似不像, an interdisciplinary collective. His most recent works include: Chapter 21 (Raven Spirit Dance); Ying Yun (Wen Wei Dance); Offering (Co.ERASGA); Orangutan (The Biting School); Undressed (Alberta Theatre Projects); Kim's Convenience (Arts Club Theatre Company).

Alison Yanota
Alison is a graduate from the Mount Royal University Diploma in Technical Theatre and the University of Alberta MFA and BFA in Theatre Design. She is an artist and educator, who believes in the performance space as a form of interactive sculpture.

Jordan Baylon
Jordan Baylon (they/she/he) is a second generation PilipinX artist, critic and community worker imagining justice and abundance for equity-deserving peoples within the spaces of all our relations: personal, communal and societal. As an artist, Jordan’s work gnaws at the intersection of queer identity, race, colonialism, food, ritual and the deep dark places that represent our possibilities for pleasure and liberation. The subject position of this work explores queer and racialized identities as liminal spaces: both and neither; between, across and through; both inside and outside; and both literal and imagined. Jordan is also proud to serve as General Director of Chromatic Theatre.