Un-nevering | Thea Patterson (Montreal)
Join us for MZD’s presentation of Un-nevering | Thea Patterson (Montreal)
NOTE OF ARTISTIC INTENT
Un-nevering
It’s a microphone against the chest
It’s a weight like a hole
It’s the one who looks so as not to dissolve
It’s a gesture of love
It’s a ritual of mourning
-Camille Renharhd
She dances with the one who is there and
not there
Unfinished
un-nevering
How can we be together even when we are not – especially and in particular across the veil of loss that seems so (in)finite? For choreographer Thea Patterson, Un-nevering is a response to the violent loss, in August 2021, of her life partner and artistic collaborator Jeremy Gordaneer. Exploring the shapes, textures and tones of grief, Un-nevering asks: what if there is no never?
This show will run for two evenings:
April 18 and April 19
7:30 PM
Tickets | $35/$30 MZD Members
MZD is located at 9931 78 Ave NW, Edmonton
There will be an artist talkback after the Friday evening show! Join us for the artist talk with Lin Snelling and Thea Patterson.
Artistic Statement | Thea Patterson
My practice is defined by a desire to create work that questions the parameters of the form, and the lines that divide the disciplines. I am often found in the company of objects, whose dramaturgical agency and collaboration allows me to decentre the human in the frame, allowing for the liveliness of other entities and forces to inform the work. As I move the dance out from my centralized subjectivity and into other things, the space, the air, the sound, each with their own subjectivity and desires, I open to the possibility that there is a larger intelligence at work than just my own.
This allows for the emergence of meaning, and in movement that expands definitions of dancing. My focus is not in the achievement of virtuosic feats of physicality but in the way the bodies and objects can potentially carry and express multiplicity and where virtuosity is found in the tiniest of gestures and in the potential of failure.
And sometimes… The best possible solution might be to fail… To fall in love with the uncertainty, to love the stretch, the confusion… To love the demand of it, and the expression of it. To love the desire… To love its drops and slides to conversation and back again… To love being suspended in a space of waiting and delayed gratification as a space of conviviality and discovery. To love the difficulty, the doubt, the hesitation. To love the push against the conceptual boundaries of where the thing is or what it is. To love the paradox and the refusal to yield to demands for clarity. To love the hesitation. To love the possibility in it all. To love the dance that appears and disappears or is found in the exchange of words or the air that passes… And to love it hard.
CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY / CONCEPTION ET CHORÉGRAPHIE : THEA PATTERSON IN
COLLABORATION WITH / EN COLLABORATION AVEC RACHEL HARRIS, ELINOR FUETER
PERFORMERS / INTERPRÈTES : THEA PATTERSON, RACHEL HARRIS, ELINOR FUETER
DRAMATURGE : LOIS BROWN
PHENOMENOLOGICAL COACH / ENTRAÎNEUR PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUE : PETER TROSZTMER
SOUND DESIGN / CONCEPTION SONORE : DAVID DUBLINE
LIGHTING DESIGN / CONCEPTION LUMIÈRE : PAUL CHAMBERS
ASSISTANT LIGHTING DESIGN / ASSISTANT CONCEPTION LUMIÈRE : TIM RODRIGUES
TECHNICAL DIRECTION / DIRECTION TECHNIQUE : IOHANNE WAKAL
DEATH DOULA AND FACILITATION / DOULA DU DÉCÈS ET FACILITATION : ELLEN FUREY
VOCAL COACH / ENTRAÎNEUSE VOCALE : SUSANNA HOOD
ARTISTIC CONSULTATION / CONSULTATION ARTISTIQUE : NATE YAFFE
VIDEO / VIDÉO : JEREMY GORDANEER
DISTRIBUTION / DIFFUSION : CAPAS | DANCE LABEL / LABEL DE DANSE
PRODUCTION : THEA PATTERSON
DELEGATED PRODUCTION / PROUCTION DÉLÉGUÉE : PARBLEUX
CO-PRODUCTION / COPRODUCTION : FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES – FTA (MONTRÉAL, CANADA)
CREATIVE RESIDENCIES AND SUPPORTS / RÉSIDENCES ET SOUTIENS DE CRÉATION : INCEPTION PARBLEUX (MONTRÉAL, CANADA), STUDIO 303 (MONTRÉAL, CANADA), LA PETITE PLACE DES ARTS (SAINT-MATHIEUDU-PARC, CANADA), PRESENTATION AT / PRÉSENTATION AU FESTIVAL OFFTA 2023 (MONTRÉAL, CANADA), CENTRE DE CRÉATION O’VERTIGO – CCOV (MONTRÉAL, CANADA), MILE ZERO DANCE – MZD (EDMONTON, CANADA)
SPECIAL THANKS TO / REMERCIEMENTS PARTICULIERS À : ATLAS PROGRAM IMPULSTANZ – VIENNA INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL (VIENNA / VIENNE, AUSTRIA / AUTRICHE), GUY COOLS, MARIO LAMOTHE, CAMILLE RENHARHD FOR HER TEXT / POUR SON TEXTE, WINNIE HO, NEIGHBOUROOD DANCE WORKS – NDW (ST-JOHN’S, CANADA)
THE CREATION OF THIS WORK IS MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF/ LA CRÉATION DE CETTE OEUVRE EST RENDUE POSSIBLE GRÂCE À L’APPUI FINANCIER DU : CONSEIL DES ARTS DU CANADA, CONSEIL DES ARTS ET DES LETTRES DU QUÉBEC, CONSEIL DES ARTS DE MONTRÉAL
Photo credit | © Kinga Michalska
Featuring
Thea Patterson
Thea Patterson is a Tiohti:áke/Montreal based choreographer, performer, and dance dramaturg. Her performance practice revolves around an acute set of questions regarding the body, objects, perception, vitality, and time. Her early choreographic works include Rhyming Couplets (2008), and A Soft Place to Fall (2006) (which was made into a BravoFACT film) and the dance I cannot do (2013). An interest in collaborative models led to the co-founding of the collective The Choreographers (2007-2011) who went on to make several works together including Man and Mouse (2008) and OH! Canada (2011).
From 2007 to 2015 she was dramaturg, and co-artistic director with Peter Trosztmer and Jeremy Gordaneer on seven acclaimed works, including Eesti: Myths and Machines (2011) and #Boxtape (2014). She has provided dramaturgical counsel for many independent choreographers including Andrew Turner, Nate Yaffe, Sasha Kleinplatz, Lois Brown and Katie Ward. From 2014-2016 she completed a Research Creation Master’s degree at DAS Choreography in Amsterdam which explored emergent choreographic forms, and other methods for altering aspects of spectatorship. Thea has several ongoing collaborations, as a dramaturg, and collaborator, choreographer and performer in Montreal, Portugal, Edmonton, and Newfoundland. Her work Silvering (2020) was presented at Mile Zero Dance in Edmonton and her latest work Un-nevering (2023) was presented at the Festival OFFTA in Montreal.
As well, she is a SSHRC funded PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta and from 2019-2021 was co-editor- in-chief of Intonations, an online Graduate run journal. Photo credit | © Eleonora Barna
Lin Snelling
Lin Snelling is a dancer whose artistic practice brings the qualities of improvisation into dance, theatre, writing, visual art, and somatic practice. She toured the world with Quebecois dance/theatre troupe Carbone 14 and worked with many improvisation ensembles. She teaches dance, experiential anatomy, and composition at the University of Alberta where she is also Director of Graduate Studies in Theatre. Her performing includes over 50 improvised and scored dance performances (locally, nationally, internationally), teaching/creating situational dramaturgies and real time composition pedagogies for actors and dancers, and moderating, leading, and creating seminars/workshops for communities and graduate and undergraduate students. She has collaborated with Edmonton dance artists Gerry Morita, Amber Borotsik, Kate Stashko, Brian Webb, the Good Women Dance Collective and Montreal dance artists Tedi Tafel, Thea Patterson, Sarah Bild and Susanna Hood. She toured Rewriting Distance with dramaturg and longtime collaborator Guy Cools that has travelled to 7 countries, 14 cities with 48 participating artists and 105 performances.
She recently performed in the Joshua Tree as part of the BWDC Summer Season that toured to Bengaluru, India. In 2019 she received a McCalla Professorship for a new collective creation, A Sounding Line.
Other recent dance collaborations include Far Away and Personal, a dance film with musician/composer Michael Reinhart and ENTRANCES with writer David Gagnon Walker and multimedia designer Tori Morrison from Strange Victory Performance. Watch out for a new solo Before/AFter, created as a HoT Artist, through the Naked Theatre (Brussels) sometime soon.
ARTIST TALKBACK
There will be an artist talkback with Lin Snelling and Thea Patterson, after the Friday evening show!