Meet the dancers of Levée des conflits’ professional workshop, Pt. 1
On September 9th and 10th FringeArts and Drexel University’s Westphal College will present Levée des conflits, a dance in the round from world-renowned choreographer and dancer Boris Charmatz, as part of the 2016 Fringe Festival. Beginning September 7th, Westphal is hosting a series of lectures and workshops—professional and community—around the performances as part of a series dubbed Boris Charmatz: Dancing Dialogues, capped off with an informal performance from the professional workshop of 24 local dance artists. In anticipation, Dancing Dialogues has been profiling each participant and we’ll sharing their reflections on their craft here.
Pamela Hetherington
“I’ve been able to do more choreography this past year because I built my own tap dance space in Brewerytown, it’s called Soundspace 1525. I really enjoy education, making tap dance accessible to people. I’m one of those people that, I’m not myself if I’m not working on a project. So I’m always coming up with something. Even if it didn’t become a show, I’m always practicing or putting something together, or calling someone up and being like we need to work on something.”
John Jarboe
“The kind of relationships I’m interested in building with the audience are very live, and insistent on their liveness. Like I’m not a cell phone, I’m sitting on your lap. If you say something I’ll hear you and I talk back even though this is scripted and we have a story. You are here in the room and that’s the kind of relationship I’m interested in. So it’s never quite complete until it’s been iterated, it’s a very iterative process, iterated with the audience. So it feels a little gastric, it feels a little animal. I write a lot of my lines with writing collaborators and almost memorize them. So it almost feels like being on the brink or being on the edge of a cliff sometimes.”
Danielle Currica
“There are people who are doing daily devotional practices and really living inside of these art forms in a way that it is a part of their molecular structure. It’s really inside of them. I think what has influenced me have been people who are truly integrated into the artistic process. Where influence comes is when I come into contact with people who are truly integrated into whatever that artistic process or practice is for them. When it is a part of who they are and it’s how they function. By proxy, I have no choice but to go down that winding road with them and I come out the other side a more developed artist.”
William Henry Robinson
“My job [as an ensemble member] is to be, in a lot of way I think, seamless. I think about this too when I’m biking [as a courier]. If it seamlessly fits in, I try to put forth sort of the wave of it, and meld into or be with that current. Even with solo moments within an ensemble work, the idea that a solo isn’t just ‘go now’, you are thinking consciously, ‘what are my actions playing into the totality of the scheme that’s happening’, you know. It’s my job to be aware of that, and everything matters. And in those moments taking care of that understanding that everything matters and you can’t just do necessarily whatever you want. Even if it’s a solo.”
Anne-Marie Mulgrew
“What motivates me to make a dance? Well, I think I’m just addicted, quite frankly. If I don’t make something, I just feel like I’m not whole. So it’s in my blood and it’s part of who I am now that I feel like I need to explore and have something to say. I start, we make some movement, we explore, we chat, and over time something happens.”
Zornitsa Stoyanova
“For my latest project, my goal was to be bold and to not censor myself. I think that is something that we don’t learn early enough as makers. Especially women makers, we don’t learn early enough. And having a child has taught me that there’s no time to chicken out on something that could be perceived as too risqué, or maybe slightly inappropriate, or not modest enough, or any of those things. The piece was called Explicit Female, and I’m performing that piece at the Fringe after the Charmatz. So it’s to just be true to myself and not chicken out from my choices.”