Danses buissonnières_classe 2012

Kimberley De Jong
Kimberley de Jong has been working for La Comganie Marie Chouinard since 2006. She participated in the creations of “Orphee et Eurydice”-2008 and “Mouvements/Henri Michaux”-2011. She is currently working as rehearsal director for the Company. Prior to living in Montreal she danced for Itzik Galili in Groningen, Netherlands. Kimberley spent a summer in Tel Aviv, Israel, 2008 studying “Gaga” dance form, Ohad Naharin, amongst the Batsheva Dance Company. She is interested in Continuum, Linda Rabin, Montreal, QC, as a means to enhance movement and creation within. Her choreographic experience started with a solo created on Jeannie Vandekerkhove “Charlotte’s Web” 2006. She has taught creative movement at the Arts Umbrella School of Dance, Vancouver, B.C. and also taught “Body Remix”, Marie Chouinard repertory at the Springboard 2010, Montreal QC. This year she taught contemporary dance at l’UQAM. Kimberley became a mother in 2009. Kimberley is interested in researching authentic movement motivated by an emotional context, whereby movement comes from real sensations. Choreography is a means to creatively express real ideas in a context which can be shared and whereby those ideas can take on a aesthetic world of their own.

Nathan Yaffe
Nathan Yaffe studied at Purchase College in New York. Since 2007 he has resided in Canada and danced with Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottowa followed by working with Helene Blackburn, Kate Hilliard, Sasha Kleinplatz, Hélène Langevin, et Georges-Nicolas Tremblay. Nathan also works on his own creations in visual arts and dance video.

Tedd Strauss
Ted Strauss creates original music and sound design for dance, theater, puppet, and spoken word artists. Some highlights are the dance-rock-opera the Duck Wife (2010), the Emergence of language in people and things (2012) with sound poet Kaie Kellough, Everything Changes – Songs of Bertolt Brecht (2011), and A momentary fantasy (2009) with Jess Segal NYC. Strauss also works as an ethnomusicologist with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society, in Nunavut.

Marilène Bastien
Graduate in scenography at the Saint-Hyacinth Cegep, then in interdisciplinary studies in the Fine Arts Faculty, Concordia University. Marilène designs and conceives set designs, costumes and accessories in theatre, circus art and dance. She has designed for dance choreographers such as Ginette Laurin, Chantal Caron, Tony Chong, Manuel Roque, Lynda Gaudreau and Marie Chouinard.

I have used the images of Ruth Gwily from her book of illustrations, “Cycle” as a starting point and inspiration for this creation. It has been both a challenge and illuminating process to derive from a static image and bring the images to life. With movement, dancers Ashlea Watkin, Nate Yaffe and myself have created a context and developed characters for ourselves within the life cycle. We have found ways to symbolize and repeat certain aspects which are inherent within a cycle, wether it be the life cycle or cycles in general. The images within the book cycle are now merely a skeleton for this piece and ,as a trio, we have questioned the larger meaning of the cycle. What it means to grow old while new life is happening simultaneously around us? How are the process’ of being born and dying are largely related both physically and psychologically? And, what keeps us connected within a cycle, is it our relationships to one another, is it our legacy what we leave behind us? We have been exploring all these questions interpretively through CYCLe. We have brought our personal context and experience to aid us in the research for CYCLe.

Adam Kinner
Adam Kinner is a relative newcomer to the dance stage. A trained saxophonist and composer, he spent many years working as a musician – traveling through North America and Europe to perform, and recording extensively with musicians in Montreal and New York. But early on in his artistic development he was heavily influenced by Damaged Goods performances, as well as time he spent observing P.A.R.T.S. showings in Brussels. Dance became a great source for inspiration and material.

In 2008 he did a residency developing solo saxophone material in Banff, Alberta, and his work became markedly more performative, stemming from research about the body and gesture as it pertained to saxophone. Soon he realized that he was more interested in the performative aspects of a musical performance than in the music itself. He did a solo performance workshop with Ivo Dimchev and began collaborating with Montreal dancers in 2011. Now he looks back and wonders what took him so long.

I’m Faking It was created during a four-day workshop with the performance artist Ivo Dimchev. We started by choosing five topics and writing extensively about each. Each day we had to perform for the group by connecting our various topics and developing the material of each. As we performed, the topics began to fuse and a solo performance took form. In the intervening months, I have continued researching the topics and developing the piece, but it remains largely unchanged.