Stepping up for the planet The personal and the political take centre stage in Contemporary Dancers’ new season By: Eva Wasney Posted: 6:00 AM CST Monday, Nov. 6, 2023

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Water runs and rages, flows and drips through the opening performance of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers’ 59th season.

The Impossible Has Already Happened is a multimedia dance production that uses water as a vessel for discussing the human and environmental implications of climate change. The piece — which is currently touring through Western Canada — is an international collaboration between choreographers Claire O’Neil of Footnote Dance New Zealand and Jennifer Mascall of Vancouver’s MascallDance.

The pair started working together virtually amid the pandemic and quickly found common ground.

“We both use text in our work, we both work from improvisation, we both are interested in social dance,” Mascall says over the phone during a stop in Medicine Hat, Alta. “There were many, many similarities, though the esthetics are slightly different and that just adds a little bit of spice.”

One similarity, however, didn’t fit with a modern dance about a pressing modern issue.

“We were trained in this (tradition) of making conceptual and experimental work. And we both felt that it didn’t actually have a place in the 21st century,” says Mascall, who was born in Winnipeg. “What needs to be addressed now through art is how artists can partner with scientists, with people … to do what we can to help the environment.”

The choreographers consulted with marine biologists, activists and Indigenous elders to better understand the cultural, biological and environmental power of water. They set out to create an eclectic piece that would inspire movement in others.

“All the facts we give to people are not making a dent,” Mascall says. “(Artists need to) tell the story so people can feel it.”

Impossible opens in Winnipeg on Friday with a cast of dancers from Canada and New Zealand, including choreographer O’Neil and her 10-year-old daughter. The 60-minute performance is a blend of contemporary dance and theatre supported by live music from Métis fiddler Kathleen Nisbet.

Water is present, thematically, in large audio-visual projects and physically in ice lights designed to melt throughout the performance.

Jolene Bailie, artistic director of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers (WCD), is looking forward to bringing an international production with global themes to a local audience.

“We’ve been trying to bring in one show a season from elsewhere,” she says of the company’s programming goals. “The enormity of the climate crisis is overwhelming to a lot of us as individuals, so I think this is really relevant.”

WCD’s forthcoming season also includes two as-yet-unnamed new creations from Bailie and from Toronto-based Métis choreographer Jera Wolfe — who was first commissioned by the company in 2020, but was forced to present online amid the pandemic.

During a recent visit to Rachel Browne Theatre, Bailie was busy working on a duet that will be part of her May performance. As a choreographer, she aims to create one new dance per year. The process usually starts with casual, piecemeal rehearsals months out from opening night.

“It’s hard to walk into a big empty space with a bunch of people looking at you, like ‘OK, we’re going to make a (dance),’” Bailie says with a laugh. “We’ll have maybe some solos, duets, smaller group things already in existence before we bring the whole group together.”

The approach, says Bailie (whose work is known for its physicality), allows for collaboration and conditioning, “it’s like an airplane taking off instead of a helicopter.” Music is added in later stages.

Bailie’s current work-in-progress deals with decision-making and is a followup to last year’s new release, entitled retuning.

“Creation is also a process of accumulation; I always feel like the next work starts off where the previous work left off,” she says, “A lot of the work I create might be ambiguous or abstract — there’s always a desire to… understand what it means to be a human being.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @evawasney