Bradley Eng - For my Relevance
Growing up as a Chinese French Canadian in Ottawa Ontario, Bradley Eng has always in some way felt out of place. Divided by two cultures, he was subjected to racial profiling and sometimes racial bigotry from both populations that share half his blood. He struggled to find his place but he knows now that he can create his own culture and identity through his art. He integrates different movement techniques to develop a new movement methodology called Break Even. For my Relevance is born from the accumulation and fusion of Break Even and the stylistic signature of the choreographer. The performance explores the desire to be accepted and understood, to be able to stand strong alone but connected with others, to find his place in the world. These tensions feed a huge driving force that creates unique relationships in this work.
Audrey Gaussiran - Corrida
The creative beginnings of Corrida coincide with the 2015 Bataclan attacks in Paris. This violence touching the artistic world was the point of departure for reflection on terrorism and war. Who are the leaders pulling the strings and what are their motivations? What about those living on the edges of conflict? Inspired by Spanish traditions of corrida and flamenco, Audrey Gaussiran weaves a parallel between war and the tragic sport. The symbolic bull that fights against the torero… This bull motivated by the same brute force that motivates the jihadists that throw themselves into combat without fear of death.
Corrida is a metaphor of war in which the choreographer’s contemporary flamenco melds with contemporary dance and Eastern and Afro-Cuban gestures. This solo explores the violence, the beast within us, the intoxication of power, but also the humanity that resurfaces in the darkest moments. The characters of the torero, the bull, and the woman living at the border of conflict take form. Abuse of power fuel a parodical gestural language. Fighting, killing, seducing, dying, and rebirth from the ashes through the body and dance.
Cai Glover / A fichu turning - Women and Cypresses
Women and Cypresses situates the dancing women within the imagined framework and a hypothetical storyline devoid of a male presence where women sit atop the fence of gender. Culled from the expanse of an identity where borderlines have blurred, they are the work of their doing. They influence and inspire each other. They have left the oppression of the male presence and table the contents of what it means to stand before the other, as a woman, when the other is only ever a woman. The choreographer Caï Glover invited his dancers to be inspired by the invigorating aesthetics of Van Gogh's paintings with their apparent movements. Their charged and excessive colours engulfed in erratic swirls, the expressivity of what could otherwise be considered a mundane depiction of a landscape.
