Fwd: REMIX, an interview

Les Mioles (REMIX), photo by Adrienne Surprenant

I email Nancy who emails Adam who emails me. In between, who knows what happens? I’m not sure if Nancy’s words are her own or if Adam has tampered with them. I might have modified what Adam sent me. Here is an interview where none of us should be held accountable for what we might or might not have said.

Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 14:32:09 -0400
From: Sylvain Verstricht
To: Nancy Gloutnez

Hi Nancy,

I'm so sorry I dropped the ball on this interview. Sometimes I just feel so overwhelmed with all these things I love but that I do for free, and I don't even have a job! How do you manage doing what you love and making a living?

Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 8:46 PM
From: Nancy Gloutnez
To: Adam Kinner

Salut Adam,

Je me demande souvent si la bergère en moi aurait fini par faire une chorale de ses moutons ou juste une grande mozaïque de balles de laine.  Toi, qu'aurais-tu fait?

Date: Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 6:29 PM
From: Adam Kinner
To: Sylvain Verstricht

Nancy seems to think that simultaneously doing what she loves and making a living has to do with being a shepherdess of sheep. I am sympathetic to this idea. I often think that the job of the choreographer is to be some kind of shepherd, giving some direction, some discipline, some organization, some structure to the chaotic ideas, bodies, trainings, materials that performers (myself included) bring to the process. How to turn that stuff into money is a whole other problem, but the image of shaving seems apt. The shepherd captures and capitalizes the excess, but not the essence of the animal. For choreographers, I think we (they) are more needy. For Nancy, the question is whether to make a choir of the sheep or to display them as balls of yarn. For me, the question seems to be whether the sheep need to know that they are the dancers, and then further, if the presenters of dance need to know. What do you think? Can the dance of the sheep go unnoticed or does it need to be presented in a black box in order for it to register as the art-work it is?

Also, is this how the interview is supposed to go?

Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 19:48:36 -0400
From: Sylvain Verstricht
To: Nancy Gloutnez

I've always thought that human beings were excessively androcentric when it came to (well, everything) the parameters of art. It's like these studies that have been coming out that established that, besides humans, only parrots and Asian elephants can dance because they're on the beat about 25% of the time. The ability to pick out a beat seems as arbitrary a way to define what constitutes dance as any.

Also, it seems that the more freedom one is given, the more one feels anxiety about what is expected of them (re: Adam's question about how this interview is supposed to go). Yet, that's (what comes before) the starting point of any art project, which – to be fair – can come with its own share of anxiety. Nancy, does it help you that you studied music and that you work with jig? Is the sound of the steps always your starting point? Or do you sometimes begin with visual ideas?

Date: Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 9:53 PM
From: Nancy Gloutnez
To: Adam Kinner

I always start with the idea of an energy I want to portrait. I find that music gives me more freedom to do that than any other form of art. Through formal organization of musical ideas, and having people step dancing them, other images stand out and that's when the fun begins...

Jig for me is a medium to grow closer to music. As a step dancer, I find that putting more attention to the sound (in the way a musician would) substantiates jig. In Les Mioles, I like that the body performs with the same simplicity and sobriety as a musician. I like to think it gives space for the audience to hear and hopefully feel jig differently. Also, I love grey zones, ambiguity, searching for the thin line... I have a very hard time finding that with concrete visual elements at the start, for now anyway. I'm far more anxious about making sure I articulate my thoughts properly when it comes to talking about my work to anyone uninvolved in it. Even though I'm well aware of the importance of that part in my role as a choreographer, a part of me strongly resists intellectualization.

Adam, what's that like for you?

Date: 1:13 PM (1 hour ago)
From: Adam Kinner
To: Sylvain Verstricht

I always start with an idea. I'm also a context junkie. So, I always start with an idea and a context. Sometimes the context is not fully formed and has to be invented. Sometimes the idea is not fully formed and has to be invented. But the work always comes from some conceptual place (the idea) and that conceptual place is always related to the context. So with the remix it’s very clear: the idea is to rework someone else's material and the context is a 10-minute piece that follows the original, to be presented in a dance studio. For me, the work comes out of finding a way of approaching these elements ethically. Yes, ethics. Something about the way that bodies are used, the way that people are organized, the notion of "working" in dance. These are ethical issues more than artistic ones, somehow. So for some reason the work follows the ethics. After that it's just trying to take some kind of pleasure with the material.

But I'm with Nancy in that I never start with concrete visual elements. But, differently from Nancy, I like to intellectualize the work, and I feel committed to exploring work both from a kind of aesthetic perspective and from an intellectual one.

Sylvain, do you make work? If so, where do you start?

I do make work. I write. Often, something internal is preventing me from writing. More and more, the only way for me to start is by writing about why I can’t write. I’d say that’s the thread that goes through all my most recent work.

REMIX
April 12 at 6pm & April 13 at 4pm
Studio 303
www.studio303.ca
514.393.3771
Tickets: 10-20$

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