november 16 - 20, 2016 Berkeley street Theatre
dollhouse
#csDollhouse A COLEMAN LEMIEUX & COMPAGNIE PRODUCTION PRESENTED BY CANADIAN STAGE
CONCEIVED, CHOREOGRAPHED AND PERFORMED BY
live MUSIC , SOUND AND VISUALS BY
BILL COLEMAN
GORDON MONAHAN
CONCE PT, CHOREOG R APHY AN D PE RFORMANCE
BILL COLEMAN live MUSIC, SOUND AND VISUALS
GORDON MONAHAN LIG HTING DE SIG N
PIERRE LAVOIE ARROW COSTU M E
EDWARD POITRAS ADDITIONAL DECOR CONCE PTS
DAVID GAUCHER ADDITIONAL COSTU M E WORK
HOAX COUTURE RE H E ARSAL DIREC TION
KENNY PEARL
This production runs approximately 60 minutes with no intermission Dollhouse was created with support from Public Energy and Bill Coleman. World Premiere April 2, 2016 Market Hall, Peterborough, ON. Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie is grateful for ongoing support provided by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Department of Canadian Heritage, The Hal Jackman Foundation, TD Bank Group and The Daniels Corporation. Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie also wants to acknowledge the support of many individuals without whom our operations, productions, and tours would be impossible. For a complete list of donors, please visit www.colemanlemieux.com
Proud Sponsor: 16.17 Berkeley Season dance programming supporter
@canadianstage For enriching behind-the-scenes interviews, trailers, and more!
CREATORS’ NOTES In Dollhouse I have tried to find an arena to enact a particular approach to movement and performance. This approach encourages unconscious or involuntary movement from the performer. Dollhouse is a series of performative actions that although very specific, allows me to ‘be in’ this approach to movement. The lack of pre-meditated control, although not always obvious in the performer, also lends itself well to the theme of the work.
Bill Coleman Sound is a sculptural phenomenon. Sound exists in space, and the physical structure of a space determines the acoustical qualities of a sound, thus sound-shapes and musical events are formed by sound sources resonating within enclosed architectural or physical structures. Sound is thus determined by the physical aspects of a sound source (eg. a musical instrument or sound sculpture) resonating within the architecture or physical structure of the listening space. The musical form of sequenced sound events may also be determined by these elements, when the physicality of vibration and space are used to render aspects of musical form. Most organized sound and music that we listen to comes to us through loudspeakers. This means that most music and organized sound that we hear is, in a sense, artificial, since all sound heard through loudspeakers is reproduced using electrical impulses that simulate, mimic, or reconstruct the original sound. Therefore most of the music that we listen to is a simulated electronic representation of previously existing acoustical sound, or a synthesized (reconstructed) version thereof. The process of listening is highly influenced by a psycho-acoustically embedded postmodern view of electronic sound synthesis – that is, we listen to sound differently now because we regularly hear sound deconstructed and reconstructed by electronic systems and digital media. Any physical action will create some form of sound. Gestures create sounds that can be recorded as “memory objects” in various formats. The fact that we only perceive sound during an instantaneous moment of acoustical resonance does not mean that the sound disappears – rather, it can be recorded and represented by the objects that it interacts with, records upon, and leaves behind as residue. The essential ingredients are physical action (gesture), notated score (document), instantaneous acoustical resonance (sound), and the physical manifestation of resonant memory (recorded artifact).
Gordon Monahan
ENGAGE YOUR CURIOSITY POST-SHOW TALKBACK Q&A with Bill Coleman & Gordon Monahan Thursday, Nov 17 following the performance
BILL COLEMAN CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY AND PERFORMANCE Bill Coleman is a choreographer and performer and co-artistic director of Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie. His choreographic work has been presented at the Tramway in Glasgow, New York’s Dance Theatre Workshop, Place Des Arts, Montreal, Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Bill collaborated with the legendary jazz band the Sun Ra Arkestra to create Hymn To The Universe in 2008, and is featured in OutSideIn, a 40-minute 3D film that premiered at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Coleman’s work has transcended traditional theatrical settings to include mountain tops, rainforests, prairies and urban construction sites. He has created a bold collection of large-scale, site-specific works, collaborating with diverse groups including WWII veterans, Aboriginal communities, fishing villages, ranching towns and urban neighbourhoods. He uses dance as a means to unite communities within their natural environment and past locations include Banff, Gros Morne and Grassland National Parks, the steppes of western Mongolia, Long Plain First Nation Pow Wow in Manitoba, the Great Bear Rainforest in BC and Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood. Coleman uses a unique methodology of movement he has developed through his life as a dancer. It involves accessing an embodied cognitive state to explore movement, and as an approach to technical practice as well as performance. The aim is a heightened awareness of the senses that induces both physical control and involuntary movement, allowing participants to access new territories of physical experience and exploration. Coleman currently uses this technique in all his dance practice as well as in local kindergarten classes, open adult workshops, collaborations with organizations such as National Parks Canada and Toronto Community Housing and as a point of departure for research in collaboration with the Department of Cognitive Science at McMaster University.
Coleman was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Zorro; he received the Jerome Foundation’s First Light Award in New York for Baryshnikov: The Other Story and, in 2002, he received the Canada Council Jacqueline-Lemieux Prize. He has been teaching creativity and movement for over 25 years, most recently at Nipissing First Nation, Ontario; Environmental Arts Festival, Scotland; Prostur Plus, Croatia; Centre For Indigenous Theatre, Toronto; New Dance Horizons, Regina, as well as at the University of Archangelsk in Russia, Concordia University, L’École de danse de Québec, School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Alberta University, Victoria University, University of Toronto and the University of Regina. In upcoming projects, Bill is creating a solo on dancer Chrysa Parkinson, and Ectoplasmotion, a new work in collaboration with Carol Prieur, Won Meyeong Won, Benoit Lachambre and Ann Trepanier.
GORDON MONAHAN live mUSIC, SOUND AND VISUALS Gordon Monahan’s works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and sound installation span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance. The renowned composer John Cage once said, “At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven’t heard before.” Gordon Monahan is the recipient of a 2013 Governor-General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. He won First Prize at the 1984 CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers, as well as commissions from the Vancouver New Music Society; CBC Radio; Dade County Art in Public Places, Miami; The Kitchen, New York; the DAAD Inventionen Festival, Berlin; the Donaueschinger Musiktage; the Sony Center, Berlin; the Coleman-Lemieux Dance Company, Montreal; and the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland. His controversial commission for the Dade County MetroRail transit system was banned during the 1988 New Music America festival in Miami. Monahan has been Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990), the
Exploratorium in San Francisco (1991), D.A.A.D., Berlin (1992-93), the Western Front, Vancouver (1999), Podewil, Berlin (2002), and Recto-Verso, Quebec City (2011-12).
PIERRE LAVOIE LIGHTING DESIGN Pierre Lavoie has worked in dance since 1982. First as stage manager in Toronto then in Montreal with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. There he had the great opportunity to work closely with his mentor: lighting designer Nicholas Cernovitch. Pierre is currently the resident lighting designer with Alberta Ballet and Margie Gillis. He also tours extensively with Montreal based Compagnie FLAK. Dollhouse is his sixth lighting design with Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie.
KENNY PEARL REHEARSAL DIRECTION Born in Toronto, Kenny Pearl spent thirteen years in New York City, dancing with the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (196780). Other highlights: performer with the Stratford Festival (1981); artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre (1983 – 1987); teacher at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre (1989-2001); faculty at Ryerson University (2002-2015); guest teacher in Vancouver, Quebec City, Montreal and Mexico City, and at the Juilliard School of Music, NYC; rehearsal director for the Graham Company, and for Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie (2007-2012); director of workshops for emerging artists (2009 – 2016); director of Toronto’s GMD, a professional dance class. His recent book, The Dance Gods: A New York Memoir, is available at www.dancegodsbook.com.
EDWARD POITRAS ARROW COSTUME Edward Poitras is a Métis artist based in Regina, Saskatchewan. His work, mixedmedia sculptures and installations, explores the themes of history, treaties, colonialism, and life both in urban spaces and on Indian reserves. Poitras was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1953 and he is a member of the Gordon First Nation. Poitras studied with Sarain Stump at the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College in 1974 and then with Mexican Aboriginal artist Domingo Cisneros at Manitou College in La Macaza, Quebec from 1975-1976.
Poitras has had his work exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Finland. Since 1980, his work has usually been included in major contemporary Aboriginal exhibitions. In 1995, he was the first Indigenous artist even chosen to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale. Poitras has taught at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (1976-1978), the University of Manitoba (1978) and the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College at the University of Regina (now First Nations University of Canada) from 1981-1984 and 1989-1990. His work is included in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Mendel Art Gallery, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and the Canadian Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Poitras was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2002.
ABOUT COLEMAN LEMIEUX & COMPAGNIE Founded in Quebec in 2000 by individuallyrenowned dancers/choreographers Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux, Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie (CLC) has distinguished itself by its innovative, unbridled artistic vision. CLC creates, produces and presents varied works on a local, national and international scale. The Company has toured across Canada, into the United States (where they headlined the Jacob’s Pillow Festival and appeared at Fall for Dance in New York City and in several other major cities), and to Brazil, China, Russia, and was the first modern dance company to perform in Mongolia. CLC’s repertoire is eclectic, daring and technically sophisticated, a visually rich, emotionally arresting tapestry nourished by other talented choreographers and by gifted artists from many disciplines. James Kudelka, CLC’s Resident Choreographer since 2008, has adapted some of his major works for the company. Other frequent CLC collaborators include media artist John Oswald, countertenor Daniel Taylor and visual artist Edward Poitras, as well as renowned dance artists Margie Gillis, David Gaucher, Guillaume Côté, Heather Ogden, Andrea Weber, and Carol Prieur, filmmaker/choreographer Anne Troake, composers Christopher Butterfield, Rodney Sharman, costume designer Liz Vandal, and Toronto fashion idols Jim Searle and Chris Tyrell of HOAX Couture.