13 minute read
Making Space for Cultural Connection at Morrow
Rianne Svelnis’ sharing of cross-disciplinary practices through Symbiotic Forms
by Rachel Silver Maddock
As winter became spring and spring will inevitably turn into summer, Morrow – a culturalspace opened by Dumb Instrument Dance in July 2020 – is host to a special new initiativethat brings together artists in mutually beneficial, or symbiotic sharing of practices.
Symbiotic Forms, envisioned and realized by Dumb Instrument Dance, makes three artists “Cultural Connectors” between February and August this year. The artists – Rianne Svelnis, Joyce Rosario and Marisa Gold – are given the opportunity to invite other artists, educators, and activists into processes of research, dialogue, and practice sharing, supported through 100 hours of space and funding for their collaborators.
I was drawn to learn more about Symbiotic Forms because it uniquely puts the focus on the relational aspect of artmaking, rather than the creative product. This aligns with something I have felt in the slow return to “normal” this year – a new appreciation for how those in-person connections, in-studio or in passing, inform and inspire my own practice. The program is creating space for that invaluable exchange, expanding its scope outside of the dance community to reconceive of the sharing of cultural and artistic knowledge.
In my conversation with Rianne Svelnis (who completed the bulk of her time at Morrow in February and March 2022), I found myself captivated by the intricacies of each of Rianne’s different projects, from pulp painting to storytelling, and imagining each creative process layering upon the last in the space at Morrow.
Dumb Instrument Dance from Ziyian Kwan's Choreography Made in Voyage
© David Cooper
Rachel Maddock: How did you get involved in Symbiotic Forms?
Rianne Svelnis: Ziyian [Kwan, artistic director of Dumb Instrument Dance] invited me to be one of three artists in the program with Joyce Rosario and Marisa Gold. She did the grant writing and secured the funds to support the program. When we were first envisioning it, it was called Symbiotic Forms because of the intention to learn how different practices can be in relationship and in symbiosis, as mutually beneficial.
RM: Yes, the name reminds me of plants!
RS: Exactly! Seeing how distinct practices can strengthen one another and uplift one another is interesting.
RM: So as a Cultural Connector, you had 100 hours of space at Morrow. Could you use those hours however you wanted or how did you structure it?
RS: Ziyian was super open to how I wanted to build the program and who I chose to practice share with. The other thing it provided was some mentorship and administrative support from Ziyian; she helped me envision the larger scope of the whole program.
RM: What piqued your interest to be a part of it?
RS: I think one of the reasons Ziyian invited me is that I feel like in my life I have participation and bonds in different communities – not just the dance community. My program was three or four different practices coming together based on relationships I already had, [seeking to] understand how dance applies to other practices and what those practices can give back to dance.
RM: I see that you were working with Sauha Lee, Alexa Solveig Mardon, Olivia C. Davies and Romila Barryman. What practices did they bring into the space at Morrow?
RS: My first collaborator was Sauha Lee, who is a landscaper and visual artist. She makes pulp paintings out of decomposing plant material and reused scrap paper. Sauha and I have known each other since we were three years old, so we have a lifelong relationship. Sauha’s work has been in the Morrow gallery since the original Morrow space, and she knew Ziyian from a residency called SOJOURN.
Rianne Svelnis and Sauha Lee at Morrow
© Ziyian Kwan
Sauha and I did a practice share where I offered movement and somatic practices related to the theme of her work, which is Winter Bones, because of what is revealed when winter comes, the leaves drop, and we see the structure of plant material rather than the fruits. We did bone dances together… somatic bone dances! She’s not a dancer, so I offered parts of my practice to see how it might relate to the themes in her work. Then we designed a workshop that was open to the public with two parts: a somatic warm up then pulp painting with Sauha, and participants brought in plant material and scrap paper. It was this question mark of what doing a somatic warm up would give to this craft, and vice versa. It was really fun!
RM: That sounds extremely fun but also interesting.
RS: It was brand new; we had never done that before. In the room, there were dancers, academics, landscapers—lots of communities coming together in that space. It was really cool because the landscapers knew all this shit about plants, then the dancers were really sourcing material from their body experience.
RM: I’m curious about what pulp painting has added to your practice?
RS: Something Sauha and I talked a lot about is perceiving beauty in decomposition – in rotting material, or waste material. In landscaping or gardening, the wet or dry plant material is perceived as waste and composted. But what she does is repurpose it and turn it into artwork. So that was a big learning [piece] for me: how to reperceive things in my work or in my life that I might see as ugly or useless or rotting and invite the possibility of repurposing those things and understanding beauty in a different way. It’s quite conceptual but it’s a really beautiful concept.
Rianne and Sauha's pulp painting and somatic movement workshop at Morrow
© Rianne Svelnis and Sauha Lee
RM: After working with Sauha, you worked with Alexa?
RS: Yes, then I worked with Alexa Mardon on an ongoing project, offering movement classes for support workers. This relates to another part of my life – frontline support work and direct action. In the Downtown Eastside (DTES), I am part of some mutual aid projects. For several years, Alexa and I have been working on a class or workshop for people whose job or life puts them in high intensity or crisis situations frequently, to see how we can use our knowledge of the body that we have from dancing to apply to the nervous system in times of crisis, or to apply our understanding of choreography to social choreography if there is a crisis in a group, for instance.
We did two workshops, online and in person. It was very cool because there were professional trauma therapists, dancers and front-line workers all coming together to be in the body and talk about what tools we can practice when a crisis arises: to ground or calm the nervous system or make a connection with someone that could be supportive, or just move the body in space when a freeze response comes up.
RM: I love that. I think the type of dance we do is so much about how you are, and how you can be in the world. It is wonderful to see you reaching out to the community and trying to share that knowledge. Do you feel like it was successful, like you managed to communicate that?
Workshop with Rianne Svelnis and Sauha Lee at Morrow
© Ziyian Kwan
RS: Yes, I think there are lots of different methods of connecting to the body – this just happens to be the one Alexa and I are experts at and employed at. Because we teach and share these tools and receive them in dance class, we can share them. People could go to a yoga class for instance, or any other type of physical practice but this is the one that is available to us, because Alexa and I both have dance and front-line support practices. I do think it is successful. Over the years, we have been learning what people respond to and what language people respond to. Having a toolbox or a set of responses can be helpful – for instance if I feel like I am panicking I can feel my feet on the floor.
RM: So those are just two of the four projects you did!
RS: I know it’s a lot of information.
RM: No, it’s great! It’s the actual substance of the work that’s the most interesting part. I can see what you mean about connecting different communities, it’s really lovely that this program provides space for that. It can feel so disparate, these communities that we have. I am curious about the other collaborators you worked with. Do you want to touch on your work with them?
RS: Then I worked with Olivia Davies with Matriarchs Uprising. She has a program called the DTES Grandmothers Collective. Ziyian, Sophie Dow and I joined them in their improvisational creation residency that weaves [together] cultural sharing and intergenerational knowledge. There were four DTES community artists [Dalannah Gail Bowen, Rosemary Georgeson, Savannah Walling, and Sharon Jinkerson-Brass] that are part of a storytelling collective. It was really special for me because I have a long relationship with Olivia, and existing relationships with two of the elders so there was familiarity there. That process in particular was really restorative and gentle. We sat in a circle and experimented and shared experiences and stories. The theme of that particular group's project is Gathering Hope, which was really beautiful.
Gathering of Hope at Morrow, courtesy of O’Dela Arts
© Erik Zennström
Then I worked with Romila, who is a writer, facilitator, cyber-mystic, and a new collaborator for me. We spent a week together. That was a really special opportunity because we had only ever worked together online, where we met at an SFU Community Capacity Building course in 2021. Our studio time together was a non-linear, non-cerebral way of getting to know one another, and sensing one another’s ways of perceiving through our art practices. We did a beautiful practice share that felt both embodied and ethereal, and intentionally didn’t have a showing or workshop or anything but kept it just for real time in the studio. I also had one really special day of practice share with my dear friend, Harmanie Rose. We work together with All Bodies [Dance Project] and have created and danced together a lot. So, it was like a joyful reunion where we shared what we had been working on lately, built a score, danced it together, and spent time witnessing one another.
RM: Overall, what was your experience of being a Cultural Connector?
RS: Especially when the pandemic hit, I was thinking a lot about how I felt uncomfortable with how compartmentalized different pieces of my life felt and how the dance world felt like a closed or siloed community. And sometimes what we learn about being a dancer is that it’s the only thing you can do, or else you won’t be successful – that you have to be 100% devoted to dance and that’s it.
I was pushing against that a little bit and wanted to challenge that to be a whole person with lots of different interests and practices and places where I put my energy. To move away from a scarcity mentality where I only have so many units of energy, and if I use any of them on something else then my dance practice or dance career will suffer. I wanted to reimagine it so that all the pieces strengthen one another instead of taking them away from one another.
RM: Do you feel like the weeks and hours you spent in Symbiotic Forms will be informing your work over the next period of time, or is it something that’s finished? Are you going to continue these kernels of ideas and disseminate them in some way?
RS: I feel like a lot of what happened is relationship building and understanding other people’s practices. This is something Romila articulated beautifully during our time together in the studio: that it is a practice unto itself, to join someone in their perspective and their way of doing and way of processing the world. And so that is something that I will definitely continue to practice – how to meet someone, how to exchange, and how to join them in the way they understand the world and process it through their art.
RM: What was it like to have a more extended period of support for your practice and personally?
RS: It felt like a celebration of relationships. It was very affirming and uplifting to have support from Ziyian and Dumb Instrument Dance to support relationships and practice sharing with financial support – it is a very special and rare thing. I am feeling a lot of gratitude and reflecting on how some of the relationships were lifelong, and some were quite new. In some ways it is a study of how relationships form and change when we meet in artistic practice. It was beautiful to be supported and to vicariously support other artists through the program that Ziyian put together.
Rianne Svelnis is a queer dance artist and a settler of European descent living on the lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, and sə̓ lílwətaʔɬ people. A graduate of Modus Operandi Contemporary Dance Training Program, Rianne has since collaborated and performed in works by Ziyian Kwan, romham pàdraig gallacher, Sasha Kleinplatz, Justine Chambers, Daisy Thompson, Olivia Davies, Emmalena Fredriksson and others. She has also created new works in collaboration with Sauha Lee, Zahra Shahab, Kelly McInnes, Areli Moran, and Andrea Cownden and Layla Marcelle. Rianne co-facilitates inclusive community dance classes with All Bodies Dance Project, Movement Classes for Support Workers with Alexa Solveig Mardon and is in mentorship with Karen Jamieson Dance with the Carnegie Dance Troupe in the Downtown Eastside. Rianne is also a grateful participant in the mutual aid project Distro Disco.
Symbiotic Forms continues through August with Joyce Rosario from March – July 2022 (working via Critical Response Process with Justin Calvadores, Jeanette Kotowich, June Fukumara and Natalie Gan) and Marisa Gold following from May – August 2022. More information and public participation opportunities can be found at Dumb Instrument Dance.
Rachel Silver Maddock (she/her) is an independent dance artist, writer and choreographer living and working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, Vancouver and Port Moody, BC. She holds a Diploma of Dance Studies from Trinity Laban (UK) and a BA Visual Culture & Performance Studies (SFU). Since 2015, she has danced in various projects for independent artists and companies in BC including plastic orchid factory, The Body Orchestra Collective, It’s Not A Box Theatre and Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject. She has presented her work at Mascall Dance’s Bloom, Chalk It Up and The Dance Centre. Rachel writes about dance and the visual arts for publications including The Dance Current, Dance International, SAD Mag, Dance Central and the Burrard Arts Foundation.
