“Surreal and sexually charged…Five red-hot dancers rip open the heart as a place for electrical and emotional sparks… For cool kids and those who think with their hearts” - The Georgia Straight

A Co-production of the CanDance Network Creation Fund, The Cultch, Brian Webb Dance Company, National Arts Centre, L’Agora de la danse, Festival TransAmériques and supported by the Dance Section of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Love, In Effect, Is an Emotional Force field

The fundamental need to connect, despite obstacles of time and distance, has become a central paradigm of human communication. Making these concepts flesh, Heart as Arena, a multimedia work for five performers, explores ideas of receptivity, transmission and the secret language of electricity that animates heart, mind and muscle.

Low-watt radio transmitters broadcast a fragile stream of love songs, snatches of static, and the deep silence of space.  A constellation of radios hovers above the dancers, creating a living array of sound. The transmissions create a physical soundscape that is constantly acted on and disrupted by the slipping frequencies and electrical fields created by the dancers’ moving bodies. Bellini’s Norma, the canonical opera of desire, love and loss, acts as the emotional centre of the piece, emerging and disappearing throughout the piece like a distant station heard on late night radio.

This choreography explores the heart as an arena of electrical and emotional force fields; the attraction and repulsion of bodies in motion; physically demanding expressions of need and want; the electrical interplay at the base of our emotions; the firing and silencing of the very neurons that create our experiences of falling in or out of love.

The work features performers Sarah Doucet (Toronto), Shay Kuebler (Vancouver), Amber Funk Barton (Vancouver), Masaharu Imazu (Montreal/Japan) and Dana Gingras (Vancouver/Montreal). Creative collaborators include sound artist Anna Friz (Toronto/Chicago), sound and lighting artist Mikko Hynninen (Finland), dramaturge Ruth Little (England).

People:

CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Dana Gingras, in collaboration with the performers
PERFORMERS: Amber Funk-Barton  |  Sarah Doucet  |  Dana Gingras  | Shay Kuebler  | Masaharu Imazu  |  Karen Fennell (apprentice)
TRANSMISSION CONCEPT, INSTALLATION AND COMPOSITION: Anna Friz
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Mikko Hynninen
DRAMATURGY: Ruth Little / Daniel Canty
COSTUMES AND STYLING: Sarah Doucet
PHOTOGRAPHY: Yannick Grandmont

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Promotional Images:

A Co-production of the Festival TransAmériques

Smash Up is a full evening presentation consisting of a series of short mixed-media works. Conceived as a collision between dance, animation and sound, Smash Up takes as its informing element the fluidity of the post modern age of repurposing— where the remix, the sample, the mash-up, the hypertext, the cut-and-paste, the adaptation and the bricolage are the means by which we order (or disorder) our existence.

In juxtaposing live movement with the motion of animated projections, Smash Up employs a pop sensibility that creates a mobile tactile atmosphere, deconstructing the sublimely disquieting forces of desire, isolation, emotional and physical dislocation manifested between layers of image, gesture and sound.

From algorithmic languages to the incorporation of ‘readymade’ choreography and stream of consciousness collections, Smash Up makes use of multiple formats and methodology to generate a continuous evolution of action and reaction. In a fractal, ever-evolving set of ideas and images, technology is filtered and re-enunciated through the performers’ physicality. Metastasized growth of line and form masses into chaos; patterns combine and dissolve; normative ideas of physical space are perpetually disrupted and rearranged.

Past Performances:

Smash Up premiered in 2007 and has been presented across Canada and in the US. The interactive software that generates the animation of the company’s celebrated work Chain Reaction and video of the live performance have been presented at graphic design conferences and universities around the world, with presentations spanning a number of different incarnations, including Munich at Toca Me, Barcelona OFFF, Lisbon OFFF, New York OFFF Toronto FITC, Chicago FITC, Brighton FOTB, Tokyo FITC, Edmonton FITC, Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo, AIGA (American Institutions of Graphic Artists), SVA (School of Visual Arts), and Stone (John Zorn’s gallery) in New York.

Reviews

I Am a Chain Reaction, one segment of the installation-based Smash Up and the year’s most unforgettable dance piece, was a collaborative effort with animator Amit Pitaru and visual artist James Paterson. But props go to Dana Gingras for pulling it all together as both the choreographer and performer in the exhilarating work…. Its brilliance lay in its absolute fusion of dance and animation.

—Janet Smith, The Georgia Straight Top 12 Performances of 2007

Then came the dance highlight of the evening….Playing a couple in the throes of deep commitment, the two juxtaposed displays of precision, strength and scary speed with flashes of tenderness — the audience roar was spontaneous.

—Kathryn Greenaway, The Montreal Gazette, Tuesday June 3, 2008

People

CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Dana Gingras, in collaboration with the performers.
PERFORMERS:   Sarah Doucet | Susan Eliott  | Dana Gingras |  Shay Kuebler|  Sonja Perreten
ANIMATION AND PROGRAMMING: James Paterson and Amit Pitaru
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN: Jonathan Inksetter
SOUND DESIGN AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC: Roger Tellier Craig
LIGHTING DESIGN: Marc Tetreault
PHOTOGRAPHY: Andre Bergeron, Yannick Grandmont, Dominic Schaefer, Austin Young ——————————————————————————————————————

For Press and Presenters

Technical Rider

Fiche Techinque

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Videos

Watch Chain Reaction on Youtube

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Promotional Images:

A Co-production of AoD and The 605 Collective

Premiere: The Cultch, Vancouver, 2012

Other Dates: Victoria 2012,

New Animal is a multi media work that exploits the supreme versatility of the five dancers of The 605 collective.  Suffused with raw, unbridled energy, groove, ludic interaction and a hunger for movement, the performers reclaim their animal bodies as a means of becoming fully human. Engaging with the push and pull of the group dynamic, while recognizing its interdependence, attempts to speak of otherness.

Playful and intimate, New Animal walks a tightrope between fleeting moments of control and radical shifts in dynamics. The tension between flesh ultimately pushes the structure towards the edge of chaos and entropy. The collective effort to maintain form under pressure requires a concomitant acceleration of energy and willingness to adapt against imminent disorder.

The performance will also feature film elements that work with extremes in scale, animating and amplifying details of both natural and man made worlds through stop frame techniques.

Reviews of Work in Progress:

Rather than repressing their humanity for their art, the dancers seem to carry their social context with them in the work. New Animal is athletic and powerful. Dancers use the floor to execute swift falls and leaps that see them go from prone to standing in seconds. Their interactions onstage are complex and gestural, deriving from natural body language rather than from an external geometry….New Animal never descends into abstraction however there are always two levels to the dancing, one that is legible in a narrative sense and one that is legible in a symbolic sense.

—Kirstie McCallum, Plank Magazine, October 22nd, 2009

From the get-go, New Animal is its own world where the dancers appear beholden to prevailing forces: internal back-of-the-brain animal instincts versus an external invisible hand. Technically impressive with their universal ability to fast-forward, rewind and stop on a dime, 605 attacks New Animal’s contrasts between explosive physicality and moments of suspended animation — most impressively demonstrated by Shay Kuebler’s physics-defying handstands.

—By Jessica Barrett, North Shore News, Friday, October 16, 2009

People:

CHOREOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION: Dana Gingras, in collaboration with the performers
PERFORMERS: Amber Funk-Barton  |  Lisa Gelley  |  Sasha Kozak  |  Shay Kuebler |  Josh Martin
SOUND DESIGN AND ELECTRONICS: Roger Tellier Craig
FILM: Dana Gingras and Yannick Grandmont
PHOTOGRAPHY: Yannick Grandmont

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Promotional Images:

DANCES FOR DZAMA (trailer)

A Bravo!FACT Presentation

Upcoming Screenings:
March 2011 LOIKKA Dance Film Festival, Helsinki
April - May 2011 MOVES festival, Liverpool, U.K.
Bravo!Arts Channel (various screening times)

Inspired by Marcel Dzama’s Drawing for Dante, Dances for Dzama is a filmic fan letter to the Canadian artist. Set deep in a fairytale forest, a girl and a bear engage in a series of duets that rapidly evolve and escalate, alternately creating a sense of harmonious engagement and playful competition.

Past Screenings:
Dancing for the Camera International Festival /American Dance Festival - Durham NC
26e Marché du Cort Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand

MADance Screen Salon - Toronto

People:
CHOREOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION: Dana Gingras
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND EDITING: William Morrison
PERFORMERS:  Andrea Gunnlaugson as the bear & Kathleen McDonagh as the girl
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Alexander MacSween
ORIGINAL MUSIC AND SOUND DESIGN: Gabriel Issac Mounsey
SET DESIGN AND PAINTING: Angela DeChristofaro
COSTUME DESIGN: Reva Quam
PHOTOGRAPHY: Dominic Schaefer

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Production Stills:

WHAT IS MINE IS YOURS (trailer)

Premiere: November 7th 2010 Los Angeles County Museum Of Art

Additional Screenings:  November 26 2010, STABLE, Montreal

Two people locked in bitter mouth-to-mouth combat. Created especially for Let Them Eat LACMA a year long investigation of food, art, culture and politics presented by Fallen Fruit.

People:
CONCEPT AND DIRECTION: Dana Gingras
PERFORMERS: Julie Buchinger | Karine Denault | Yannick Grandmont  |  Dana Gingras|  Masaharu Imazu
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND EDITING: Yannick Grandmont
SOUND DESIGN: Roger Tellier Craig (from Ravel’s Le Gibet)

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Production Stills:

AURELIA

A Bravo!Fact Production

A dive into the isolation of the unconscious mind. A lone Esther Williams like figure swimming and drifting amongst the murky depths of lost and found memories, sinking towards the bottom of a metaphoric ocean against the tide of flotsam and jetsam.

Aurelia was inspired by ‘Davey Jones’ Locker’, a solo created for Smash Up.

People
CONCEPT AND CREATION:  Dana Gingras and Jonathan Inksetter
DIRECTION AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Dana Gingras
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND EDITING: Jonathan Inksetter
PERFORMER: Sonja Perreten
ANIMATION AND PROJECTIONS: James Paterson
SOUND DESIGN: Roger Tellier Craig

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Production Stills: