Idealicious to be presented at Culture Days
Home Town: St. John’s
NLAC Program Funded Under: Professional Project Grants Program
Grant Recipient: Tammy McLeod
Amount Funded: $4,250
Idealicious is a 35-minute contemporary dance performance that explores word play and the alphabet. Choreographed by Montreal-based dancer, choreographer, and educator Eryn Trudell, it is presented by Tammy MacLeod, with Andrea Tucker and Calla Lachance who perform a combination of solo, duo, and trio pieces. Idealicious is a playful and accessible performance that mixes spoken word with movement to explore fun extrapolations on the letters of the alphabet. The result is a rhythmic and story-driven piece.
Neighbourhood Dance Works will present Idealicious as part of the Culture Days celebration in St. John’s:
Dates: Sunday, October 2, 2011
Time: 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Venue: Cochrane Street United Church, St. John’s
Admission: Free
Contact: Neighbourhood Dance Works
Phone: (709) 722-3663
E-mail: ndw@nfld.net
Website: www.neighbourhooddanceworks.com
Q and A with Calla Lachance, dancer and Executive Director of Neighbourhood Dance Works...
NLAC: Let’s start with a real “layman’s” question: how do you go about exploring the alphabet through dance? I guess, you start with....A? Or not?
Calla: We started by improvising in the studio, just walking and moving naturally through the room. Eryn gave us a letter to work with - I think it actually was the letter ‘A’ and we started speaking words that began with ‘A’. Then we started mirroring our movements to reflect those words and this created a sense of connectedness to one another. Someone would say a word and it’s like our bodies just knew what to do, and somehow we’d all do it together, completely intuitively and in sync. For instance someone said “Avalanche” and we all just crumpled to the floor in slow motion. We allowed ourselves be completely uninhibited to keep the initial phase playful and fun. We realized after the first rehearsal – that there wasn’t going to be any problem creating the material, the biggest challenge was for Eryn to distill it down to what really worked.
NLAC: What three words would you use to describe this piece?
Calla: Fun, Surprising, Energizing
NLAC: Who is the intended audience for Idealicious?
Calla: Young and old alike – on our last school tour the teachers loved it as much as the children.
NLAC: Idealicious involves a vocal element – tell us about that – how do you use voice in the piece?
Calla: We are speaking all the time, but we try to not let it over-ride the movement. For us the movement is still the impetus of the creative pulse in the work. But the words are essential – they give us and the audience images to relate to, it opens up an imaginative playground that allows the view to see into the world we’ve created on stage.
NLAC: Audiences may not be used to hearing, or may not expect to hear, dancers speak or vocalize when they perform...how does this work for you?
Calla: When we are speaking we are not always creating a linear story, like you’d find in a children’s storybook. The words we speak don’t always have anything to do with one another – for instance in the ‘A’ dance we speak “apple, alligator, ask, acorn and ants’. Each word represents a situation or feeling, and when we speak those words, it leads to transitional movement phases that create a new scenario. The result is the jumbled alphabet soup – you never know which letter we are going stumble onto next and the audience never knows what journey those letters and words will take them.
NLAC: Did you have to do special work to incorporate voice into the piece?
Calla: We warm up our voices quite a bit prior to rehearsing or performing but we haven’t had a vocal coach come in during the rehearsal process – this is something we’d like to do in the final production phase. We think it is important to work with theatre professionals who have a lot to offer when it comes to speaking on stage and addressing the audience.
NLAC: What about other elements such as performance space, set, and costumes. How do these contribute to the experience?
Calla: We are still working on costumes, but when we did it at the 24 Hour Art Marathon we had Natasha, a body painter, put letters all over our arms and legs - that was fun! Chris Driedzic did a wonderful job putting the music score together. We are still working out a possible set design. All of these elements are really important, they give the work a crisp appearance.
NLAC: What does the show “look” like?
Calla: It looks like a strange blend of chaos and uniformity – one minute you’re wondering “where the heck is this going to go?” and the next minute we pull the movement and spoken text together and kablam! - you’re inside this magical little world.
NLAC: You toured the piece to schools as part of the NLAC’s School Touring Program – how did that go?
Calla: It was fabulous – the children and teachers responded just as we had hoped. They had so many comments, reflections and positive feedback. One 10 year old girl commented after the show: “I can really see how this dance promotes none violence.” We were really taken aback by her response, as well as other insightful comments. One teacher told us in all her years teaching she had never come across such an affective teaching tool aimed at teaching the alphabet and encouraging proper enunciation and communication. She said she went back to the classroom and all the kids were walking about speaking words, moving about finding gestures to express their words. I can’t tell you how satisfying this was for all of us.
NLAC: What do you have planned for the Culture Days presentation?
Calla: We are showing the work at Cochrane St United Church as part of Neighbourhood Dance Works Festival of New Dance Showcase. We want to share the work as much as we can with the community and stir up a conversation about movement, expressive dialogue, and relationships. We will perform the work and have a discussion, maybe even teach a section of the work.
Idealicious (L to R) Andrea Tucker, Calla Lachance, and Tammy MacLeod
NLAC: What are your plans for Idealicious beyond the performance during Culture Days?
Calla: We hope to do more school touring, as well as apply to other local festivals like Sound Symposium and the St John’s Storytelling Festival. We also intend to apply to children’s festivals across the country once the final production phase is complete.
NLAC: Is there anything you would like to add?
Calla: We are extremely grateful for the support of the NLAC. It has been an incredible opportunity to create this work and then be given the financial means to bring the work to other communities.
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