EDAM Presents
Choreographic Series
December 2024
Alexa Solveig Mardon
Rachel Meyer
Peter Bingham
Welcome to EDAM’s Choreographic Series. We are thrilled to present new work by guest choreographers Alexa Solveig Mardon and Rachel Meyer, alongside a new directed improvisation by EDAM’s Artistic Director Peter Bingham. Our guest choreographers and their collaborators have been in residency at EDAM this fall, and we extend our deep appreciation to all the artists whose hard work and commitment have brought these performances to life. We are also immensely grateful for your presence here tonight to witness these new creations. Thank you for your support.
The EDAM Choreographic Series aims to provide a platform for emerging and established choreographers to showcase innovative and thought-provoking contemporary dance and performance; and celebrates creativity, collaboration, and the power of dance and movement.
video still by Darryl Ahye
wide iris empty heaven
by Alexa Solveig Mardon
wide iris empty heaven is a work-in-progress duet performed by Shahir Qrishnaswamy and Rhyan McCorkindale with costumes by Jaewoo Kang.
wide iris empty heaven swims alongside archetypes of angel, apparition and psychopomp – two figures as a morphing, singular messenger and tender of the threshold.
Holding one another is a spell
for summoning the fortitude to see.
Performers: Rhyan McCorkindale, Shahir Qrishnaswamy
Costume: Jaewoo Kang
Sound: Sasha J. Langford
Dramaturgy: Erika Mitsuhashi
ALEXA SOLVEIG MARDON is an artist co-creating and seeking spaces for imperfect ritual, queer fantastical myth-making, and multi-sensorial solidarity across difference. Alexa’s work encompasses stage performance, poetry, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, Movement Classes for Frontline Support Workers with Rianne Svelnis, and dreamwork + divination. As a queer settler artist living in collapse times, Alexa’s life is a commitment to the creation and sustenance of webs of support, enoughness and liberation with collaborators, community, and more than human entities. They are one half of the creation duo Mardon + Mitsuhashi. With a group of dance artists in solidarity with Palestine, they support the organization of monthly Dabkeh dance workshops with Canadabkeh. All funds raised go to supporting the cultural resistance work of Canadabkeh. The next workshop is December 14th 1-3pm. Please join us!
www.instagram.com/canadabkeh
JAEWOO KANG (costume design) is a queer Korean-Canadian and interdisciplinary artist working with film, animation, textile and performance born in Busan. A major theme for him is queer eroticism and how intimate moments with others can allow the self to have an introspective experience. Recently he finished a residency at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver with a fashion performance presentation. With the support of Canada Council and BC Arts Council, he is currently in post-production for his first animated feature film, Primavera.
SHAHIR QRISHNASWAMY (performer) is a multimedia performance artist, holistic educator, trauma-informed yoga teacher, somatic counselor, and integral facilitator. His current life's work is to support all beings to restore a loving connection with themselves, communities, and earth through community-based arts education. He holds a master’s in Contemplative Education from SFU and a bachelor’s in Film and Cultural Studies from McGill. His practice weaves insights from Buddhism, animism and developmental psychology to offer encounters with the uncanny and the sacred inside each of us. He was born in Malawi, with ancestry hailing from Karnataka and Gujarat, India.
SASHA J. LANGFORD (sound) is a composer and interdisciplinary artist based on unceded Coast Salish territories, who works at the intersection of sound, writing, performance, and social practice. Sasha's solo and collaborative work has been presented at Ehkä-Kutomo (Turku, FI), FestivALT (Kraków, PL), Lines of Flight Festival of Experimental Music (Dunedin, New Zealand), Ende Tymes (Brooklyn, NY), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), and the International Noise Conference (Miami, FL).
RHYAN McCORKINDALE (performer) I am a sacred joke, settler of mostly Celtic descent, living on the unceded lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples. I move slowly, love slowly, and transform quickly and invisibly. I have collaborated and performed in works created by Mardon + Mitsuhashi, Jaewoo Kang, Hazel Meyer, and Katie Close-Garland/Davey Calderon.
ERIKA MITSUHASHI (dramaturgy) is an interdisciplinary artist based on unceded MST territory. Her work has taken the form of performance for stage, installation, experimental film, site specific/responsive performance, scenography and projection design. Most recently she has been developing her work as a dramturg, producer and curator, which has blossomed organically from being an enthusiastic fan girl of artists and their processes.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to Rhye, Shahir and Jaewoo, whose steadfastness, butt jokes, depth of inquiry, complete babe status and trust made this wild ride possible even when I doubted. I love you. Thank you to Erika Mitsuhashi, Lee Su-Feh, Rianne Svelnis, Romila Barryman, Bynh Ho, and Xwechtaal Dennis Joseph for conversations about breath, touch, death, rhythm, attachment, initiation, and dormant knowledges waking up. Thank you to CHIPS collective and especially Reed for all the late night shifts shredding denim. Thank you to MascallDance + Jennifer for supporting the initial seed of this work at Bloom last spring and to Marnie + Jim at Empire of Dirt for the space to dream, craft and rest. Thank you Peter for the invitation and thank you Sierra and Olivia for all your incredible communication and hard work. Thank you to the flowers, leaves, shells, stones and lichen of unceded Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleilwaututh and Ktunaxa territory which became our eyes. Thank you Z. Thank you to the entities who are making themselves known in all their beauty, terror, play, and exactitude as we bear witness to ongoing genocides and step deeper into sacred responsibility.
photo by David Cooper
Magicicada
by Rachel Meyer
In spring of 2024, two broods of periodical cicadas emerged simultaneously in central Illinois, coinciding with a visit to my childhood house in the small town of Collinsville. Billions of these insects emerged and shed their exoskeletons after living underground for 13 and 17 years. My home, seemingly unchanged since I moved out approximately 17 years ago, is now also surfacing a transformation.
Choreography in collaboration with the artists: Rachel Meyer
Performance: Ariana Barr, Oksana Maslechko
Composition: James Maxwell
Costume Fabrication: Robyn Jill Laxamana and Linda Chow
RACHEL MEYER grew up in Illinois, trained with St. Louis Ballet and the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. She received her BFA at the University of Utah and was awarded a Princess Grace Award in 2010. Rachel has been a member of the Utah Regional Ballet, Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre, the Michael Clark Company, and Ballet BC. As an independent choreographer, she has presented four full length, site-specific works from 2017- 2023, and created a commissioned work for Ballet Edmonton in 2019.
https://rachelmeyer.ca/
OKSANA MASLECHKO began dancing with Slava Doval’s DanceFusion in Nelson, BC, exploring styles like Hip Hop, House, Afro, Bellydance, Folk and Bollywood. In 2016, she moved to Vancouver, training two years with Lamondance and performing six years with its company under Davi Rodrigues. As a freelance dancer, Oksana has collaborated with artists including Vanessa Goodman, Rachel Meyer, Idan Cohen, Alexis Fletcher, Wen Wei Wang, Anya Saugstad, Nicolas Ventura, Brandon Alley, Racheal Prince, Ziyian Kwan, Cristina Bucci, Yoshito Sakuraba, Lara Barclay, Kirsten Wicklund, Heather Laura Gray, Alysa Pires and Heather Dotto.
Raised in Victoria BC, ARIANNA BARR has nurtured her love of dance and expression since the age of six. With the support of her family, her movement practice has moved from the living room to the studio and now, fortunately, to many collaborative spaces and stages across Canada. Grateful to spend her life being shaped perpetually by the people she works with and by movement itself, Ariana is privileged to live and dance as a guest on the traditional, unceded territory of the Coast Salish people.
JAMES MAXWELL is a composer of concert music and music for dance, theatre, film, and media. Recent and upcoming works include the final episode, Cabin in the Woods, of the “podcast”/soundwork, The Refrain: Getting in Sync with the World with Fight With a Stick performance, the score for Helen Walkley’s blocking, and kwelfaeld for 2 alto flutes, bass flute, and electronics for the Tempest Flute Choir.
Special thanks to Brandon Lee Alley for his collaboration in initial rehearsals, and to my father, Rick Meyer, for the audio recordings of cicadas and tree frogs in Illinois.
photo by Chris Randle
drawing attention
by Peter Bingham
Direction: Peter Bingham
Dramaturg: Raïna von Waldenburg
Dancers: Anne Cooper, Francesca Frewer, Hayley Gawthrop, Arash Khakpour, Olivia Shaffer, Antonio Somera Jr.
Sound: Alex Mah
Thank you Raïna and to all the performers for their commitment and artistry.
PETER BINGHAM, Artistic Director of EDAM Dance, has been exploring the boundaries of improvisation and choreography since 1975. His work has been performed across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia.
ANNE COOPER Anne has danced in EDAM/Peter Bingham's works since 1994. She's also danced in the 'Glimpse' Performances, USA, with Nancy Stark Smith and for choreographers & companies in Vancouver, Winnipeg & Quebec City. She has created and presented her own work in Vancouver. She's taught Contact Improv at EDAM and elsewhere since 2000. Anne is grateful to live and work in Vancouver, BC, situated on the unceded, ancestral land of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
FRANCESCA FREWER is a contemporary dance artist living as a grateful guest on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her practice celebrates movement as an experience of the unfolding unknown — in performance, practice, creating work, producing shows at the DIY space Boombox, and teaching contemporary dance, Contact Improvisation, and The Feldenkrais Method.
Originally from Tehran, ARASH KHAKPOUR is privileged to be a dance artist who has immigrated to the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. Arash is very lucky to work with and learn from Peter Bingham. He is overjoyed to have been dancing and performing with the exceptional EDAM ensemble for the past 7 years.
ALEX MAH is an interdisciplinary performing artist, composer-musician, and CI practitioner. He composes mostly weirdo experimental music and sometimes sweet songs for dance and theatre. He is grateful to have worked with Peter Bingham since 2015 and was fortunate to be a jam musician for 300 dancers at contactfest Freiburg 2024, Europe’s largest CI festival. He is fond of folk music, loves a good cheesecake, and prefers taking things slowly.
Born and reared in Semiahmoo territory HAYLEY GAWTHROP is an independent performing artist residing in the unceded, ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil- Waututh Nations. Music and Dance make Hayley feel more radically alive. Their passion for autonomy and interest in improvisation led them to explore Contact Improv under the tutelage of Peter Bingham in 2015. They have been dancing professionally with the EDAM ensemble since 2021 and teaching CI at EDAM since 2022.
RAÏNA VON WALDENBURG, former full-time faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, adjunct at SFU and UFV, currently teaches workshops in Grotowski-based physical performance. Raïna is a dramaturg, writer, director, and performer in Vancouver and the experimental downtown NYC theatre scene. She has been facilitating artists in the development of original performance material for thirty years.
OLIVIA SHAFFER’s been rolling around on the floor for as long as she can remember. It was the nightly wrestling matches with her father that first unveiled the joy of Contact Improvisation. She is grateful to have somehow made a career out of it. With over 15 years of freelance dance experience, she is now the Associate Artistic Director at EDAM, a certified Feldenkrais® practitioner, and serves as Adjunct Faculty at UBC.
www.oliviashaffer.ca
ANTONIO SOMERA JR is a queer and quirky freelance dance artist who lives and works on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. His interests lie in improvisation, whether it be through contact dance, freestyling in street dance battles or becoming an adult.
EDAM CHOREOGRAPHIC SERIES 2024
Artistic Director
Peter Bingham
Associate Artistic Director
Olivia Shaffer
Interim General Manager
Sierra Megas
Front of House
Maggie McGhee
Lighting Designer
James Proudfoot
Sound Technician
Alex Mah
www.edamdance.org
Thank you to our wonderful volunteers!
EDAM gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council and the City of Vancouver.
We, at EDAM, live, work and create on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.