Company 605’s Winter Intensive Online
December 9 – 12, 2020
Co-Presented by SFU Woodward’s Cultural Services in association with SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
In Partnership with Raven Spirit Dance’s IndigenousGround Training
Photo of Zahra Shahab, by Angel Lynne
As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the protection of the health and safety of all participants, the 2020 Winter Intensive has been redesigned for a four-day online experience that aims to offer accessibility and prioritizes an accumulative exchange between all attending participants / artists.
Intensive programming will take place on Zoom with meeting links and detailed instructions provided to participants via email.
Registration Cost*
$220.00 + $11.00 GST = $231.00 Total
Payable via cheque or PayPal transaction.
*$220 is the cost of the 2020 Winter Intensive. All emerging and professional members of CADA/West can receive a 50% reimbursement through their Training Subsidy Program ($110 + GST).
Cut-off: 2pm on December 8, 2020
Submit payment here:
Please fill out the registration form below:
2020-registration-form Download
*Company 605 also recognizes the difficulties the pandemic has placed on many in the performing arts community, and if the cost of this Intensive is prohibitive to you at this time, please contact the company directly at info@company605.ca about arranging a Pay-What-You-Can alternative. No one will be turned away.
Daily Schedule
11:00 – 12:45 PST – Alanna Kraaijeveld (MTL): Inspire by Fighting Monkey
This Movement class is comprised of form and task-based dances that examine and test physical and creative possibilities. These dances ask the participant to continuously meet something outside of themselves – an object, form, concept, context – and observe, reflect, and integrate feedback through practice. Each dance presents a rigorous framework to stimulate creativity, adaptability, awareness, power and softness.
Foundational elements from Fighting Monkey Practice will be offered, namely FM Zero Forms, FM Abstract Tools, and FM Coordinations. Elaborations based on Kraaijeveld’s research, improvisation and performance experience will be included. Play, problem solving, and creativity will support examination of relationship between the individual and other objects and stresses in unpredictable environments. New pathways to learn, understand, and to define what is important will be prioritized, and each participant is expected to take responsibility for individual learning and work given this imperative.
12:45 – 14:00 PST – Break / Unplugged Walking Score (Offline)
As a cool-down/reset, and to combat screen-time fatigue, able participants will be encouraged to practice in a low-energy outdoor walking score first initiated by 605 Co-Director Lisa M. Gelley during the first wave of the pandemic.
On their own time, participants can follow, modify or build their own proposed choreographic score intended for a brief solo outdoor excursion, drawing organized attention toward multiple variables as they navigate public spaces.
14:00 – 15:30 PST – Creating For Now (Josh Martin / Alanna Kraaijeveld)
A participatory dialogue led by Josh Martin and Alanna Kraaijeveld that aims to stimulate a creative mindset not tied to specific conditions; creativity that is adaptable and responsive through its expectation of change. Embracing a forced autonomy, discussion and trials will be based on how to develop personal systems of feedback. Prompts will pursue a re-interrogation of individual choreographic values and approaches in various climates for making. Agility – physical, mental, conceptual – between exploration of possibility and further definition of generated material, as well the blurring or merging of these processes, will be a point of inquiry.
Creating For Now is an affirmation of the creative toolbox we continue to carry. It facilitates acts of making in relation to what is present and available at each current moment, and acknowledges the potentially provisional nature of artistic action and choice. We hope to mobilize the most meaningful aspects of our creative processes to be utilized now, and which can be carried forward for later.
15:30 – 16:30 PST – Rest Break
16:30 – 18:00 PST – Artist Offerings:
This portion of the day is aimed at opportunities for participants to try on and learn about the movement ideas and creative thinking driving the work of other artists. For Wednesday – Friday, each day will offer a different instructor delving into specific exercises and tasks pulled from their current practice and artistic interests. For Saturday, the Intensive will shift to a conversation hosted by Raven Spirit Dance’s IndigenousGround Training, to listen in on multiple artists as they speak about the basis of their work.
Specific Segments
Wednesday Dec 9th – 16:30 – 18:00 PST – Movement Class – Josh Martin (Company 605)
Self-Isolation
Class will be centered around Josh Martin’s personal approach to isolating movement and time within the body. Working with a number of distinct techniques and co-ordinations developed in his practice, participants will be guided through both example material and strict improvisation tasks that exercise atypical re-organizations of action and stillness, and utilize specific qualities of momentum and stop. Treating body as video, movement sequences are broken down and segmented, and split apart into multiple overlapping timelines that explore new forms of synchronization.
Thursday Dec 10th – 16:30 – 18:00 PST – Masterclass – Maura García (USA)
Dancing Ourselves
*hosted by Raven Spirit Dance’s IndigenousGround Training
Friday Dec 11th – 16:30 – 18:00 PST – Movement Class – Justine A. Chambers (Vancouver)
Increments and Iterations
This workshop is centred on feeling the reorganization of our whole bodies around, and with infinitesimal movement shifts. We will work with multiple iterations of a singular action, and the endless increments of movement between a number of different actions. Allowing all that informs the present to be implicated in these incremental shifts, we will determine action through sensation. We will oscillate between predetermined movement and being led by what emerges as our bodies shape and reshape themselves.
Saturday Dec 12th – 16:30 – 18:00 PST – Artist Conversation
*hosted by Raven Spirit Dance’s IndigenousGround Training
Discussing Creative Process with artists Jeanette Kotowich, Aria Evans, Jacob Boehme and Michelle Olson.
What values do our bodies carry into our art? What processes do we employ to create with? In what frameworks do we present our work? The artists from the Indigenous Ground works-in-development will be sharing their insight on these questions.
Sunday Dec 13 (Optional Attendance) – 10:00 — COFFEE DEBRIEF
To conclude the Winter Intensive, 605 Co-Directors Lisa Gelley and Josh Martin invite all participants to join in for one last brief and casual meet-up to discuss the week as a whole and offer feedback and ideas from their experience. This is a space to connect as a group, enlist community support, ask questions, and share thoughts toward future endeavours before parting ways.
***The recordings of the classes will be available for registered participants on company605.ca after December 13, 2020
About the Guest Instructors:
Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. The anchors of Justine A. Chambers movement based practice are found in collaborative creation and close observation. In her work she privileges what is felt over what is seen, by working with her body as an imperfect recording device to develop a cumulative embodied archive. She is concerned with the choreography of the everyday; with the unintentional dances, as she describes them “that are already there.”
Her recent choreographic projects include: And then this also, One hundred more, tailfeather, for all of us, “it could have been like this”, ten thousand times and one hundred more, Family Dinner, Family Dinner: The Lexicon, Semi-precious: the faceting of a gemstone only appears complete and critical. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
https://justineachambers.com
Maura García (non-enrolled Cherokee/Mattamuskeet) is a Dancer Choreographer who creates contemporary Indigenous performance. Her work is powered by a desire to perpetuate ancestral knowledge, actively respect the living earth and bring happiness to people. Maura’s artistic creations reflect the power of stories to form and change our realities. Through narrative-driven choreography and beat-embracing movement she seeks to form connections, empower Indigenous cultural values and explore the rhythms of the natural world. Both as a soloist and with ensembles, she has performed throughout North America, notably at: La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (NY, USA), The Dance Centre (BC, Canada), New York Theater Workshop (NY, USA, Woodland Cultural Centre (ON, Canada), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR, USA), the ArtsCenter (NC), Atlas Performing Arts Center (DC), Dance Place (DC), Disney World (FL), Embassy of Senegal (DC), Kansas City Repertory Theater (MO), Lawrence Arts Center (KS), Links Hall (IL), Rhythmically Speaking Festival (MN), Talking Stick Festival (BC, Canada), Unedited Series (SC), University of Arizona, University of South Carolina, Walker Arts Center (MN) and the Weesageechak Begins to Dance Festival (ON, Canada).
Alanna Kraaijeveld is a contemporary dance artist. Her approach to movement practice and performance is centered on context driven, collaborative practices. Kraaijeveld has over 15 years experience and continues to be a sought-after collaborator in the performing arts milieu. As performer, teacher and creator, her collaborations are numerous: Company 605, École supérieure d’art dramatique (Paris), Justine Chambers, Yves Charuest, Modus Operandi, Marie Claire Forté, Studio 303, Vim Vigor, Sarah Chase, Stella Adler Studio of Acting (NYC), Opéra de Québec, William Parker, Susanna Hood, Louise Bédard, Frédérick Gravel, Elizabeth Langley, among others.She toured internationally with Dave St-Pierre, in productions Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde and Foudres.
From 2004 – 2008 she was a company dancer of Le Groupe Dance Lab under the artistic direction of Peter Boneham. Le Groupe Dance Lab was an international centre devoted to the research and development of contemporary dance. Now ubiquitous in the contemporary arts milieu, the model of ‘the Lab’ was one of the first of its kind, established in 1988. Since 2015, Kraaijeveld is a student of Linda Kapetanea and Jozef Frucek, developers of Fighting Monkey Practice. Kraaijeveld has a Master of Arts degree in Dance Pedagogy and has taught at institutions and organizations across Canada, in Europe, and the United States. She represents Fighting Monkey as an *Inspire by FM instructor. She shares her knowledge of movement across various communities including dance, theatre, sports, and at-risk youth.
