An ever-lasting possibility to shift consciousness, an initiation to ceremony, an invocation of material witnessing, gratitude extension, and water as our collective conduit. Summoning strength. Sensing the unseen. A pulsating push from the heart to channel inspiration. Close your eyes and make a wish.
35 min site-adaptive ensemble
This site-adaptive performance activation for Vancouver’s Firehall Art Centre Courtyard took place on July 8th and 10th, 2020 as part of the 32nd annual Dancing on the Edge Festival of Contemporary Arts.
Check out the essay written by Daisy Thomson here
Other Press and Reviews from July 2020 Live Performance and Live Stream:
www.thedancecurrent.com/review/upon-four-pillars
Key Collaborators
Choreographer, Co-Creator – Olivia C. Davies is a dance artist, choreographer, community-arts facilitator and emerging curator of Anishinaabe, French-Canadian, Finnish and Welsh heritage. Her choreographic works often explore the emotional and political relationships between people and places and neo-traditional aspects of her Indigeneity. As Artistic Director of O.Dela Arts, Davies is committed to collaborating with artists to produce unique live performance events including the Matriarchs Uprising Festival, CoexisDance Western Edition Improvisation Series, and Concurrence Gatherings. She is a founding member of the MataDanze Collective (Toronto), Crow’s. Nest Collective (Vancouver), and the Circadia Indigena Arts Collective (Ottawa). Over two decades, Davies’ work has included collaborations with musicians, poets, writers, and digital media artists from across Canada in Ontario, Quebec, and BC. Originally from Algonquin Territory, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Davies is currently based in Vancouver, BC, Canada on the ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territories of the ʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
Poet, Co-Creator – Nagoohiindaak / Melissa Frost is the daughter of Shirlee Frost, granddaughter of Alice Frost, and great-granddaughter of Joanne Njootli. She comes from Wolf clan/Chʼichyàa from the Vuntut Gwichin First Nation of Old Crow, Yukon. Frost is an aunty and a cousin who works for mother earth and our future generations. She has forged a career out of her passion for the arts and community work with youth. Frost tries to channel traditional teachings and positive, hopeful messages when writing or performing her spoken word poetry.
Cultural Advisor – Gloria May Eshkibok, actor, singer, writer and producer. Gloria May Eshkibok is from the Wikwemikong unceded territory on Manitoulin Island. Currently residing on the Capilano unceded territory of the Squamish Nation, Eshkibok has been an actress, singer, writer and producer for more than 30 years.
Cultural Advisor – Sharon Jinkerson-Brass is a member of Key First Nation in Saskatchewan. She was part of the “sixties scoop” but reunited with her family in the 1980’s. She received her cultural teachings from her beloved Anishinabek grandmother Rebecca, who was a midwife and traditional healer. Sharon’s cultural heritage has inspired all of her art and way of living.
Sharon is an award-winning artist who was the artistic director of “Big Sky” a successful multi-media company that performed in the US and Canada. For 30 years she has also been a community leader working for social change for the Indigenous Community in the areas of arts, culture, health and community development. Sharon is currently working on multiple projects in the Aboriginal community on topics related to health, green energy and cultural healing. Sharon believes that a relevant, sustainable cultural foundation is the key for wellness for her people and all people.
Artistic Mentor – Raïna Von Waldenburg recently moved to Vancouver from NYC in 2012. Raïna was full-time faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she taught a physical approach to acting based on Jerzy Grotowski at the Experimental Theatre Wing for the past 17 years. She has been faculty at Simon Fraser University, University of the Fraser Valley, and the Art Institute of Vancouver. Raïna received her MFA in creative writing from Goddard College, and her BFA in acting from New York University. Raïna’s solo show Oysters Orgasms Obituaries at La MaMa E.T.C (NYC) received the 2012 New York Innovative Theatre Award nomination for “Outstanding Solo Performance”, and the 2014 Persephone Award for “Innovative solo performance using the physical work of Grotowski”. Raïna’s directing/devising/original solo credits in Vancouver: My Friend Andrea (The Cultch), 12 Minute Madness at the rEvolver Festival (The Cultch) and Fringe Festival (Firehall Arts Centre); 50 Words (in an apartment519 East Georgia Street); and UFV and Sto:lo Research and Resource Management Centre’s production of a devised work Grand Theft Terra Firma: Stories of (Re)Conciliation (Coqualeetza Longhouse, Chilliwack and Reach Gallery, Abbotsford). Raïna has performed in the experimental downtown NYC theatre scene, and has facilitated artists in developing original work and devising material for performance for thirty years. Raïna has also worked in film, is a published poet, and mother.
Collaborator – Kelly McInnes is gratefully based on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Kelly dances with the intention of healing and through this works as a choreographer, performer and facilitator. Often multi-disciplinary, collaborative and site specific, Kelly’s work explores the socio-political and invites an attention to sensation. She intends her choreography to challenge the status quo, to inspire a feminist gaze and to celebrate our connection to the earth. Kelly’s choreographic work has been presented throughout Canada, in Berlin and in Mexico. Recently, she received the Choreographic Award at the 2019 Vancouver International Dance Festival for her work SHINY. As a performer, Kelly has interpreted the works of EDAM Dance, MACHiNENOiSY, Restless Productions, Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, 605 collective, LINK Dance, Metal Dog, Chick Snipper, Anne Cooper, Olivia Davies, Daina Ashbee, Sammy Chien, Jacinte Armstrong & Ashley Whitehead. Kelly is a member of the collective, Pressed Paradise, that focuses on activating public and unconventional spaces with performance. She is also a member of Mutual Futures collective with a focus on the practice and performance of improvisation. www.kellymcinnes.com
Collaborator – Ziyian Kwan has worked as a Vancouver based dance artist since 1988. As an interprète, she has performed close to 100 original creations by an eclectic range of choreographers on international stages. As Artistic Director of Dumb Instrument Dance, Ziyian creates work that abstracts lived experience to create collages of surreal imagery, spoken form and kinetic narrative. Over three decades, Ziyian’s artistry has been indelibly touched by collaboration with luminaries in the fields of dance, music, film, theatre, literature and visual art. www.dumbinstrumentdance.com
Collaborator – Rianne Svelnis is a queer dance artist and a settler of European descent on stolen + occupied Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh), and xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) territories. She works on dance as an entry point to pleasure and attention as disruption, and as a way of entangling and moving in the complexities of being together. Rianne has danced in works by Justine Chambers, MACHiNENOiSY, Emmalena Fredriksson, Sasha Kleinplatz, Daisy Thompson, Olivia Davies and Naomi Brand, among others. Rianne has also presented her own choreographic work in collaboration with All Bodies Dance, Zahra Shahab, Kelly McInnes and Areli Moran (Mexico).
Project Writer – Daisy Thomspon is a dance artist who performs, creates and writes, Daisy curiously observes how the dancing body serves as a key site for the questioning of embodied power relations. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the area of dance and politics, with the goal of advocating for the field of dance performance and education. As a dancer, she has had the fortune to dance for Trisha Brown Dance Company (USA), Eva Karczag (Amsterdam), Emmalena Fredriksson (Sweden/Vancouver), Ugo Dehaes (Belgium) and Battery Opera Performance (Vancouver), among others. She also regularly teaches contemporary dance technique, and is a proud mother of 2 children.
Graphic Designer – Adriana Contreras is a visual artist, graphic designer, avid arts advocate, and a dancer at heart. She moved from Bogotá, Colombia to Vancouver, unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories, with her family in 1998. Since then, she’s worked and volunteered with arts organizations such as SFU Galleries, New Performance Works Society, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Burnaby Arts Gallery, The Latin American Film Festival, among others. She has also worked in countless projects with her father, photographer and painter, Juan E Contreras. Adriana says, “For me, visuals and art-making helps navigate a lengthy and ever-evolving relationship with migration. It helps me understand the place where we landed and has become home, what it means to be a migrant in a racialized body on unceded First Nations lands, and what are the responsibilities that arrive with the privilege of living here; continually and simultaneously looking and the personal, the local and the global to make sense of the world.”
Additional Music – Michael Red is a Vancouver and Sunshine Coast based electronic music producer, curator, performer and DJ. The founding member of the respected bass music collective Lighta! Sound, head of the Low Indigo leftfield music label, one half of LA FE, one half of Chambers, former curator for New Forms Festival for over ten years, Bass Coast Music Festival resident, Shambhala Music Festival performer over ten years, former long term collaborator with throat singer Tanya Tagaq, and ambient/experimental artist under the alias Souns. His music has been released on Isla, Modern Math, New Kanada, Mutek Recordings, South Fork Sound, King Deluxe, Debacle, Beacon Sound, Deep Sea Mining Syndicate, Subtempo and Babel Printed and Pressed. Michael’s performed across Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ, Mexico, New York and has been written about in The Wire, XLR8R, Resident Advisor, and Vice’s Thump. Ongoing influences include: dub music, all nature, outer space, the unseen world, transcendence and evolution.
Production Manager – Nico Dicecco is a stage manager, writer, and performer based in Richmond, BC. Some of his recent stage management work includes Dissection of a Mixed Heritage Woman (Nyla Carpentier),The Sea (SlammingDoor Collective), Dancing Lessons, A Beautiful View, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Naked GoddessProductions), Med’Cine, Crow’s Nest and Other Places She’s Gone (O. Dela Arts), Precious Little, MadeinBC- Dance on Tour, Wild/Society (star star theatre), and Gwandaak Theatre live-streamed event.