The work was fierce and intense. The dancing was stunning and skilled and unrestrained. The scale of the performance may have been the perfect way to wrap up the Fluid Festival, to feel a sense of unity and a collective energy to go out and…. I don’t know.

The performance’s ferocious physicality called the audience to action. The dancers’ pumping fists and musicians’ pounding drums are universal calls to unite and act. What exactly In your rooms was calling us to do isn’t crystal clear, but it doesn’t matter so much as the fact that we were called to do something and we all felt it together.

The big statements and large themes in Shechter’s work requires his cast of twelve dancers and four musicians to fulfill. Even with that many bodies he gets even more impact out of every image by amplifying it with lots of repetition and unison movement. It’s pretty clear his dance is talking about big things and addressing a society that includes us in our seat and one that also matters to us.

The first question asked in the chat back was about how Shechter felt we were as an audience in comparison to the other audiences that the company has performed for on this tour. Shechter loved the question and reassured us that we performed well and I would have to agree. For a performing arts community that can be at times inconsistent and divided we showed up and were there full force last night. Sharing that experience with a packed house of fellow artists and supporters of the arts was awesome. There was something shaken up in that theatre that I predict will linger on our skins for a while. I hope that next time we sit down in the theatre together a little taste of last nights fist-pumping energy might still hang in the air between us.

Tuesday night I sat in the theatre watching the Alberta Showcase 1. So often a piece of dance is surrounded by the mystery of how the artists came to make this work. What were they exploring to help them create this piece? What are the questions they were asking and the things they were doing in the studio to get them here? Empowered with the experience of their workshop fresh on my skin I watched Snelling and Reinhart’s piece with some answers to these questions. I understood their work in a much deeper way and could relate to their experiences on stage because of mine in the studio with them. I was able to recognize the tracking, reflecting, listening and composing that is the work of the improviser on stage. I could appreciate where the work was coming from because if only briefly I had been there too.

It is such a privilege to be let in on an artist’s process. It lets us experience their work on stage from a deeper place, knowing a taste of what it takes to get there. With so much of our creative work happening alone in the studio it is a powerful thing to open the doors and invite others in. Unveiling those private explorations does not mean revealing the magicians secrets but rather generating creative possibilities and sharing your toys generously. (Like kids playing in a sandbox, it’s always fun to play with someone elses toys.)

Which isn’t to say that we should have to take part in a workshop in order to understand or appreciate a piece of choreography. Not at all. I mean mostly to say that taking part in workshops and classes and other peoples creative processes makes us better viewers of dance and more appreciative of the diversity of artistic visions and of the multitudes of questions that an artist can ask in order to create a piece of choreography.

So if the doors to a studio are opened I say walk through.

They create a prairie tour circuit!

Robin Poitras (New Dance Horizons), Brian Webb (Brian Webb Dance company & Canada Dance Festival, Brent Lott (Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers), Davida Monk (M-Body & DSW), Nicole Mion (Springboard, Fluid Festival & containR) came together this past July over garden performances and lake side discussions to consider the idea of building a western prairie dance circuit. I’m happy to say that we are moving forward with exciting plans. Premiering at the Fluid Festival in 2010, emerging/mid career artists from each community will be selected to tour Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg. For 2011 the Prairie Circuit will feature the work of established artists from the prairie provinces.

This is a really exciting step for the dance community. Its one big step forward for artists and audiences based on the prairies. This initiative helps build context, community and longevity for western based work. And working together is the only way to realize such a goal. Thanks to New Dance Horizons for organizing events and to the Canada Council for funding the meetings.

Western touring is not some kind of Colonial model where artists from Montreal and Toronto come to the prairies to present their work to the ‘regional outback’.

Lets shift the power folks. Lets bring them to us, and celebrate the talent in our own backyards!