We wrapped up the first session of MINE on Friday with our group of 19 youth at Trout Lake Community Centre. We've had an enriching, inspiring 8 weeks of getting to know eachother, trying new things, learning from one another and exploring our creativity. We danced, made music, conversed, collaborated, created and performed.
Each session we start with a check in where we get to know everyone a bit more each week, we hear each other's names and share something we remember or thought was interesting from the last session or just share something about our day - verbally or physically. The youth are a mix of trained and non-trained dancers. Our warm up consists of different physical sequences and improvisation tasks to explore movement in our bodies, expand our ideas of what dance can be, develop our spatial awareness and jam to some beats! We worked each week with a different theme that we used as a lens for the physical ideas we explored with the clothing. Some themes from this session included consumerism, fast-fashion, globalization, design and textiles. Mannequins, clothing monsters, pacman, the pile, ghost dresses, conveyor belts, tag song, tasks, it's mine, leap frog, eating head, model walks... just to name a few of the tasks we played with. Through this, we also had dialogues around what makes a successful collaboration, our roles as audience for the group, how we can create metaphors with performance that reflect or magnify larger ideas within society and how we can change the intention of a scene with tools like timing, spacing and levels. Some youth expressed surprise when their ideas came to life. They realized traditional dance training is not required in order to create something interesting and complex. Just their bodies, creativity and willingness to try new things. We experienced many inspiring, unexpected moments of true expression, solo taking/giving and collective improvised decision making. Participants expressed they have a new relationship with their clothing and perhaps all their possessions. Some shared their excitement with different images they saw created and how they related to the topics we are exploring. Others were interested with how something so everyday, like clothing, could be used for something else entirely than it's functional purpose, and perhaps become something new in itself, while remaining forever reusable.
Rianne, Alex and I have had the privilege to have the mentorship of Vanessa Richards over the course of this project. Vanessa has an extensive background in community-engaged art practice and has been sharing her wealth of knowledge with us. She has been our go-to person for any challenges we have faced, or questions we have had, including working with youth from different levels of movement experience and backgrounds, creating a safe space to engage in conversations about challenging topics and try new things, finding ways to connect the group and hear everyone's voices, creating group values and responsibilities collectively, just to name a few. Next session we have more themes to explore including identity, body image, the stories, memories and value clothing holds in our lives. Stay tuned as we continue to collaboratively create something that will be performed at LINK on May 17 at the Roundhouse Community Centre.
We'd like to thank the support of Julie Lebel / MiBC, Bernie Dionne / Trout Lake Community Centre, The Vancouver Parks Board, BC Arts Council & The Vancouver Foundation for the continued support of making this project possible.
