Ben Ruddick

Hofesh Shechter Company perform in your rooms/Uprising, part of this year’s Fluid Movement Arts Festival

DETAILS

Fluid Movement Arts Festival
Theatre Junction Grand
Sunday, October 18 - Sunday, October 25

More in: Dance

Now that Calgary’s festival landscape is filled with everything from folk music to food to fireworks, sometimes it’s worth taking a step back to look at those passionate individuals who first thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to start up a festival?”

For the Fluid Movement Arts Festival, which celebrates its fourth year this week, that person is Nicole Mion. Working as a dancer and choreographer, Mion discovered that she had a passion for the physical in all of its forms. “Physicality is a love of mine and I feel like any kind of expression that has a physical presence is fair game,” she says. “If a visual artist is doing something that speaks to me physically, then all the power to them. I’ve never been a purist and the work I like doesn’t tend to be pigeonholed into big D-‘Dance.’”

Four years ago, Mion was inspired to start a festival that traverses contemporary dance and physical performance. “I would hear of all these fantastic artists touring the country and not coming here or, worse, flying to Calgary and going straight to Banff,” says Mion. “That was just crazy to me. If we want our city to be considered in a broader national and international context, we have to participate in making that happen. That’s why I like the idea of programming one of the hottest international acts in the dance world, side-by-side with local performances.”

This year, that hot international act comes in the form of In Your Rooms / Uprising by the U.K.’s Hofesh Shechter Company. Mion first encountered Shechter’s work in a viral video online. “Live performance often doesn’t translate well on film and you can get very bored very quickly,” she says. “When I watched this one, I wanted to see more.” She asked herself: “Who’s this Hofesh Shechter guy?”

Shechter is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy for Dance and worked with the renowned Batsheva Dance Company before moving to the U.K. “That’s when he decided that he hated contemporary dance, that it was boring and so ingrown upon itself that it had become disconnected,” says Mion. He started experimenting with dance and musical composition, and his experimentation caught the attention of Sadler’s Wells Theatre, one of the world’s biggest dance presenters. “His music is kind of Middle East meets rock meets classical,” says Mion. “He’s influenced by a street sensibility, but also by the higher dance background that he comes from. His work is just on fire.”

While he’s in Calgary, Shechter will also teach a workshop for local dancers, one of a wide variety of workshops that takes place during the festival. “If artists of that stature are visiting our community, I just love to pick their brains and get underneath their skin,” says Mion. “In this age of computers and technology, there’s just nothing better than a connection with someone live onstage or in the studio. It engages us, makes us feel more human. If we get that chance, then bloody hell, let’s take advantage of it!”

If the idea of a workshop is just a tad too intimidating, there’s another opportunity to engage more deeply with Fluid Festival performers: artist talks. The festival’s other big touring act, On the Ice of Labrador by Montreal Danse, features two opportunities to hear about the artistic process and ask questions of the artists. For anyone who attended the festival’s previous edition, this may come as a particularly juicy opportunity, since On the Ice of Labrador is choreographed by Sarah Chase, who performed a solo work last year.

“It seemed like a nice way to introduce the community to Sarah’s work,” says Mion. “She’s a storyteller and a mover and the way she brings those things together is truly unique. Storytelling is right back there with gathering around a fire; it’s core to human beings and I’m fascinated with the way she brings it to the stage.”

Montreal Danse is known for searching across Canada for the country’s hottest choreographers and joining forces to create new work. Chase caught their eye with her unique style of crafting poetic stories with equal parts body and voice. “She works in a style similar to [author Michael] Ondaatje,” says Mion. “She’s got a lot of balls in the air. When you first start reading his books, you’re like, ‘What?’ This doesn’t connect! But you just have to trust that it will come around and coalesce. Sarah is a master of working in that way, with true stories.”

Earlier this week, Mion shed her curator’s hat and performed an original piece at the Alberta Showcase event. “Trying to pull a double duty between curator and creator can be a little crazy,” she admits, “but ultimately, I think it’s really important to be reminded the festival — beyond the money issues, the politics, the craziness — is about performance, about connecting with something that makes time stop.”