Vancouver's The Holy Body Tattoo to choreograph monumental, the second NAC Youth Commission for Dance, a partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts
December 23, 2003 -
OTTAWA -- monumental, a new dance work aimed at younger audiences, receives its world premiere at the National Arts Centre in early 2005. The second NAC Youth Commission for Dance, a partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts, monumental is being choreographed by The Holy Body Tattoo co-Artistic Directors/choreographers Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras. Collaborating artists include visual artist Jenny Holzer, filmmaker William Morrison, lighting designer Marc Parent, and musician Roger Tellier-Craig, with other music from Les Tambours du Bronx and godspeed you! black emperor. monumental will showcase The Holy Body Tattoo's largest performing ensemble to date and tour to Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Victoria, and Vancouver in 2005.
monumental is an elegiac investigation into the physical anxiety of urban culture. In an ever-accelerating climate of greed and ambition, personal relationships are subjected to group identity and human connection becomes increasingly difficult. Even as some individuals are made larger than life, most break and topple under the strain. Separated by the physical barriers of the city and the rigidity of social order, the yearning for shared and abiding values is nurtured like a secret shame; desires, indicative of fragility and need, are silenced. Within this isolation, the need for intimacy remains, furtive and hidden beneath looming towers. In the disjunction between immaculate facades and human fragility, innocence is the first loss.
"monumental represents a truly unique opportunity for the company and for us as choreographers: to create work on a large ensemble is rare for a company of The Holy Body Tattoo's size, and the energy and power the work accumulates has made for a thrilling creation and rehearsal process thus far. The mass and scale of the work allows us to explore, as choreographers, the sense of isolation that the tyranny of cultural conformity breeds. Being included in the NAC Youth Commission project highlights this dimension of the work. While the characters in monumental are not literally representing young people, struggles with personal identity versus group identity and a pressing submission to the "social order" are familiar to most adolescents."
Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras
Founded in 1993, The Holy Body Tattoo seeks a performance language which gathers a sense of humanity through effort, repetition, scale and humility. Co-Artistic Directors and Choreographers Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras have performed independently for many of Canada's leading choreographers and have danced together since 1987. The company reflects upon (and reflects outwardly) the concerns, ideas and attitudes of contemporary popular culture, locating a sense of conscience and hope through intense physicality and deeply sought courage. The Holy Body Tattoo has received both critical and audience acclaim with performances in Canada, the U.S and Europe. Employing multimedia elements in film, video projection and music, the work of The Holy Body Tattoo explores the nature of human endurance through ideas of surrender, fragility and broken elegance. Contrasting qualities of receptivity, intimacy and trust with uncertainty, loss and the relinquishing of effort, the company seeks to honour the human capacity for resilience, perseverance and the will required to achieve it.
"More art than dance, the highly visual work of The Holy Body Tattoo skyrockets dance theatre into new realms. Like a black and white photo seen as it develops, The Holy Body Tattoo's tight, fast, repetitive movement slowly sears itself onto the mind, clearly and indelibly."
The Washington Post
During the 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06 seasons, the National Arts Centre Youth Commission for Dance breaks new ground by commissioning Canadian choreographers to create an original new work aimed specifically at a teenage audience. monumental follows Toronto-based choreographer Matjash Mrozewski's creation, Break Open Play, which received an enthusiastic audience response and rave reviews in November 2003. A different choreographer, still to be announced, will be commissioned to create works during the third year of the NAC Youth Commission for Dance.
To engage youth in the creative process, the National Arts Centre convened the NAC Youth Focus Group for Dance in October 2002. The original five group members, aged 14 to 16, had widely differing experiences of dance, and their comments have helped to define the project and reveal how dance reaches young people. Many discussions have been filmed by videographers and a 20-minute documentary of the process will be the eventual result. Dancers in other cities have also shared interactive discussions with the Youth Focus Group in Ottawa via the NAC's broadband technology. Headed by the NAC's innovative New Media team, this experience allows participants in different cities to observe each other and discuss the work in progress in real time. Other education and outreach activities included lecture/demonstrations for drama/arts students and creative process dance workshops at Ottawa high schools, student matinees, and an NAC-produced Study Guide.
The NAC Youth Commission for Dance aims to widen the existing Canadian dance repertoire for young audiences, to underscore the National Arts Centre's commitment to national and community partnerships, and to reinforce dance for young audiences as part of an ongoing aesthetic education. As Canada's leading dance producer/presenter, the NAC places a high value on fostering a relationship between teenagers and contemporary dance and the Youth Commission for Dance underscores the NAC's commitment to youth and educational activities. This may encourage young people to consider a career in the performing arts, offer a vehicle for teenagers to maintain an interest in the arts, and create youth-oriented works which will help develop informed dance audiences for the future.
This project would not have come this far, this fast, without the enthusiasm and dedication of Anne Valois, Head of the Dance Section of the Canada Council for the Arts, who has made a 3-year commitment to this partnership.
monumental is co-produced by The Holy Body Tattoo and the National Arts Centre.
The NAC Youth Commission for Dance, as well as all NAC programmes for youth, is supported by the National Youth and Education Trust, with special thanks to TELUS (founding partner of the trust), CGI Group, Sun Life Financial, supporters and patrons of the National Arts Centre Gala, and the National Arts Centre Foundation Donors' Circle.
