תעתיק 🔗
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Hello and welcome to Push Play,
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a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with
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artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form.
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I'm Gabriel Martin,
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director of programming at the Push Festival,
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and today's episode highlights grotesque liberation,
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death and resurrection, bodies of labor, and more.
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I'm speaking with Andrea Pena, choreographer of Bogota,
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which is being presented at the Push Festival January 31st
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and February 1st, 2025.
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Visceral and transgressive Bogota constructs a brutalist
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landscape from choreography inspired by Colombia's
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political and spiritual heritage.
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This raw physical experience of mutation and resurrection
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explores embodied origins,
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inherited mythologies and mortality,
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honing the rebellion of deviant bodies and paying tribute
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to resilience within the post-colonial era.
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Interested in the depth of human individuality that
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breaches from a personal disposition as a bi-cultural
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artist,
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Pena's approach is known for its difficult choreography as
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a highly intricate, vulnerable,
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and somatic raw physicality that engages in deep encounters
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between the physical body and a highly conceptual research
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approach.
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With a background in industrial design,
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her work borrows from visual art practices and spatial
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qualities of creative making,
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questioning the body as a material existing in relationship
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to space and time.
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Here is my conversation with Andrea.
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There is a JGB beside me,
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but I am actually on indigenous territories.
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I'm on the unceded traditional and ancestral territory of
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the Coast Salish peoples, so the Musqueam, Squamish,
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and Tsleil-Waututh.
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I am a settler, and I've been, you know,
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a part of the being a settler is a responsibility to
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learning and engaging with learning about indigeneity and
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engaging with contemporary indigenous.
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issues affecting Indigenous people today.
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And one way that I've been doing that is through the
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Yellowhead Institute,
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which you'll hear me plug in quite a bit.
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And so I'm working through their red paper land back
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course,
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which is really encouraging settler folks to reflect on
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what it means to be living in accordance with Indigenous
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law and to enact land back by supporting front lines.
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And one thing that really stood out in the lesson,
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one of the recent lessons from this course is they just put
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it so clearly that if we really want land back but do
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nothing about it, we are upholding the liberal fantasy,
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a belief that you can change the world by simply feeling a
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certain way.
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And I just think that's really to the point.
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Andrea, where are you joining the conversation from today?
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Hello.
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So I'm actually currently in Pittsburgh.
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So I'm a bit in transit,
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stepping out of Montreal for a few days.
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I'm here on the ancestral lands of the people of Adena,
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Hopewell, Morengohala,
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and Seneca people here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
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Thank you for that.
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And usually you're in Giorgia, Montreal.
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Giorgia, Giorgia, Giorgia, Montreal.
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And so you describe AP&A or Andrea Pena and artists as a
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millennial company.
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What does that infer for you?
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Yeah, I think for me it was really important to situate,
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you know, AP&A in terms of the fact that it is millennial.
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I mean, you know, I'm in my 30s.
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A lot of the artists that we work with are also within the
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same age range.
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And I think there's something that is social,
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politically cultural specific to our generation
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and to the
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sort of desire or lens or perspective.
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And so I really wanted to kind of, you know,
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be frontal about that and kind of situate ourselves there.
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I think in the word millennial or in how I connect to the
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word, I think I, you know,
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see myself as a sort of new generation of artists,
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a new generation of thinkers, of creators,
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where for me it's really not just about the work,
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but the how.
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So not just what are we creating?
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What is the work about?
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What is the art about?
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But like how is it being made?
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I think for me, you know,
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the choreographic practice is something that really
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requires a lot of reconsideration and deconstruction.
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And I would go as far as saying like decolonializing the
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practice itself.
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I think it's a practice that has certain hierarchies
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embedded to it, certain ways of seeing.
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And I and what we're trying to do with APNA is sort of take
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the responsibility to reflect on what does it mean to do
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choreography today?
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What does it mean to gather people, to lead people,
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to build these things?
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shows?
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What do the shows talk about?
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How do they talk about them?
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What is at stake inside of a work?
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And then, more importantly, like,
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how do these people come together in community to build
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these pieces?
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I think what we're trying or what I've been trying to do
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with an AP&A and, you know,
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first it started as something utopic and a goal and little
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by little, it's reframed itself.
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But it was really important for me to kind of approach
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choreographic works from a different lens.
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I mean,
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I used to be a professional dancer and I think it was
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important to both bring Bring my own values as somebody
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who's Latin American Colombian who has indigenous Latin
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American Backgrounds to bring some of those values into not
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just how we make her work, but what is a company today?
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so everything from bylaws internal communication things
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that try to kind of make us reframe and rethink what does
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Company and leadership mean as well Obviously these things
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are not always easy because having a company There are
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certain structures framework systems that you operate under
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But I think for me that millennial aspect is sort of giving
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space for those internal tensions to exist and also to
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reflect on You know,
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what is the future of choreography from today forward?
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What do we want to build as a community?
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what do we want to build as a practice for each other for
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Publix and Yeah,
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and and kind of what that looks like so it's it's really an
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amalgamation of a lot of those questions and reflections I
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think that are simply situated in that word Millennial is
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like it's today meaning we're looking at the past the
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history of Choreography in the past the history of
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companies in the past and trying to reimagine like what do
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we want this to look like?
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In the future.
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Yeah, I get it.
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So excited hearing you speak about this and I remember in
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one of our first conversations Almost exactly a year ago at
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par cordonce in Montreal we we thought we had a
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conversation and you spoke a bit about this as well like
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how you're How your company is working and how you're
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thinking about?
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democratizing the choreographic process and as you
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referenced you've danced with ballet BC and other Other
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high caliber technical Great.
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Thank you.
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Yes Company is with you know,
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like a more classic hierarchical environment It's quite,
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you know common as you're mentioning that These companies
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operate in a certain way.
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So I would love to just hear a little bit more about
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democratizing the choreographic process like,
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how does that differ from the norm?
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And what is the impact on the work itself?
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So maybe like,
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what does that look like in the studio and a rehearsal
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process?
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And is that translated into the finished work?
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Yeah, I mean, I think for us that kind of,
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it's a bit twofold.
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The notion of democratizing is kind of both internally for
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us as a team,
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but also externally in terms of community and our public.
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For me,
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my kind of first goal is how do I de-center the choreographic
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role?
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There's a really amazing book that I forget her name.
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She's a Spanish author and she talked about everything that
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is the sort of tension between the periphery and the
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center.
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So,
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embodiments of the peripheries versus embodiments of the
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center and the sort of boundaries that lie between the
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periphery and the center.
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And I think that's just always something that's kind of,
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you know, you know,
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as someone who's immigrated Latin American in Canada,
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it's tensions that I've always had.
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And so, yeah,
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I think I became really curious about how do I de-center
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the choreographic role?
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I think the choreographer or choreography is sort of this
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like role that is often put on a pedestal as something that
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is mysterious and amazing.
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It's like,
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no choreography is just a lot of trial and error and a lot
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of failure.
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And you happened to choose some ideas that you feel like
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works in community with your people and you put a
show,
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you know?
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But it's often,
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very often do we talk about the fact that it's just trial
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and error and that it's not that mystic, you know,
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or like genius.
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And so, yeah, I kind of was fascinated to like,
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how do we de-center that role?
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And, you know, we're not a collective.
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AP&A is not a collective.
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There's companies that work as in a collective
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infrastructure.
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For us, we're not a collective,
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but I see myself sort of as like a facilitator,
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team leader.
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For sure,
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I'm proposing a project or a concept or a research idea
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that I'm bringing to the table of my collaborators.
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But what we've realized that we've been doing kind of
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little by little through time,
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I would say is to de-center the choreographic process.
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One of the things we've done is sort of democratize the
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dramaturgical practice.
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I've been working with the same sort of group of artists,
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both from designers to performers for many, many,
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many years.
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And together,
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we've sort of been building these sort of hybrid practices
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that allow all of us to hold a dramaturgical key in what we
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do, meaning that it gives us like codes, information,
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angles to kind of each one of us, them,
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also to bring the sort of own agency to the work,
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questions, point of views, perspective.
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A lot of the times, the dramaturgy,
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which is the sort of internal thread or like overstating.
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structuring intelligence or network of information of a
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piece is really between the choreographer and the
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dramaturge.
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And we've sort of tried to sort of evenly, not evenly,
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but like spread that reflection across the team,
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meaning that we really prioritise like, you know,
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even if sometimes we're a team of 25 people,
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hour and a half conversations after rehearsal to make sure
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that this the sort of conceptual frameworks, ideas,
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political standings, questions,
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reflections are shared across everybody and that those
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conversations are,
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yeah, like approached from a very collective point of view,
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even with our designers as well.
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So I think it allows, I call it like a sort of ecosystem.
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When we create works,
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it allows the sort of ecosystem to create a work together,
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specifically building Bogota.
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I remember saying to the team,
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I really want to build a piece from the back door.
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And everyone's like, what the hell does that mean?
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I was like, I don't know.
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Just metaphorically, it feels right.
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Like, how do we build a piece from the back door?
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How do we build a piece from the bottom up?
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What does that mean?
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What does that look like?
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And through two years of research,
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what we did was we realized that together we were sort of
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building tools, systems, language,
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putting words onto things we've done for years to help us
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understand the sort of tools that we've been co-building
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together.
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And so in order to do that, you know, we, I mean,
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specifically for Bogota,
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we had about two years of research before we actually
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started Bogota or knew that that's what we were doing.
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It was about two years,
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year and a half of trying to research practices and methods
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that would allow us to be all equipped with tools that gave
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the team agency and the ability for everybody to kind of
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bring in their point of view.
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I don't know if you heard me what I was saying about trying
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to create a piece from the back door, from the bottom up.
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And so it was how do we, what are those tools?
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What are those practices?
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What are those methods in order for us to build a piece
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from the back door or from the bottom up?
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And, you know, intrinsically,
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some of that stuff may have looked like, you know,
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having like prioritizing time for conversation.
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That's something we do a lot,
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is that the dancers and the artists,
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performers are very much in tune in line with everything
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that's happening in the production side from conceptual
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choices, artistic choices, materials choices.
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There's a lot of conversations that we have as a team where
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we share, you know, what is at stake in the work?
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What are the sort of social political questions of the
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work?
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How do people feel?
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I think for myself as well,
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I realized that if for me to build a work and be this
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facilitator as a team leader,
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I also had to get really comfortable with being vulnerable.
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And I think that sometimes the choreographic role were
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expected to be the with the answers and it's often that I
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come to my team and I'm like guys I feel really overwhelmed
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we're making work about the Anthropocene what does that
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mean who are we to make a work about the Anthropocene like
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and to share those vulnerabilities um those discomforts
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those insecurities places where I don't have answers I have
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no idea so that together we can find answers and together
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we can build uh doesn't have to be a homogenous point of
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view but build a common language and a common understanding
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to have a direction together that holds a space for
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multiple points of view so yeah we've been building
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different practices um we work a lot on trying to use
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language it's strange but like we work a lot with Post-its
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a lot with like not just about the creation itself but
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00:14:14,300
trying to name how we work so that we're all aware of what
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are the tools we've been developing together can we put
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language on those tools so that um Yeah,
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people can feel empowered,
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like here's this random tool that we're using,
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but this tool means this to me,
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even if that means something else.
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But we have a common understanding.
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So trying to build ways that we can share, I think,
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choice making.
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Can you give an example of a tool?
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For example,
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I think one thing that will help make sense of that is so I
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finished my master's last year.
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It's a master's in design and it's a master's that looks at
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how the choreographic practice is actually situated within
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the everyday built environment.
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So like for me, a chair, a handle, a car,
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anything that is the built environment is the sort of
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choreographic proposition that our body has to interact
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with.
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And I realize that a lot of the times our bodies are
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interacting with the built environment,
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but they're not necessarily in a negotiation.
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And so a lot of my work, choreographically,
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are these tools are about putting systems of negotiation in
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place, which for me means the position for two people,
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two things,
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two entities to propose their own point of view and
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actually have a sort of push and pull,
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meaning a negotiation or where we're not just interacting
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or interpreting or receiving or reacting,
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but there's actually a negotiation.
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So, for example,
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some of those tools we call it like an example of a tool is
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like a container state that comes to mind.
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So where we use a lot of words in creation.
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So, for example, the container could be a word like.
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I'm trying to find a reference like grotesque and the
state
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is maybe liberation.
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And so the body is in a container of grotesque and the
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individual is trying to find a state of liberation.
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And so what we're trying to do is we kind of put these two
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words together and the artists are exploring what does it
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mean to be in a container of grotesque and in a state of
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liberation.
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That doesn't for me or we play with these sort of tools
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because.
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creates a sort of language that we understand what we're
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playing with,
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but the interest is not the succession of that.
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It's not how well is it received, how well is it literal,
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it's just kind of being able to see a person in negotiation
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with these two elements and the point of view that is
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brought forward.
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We also have things like we've named it like all supports
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one,
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one supports all and those are just like tools where we
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know okay whatever situation we're in choreographically,
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what does it mean to be in a situation where one is
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supporting all or all are supporting one.
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So trying to name sort of bigger picture tools where it's
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vague enough that there's room for interpretation and for a
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situation to guide what is happening in that moment,
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but clear enough I think in what we're just in our own
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comprehension together of these things so that we can move
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forward in a direction.
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00:17:12,339 --> 00:17:15,220
So a lot of the works are built with these sort of larger
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picture tools that were yeah trying to find language for.
380
00:17:22,119 --> 00:17:25,380
Thank you that's really fascinating to just get a little
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more clarity about what that means and it's like so rich
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already with imagery.
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00:17:30,780 --> 00:17:36,260
You describe Bogota as queering death or that one aspect of
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the work is queering death and when we met and had our
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conversation last year you also introduced me to Sarah
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Ahmed's queer phenomenology and I'm wondering if you can
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talk about what queer as a verb means to you,
388
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to your practice, to Bogota specifically.
389
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So I think in that notion of you know both also millennial
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artists the APNA is the team is predominantly queer doesn't
391
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mean everybody has to be your is queer but there's a big
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part of from the people that work in production to
393
00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:14,020
designers to the performers to our grand writers are people
394
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who identify as queer which for me means without defining
395
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it because we always say like who are we to define what
396
00:18:20,620 --> 00:18:23,040
queer it is what is a queer aesthetic that's not the goal
397
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like it's queer it for us is more of a lens a point of view
398
00:18:26,340 --> 00:18:30,680
like glasses that you put on that that you see the world in
399
00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:34,080
a certain way so definitely we use a lot the term queering
400
00:18:34,080 --> 00:18:35,060
in APNA.
401
00:18:36,560 --> 00:18:39,680
I was recently talking to Jonathan Sosier designer and he's
402
00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:41,880
like you know every time I'm thinking about the sonography
403
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:45,520
I feel that the way I think about the materiality is how am
404
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:48,680
I on the edge or how am I queering this materiality what
405
00:18:48,680 --> 00:18:51,740
does it mean to queer that materiality it's a very
406
00:18:51,740 --> 00:18:56,100
metaphorical metaphysical word but I think we try to
407
00:18:56,100 --> 00:19:01,740
approach from lighting to sonography to costumes to our
408
00:19:01,740 --> 00:19:08,080
writing like how do we queer and in Bogota specifically and
409
00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:12,980
in the notion of like looking at death I didn't know we
410
00:19:12,980 --> 00:19:14,860
were going to make a piece about death or I didn't know
411
00:19:14,860 --> 00:19:16,640
that was going to be what I was going to propose to the
412
00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:20,940
team but I started being fascinated with death as a notion
413
00:19:20,940 --> 00:19:24,440
of like cycles of transformation and deaths outside of
414
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:27,220
maybe more western notions of death like the end of life,
415
00:19:27,220 --> 00:19:30,940
but rather looking at death as like the multiple deaths and
416
00:19:30,940 --> 00:19:34,140
rebirths that we have in our lifetime,
417
00:19:34,420 --> 00:19:36,540
like in a human lifetime here on this earth,
418
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and other alternative notions of what those cycles mean.
419
00:19:42,560 --> 00:19:46,460
So that was kind of a way of queering that question.
420
00:19:47,260 --> 00:19:49,120
And then specifically, somehow,
421
00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:53,700
this notion of death and life cycles brought me back to
422
00:19:53,700 --> 00:19:55,160
Bogota, my hometown,
423
00:19:55,440 --> 00:20:01,000
and I've never made a work that is super rooted in my
424
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:04,560
culture in such a tangible way and my ancestors and the
425
00:20:04,560 --> 00:20:05,540
place where I was born.
426
00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:10,140
But I realized that a lot of the history of Colombia is
427
00:20:10,140 --> 00:20:12,920
rooted in these notions of different cycles of life and
428
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:16,060
from the colonial era, you know,
429
00:20:16,320 --> 00:20:19,840
like the colonization and taking a lot of our ancestral
430
00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:23,820
heritage to contemporary notions of life and death,
431
00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:27,900
to the way we mythologize life and death.
432
00:20:28,180 --> 00:20:30,800
I don't know if you've heard of magical realism,
433
00:20:31,020 --> 00:20:34,580
but in Colombia, magical realism is both in literature,
434
00:20:34,580 --> 00:20:38,240
but it's like extremely rooted into everyday life stories
435
00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:39,440
and ways of living.
436
00:20:42,140 --> 00:20:46,020
And through this mythological research,
437
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:51,820
I became fascinated with what I found out is the Latin
438
00:20:51,820 --> 00:20:54,220
American Baroque or the Andean Baroque.
439
00:20:55,280 --> 00:21:00,100
And Baroque paintings are all about the Renaissance, death,
440
00:21:01,140 --> 00:21:03,300
rebirth, resurrection,
441
00:21:03,780 --> 00:21:07,420
all of these European perspectives on the notion of death.
442
00:21:08,060 --> 00:21:12,860
And in Latin America, when Latin America was colonized,
443
00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:16,120
a lot of churches and paintings,
444
00:21:16,500 --> 00:21:18,980
obviously all of this infrastructure came with,
445
00:21:19,580 --> 00:21:22,880
but a lot of the craftsmen and artisanal people of Colombia
446
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:24,700
who were building these things, not just Colombia,
447
00:21:24,780 --> 00:21:26,380
but other countries in Latin America,
448
00:21:26,860 --> 00:21:31,360
started to hybridize a lot of these Baroque architectures,
449
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paintings that were being imposed by infusing them with
450
00:21:35,580 --> 00:21:40,740
Latin American ancestral, I would say, aesthetics,
451
00:21:40,940 --> 00:21:41,880
qualities, and narratives.
452
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:43,160
So for example, in Bogota,
453
00:21:43,340 --> 00:21:48,500
you have a small church that is super Baroque,
454
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extremely exaggerated, covered in gold,
455
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but all the paintings of these religious Catholic saints
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that the local people painted are actually painted in the
457
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backdrop of the Amazon.
458
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So you have these religious saints that are coming from
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00:22:02,620 --> 00:22:05,700
colonization, but they're being painted in the Amazon.
460
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:08,820
And so you have these sort of tensions between what is
461
00:22:08,820 --> 00:22:11,780
local and what is being imposed and the subverting of the
462
00:22:11,780 --> 00:22:13,700
Baroque by the Latin American people.
463
00:22:15,340 --> 00:22:16,980
So this was really fascinating for us.
464
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:19,320
realize that the Baroque is not just something European but
465
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:22,440
it was something that was subverted subverted many many
466
00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:25,820
years ago and in that we were thinking wow well what does
467
00:22:25,820 --> 00:22:28,400
it mean to queer the Baroque as well like a lot of the
468
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times the Baroque representation and everything that is
469
00:22:30,860 --> 00:22:33,580
religious is obviously has a long-standing history with
470
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queer bodies and notions of body so we also took a lot of
471
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these paintings and we tried to queer those paintings so
472
00:22:43,540 --> 00:22:50,680
find ways of representing hinting at playing with these
473
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:54,500
hybrid Baroques but through the queer body what is it i
474
00:22:54,500 --> 00:22:57,520
mean we have a movement called the Double Gate Jesus and
475
00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:04,020
it's two men on top of each other like back to chest in a
476
00:23:04,020 --> 00:23:06,940
sort of Jesus position in this really beautiful tender
477
00:23:06,940 --> 00:23:13,120
embrace so trying to kind of subvert these notions through
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queering of image of like images that are so embedded in
479
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our social cultural history and I think Colombia in
480
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particular a country that is sort of highly influenced by
481
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Catholic culture,
482
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Catholic religion and how that's intention in the country
483
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itself.
484
00:23:31,740 --> 00:23:36,100
To imagine this sort of queer landscape and when we talk
485
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about death you know you're asking me about queering death
486
00:23:38,580 --> 00:23:43,400
Bogota is also this sort of we call it a sort of post-human
487
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:49,160
and post-colonial space where we're trying to imagine you
488
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:52,520
know what does it mean what is the future of of a colonial
489
00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:55,420
I don't think we're in post-colonial times at all but like
490
00:23:55,420 --> 00:23:57,920
our role as artists is to imagine what this looks like and
491
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:01,800
imagine these sort of places so we're using I always say
492
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:04,720
Bogota is a piece about Bogota but it's not about Bogota
493
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:07,560
Bogota I'm using it as a sort of trampoline that is very
494
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:13,360
personal to me my culture my ancestry to talk about like
495
00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:16,040
post-colonial landscapes and what that looks like and how
496
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:20,380
do we queer those imaginaries by how bodies inhabit each
497
00:24:20,380 --> 00:24:23,660
other in space and for us to queer some of that stuff was
498
00:24:23,660 --> 00:24:26,980
also like there's a lot of chaos and complexity in Bogota
499
00:24:26,980 --> 00:24:32,780
and it was important that we create visual aesthetic
500
00:24:32,780 --> 00:24:36,140
choreographic spaces that make space for complexity and non
501
00:24:36,140 --> 00:24:40,840
-uniformity and non-homogeneity so that we as people I
502
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:43,860
think society is not really comfortable with complexity we
503
00:24:43,860 --> 00:24:48,380
really like order and we like to understand and so for us
504
00:24:48,380 --> 00:24:52,800
as artists like how do we make space for us to sit with
505
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:55,980
complexity on stage as a way of building different visual
506
00:24:55,980 --> 00:24:59,260
landscapes that become part of social culture After Push
507
00:24:59,260 --> 00:25:01,980
Balibisi will be presenting choreography they've
508
00:25:01,980 --> 00:25:04,720
commissioned from you and I would love to hear you talk
509
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:08,060
about the through lines of your choreographic inquiry so if
510
00:25:08,060 --> 00:25:12,760
people see Bogota and then your work with Balibisi what
511
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:15,820
might they see as an ASIMS that carries through?
512
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:18,500
I think it's a really good question.
513
00:25:18,700 --> 00:25:19,300
I mean, you know,
514
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:21,240
I'm really excited to work with Ballet BC.
515
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:23,360
It's like coming back to like one,
516
00:25:23,740 --> 00:25:25,180
a place where I started working.
517
00:25:25,380 --> 00:25:28,400
So it's like a massive full cycle and we've never been to
518
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:30,840
Vancouver and Vancouver was my home for such a long time.
519
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:33,080
So I'm so excited for all of this.
520
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:39,060
I think it's wonderful that the artists of Ballet BC can
521
00:25:39,060 --> 00:25:40,560
come see APNA, you know,
522
00:25:40,580 --> 00:25:42,800
because we work on a piece for three years,
523
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:45,960
we're able to build practices, methods,
524
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:50,400
kinship and ecology that helps us dream of these other
525
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:52,840
universes that are pluriversal and complex.
526
00:25:53,280 -->
00:25:55,980
And that's like in the, it's in the ecritsir,
527
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:57,620
like it's in the choreographic writing.
528
00:25:58,780 --> 00:25:59,260
Of course,
529
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:02,580
bringing that to Ballet BC is a challenge in five,
530
00:26:02,660 --> 00:26:04,480
six weeks, but that's the goal is like,
531
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:09,360
how much of that point of view can we bring to a company
532
00:26:09,360 --> 00:26:10,220
who does repertoire?
533
00:26:10,940 --> 00:26:14,440
How much of those ways of working and seeing can...
534
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:18,080
Can I transfer and bring into conversation with the artists
535
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:18,760
of Bali, BC?
536
00:26:19,540 --> 00:26:20,280
I think in particular,
537
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:24,100
one of the things that really excites me and we were
538
00:26:24,100 --> 00:26:27,040
talking with Mehdi about this the other day is I think this
539
00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:30,040
notion of negotiation for me really comes from my design
540
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:30,500
background.
541
00:26:32,380 --> 00:26:35,440
So we were trying to imagine how can I bring a sort of
542
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:35,900
design,
543
00:26:36,140 --> 00:26:39,580
let's call it loosely intervention or a design situation
544
00:26:39,580 --> 00:26:43,560
that allows for the work that we'll do at Bali,
545
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:45,940
BC to have some form of negotiation.
546
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:50,080
So that's kind of what we're thinking about is trying to
547
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:50,720
imagine,
548
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:54,000
I call it loosely a design intervention not to give too
549
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,140
much away because it's there but I don't know if I'm gonna
550
00:26:56,140 --> 00:26:59,060
go in that direction but something that allows for the
551
00:26:59,060 --> 00:27:00,200
choreographic work at Bali,
552
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:03,120
BC to be a negotiation between these people.
553
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:05,960
The goal is to make a piece on the full company so it's a
554
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:09,980
lot of performers to transfer some of those ideas over.
555
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,180
But yeah, I think that would be it.
556
00:27:13,300 --> 00:27:17,300
My goal is to sort of transfer these notions of negotiation
557
00:27:17,300 --> 00:27:21,100
and also the sort of hybrid practices between design and
558
00:27:21,100 --> 00:27:23,180
dance movement.
559
00:27:23,660 --> 00:27:25,920
I always say for us, sonography is not,
560
00:27:26,660 --> 00:27:27,860
I never call it sonography.
561
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:30,680
Usually I call it more like landscapes of interaction
562
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:34,840
because it's important to see how the body is in dialogue
563
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:35,880
with its environment.
564
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:41,600
So we're trying to find what's possible to do with Bali,
565
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:42,600
BC in that regards.
566
00:27:43,220 --> 00:27:45,580
And with regard to design, because yeah,
567
00:27:45,580 --> 00:27:49,120
you've mentioned you're a design artist and that's a big
568
00:27:49,120 --> 00:27:49,980
part of your practice.
569
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:52,300
And in Volkata,
570
00:27:52,300 --> 00:27:55,860
you reference Baroque which we've spoken about, brutalism.
571
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:00,960
Are these aesthetics thematic to your work or are those
572
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:02,160
really specific to Volkata?
573
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:06,540
No, actually they're really, it's interesting we were,
574
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:10,560
there's currently actually a research group at UCAM,
575
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:14,940
the University of Quebec Amor et al that is studying like AP
576
00:28:14,940 --> 00:28:15,560
&A practices.
577
00:28:16,300 --> 00:28:18,940
So it's really interesting from like a ecological
578
00:28:18,940 --> 00:28:23,280
sonography from a decolonial dramaturgy with Angelie Rilke
579
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:28,200
to two students in the theatre department.
580
00:28:28,220 --> 00:28:30,860
There's a sort of research group that is meeting for a year
581
00:28:30,860 --> 00:28:35,460
to understand the sort of decolonial and design practices
582
00:28:35,460 --> 00:28:38,560
of AP&A and what are like you asked me to name some tools
583
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:42,060
it's like we're trying to name these things so that we can
584
00:28:42,060 --> 00:28:45,540
also democratize like the things we create to like build
585
00:28:45,540 --> 00:28:49,040
discourse around practice like what are artists making
586
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:52,580
today in 2024 and what is choreography and how can we also
587
00:28:52,580 --> 00:28:57,940
make some of those thoughts tools trial and error available
588
00:28:57,940 --> 00:28:58,480
at large.
589
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:02,040
So there's a an interesting group working on that at UCAM
590
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:05,020
at the moment and they asked me, they were like,
591
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:06,140
what do you mean by industrial?
592
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:08,860
And me, Ugo, the lighting designer in Jonathan,
593
00:29:08,860 --> 00:29:10,780
the sonography were like, whoa, we've never,
594
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:12,420
we just take that word for granted,
595
00:29:13,300 --> 00:29:15,380
because we've been working for so long together.
596
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:18,920
And it was interesting, because I said, for me,
597
00:29:18,980 --> 00:29:21,380
the industrial refers to the past and the future.
598
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:25,040
And it's a word why I'm trying to encompass both past and
599
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,000
future notions of the industrial,
600
00:29:27,140 --> 00:29:30,500
where obviously the past is like the industrial revolution
601
00:29:30,500 --> 00:29:33,180
and the industrialization of humanity, where like,
602
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:36,120
you know, we live in a very industrialized society,
603
00:29:36,140 --> 00:29:39,160
whether we're aware of it or not, you know,
604
00:29:39,300 --> 00:29:42,580
from everything from cars nine to five,
605
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:45,240
like the industrial revolution really affected the sort of
606
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:48,020
mechanized lifestyle of humanity.
607
00:29:48,660 --> 00:29:50,300
And everything that is industrial,
608
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:52,200
we call that also the body of labor.
609
00:29:52,740 --> 00:29:55,300
So in APNA, we name different bodies.
610
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,900
So we have bodies of mythology, bodies of labor,
611
00:30:00,420 --> 00:30:05,180
bodies of like bodies of anthropology, bodies of non-human,
612
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:06,980
like we try to name different bodies.
613
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:09,340
So those are also just to insert the tools.
614
00:30:10,700 --> 00:30:13,380
And this notion of bodies of labor for me really comes from
615
00:30:13,380 --> 00:30:13,800
Colombia,
616
00:30:13,860 --> 00:30:16,440
like a lot of the countries that exist in the peripheries,
617
00:30:16,580 --> 00:30:16,640
right,
618
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:18,820
countries that are not the center like North America,
619
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:21,280
but a lot of countries of the periphery,
620
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:23,700
you see a lot of bodies of labor, right,
621
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:25,920
you have a lot of industries that are still active,
622
00:30:26,060 --> 00:30:27,520
even in Quebec or in Canada,
623
00:30:27,820 --> 00:30:30,460
like the moment you step out of Montreal and you go to
624
00:30:30,460 --> 00:30:32,900
Rimsky or like these outside cities,
625
00:30:32,900 --> 00:30:36,140
you see industry and you see these bodies who through
626
00:30:36,140 --> 00:30:38,480
industrialization, they become bodies of labor.
627
00:30:39,740 --> 00:30:40,100
So for us,
628
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:44,100
the word industrial hints at this sort of body of labor,
629
00:30:44,100 --> 00:30:47,200
and also the resilience and the humility of most of those
630
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,880
bodies of labor that exist outside of the center or the
631
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:50,540
city center.
632
00:30:51,420 --> 00:30:53,560
And at the same time, now for us,
633
00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:56,360
the word industrial also is sort of hinting at everything
634
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:57,280
that is the artificial.
635
00:30:58,620 --> 00:31:01,760
So let's call it like the post-human and thinking about the
636
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:03,840
digital environment, the digital era, artificial.
637
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,240
intelligence we just did a piece called replica that looks
638
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,760
at the sort of notions of replication of body through time
639
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:14,620
and because i was quite quite
fascinated with like how we
640
00:31:14,620 --> 00:31:17,420
represent bodies in the digital sphere today with the
641
00:31:17,420 --> 00:31:20,680
metaverse and tiktok and all this stuff um so yeah the
642
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:23,280
industrial sort of teeters between everything that is this
643
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:26,920
body of labor that comes from the industrialization and
644
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:31,640
things that are maybe most more post-human or artificial or
645
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:35,720
artificial intelligence um in terms of digital digital
646
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:40,580
culture thank you andrea we are very blessed to have you
647
00:31:40,580 --> 00:31:43,780
coming you and apna the artist you work with coming to
648
00:31:43,780 --> 00:31:46,700
share this work with us here i am so thrilled i'm so
649
00:31:46,700 --> 00:31:50,500
excited um and i imagine that our listeners are too after
650
00:31:50,500 --> 00:31:53,900
hearing you paint this rich picture of the kind of
651
00:31:53,900 --> 00:31:57,880
influences and tools that you're using to devise this work
652
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,660
no we're super excited i mean i think for me coming back to
653
00:32:01,660 --> 00:32:04,880
vancouver like i mentioned is It's quite precious.
654
00:32:05,100 --> 00:32:07,880
There's a community there that I still feel connected to.
655
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:10,980
We haven't been to Vancouver yet.
656
00:32:11,420 --> 00:32:12,640
And I think, again,
657
00:32:12,740 --> 00:32:14,960
just to be in conversation through practice,
658
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,600
I think is really, really interesting for all of us.
659
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:23,580
You just heard Gabriel Martin's conversation with Andrea
660
00:32:23,580 --> 00:32:24,080
Pena.
661
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:25,500
Her show, Bogota,
662
00:32:25,660 --> 00:32:28,380
will be presented at the Push International Performing Arts
663
00:32:28,380 --> 00:32:31,500
Festival on January 31st and February 1st,
664
00:32:31,580 --> 00:32:34,020
2025 at the Vancouver Playhouse.
665
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:38,460
The festival will run from January 23rd to February 9th.
666
00:32:39,340 --> 00:32:40,160
I'm Ben Charland,
667
00:32:40,260 --> 00:32:43,420
and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Trisha
668
00:32:43,420 --> 00:32:43,880
Knowles.
669
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:47,080
Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.
670
00:32:47,940 --> 00:32:50,860
New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and
671
00:32:50,860 --> 00:32:53,080
Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.
672
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:57,000
And for more information on the 2025 festival and to
673
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,540
discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater,
674
00:33:00,540 --> 00:33:03,100
dance, music and multimedia performances,
675
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:05,760
visit pushfestival.ca.
676
00:33:07,260 --> 00:33:08,460
And on the next Push Play.
677
00:33:09,180 --> 00:33:09,940
When I was little,
678
00:33:10,260 --> 00:33:13,000
I thought that one day I would feel like an adult,
679
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:15,020
but that day never came.
680
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:17,080
I'm just I'm still the same person.
681
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:20,380
I just have a little bit more of responsibilities than when
682
00:33:20,380 --> 00:33:21,260
I was 11.