montréal QC 2013

 

With a B.A. in Classics as well as extensive dance training at Concordia University and the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Peter Trosztmer has distinguished himself as an interpreter of the highest caliber and continues to collaborate with many national and international choreographers. He has created five critically acclaimed solo works and is co-artistic director, along with Thea Patterson, Katie Ward and Audrée Juteau, of ‘The Choreographers’ who together, and individually,  create innovative fresh work using collaborative paradigms. His work on the multi media project Norman received an Angel Award at the Brighton Festival UK (2009). Recently he was selected for Triptych (a research exchange between Circuit-Est in Montreal, The Opera Estate in Bassano Italy, and The Dance Centre in Vancouver) and was invited for a 2-month residency at FABRIK in Potsdam in summer 2013. He is currently researching interactive movement tracking with sound and video with Zack Settle at the S.A.T. (Sociéte des arts technologiques) in Montreal.

 

Rewriting Distance with Lin and Guy – May 2012.

 

Expectations

Thoughts

Feelings

Fears

Trying to find the unknown self

Trying to identify the present

What is my choice at this instant

 

Opening any door is good.  There is always a door to be opened.  A door offers possibility.

 

Lin rolls around the mirror – there are fragmented reflections parading around – all I can think about are the vibrations that the wheels are sending through the floor.  Electricity travels through the floor of my studio when it rains – amps, watts, ohms. 

 

I can lie, tell stories, things that are not real, project things into space, feel my body speak – for example …– my digestive track is working hard right now ?

 

Sometimes you just have to get that motor running.  It is a three-way experience – I only have one part to play.  The best part of structure and rules is finding out how, where, when, why to break them… – stay lucid.

 

Confusion arrives – is embraced – we trust in it and move forward (opening doors)  Tell stories of electricity, balance, past, travels, grandfathers, fishing, past encounters with strangers, moose … I did have a feeling that I could be a storyteller. 

 

Feeling ineffectual and not minding it…

 

Sailors, knots, navy, war, Sailing is intuitive. – knots are emotional, they make us feel things that we do not understand – perhaps they tie us to our past.  Peter tries to be a knot, Guy tries to balance against a knot – he needs Lin to release the knot.  –   – there is lots of paper everywhere, writing, words, water, stuff – it is really nice to make a well worked in mess.  I love Lin’s drawings.  These two are so generous.

 

Lin has a hand grenade. 

Guy likes to balance.

Peter is a hobo, likes to break the rules and has a phone. 

Lin is the real hobo – she does not have a phone.

 

Hobo’s are fun – they force us to think differently

 

Older is better – it just means that it is well-crafted

Analogue vs Digital – Analogue is older – and better.  At least it is real Digital is only zero’s and ones. 

 

 

Being on tour can be difficult – we need to hang onto things sometimes.  It can be food (finding nice restaurants), music is still good to look for, you can always hit the bars after work – or make an evening walk part of the day.

 

Grandfathers Great Grandfathers – wars, gardens, baking bread, making beer.

 

Go forth into the world and bring back your riches.

 

David died on his bike and Chris died on his sailboat. 

 

Holding the space…

When there are three of us – it feels like someone is always holding the space for you.   It just feels better when that is happening. 

 

I think that I have realized that I like it best when I don’t completely understand all the rules.  Something about living in Quebec I think. 

 

If it is spoken it is heard, if it is written it has weight, (if it is tied down with a knot…)  With water it can still be washed away – the power of the sea, a wave of words washing through the space. 

 

Follow your dreams – you can ask for help

 

Sunlight is magical, I am so glad that we ended up working the later part of the day when the sun is low.

 

Small embellishments are hopeful – amazing, responsible for everything that is wonderful. 

 

You can be alone in a group and you can take “it” for you and you can let “it” go when you want. 

 

It is wonderful to see small parts of things.

 

Paper looks so good when it is crinkled.  

 

We tell stories of love, the past, nostalgic sentiments seem to be alive with this trio. 

 

Time in my workshop studio.

 

There are still ghosts of Lin and Guy in my studio.   The ladder at the end of the stairs has been replaced with a stepladder.  Sometimes the best thing we can do is sit and wait.  Sometimes the space that we are in requires that.  It is important to be careful while we throw caution to the wind there are plenty of sharp things around.

 

My overalls fit Guy and Lin looks great in the show pants.  A train just went by. With Michael here it always feels like there is someone grounding us.  I know that his pictures are going to be great in the space.

 

There is something about really old spaces … There are already stories – not much has to be spoken until you have sat and listened a long, long time.

Guy likes the rope lights. 

Lin likes the lights made from conduit pipes.

Michael just really seems to like it all.

 

No body got hurt :/()

 

Our last day is open.  We bring out all the writing from the previous days – the papers are like sculptures that have a history written into their very structure.  Some are crinkled some are rolled up – some are stained with coffee others with water and ink – (water color drawings). 

 

I begin with writing as it is my least familiar spot and this excites me a little.  Feelings and sensations from the week are flowing through me.  I am happy to be here with everyone. 

 

I tell a story about a bus trip to Montreal when I was in high school in Toronto – Lin and Guy are around but I am focused and do not see them.  Before I know what has happened there is a chair precariously suspended from the ceiling and Guy and I are thundering around a large piece of thick paper.  Lin is just behind us.  Guy is suspended now falling and landing on my back as we tumble through the space – We have settled Guy is wrapped in paper in my arms. 

 

It feels like dance has changed me once again.  Re-metabolized, opened up and re-organized – re-wired from time spent with new people. 

 

Thank you for sharing yourselves so generously.

 

 

Stem cells. Endless Potentiality. Mirror Neurons. Electricity. Yoga. Yoke.

My body vibrating with others. With the people I meet. With the dances I watch. With the children playing next doors.

The change of temperature like the change of seasons can be radical.

The voltage rising in early spring makes old machines explode, but with the right conductors and transformers, it regenerates you.

My body is dependent on others to regenerate itself, but also to ground itself, to become what it already is: endless potentiality.

Appreciating Peter’s compliment on my hairdo, I will still have a haircut. And maybe afterwards it will sparkle.

Re-membering white underwear burning in an electric chandelier or a rock being dropped on a copper plate with a body underneath.

Resistance and endurance.

Lin giving herself the task of seeing how far she can go exhausting one track… We might have to organize a 24 hours session for that.

 

The day started with some simple, but basic questions hidden behind the stories:

And it ended with a longue journey, creating this one perfect, still image, that was repeated twice.

The craft of securing things, so that your partners can take more risks.

The shadow of a messy table becoming an amazing landscape.

We all like to share stories about our grandparents. The once about our parents are harder to reveal.

And there is always a point towards the end where you want someone else to untie you or cut you free.

To knot yourself free!

 

Peter: “Knots are emotional.”

Lin: “And now it is gone, don’t you love that!”

 

To reveal. To unveil. To hide.

To follow your dreams.

To embellish. To narrate.

To lie. To walk through open doors.

To live with a coyote.

To be a sculpture, emerging.

To draw with water your shadows.

To be a sloth. To love to be a sloth.

To want to fly. To jump down on paper.

To secure yourself as a witness.

To write.

To open your bag.

To be not ashamed.

To ask for help.

 

Michael: “It was a lot about feet today.”

Lin: “It is like camping, isn’t it?”

 

A lot of Peter’s propositions this week where about ‘space’. Refinding and re-membering the strong connection of the practice with the actual, physical spaces we work in. The space as fourth partner, turning the triangle into a quadrant or a circle.

Today Peter invited us in his space in Griffin Town, a large shed built in the form of a triangle against the wall of the railway, which in former times was used amongst others as coal storage and as a horses and carriage stable.

We felt inside a huge dome, the hull of a ship, a huge oil tanker.

A lot of the physical actions and the imaginary was about climbing stairs to a place on the wall high up with no door to enter or exit through; to fly, like the huge metal bird in the middle of the space, made of wire and old rusted pipes from which cobweb was dripping; trains falling from the sky;…

We continued to re-member our ancestors and explore fragments of new science and we measured time in distances.

The space was polluted, so we aired it, with the smell of grinded coffee grains.

I glided down an avalanche of white paper shreds and invented a personal story, I actually had recently seen in a film.

We wore blue overalls and there was a real sense of the practice being ‘work’, constructing and deconstructing. Or as Louise Bourgeois put it: “To do, to undo, to redo.”

Time condensed, passed more slowly and quickly at the same time.

 

We brought all the written residues of the past week back into the studio at St-Andre and performed the practice for a generous audience of friends and colleagues.

I was very tired, even exhausted, but the practice – the physical contact with Lin and Peter, did regenerate me. Like Spinoza’s statement how we need other bodies to regenerate our own, which I quoted form John Berger’s book, in conversation with Lin lying on the floor and watching through a huge paper telescope. Spinoza, the grinder of lenses.

Catherine and her 3 month old son Benjamin, where present through the email she sent to us both, revealing how both babies and travelling are great sources for stories, which connected magically to Peter’s story of his high school trip to Montreal with which the practice started and all the babies, born and unborn, that were omnipresent until the very end when Peter wrapped me in a huge paper pamper and cradled me while I read another fragment of found text, torn to be revealed:

“… a small patch of light

   … falling sideways

        … with something

          … appears to this day in a

          … all manner of

            … incidence

            … way’s a story

                              is

              successful

                                    because

                      it disappears.”

                       

Guy Cools,

Montreal, May 2013

 

 

notes

lin snelling

• the process by which heat or electricity is directly transmitted through a substance when there is a difference of temperature, or electrical potential between adjoining regions without movement of the material
• The process by which sound travels through a medium
• The transmission of impulses along nerves
• The conveying of fluid through a pipe or other channel

day two

day three