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In the End… at the Core… Communication

Jenn Doan

After taking several weeks to let this whole project sit, digest, and give space and time for reflection. I came to learn one major thing (among many other little things of course)… Communication was at the core of inlayers and its success. There was communication that needed effective execution on 2 levels. The first was the communication with us artist with the online audience. The second is the communication that was needed between each and every person involved in creating inlayers.

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some final musings on deuxieme partie….

Taryn Javier

Here are some of my final thoughts on how inlayers – deuxieme partie went.x It has been a full month since the close of the show and I still feel as though I have not adequately grasped all that has happened. It seems so odd because this project was worked on and talked about a […]

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Pam’s Path of Performance

Pamela Tzeng

Ever wonder what goes on a dancer’s mind while performing? Pamela tells us what is running through her head during a performance.

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I NEED ANSWERS!

In the past few rehearsals i had a breakthrough, which nominated me as a featured dancer for those rehearsals. For one of the rehearsals Pam, Melina and i had to use Melina’s solo she developed from the day before and find ways to use contact in it. We played with some lifts and contact through our limbs and taryn would come often to see what she liked, and fix what she didn’t like. There were a number of lifts where i was the one that was lifting and since im not as experienced in lifting liked to have more time to figure pathways out. But before we got to a point where we actually got it, taryn would change it because it was not working. I was annoyed a bit and did tell her half way through to back off a bit just because we all need the time to figure stuff out. Which after the three of us found our rhythm and cleared up pathways and it was all fine and dandy! She later made us do our phrase we made x3 to the point of exhaustion which actually turned out pretty well from what she said.

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Maybe this is exactly where I need to be…

Pamela Tzeng

At this point of the inlayers process I’m feeling emotionally drained. In the past weeks Taryn has been using several structured improvisations to develop material for the work and the relationships between the dancers. As we’ve been researching and working to ‘drop into’ our states of consumption more quickly… an unsettling trend in my behavior has been happening when we really get into the meat of our improvs– that of becoming so emotionally frustrated that I begin to cry.

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Dance was able to give me the gift of self expression at a time where i needed it most…

I focus on dance because it is something that takes place every day. In a sense, we are all dancers – and as cheesy as that may sound, it is true. Dance was a way for me, like many artist, to express myself and was a tool to release my frustrations and anger towards life. The first time anyone told me that “you inspired me” also gave me another reason to keep dancing. I wanted to be able to touch and inspire others through dance. I wanted them to have imagination people and to think of their bodies as a way to communicate to the world and not merely a static object in space.

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To convey something against words

Presently I choose to work in live performance because I believe it is a medium with great affective, creative, intellectual, emotional, and reflective potentials. I have trouble with dance’s ability to only communicate one specific thing, but am continually surprised at its ability to communicate so many things at once. I go to see live performance because of its capacity to use bodies to speak about socio-political, intellectual, emotional, and epochal issues, which are always somehow closely related to the body.

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Dance brings me into the present moment and helps me feel connected mind, body and soul

So I am one of those dancers that has been dancing since the age of four (it’s really not as fancy as it sounds). As a little one, I was completely uncoordinated and had the attention span of a peanut. Dance class was an extra-curricular activity that my mom enrolled me in as a strategy to exert my creative energy in ballet rather than destroy her white carpets with all my crafty creations & materials – hot glue gun and sparkles included.

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Dance feeds my soul and gives me hope.

Jenn Doan

Movement and performance creation has always been with me since a young age. I was really expressive with my creativity and always quite kinesthetic and physical. In Grade 6 I remember being inspired by a movie on tv so i decided to write up a whole play on my own time and performed it with a friend for the whole class. I would also always go the extra mile when we were asked to write book reports in Language arts class. I would create a whole performance instead of write a “report.” I also remember creating every kind of club possible like a cooking club, a sewing club, an animal club, a Fear Street club… Me and my friend would organize field trips and events for all our clubs.

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Car doors and dance floors

Melina Stinson

Since I graduated from dance school 2.5 years ago, I have been very lucky to participate in many interesting projects. I haven’t had any prolonged breaks or times with nothing waiting for me around the next corner. More and more I can actually live/survive on the small pay from these dance contracts. Like most dancers, I also have a few part-time jobs (teaching yoga mostly) that help weave a thread of stability through the contractor life-style. This is all tickity-boo if life behaves, contracts keep appearing and nothing unexpected happens. We all know life doesn’t really work this way.

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