ANDREA PEŇA: UNTITLED I
UNTITLED I is a solo performance that inquisitively expresses the silence, vulnerability and harmonic repetition of the flesh as a means of questioning human resilience—resilience as in the capacity of a strained body to recover after deformation, where body and individual surrender and are transformed by alterations in experience.
Artistic direction: Andrea Peña
Choreography: Andrea Peña in collaboration with François Richard
Dance: François Richard
Music: Bobby Leon
Lighting design: Hugo Dalphond
Technical direction: Roxanne Bedard
Website: andreapena.net
VANESSA GOODMAN: CONTAINER
She is the only person on the stage, yet she is never alone. The solo CONTAINER of the Canadian choreographer and dancer Vanessa Goodman unfolds to reveal the relationship of a human being, a woman, to her inner self and to the outside. It seems to be a struggle with expectations. This time as a dancer, Andrea Peña stands in her boots like Super Woman. She strides forward, backward, forward, backward, forward. She is buffeted, bent, fighting her way through matter that presses against her body, invisible. She frees herself—almost. Paths of light open up to her, as do crossroads. But like a forbidding forefinger, a light bar threatens her. It oscillates. A sharp scythe blade. A Yiddish good-humour song frames the solo: “Chiribim Chiribom.” Its cheerfulness gives the dancer the rest. End. Beginning.
CONTAINER is a solo work by choreographer and performer Vanessa Goodman that explores heritage, culture and resistance.
“A visceral solo dance bursting out of a starkly abstract stage and costume design. Goodman’s character is born into a rectangle of light, moves powerfully but haltingly through the darkness, and then returns to the light. She moved to the industrial-ambient music in a way that elicited from me an audible and unbeckoned ‘damn’ at the end of the performance.”
—The Seattle Stranger
VANESSA GOODMAN, artistic director of the Vancouver-based company ACTION AT A DISTANCE DANCE SOCIETY, worked as a dancer after graduating from college. The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award in 2013 enabled her to produce her first full-length piece as a choreographer. Her works reflect the human condition and use dance to break down with dance.
Artistic direction/choreography/sound arrangement/costumes: Vanessa Goodman
Performed by: Andrea Peña
Original music: Loscil Sound: Loscil and the Barry Sisters
Lighting design: James Proudfoot