O.DELA ARTS X MUSICA INTIMA

Inspired by Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”, O.Dela Arts and Musica Intima adapt the timeless love story in “Where You Go”. Singing a live score with music by David Lang, Luca Marenzio, Rebecca Dale, Jóhann Jóhannsson, the vocal ensemble accompanies Sophie Dow and Brandon Schwinn, portraying two lovers bound by the inescapable promise of death. She is bound to Him and He to Her, now and forever more. The second act is inspired by the duet, Klangenfort, originally conceived and performed by Savannah Walling and Terry Hunter, and is an ode to everlasting love transmuting all those left behind.

Director, Choreographer, Performer: Olivia C. Davies

Olivia C. Davies creates and collaborates across multiple platforms including Contemporary Indigenous choreography, creative writing, film, improvisation, performance, and sound design. Davies' body of work explores the emotional and political relationships between people and places, often investigating the body’s dynamic ability to transmit narrative. Creations and collaborations traverse boundaries by conveying concepts and impressions that open different ways to experience the world. Her work has been presented in person and online across Turtle Island and abroad since 2011. She is the Managing Artistic Director and Founder of O.Dela Arts and the Matriarchs Uprising Festival. Davies is a mother, mentor, and mentee who honours her mixed Anishinaabe, French Canadian, Finnish and Welsh heritage. www.oliviacdavies.ca

Dramaturg: Raïna von Waldenburg

Raïna von Waldenburg is a Grotowski-based actor, devisor, director, playwright,mentor, dramaturg and teacher. For 35 years Raïna has been developing an approach to embodied presence, devising and performing called I AM ONE WHO, and she has been teaching workshops and serving as mentor/dramaturg for theatre/dance companies in the development of original Material. Former full-time faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, she taught Grotowski- based physical acting at the Experimental Theatre Wing for 17 years. Raïna has worked nationally and internationally with Ne.Sans Opera and Dance at Teatro Massimo (Palermo), Chaos Emblematic at (Berlin), InterACT – Werkstatt für Theatre und Soziokultur (Graz), Bali Conservatory (Ubud), Broadway’s Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy (NYC), Full Moon Films’ Split (NYC), Kaid Media’s We Are the Hartmans (NYC), Actors Without Borders (NYC), Telluride Theatre (Telluride), Company Link (Winnipeg), Working Classroom (Albequerque), and Shoe String Productions (Syracuse). In British Columbia, Raïna has worked creatively with EDAM Dance, Ne.Sans Opera, O.Dela Arts, The Biting School, Fight With A Stick, Kinesis Dance, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, The Falling Company, Generous Mess, The Assembly, New (to) Town Collective, James and Jamesy, Tomoe Arts, Helen Walkley, Sto:lo Research and Resource Management Centre, UFV Mainstage, Boombox, and the Dance Centre’s Mentorship Program “12 Minutes Max”. Raïna has performed in the experimental downtown NYC theatre scene for decades at venues such as La MaMa Experimental Theatre, St. Mark’s Theatre, OHIO Theatre, The Culture Lab, Grand Theatre, American Place Theatre, BAX, Dixon Place, and the Gene Frankel Theatre. Raïna received her MFA in creative writing from Goddard College, and her BFA in acting from New York University where she trained under Stephen Wangh, and Grotowski’s principal actor and protégée Ryszard Cieslak. She served as research assistant and editor for Stephen Wangh’s book An Acrobat of the Heart: A physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. Raïna is also a published poet and mother.For more information: rainavon@gmail.com website: www.alivebody.ca

Outside Eye: Savannah Walling

Savannah Walling is a theatre artist, playwright, interdisciplinary performer, and community-engaged artist trained in dance, mime and music. She has collaborated with artists of many genres, traditions, and ancestries on original creations interweaving local content with lived experience, accessible storytelling, spectacle, live music and living cultural practice. Her choreography and interdisciplinary productions have been presented since 1983 in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, across Canada, and in the USA, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Bali, Japan and Korea. She co-founded Vancouver Moving Theatre, the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival and Terminal City Dance. In recognition of her visionary community-engaged interdisciplinary art practice and contributions to Canadian culture, Savannah was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, presented with an Honorary Doctorate by University Canada West and awarded the King Charles II Coronation Medal. While teaching contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University in 1976, she choreographed and premiered “Klangenfort”, presented by Terminal City Dance on tours across Canada. She gifted images and text from "Klangenfort" to Olivia C. Davies, to serve as creative seed for Olivia’s new choreography created for this time and space. An immigrant to Canada, Savannah has lived and worked for almost 50 years on ancestral homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh.

Performers: 

Sophie Dow: Treaty 1-born Sophie Dow is a multidisciplinary creative, inspired by dance, music, film, collaboration and familial Michif/Assiniboine + French, Ukrainian, German roots. An avid adventurer, Sophie exudes passions for busking, yoga and traveling on top of holding a degree in Dance Performance and Choreography from York University. Sophie presently fulfills roles as: Artistic Associate of O.Dela Arts, and The Chimera Project, residency coordinator at Dance West Network, fire spinner & board member with Ember Arts Fire Society, a creative director of Prince Edward County’s Flight Festival of Contemporary Dance, board member with the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance and the Toronto Dance Love-In, musician with The Honeycomb Flyers, a licensed practitioner of Traditional Thai Massage, a trained facilitator & student of BreathWave, a student of cranial-sacral therapy, a freelance dancer/choreographer/sound designer and a puddle jumping trickster.

Brandon Schwinn: A multimedia and dance artist whose work explores improvisation as a way to trace the impermanent connections between dance and daily life. His movement practice thrives in collaboration with others who share an affinity for spontaneity, revealing the undeniable truth that nothing lasts. For him, dance becomes a way to play with time, stretching and compressing moments into something playful and creative, fleeting, and deeply human.

Music: Music Intima - Vocal Ensemble

Multiple Singers -- exact names TBC

Grassroots beginnings took musica intima to international renown by pushing the boundaries of traditional choral performance and offering new perspectives on ensemble singing. One of Canada’s most esteemed vocal ensembles, musica intima’s unique shared leadership model invites each of the 12 members to be a co-artistic director of the group, exchanging ideas freely and exploring their individual musical creativity.musica intima is continuing to receive national recognition for their ongoing efforts to be leaders in decolonizing and diversifying Western art practice locally and within the Canadian arts sector, garnering a JUNO and 2 WCMA award nominations for their groundbreaking collaboration, NAGAMO, with Cree composer and curator Andrew Balfour, with whom they toured across the country, sharing with over 1000 young singers and artists across the country on what it means to collaborate and the decolonization of the choral arts.

Lighting Designer: Jonathan Jono Kim

Jonathan, better known as Jono, is a Korean-Canadian lighting designer who currently lives and works on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ y̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ x̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University's Theatre Production and Design program. Recent credits: Family Room (The Falling Company); Homecoming (Urban Ink); Take Form (Ballet BC); Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories (Neworld Theatre); Ridge (Brendan McLeod & The Fugitives); The Hobbit (Pacific Theatre); Kim's Convenience (Theatre NorthWest); Miracle on 34th Street (Arts Club Theatre Company); Heathers: The Musical (Studio 58); Grandma. Gangsta. Guerrilla. (Ruby Slippers Theatre); The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe (Presentation House Theatre); Behind The Moon (Touchstone Theatre); Ins Choi: Son of a Preacherman (Pacific Theatre); Casey and Diana (Arts Club Theatre Company); The Frontliners (Blackout Art Society, Firehall Arts Centre and vAct).