"I want to see our community blossom." Peggy Baker's unflagging generosity and unique upcoming show
Early in January I had the new-year joy of sitting with Peggy
Baker to talk about her upcoming show SplitScreen at Theatre Centre. A clear,
crisp day of fresh month, Church street seemed cleaner and brighter as I headed
over to the National Ballet School, where she and her company are resident, to meet with her.
Peggy was just emerging from Christine Wright’s ballet class
for contemporary dancers (a program spear-headed by Peggy Baker Dance
Projects), and we headed up to her office, lined with books and a smattering of
gorgeous posters on the walls.
I have known Peggy for a long time now, but I still get a
little nervous when we talk. The clarity and precision of her thoughts possess
the same clarity and precision of her choreographic works, with a beautiful
layer of warmth as well. Wisdom in
motion.
photo of Peggy Baker by Aleksander Antonijevic
We started with a little chat about the New Yorker...
P: I subscribe to the New Yorker and what I really
appreciate about that magazine is the volume of conversation about literature
of all kinds, dance of all kinds, art of all kinds. Dance resides right in
there with political commentary and science and cartoons…It’s really where
dance is, part of the world.
L: It needs to be talked about in amongst other things.
P It stimulating, exciting, nourishing to read it in that
way. It’s a struggle in this country for this kind of holistic view.
L: Speaking of a holistic view….I was reading about the
program for your upcoming show…. What was the impetus or spark to put those
pieces together…it’s a mixed program, but it’s not.
P: No, it’s not a variety pack….Well….The move to a new [theatre]
space ….I did my first show in 1991 at the Betty Oliphant Theatre, then for a
while I was at the Fleck Theatre, then I went back to the Betty O. They are both
conservative spaces, a really old format that’s very successful. Proscenium staging
is amazing, like a fantastic sound studio.
There were pragmatic issues about the theatre, the main one
is that it’s a teaching studio so if you are presenting there you have to dismantle
your show everyday. My shows have
been getting pretty complicated staging-wise and the last time we were there,
it was frightening to pull apart the level of technical we had every night….
L: And Theatre Centre, where SplitScreen is happening is an
outstanding place. The leadership and values are apparent in the actual bricks
and mortar there!
P: Toronto has been lacking a place like this for many
years.
It’s important to me to try to find my integration in our community.
We [the dance community] are at a disadvantage because we don’t have a central
meeting place or presenters who champion local creators. I’ve been separate because of the
location of presenting my work.
Theatre Centre puts me in a neighbourhood that’s alive with ideas and
images and activity and art.
So why did I choose these works….
Not presenting anything new was pragmatic as I’m working
towards a very big project so I had to budget my resources this year.
I felt like one of the things that’s been happening and I’ve
been questioning is the utter disposability of everything we make. I wanted to
bring together works that I felt had some resonance with one another and were
strong in their own right, with a good balance between male and female and in
the Theatre Centre space to could offer an intimate experience with the
performers.
I wanted works that require great artistry, that are
substantial as a choreographic works and as I put them together a pathway
through these works emerged….
Opening with a woman alone on stage. That’s how I’ve spent
much of my career…You understand that incredibly vulnerable position.
L: I do.
P: Then to look at two men. Ric Brown and David Norsworthy. Ric is almost twice the age
of David…at opposite ends of their career arcs. They are thoroughly
unique. The material very available
for David at his age and a triumph for Ric as an older dancer.
L: I don’t know Ric at all, but when I see him in person or
dancing he has an almost angelic energy.
P: He is completely open, uncluttered.
And next in the program is Split-Screen. I really love Split
Screen Stereophonic….I don’t know if this is literally true…but I don’t know
that I had choreographed about intimate relationships before this piece.
Of the original dancers -- Ben Kamino, Sahara Morimoto, Sean
Ling and Sarah Fregeau -- Sarah’s the only one I have this time. So it’s been
really interesting and great to shift it so much. The chemistry is very, very
different. It’s a kind of evidence of the strength of the composition.
I’ve set out to make works that compositionally have the
strength and flexibility of something like a musical score or a play so that it’s
only the choreography. It requires artists to enter it and create performances.
They are both necessary and strong: the composition and the performance.
Then as a companion piece to Split Screen Stereophonic, I
made Epilogue. So through the whole arc of SplitScreen we have a balance of
vulnerability and virtuosity, a blast of a flip side with the men, then into
relationships and then a lone woman again. A woman at a different point in her
life than the opening woman.
Women who are dancers.
L: Women who are dancers. They have to be dancers….What made
you want to return to performance?
P: I feel very in command of the demands of Epilogue. It’s
still very close to the bone for me. Until I’ve really completed all my
personal quandaries around it, I’ll do it. And I’m not sure it belongs outside
the Split Screen Stereophonic context.
Not every piece needs to go on. Some of my solos have
relevancies outside of my necessity to make them, some of them don’t.
L: I know what you mean. I don’t have the same span of
career as you, but I’ve found already that some of the solos I’ve made, some of
the ones I love to dance, the reasons don’t arise to do them again. Others do.
They have more opportunities. It’s hard because some are really in the
heart, they were epic and hard to make
and they may never happen again and I have to be okay with that.
It’s kind of the flip side of the disposability you spoke of before.
On to something else. There is always something structural,
architectural about your work….a description in your materials about “lines of action”
struck me. It’s not about the structure sitting there, but alive through action.
The structure is an emotional structure or one that can be felt, lived by the
dancers emotionally.
P: I came to dance through theatre, so that’s my primary
point of entry. Character, situation, relationship….something needs to be going
on. We need conflict. If nothing goes wrong there’s nothing. Where’s the
complication? the difficulty? the misunderstanding? And yet I’m pretty abstract
in my way of going at it. I love the physical character of the work. But
there’s always subtext. Motives.
Everything can’t be spoken for, otherwise there’s no room for
the dancers to create, to be spontaneous. All those things that are available
to you when you dance your own work because you can make those decisions and
responses as you go-- I am wanting to make similar situations for my dancers, to
make work that always has room, that creates room for the artists.
Dancers want great work to be inside of….it’s that feeling
of watching it and wanting to be inside it that dancers get. That’s great
resonant work.
L: I have that feeling all the time, but I hadn’t thought of
it that way. The movement seduces me, because I just want to be dancing all the time. But I think
it’s actually the journey that’s happening inside the movement that really
grabs me. It’s the whole world.
P: It is movement too. And it requires a dancer. It requires
an artist who is a dancer.
L: It’s funny
when I see plays I don’t want to be in them even though I’ve been involved in theatre
for more than 15 years. But dance
does it for me because it is the movement. I am a bit addicted to moving.
P: SplitScreen is hard for me because I can’t watch this
show -- I’m in it. I can’t quite know how it functions in performance. Being
outside the work over the last few years I’ve learned so much. But I can’t with
this show because I have to look after my performance. Once I hit the time for me to prepare
for my performance, that’s it.
Peggy Baker in "epilogue". Photo by Makoto Hirata
L: I haven’t figured that out yet. When I made a duet for
Elke Schroeder and Sky Fairchild-Waller last year, I loved just watching, It
was first thing I choreographed that I’m not at all in….but the twitchiness to
be in …to dance, is still there…how many more years do I have, it whispers…
P (laughing): I don’t have that twitchiness anymore. That’s
already made itself clear. I’m no longer a dancer but I sometimes still perform.
I’m the ruin of a dancer. I could only be what I am now if I had been a dancer.
Even if someone else could do the things I can do I’m not sure I’d buy it. I just
know that all of that investment we make in our physical practice makes a different
kind of performer.
L: You have sort of talked about this a bit already…. But
how has your choreography evolved?
P: An accelerated evolution. I’m looking with incredible kinesthetic
memory. From what I’m feeling in my body and what I’m seeing and the impulses
of my dancers. Before it was my own kinetic impulses….I didn’t expect to be a
choreographer at this time in my life, but I wanted at first to experiment with
working with other people with the same tools I used on myself. After a somewhat
lurching entry during which I learned a huge amount, something started. My own drive to make took over. Before
it was always self-exploration….
L: When do you feel that switch started to happen?
P: It happened when I came home from rehearsing with the
dancers one day and felt really happy. I realized I hadn’t felt like this since
I was really in my body.
L: So fairly recently.
P: The last six or seven years.
It was with Coalesce (2010)….it got me excited. I was
learning, I was growing. I couldn’t wait to go back into the studio. It was the
same feeling I had in my dancer life.
L: Since I had that mentorship grant a few years ago and you sat with me in my renovation-ridden house and you gave me some breathtaking advice, I
associate you with generosity – resources, information, spirit. How do you keep
yourself so generous?
P: Oh my goodness….well I’ve been the recipient of such
tremendous generosity….I come from a big family. I learned how to share and
take pleasure in sharing. I love being part of a community, a network that’s
healthy and vibrant. The more any artist here succeeds the better it is for everybody.
I want to see our community blossom. I want dance to be a
great milieu. It requires everyone to contribute to that possibility. I want to do that. I want this to be a
great place for dance. There’s some stuff in the way but we shouldn’t be in our
own way.
L: I’m glad I have this recorded because I can listen to it
again and again to feel re-inspired and rooted.
See Peggy Baker Dance Projects in the heart of the arts:
SplitScreen
February 21-26, 2017
(1115 Queen St. West)
Adults: $30
Students/Seniors/Arts Workers/CADA Member: $22
Early Bird promo-code: EARLY20, expires Jan 31st
Other discounts available through The Theatre Centre Dance Card
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