BC: [cont.] I did a piece called Hymn to the Universe, which is a collaboration with the Sun Ra Arkestra, an American jazz band. They came up to Toronto and we rehearsed for three days in the studio, and then we created a theatrical piece based on a Jesuit philosopher. They are so wild, this band. It was like going to western Mongolia, but I didn't have to go miles and miles; we did it at the Palais Royal.
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Bill Coleman, Robert Regala and Peter Chin in an excerpt from Hymn to the Universe with music by Sun Ra Arkestra
This piece had various sections and it was all based on transcending – transcending our physical beings, transcending earth. It was full of little vignettes. In “The Threshold of Reflection” section, man suddenly becomes conscious of himself; when the brain stem develops on top of the spine, and we become aware of who we are, what we are. I was using a puppet. We created a puppet mountain out of bodies. There were eight or nine sections, all quite different, and the musicians all just meandered in and out of the band. It was a fifteen-piece band. They're quite famous – they've done fifty CDs and they also watched us like hawks and it was really fantastic.
So that's that. I've been talking for a half an hour so I'll let Laurence talk. We have a company and we do lots of stuff but when I'm making things it's usually things that I hold with great affection. Even if they're terrible I don't regret it because, you know, I got to see my dad in tights or something. It's such a lot of work making dances and going through the whole thing, so a lot of the time I enrich it with subjects and ingredients that are really important to me. I probably go a little nutty, but they're such ingredients that it's an act of love, for good or bad. Anyway, in these times creation is hard, but it's good to live and work with things that have great meaning for you. Okay, that's me.
LL: Bill was talking about deciding to incorporate the company because we were both working. But actually, in fact, it was when we started to work on a project called Mr. Coleman and Mrs. Lemieux and we were applying for a commission for James Kudelka – that's when we decided that we would each have to sacrifice our funding for our own project in order to commission James. That's when we decided to start our own company. It's a funny thing now – James could not create the duet because he was busy with the Kimberly Glasco affair during that period. He said, “I can't do this now, and not for a few years.” In 2005, almost coinciding with our return to Toronto, we started the Kudelka project, which was one of the reasons we incorporated the company.
My background is quite different, a little more straightforward than Bill's.
BC: There wasn't so much haggis involved.
LL: Yeah, there was less haggis. I grew up in Quebec City, and come from a big family. I started to do gymnastics when I was ten, because my mom thought it was a good activity. She probably wanted to get me out of the house, but I did gymnastics for a while and I started to grow up and my coach said, “You're too tall. You can't be a gymnast any more,” and I was kind of relieved. It was really hard training. Every night for four years. They told me I should go into dance and they actually told me: “We think you'd be great in modern dance.” It was 1979-Quebec-City-modern-dance. I said no, no, no. I think I want to do ballet. So I started to train in ballet in Quebec City – night classes. At the end of the year my teacher, and actually my mother, said: “You should take the audition and go to Montreal to train.” I was fifteen so I was rebellious. If it was my mom's idea, it must be a bad idea so I said, “No, no, no I'm not going to go to Montreal. This is terrible. I'm going to stay right here.”
At the end of the year Mme. Chiriaeff, founder of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, came to watch a class. The next day I got a phone call from her assistant saying she likes you and she wants you to come to Montreal. I thought that's good, it's not my mother's idea, it's someone else's idea. That's why I moved. I would never have had this path if it wasn't for her. I moved to Montreal when I was fifteen, and trained at the ballet school and I was lucky, blessed with fantastic teachers. I did that for three years and then I auditioned everywhere to try to get a job. I got refused everywhere.
I was invited to go to Banff for a training program, so I went there and I met David Earle who was choreographing Sacra Conversazione. I realized immediately that I should do modern dance because it was more fun and in ballet they kept telling me, well, I was too fat. That was just a given – I was too healthy-looking and too athletic-looking and not fragile enough, but I was physical. So I decided to move to Toronto and train at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. I did that. Trained for two years at the school and then I was asked to join the company. Actually I was asked to join the company after a year, but I refused. I said, “I have to do more training.”
My path was more straightforward. I just wanted to become a good dancer and I trained hard and I was lucky because I had good teachers; I was talented, and had the facility for it. I danced with the Toronto Dance Theatre for eight years and it was a wonderful time. It was creation central there. The three founders, and Christopher House, would each create at least two works every year. We were touring all over the place, so I really learned the skill of being a dancer and travelling and being young and partying … We'd go out on an eight-week tour. My first tour was to South America – that was great. I loved everything about it.
I started choreographing when I was seventeen. In Montreal I did a few solos but my focus was mostly on dancing. I should also say that when I was in Montreal, James Kudelka was the resident choreographer at Les Grands Ballets and his work, of course, is great and my dream really was to dance with the company so I could be in his work. But I auditioned for Les Grands Ballets and they didn't take me because they said I was too young, go back, train some more – or [they would say] you're too fat. I can't remember which one it was. You're too something … your arms are too short … (laughter).
When I moved to Toronto, it was a really big deal to give up living in Quebec because I'm a Quebecker, and I thought “What am I doing moving to English Canada?” There was a fear that everyone would suddenly not like me at all and it was the opposite. Everyone was really, really nice. So that was the first big discovery – seriously, because you grow up with this idea that they all hate you or there's something really wrong with you – but it's quite the opposite. Then when I moved to Toronto I was involved in Court of Miracles right off, and guess who was coming in to choreograph a section … James Kudelka and I thought, “My god, I come here and he's here!” He did the gypsy section and he picked a lead man, woman and then four extras from the school and he picked me. So within two months I was in a new work by James Kudelka. It was a small thing, but that was a really good indication. That was pretty amazing.
I kept on dancing and then I met Bill and we got together. It coincided with the time when I started to question how long I could spend with the same company. Bill was very creative, and I felt he encouraged me to be creative as well. That sounds corny but it was really meaningful to me. So I started to do more and more of my own choreography, slowly, and then came the time that we decided to leave Toronto Dance Theatre. We wanted to do other things and one of them was that I wanted to dance for Jean-Pierre Perreault back in Montreal, so we ended up actually leaving Toronto, not just because of Mike Harris. That was part of it; we also had a second child on the way, and there was $5/day daycare in Montreal that was really appealing. We figured with a second child we couldn't both work, somebody would have to stop working, but we didn't have enough income. But in Montreal it was possible. We moved to Montreal, started a company, and worked with Jean-Pierre Perreault.
I feel like I am a choreographer, and I am a choreographer, but I have always felt that there's so much that I can give as a dancer and that has mostly been my focus. It's not that choreography is less important to me, it's just that it's a different focus. I feel that my learning is through my dancing. So, we worked with Jean-Pierre Perreault for many years. I liked working with him so much. Plus he kept telling us, “You are so young and it will be nice when you grow up, have more kids, more wrinkles.” He really liked the human in the dancer. But then he passed away. That was a difficult thing because he was a mentor and an older choreographer. He was someone to look up to; I felt I could invest, give a lot of time and energy. And with a mentor like that, when they disappear you feel left with nothing.
At that point I wondered, “Who else is going to make me grow as an artist?” and I thought it was James Kudelka. So we approached him again to work with us, and that relationship has built into the one we have now. We've remounted a lot of his work and we've housed him here – he actually lives here when he's in Toronto – and I have a huge amount of respect for him, to a point sometimes where I actually forget about my own self. He's a great Canadian choreographer and his work should be celebrated more. If nobody's going to do it then maybe we should do it and if I have to be the person propelling that I'm happy to do that. So it's been a wonderful journey with James. For me, dancing his work is learning – because he's really, really hard in rehearsal, he pushes you really hard – and I like that. I feel I'm learning every day with him. Also I feel that as a choreographer I've learned a lot, so I have more substance.
We remounted In Paradisum. It's a piece that James did in 1983 that I was in at the school at Les Grands Ballets. Years later, James did a version for us with fewer dancers. The music is by Michael J. Baker. We've been touring this piece everywhere.
We have about thirty performances of this Kudelka show coming up.
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