So I don't have a lot of information on Lola's process but she was very accommodating to me stepping into the role, and she was very generous to tweak it to suit me. This was very nice because it's intimidating to walk into a room thinking, okay the previous dancer has this body and sensibility, and I have a different body and sensibility; how am I supposed to dance this not like her, but like her? It's always hard to be in a remount. It's never the same, I find, as being in a creation.
It was a hard piece to get into – to understand how to perform it physically and emotionally because Lola creates her own worlds. There are such subtleties in how to perform the work. The simplest gestures, how to not throw them away – they have to be invested in all the time, but not too much so that you're overdoing it. Anyway, I think I'm figuring it out. I'm trying, but I've only performed the piece once, so tomorrow night's my second chance (laughter) and then my third chance on Saturday. So I feel that I'm scrambling a bit – not so much to remember, but I'm still learning it in a way. Lola's been very generous with me.
The dancers have been really generous too. It's been interesting asking them about the process. They have gone down to the beach and created some of the movement there. They went down and watched the water, watched the birds. The piece really is a comment on nature. I personally feel that it's from an urban point of view, and there are some urban moments in it for sure. My solo is one of those urban moments, which was a little weird too, because a lot of the piece is about nature and then suddenly I'm the urbanite. But in some of the movements there is the leaf or the bird in the wind; in the piece we talk about the names of things too.
Q: Vancouver, if anybody's been there, is a beautiful natural environment – but it's the city too. I found your comment interesting, because it's almost that Provincial Essays was perhaps about Vancouver and her experience living there, being in a city but surrounded by the beauty of nature.
AD: In Vancouver you can be right downtown, and within a ten-minute walk of Robson and Denman be in the middle of a park and not hear the noise of the city. You see the mountains everywhere all the time and you smell the salt air. I definitely feel the piece is about Vancouver.
CF: It feels like a very B.C., a Vancouver, piece. Sometimes it gets a rather cool reception when it is removed from its environment because people who aren't from B.C. are looking at it asking, “What?” (laughter). It's curious. I'm curious about that aspect of it.
BS: I think in every piece by Lola there is social commentary – about humans and nature and how nature can affect humans and how humans affect nature. For example, there was another piece, Volio, using trees as props. Lola has a beautiful garden at her house. We talked about this, Lola and I: we can control a garden for a certain amount of time, but if you let it go, nature will take over. There's ongoing social commentary that humans can control nature, but only to a certain point. In Volio the movement of the trees was really cool. They were fake trees, but they looked real. We paid a lot of money for them (laughter). We had these cedar trees and they were in a root ball and they were on wheels. The dancers would place them in a corner and they'd look like a little car and they'd move them around and make a line-up, and then the dancers would swing the trees around in a circle and suddenly they all came together. It was magical, like in a little park. And that was really an interesting comment because it was almost like nature was out of control and then it came together.
Vancouver is a metropolis, and at the same time nature is very present. There are also problems in Vancouver, major problems, and I think Lola talks about that in her piece in some ways. But she doesn't give you an answer. You have to think about an answer. She gives you suggestions. I remember in Montreal I was at a post-performance chat with Lola because I speak French. These questions came up, “What does that mean?” and Lola would sit there and say, “Well, what does that mean to you?” (laughter) Instead of giving an answer, she wants you to think about what she's trying to say. It might mean something to you in particular, but to another person it might mean something entirely different. That's the beauty of a canvas.
AD: I think she really values that. I think that's what gave her that ability to see dancers for their distinctive traits, and want to pull them forward and bring them into the group, so she could play with that dichotomy. “Look there's this huge city and everybody looks like they're going down the street in the same direction, but what is this person's story, what's this other person's story?” There's imbalance, and yet there's balance. I think she has been fascinated by that.
BS: I'm going to talk a little about history. There was an experimental company, EDAM, Experimental Dance and Music, in Vancouver many years ago. It was a group of choreographers who worked together and then it sort of exploded, let's say, and most of these people left. Peter Bingham was the one remaining, so he had his own company. Kokoro is another company that was started by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi; Jennifer Mascall started Mascall Dance; and then there was Lola – and that's how Lola started. I like Lola's story because when you see Lola, her story seems so unlike her! She was a punk rocker in a band singing in Germany; she's always discreet about these stories but she's always so much fun when she talks about them. She sang in this group and learned German and it's just so interesting how various experiences in your life and various parts of you come into play when you choreograph.
Lola can be so funny. But at her performances, she's always so proper. I really like her for that; she can be amazingly generous about some experiences, and others she'll reveal only when she really wants to. She's a very interesting person to know, especially when she talks about her working process. When you have a true connection with someone, it really brings you to a different level as a human being. You realize that this is a great bond, we're more energized because we have this, we can offer this, we can share. And this is what you get with Lola. A really generous human being, sharing. It's more than just dancing; it's more than just choreographing – it's a very deep level of exchange.
CF: A word that is often used to describe Lola's work, or potentially her personality as well, is “quirky”. What has always kind of given me a giggle is that she says, “Quirky. I hate that word.” So it's another giggle that the one word that so satisfyingly can sum up somebody for you is a word that they personally so strongly dislike.
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