See/Hear Performance Series
Noon, March 5, March 26, April 16 and May 14, Jean Pigott Place, Ottawa City Hall
Free
Spring is just around the corner, and with the flowers and sunshine comes an invigorating display of art in an unexpected location.
In their red coveralls, the dancers of the Ottawa Dance Directive will capture the energizing spirit of the season during a series of free, multi-disciplinary performances that take place at Ottawa City Hall, with the first one starting at noon on Thursday, March 5.
Each of the four performances in the See/Hear series features movement, music and visual projections by local artists exploring the notion of spring.
“Our departure point was the broad stroke of what the idea of spring means today,” said Yvonne Coutts, the ODD co-founder and artistic director who choreographed the site-specific piece for eight dancers.
“There are some really beautiful things about spring but also some really concerning things in terms of climate change and the warming of the ground and the Earth in general. All of the artists are trying to find intersections within our own medium to bring that theme together.”
Egyptian-Canadian artist Pansee Atta, a doctoral candidate in Cultural Mediations at Carleton University, is creating the visuals, to be projected on the wall next to the grand piano in Jean Pigott Place at city hall. The music is supplied by ambient experimental artist Wellington Sanipe on March 5 and April 16, and by the experimental music duo Pama (Ellen Waterman and Michael Waterman) on March 26 and May 14.
The choreography for all four shows will make use of the staircase and upper walkways of the city hall lobby, and include improvisational elements.
“For me, site specific work is something I’m drawn to so it’s been nice to take a different look at city hall, and the different shapes and realms that could be explored,” said Coutts.
“We have very specific tasks and very specific places to be in the space but within that, there is some flexibility in how it unfolds, and we are definitely listening to the music so we can shift according to some of those nuances.”
The idea for the series grew out of a pilot program called Listen/Hear that was presented at city hall last summer, supported by funding from the city, as a response to one of the recommendations of the municipal music strategy to make city spaces available for artistic programming.
Debaser’s Rachel Weldon, who is a producing partner (along with the city, ODD and SAW Video), compared it to something you might see during an event like Nuit Blanche, except that it takes place at lunch time.
“It’s meant to transform a very public and bureaucratic space into a performance space,” she said. “That’s what’s exciting for me: Doing a weird experimental collaboration at city hall in the middle of the day.”
