Dance artists reflect on creative residencies that culminate in Re-Centering/Margins performance
Emerging choreographers Sidney Chuckas, Mohammed Rashead, and Ana Sosa draw on everything from sci fi to anime to the play between light and dark in Dance West Network showcase
Clockwise from top, Anna Sosa (photo by Daniel J. Collins), Sidney Chuckas (photo by Elizabeth Steele), and Mohammed Rashead (photo by Vitantonio Spinelli).
Dance West Network presents Re-Centering/Margins, free, at KW Production Studios on April 29 at 8 pm and 30 at 2 pm
ASK ANY OF THE three diverse dance artists from Dance West Network’s Re-Centering/Margins creative residency what they most valued in the program, and they point first to that most precious commodity: time.
Since last fall, Sidney Chuckas, Mohammed Rashead, and Ana Sosa—whose backgrounds span ballet, contemporary, hip-hop, and beyond—have been conjuring new work as part of the fourth-annual program aimed at nurturing new BIPOC voices in dance.
“One hundred hours of space: I don’t think I’ve ever worked on anything for 100 hours,” Sosa tells Stir.
That has included an early in-progress performance in November, with the culmination of their projects returning to the stage on April 29.
“Eight months offer a chance to sit with the work in a different way,” Chuckas says in a separate call. “I’ve been able to evolve as an artist with the piece.
“I’ve been able to explore a lot of areas of dance I wanted to,” the Ballet BC dancer adds. “They gave us carte blanche—that’s rare these days.”
There are several other unique aspects to Re-Centering/Margins, too. Among them, each of the emerging choreographic talents (selected in a competitive process) was given the chance to work with a mentor: Chuckas chose Company 605’s Josh Martin and Lisa Gelley; Sosa was paired with dumb Instrument Dance’s Ziyian Kwan; and Mohammed Rashead worked with Becky Izad.
“It’s been super helpful to have an outside eye and have that support,” Sosa says.
In further cross-pollination, each was matched with an emerging writer of colour to craft essays and other pieces responding to the dance: Misha Maseka with Chuckas, Aryo Khakpour with Rashead, and Brenda "Bee" Kent Colina with Sosa.
The residents have also had the chance to take professional-development workshops in everything from costumes to lighting design.
The three resulting works on the program express new sides to each artist.
Trained in jazz, contemporary, and hip-hop, Rashead draws inspiration from his queer identity and his experiences as a first-generation immigrant from Syria. Over the time of the residency, his solo has evolved from a piece about intense emotional struggle to one that plays between dark and light, he says.
“After dancing the piece in November, I felt like that was a cathartic way of letting that feeling go—so it’s really shifted. That’s what dance has done for me: it allows me to take emotion and express it and then I’m more at peace with it,” Rashead says, adding he hopes the work will have the same calming effect on audience members who have gone through similar challenges.
Rashead adds there’s also a play between a softness and femininity to the movement, and the hard-hitting influence of hip-hop. “There’s a balance of controlled and flailing,” he adds.
With the new work Manzanar, Chuckas builds a science-fiction universe (and draws inspiration from a favourite book) to look at the intersection of the artist’s racial, sexual, and political identities.
“I’ve been exploring and creating this character as it applies to my own identity,” Chuckas says of the role of Manzanar, speaking to Stir on a break from rehearsing Ballet BC’s WAVE/S program. “There’s a lot of perception of me as a Black man, as someone who identifies as genderqueer, as a member of the LGBTQ community. For me there's a sort of satirical take on that too: Manzanar has been programmed for thousands of years how to be in society, with prescribed roles of the Black male.”
Chuckas, who performs the solo, says the choreography plays with posthuman, android movement. In the piece, the dancer wears eerie bandages wrapped around their face.
“It’s the idea of hiding,” Chuckas hints. “It’s on the verge of horror film as well….But it’s also about holding something in—the idea that you have to cover something so it can heal properly. And trying to contain this identity as this character tries to heal themself.”
Chuckas, who has studied architecture and worked in dance film projects, also integrates projections into the multimedia piece. “It’s a way of projecting the identity of the character into a landscape, to reinforce this idea of a programmed character stuck in this loop,” the dance artist explains.
Sosa is the only one of the trio who has created a group work; called Post-truth, it conjures a post-apocalyptic world where political conflict, viruses, and disease have set in after environmental disaster.
The Mexican-born artist, who is part of the new collective Okam’s Racer, says she drew part of her inspiration from the zombie film 28 Days Later—and the way the COVID era mirrored its themes.
“When the pandemic hit it was such a similar feeling of panic and disease,” explains Sosa. “And there was the greed: the tendency of humans to start to take advantage of any power they’ve allotted…Greed as something that affects us that is coming from outside us.”
Sosa is also working with a novel approach to her process, creating the choreography in close collaboration with the dancers. “As a choreographer, if you’re not listening to the dancers, I feel like you’re missing out on the most valuable resources you have,” explains the artist. “It’s been really interesting to just have the power dynamic be equal.”
The trio of pieces will offer a preview of what’s to come from the artists over the coming years. And along the way, they’ve made some new friends as well.
“We’ve gotten to know each other well,” Sosa says of her fellow residents. “It feels like you're very supported. I’ve had other residencies where you go and do your own thing. Here it never feels like you’re alone.”
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