Dance artist Shion Skye Carter reconnects with calligraphy and her Japanese culture in Residuals (住み・墨)
Translucent paper, brushlike movement, and memories of her grandparents’ traditional house drive the choreographer-performer’s new work
Shion Skye Carter in Residuals (住み・墨). Photo by Lula-Belle Jedynak
Shion Skye Carter in Residuals (住み・墨). Photo by Lula-Belle Jedynak
Residuals (住み・墨) is at the Scotiabank Dance Centre November 4 and 5
WHEN DANCE FANS come to see Shion Skye Carter’s live world premiere of Residuals (住み・墨) this weekend, they will witness the artist performing live on-stage—but in many ways, she will be somewhere else.
The piece, an ode to calligraphy, to the Japanese half of her heritage, and to her personal history, moves amid an abstract set design: sheets of paper, a translucent wood-framed box, and occasional square grids of light.
But in Carter’s mind, she is moving through the rooms and yard of her grandparents’ traditional house in rural Japan.
“I moved around a lot with my family,” the artist begins in a phone call with Stir before the piece’s debut. “This was the same home my mom grew up in. And the blueprint of their house has really been ingrained on my mind.
“From outside there was this very traditional ceramic tile roof, and then, inside, these creaky wood floors and sliding screen doors,” she recalls. “There were tatami bamboo mats—everyone sits on the floor to eat dinner—and futons you’d roll out every night.”
Carter’s dance movement is also inspired by some of the gestures she connects to people moving through that domestic space: the way her grandfather would sit in his bonsai garden, the way her grandmother would squat on the tatami, or the way a young Carter had to scoop up rice she once spilled in the kitchen, helping her mother.
“I feel like I’m suddenly transported back to that house and back to my child self and how vast the house felt when I was five years old,” she says.
Those are just some of the images and movements that drive the profound piece that’s been years in development. Carter, who moved here at six from Tajimi, Japan, started developing Residuals in 2019, after graduating from Simon Fraser University’s School for Contemporary Arts. She traces the show’s roots back to her search for her own, distinct artistic voice—one that took her back to her Japanese heritage.
Grappling with feelings of cultural displacement, she was drawn back to Japanese calligraphy—an art form she had fond memories of studying at Burnaby’s Gladstone Japanese Language School (housed in the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre) as a child. She reached out to her former teacher in the centuries-old, meditative art form. Now in her 80s, Yoko Murakami would become her mentor in the movement of the calligraphic brush—even tutoring Carter online during the pandemic.
“She’s kind of a maternal figure,” Carter says. “At Japanese School, you enter that space and you only speak the language—you really are immersed. So it was fascinating to find this old traditional art form as a way to re-centre myself in my contemporary practice.”
Like the memories of her grandparents’ house, calligraphy practice would affect Carter’s choreographic language in abstract or impressionistic ways. The artist says she was affected by everything from the ritualistic process of setting up the materials to the paper’s weight or the feel of the ink well in her hands. The repetition of learning calligraphy, repeating the kanji (characters) over and over, also influenced the dance.
“Then if I became the brush itself, what would it be like to write in the air with my body? Or on the floor?” she explains. “When I envisioned my body becoming the ink, it would take on a more liquid texture. Or what if I am the wrinkly paper?”
Developing Residuals even more after Carter won the 2022 Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award, she brought new sonic and visual layers to the production design. Translucent papers now fill and float around the space, creating their own whispering sounds as they brush against her body or the floor. “The paper is like a performer,” she observes.
Creating the piece has brought Carter back to a cultural heritage she had felt separated from. She’s also enjoyed working with the Powell Street Festival, who copresent this show and have offered a new layer of cultural reconnection for the dance artist. Building even wider bonds, Carter is forming artistic relationships with a wider Asian diaspora through dance: dumb Instrument dance’s Ziyian Kwan is a creative consultant on Residuals, and has choreographed a work with performer Juolin Lee on the same program. “Yeah, we’re just two young Asian dancers trying to show their work with the world,” Carter shrugs.
As she shows more and more of her unique choreographic voice with the world, expect Carter to find more inspiration in calligraphy—a practice in which she finds endless creative possibility, and a way to reconnect with her past.
“I felt so distanced from growing up–this felt a bit like a way to communicate with my family that have passed away,” she reflects. “It’s been a way to have more conversations with my Japanese side of my family."
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