Joyce: I am honoured and humbled to be one of three artists with Rianne Svelnis and Marisa Gold, participating in Symbiotic Forms, Dumb Instrument Dance’s sector innovation project at Morrow. 

Symbiotic Forms is an opportunity for me to deepen my research and practice as a mid-career performing arts curator. Over the next several months I will engage in a cycle of conversation and exchange with Justin Calvadores, Jeanette Kotowich, Natalie Tin Yin Gan, and June Fukumura. In support of each artist’s creative practice, I will facilitate feedback discussions using the Critical Response Process (CRP), as well as sharing its practice  values and adaptations.

Over the past 2 years I have been deeply engaged with CRP as a certified facilitator and advanced practitioner. I consider CRP an extension of my curatorial practice, valuing the relational over the transactional and focusing on care for the work and artists who make it. As a methodology, CRP is the foundation of my current practice-based research, to establish new approaches and expertise within curatorial practice in performance, its wider application, and in cultivating an independent practice outside of established institutions.

Natalie: With Joyce as an active witness, I am keen to focus on what one of my teacher’s (Diane Roberts) refers to as ancestral dramaturgy, and also want to discover what ways the creative writing revision process can bolster the crafting of new choreographic ideas. 

Natalie Tin Yin Gan (顏婷妍) is an independent choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and writer working on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Her practice squats at the intersections of food, feminisms, race, voice, and body. She has presented, performed, and spoken in Seattle, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and across Canada. Natalie is the Co-Artistic Director of company Hong Kong Exile that explores the historical and contemporary politic of the Chinese diaspora. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio and completing her teacher certification in Fitzmaurice Voicework®. Natalie is a late sleeper, a late riser, a late bloomer, a latecomer, and a late-night snacker. She publishes under a pseudonym and is currently writing for indie video game company Sunset Visitor Studios.

June: Alongside creative collaborator, Shizuka Kai and CRP mentor, Joyce Rosario I will be researching and experimenting with ‘owarai’ (お笑い). Owarai is a Japanese comedic sensibility with a unique history, specific forms, and timing that does not exist in Western comedy. Owarai has been a huge influence in my life and my clown work and I am inspired to understand how I can integrate non-Western comedic sensibilities in a Western context. By combining Owarai with Pochinko clowning I aim to further develop my hybrid, inter-cultural comedic sensibility unique to my Japanese-Canadian heritage. 

June Fukumura is a Japanese-Canadian theatre maker based in Vancouver. By day she is a polite, well-mannered theatre artist and by night she is her dark humoured, hyper kawaii, raunchy clown alter-ego, Sumiko. Sumiko dices, slices, and blends up Japanese stereotypes and serves up a zany, East-meets-West comedy experience. Winner of the 2019 Vancouver Fringe Festival’s Public Market Pick of the Fringe. 

Jeannette: ” A Landing Place. I’m honoured by the invitation to participate in Symbiotic Forms with Dumb Instrument Dance. Morrow will be a hosting site for my current exploratory research and conceptual curiosities, where I will value creative process over ‘product’. I will be joined by cultural connector Joyce Rosario and invited guest artist Raïna Von Waldenberg who will hold space for deeper questions regarding my creative process. 

Stepping forward into the ever unfolding moment of now. I return to a solo research practice called 🌾 Kisiskâciwan 🌾 after a period of insightful creative distance. I approach this work with anew and acknowledge that I too am new. I call on all of my selves (past/present/future) – to guide me forward/backward into this work. To reveal the most unapologetically authentic expression this work is archiving. All the usual heavy hitters are called to be present 💫 Ancestor | Spirit | Land | Animal | Cosmos | Self 💫

Justin: My heart is full after wrapping up my Symbiotic Forms process with Joyce Rosario. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to continue developing a practice that centre’s around my identity as a queer Flilipinx contemporary dance artist. I was joined at Morrow by queer Filipinx artists, Juan Alcuitas-Imperial and Francis Natoc. I was met with such joy with these two as they brought their creative thoughts, ideas and curiosity in to the space. Juan Imperial is a contemporary Vogue dancer who has trained in street dance styles for the majority of their life. Francis Natoc is a versatile pop musician who works with various mediums and produces their own music. 

One of my approaches to centring queerness in my practice is to be surrounded by artists who’s work distinctly reflects the intersections of their identity as QTPOC artists. This process was an opportunity for me to be in community with emerging Filipinx artists who similarly navigate working in contemporary art spaces.

It is healing for me to be in spaces where I’m able to see myself in my colleagues. To hold one another in our queerness and differences. Spaces like this are often unjustifiably rare within the contemporary dance community. Identifying as queer, gender fluid or being POC can be ostracizing. We took a lot of time for discussion. There was a lot of critical thinking toward undoing forms of practice and ideas that no longer serve our artistry as queer creators.

In May and June, Marisa and film maker Darryl Ahye engage in conversations through movement and lens in a series of film experiments using scores, props, writing exercises and spoken word poetry. The films will explore vulnerable expression as healing, physical sovereignty, and the power of perspective/being seen. At the end of their exchange, they will hold an informal showing of their research and a talk back inviting further discussion on the topics/audience experience. 

From Aug 29th- Sept 4th, Marisa facilitates a sharing between a group of multidisciplinary artists and activists called Her Tribal Roots. The goal is to bring together and activate these powerful voices from across communities, offering them sacred space for connection, harmonization and deep healing. Here is a list of some the inspiring multidisciplinary artists that she will be bringing together to share stories, knowledge and experience:
Alyssa Amarshi, Ariane Custodio, Tawahum Beige, Kt Rose, Franz Seachel, John David Muco, Janelle Reid, Felicia Simone.

Movement Classes for Support Workers are just that: classes for those of us doing frontline support which incorporate movement, play, and strategies. We invited self-identified support workers, with the understanding that support work takes many forms, and is not always professionalized. 

We have been developing this workshop since 2017 and both are or have been front-line workers in different capacities.  We recognize that workers increasingly experience “burnout”: a reasonable nervous system response to unsustainable systemic conditions. We recognize that burnout is not an individual failure to cope with crisis but rather a symptom of larger systemic dysfunction.  

These classes invited participants to access strategies for embodied rebound and repair, play, and connection through movement.  Our belief is that we each have a multitude of responses available to us in any given moment: and that movement + dance lead with awareness can help us access and practice this responsive agility.  

Our hope for these classes is an invitation of allowance of what our whole systems need, creation of space for non-linear thinking + play. We hope for these classes to build solidarity amongst workers, to build a practice of being together even when in separate places, to sew fibres of strengthening bonds between us.