PART TWO: THREE ESSAYS Defining Moments and Inspiring Artists
By Susan Elliott
It was the summer of 1987 and I had just graduated from high school. I was already enrolled at Simon Fraser University, intending to study theatre – but then I took my first modern dance class, from Gisa Cole. I had taken Highland dance and ballet as a child, but it was only now that I found “home,” and that fall I entered the pre-professional training program at Main Dance Place. Under Gisa’s direction, I was exposed to the iconic modern techniques of Cunningham, Limón and Graham, as well as to other styles such as ballet and jazz. Barbara Bourget (coincidentally my cousin) was teaching at Main Dance at that time, and when I finished the program in 1989, she and Jay Hirabayashi asked me to join their butoh-based company, Kokoro. This would mark my first season as a professional company dancer. That summer, we premiered Zero to the Power at the Firehall Arts Centre. It was strenuous and demanding, but then again, what Kokoro piece isn’t? The full-length work began with a tableau of dancers standing motionless for over 20 minutes, like a chorus line frozen on the spot, while the audience entered the theatre. For myself, an eager and slightly hyperactive 19-year-old, this proved to be only the first of many physical challenges I would encounter in my career. Standing absolutely still at the top of a piece while adrenalin and nerves course through your body is one of the most difficult tasks a young dancer can attempt. The piece escalated into a full-throttle onslaught of movement and sweat, culminating in the final section that had us emerging from a pit of mud. I can still hear my Grandmother, who was in the audience, exclaiming for all to hear, “Is that Susie?” while we slipped and slid our way around the stage. In 1990, I joined EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music), and stayed there for several seasons. This was Peter Bingham’s first company of dancers as EDAM’s sole artistic director. In the group were established dancers Katharine Labelle and Sylvain Brochu, as well as newbies, including myself, Elizabeth Burr, Scott Drysdale, Pipo Damiano, and also former EDAM dancers Jaci Metivier and Liam (Mark) Lavelle. Each of them became like family to me, a feature of dancing life that has repeated over and over again and is one of the aspects I love most about my career. One of the first pieces Peter created for the whole company was Plunge, set to the music by Mahler used in the Visconti film Death in Venice. Somehow Peter was able to utilize the diversity of skills his dancers possessed to create harmony, and every time I hear that gorgeous piece of music I am transported back to the world of Plunge. Peter had been my contact improvisation teacher at Main Dance and at first I was both intimidated and inspired by this form of movement. I was smitten by the risky and physically explosive dancing but shy about the more quiet, intimate moments. The practice of contact improvisation engages the dancer fully and on many levels, balancing extreme physicality with minute cellular responses within the body. It requires utter patience and listening to your impulses as well as to your partner’s desire to move (or not). This listening, or tuning in, provides the skills needed to fly safely to virtuosic heights and to be able to experience the joy of jumping through the air with wild abandon and being caught effortlessly by another person. I know that my training in contact has kept my body healthy, flexible and strong for all the other styles of dance I execute. It was during my years at EDAM, when I practiced CI daily, that I found myself learning to trust and recover with ease in my life outside of the studio as well. As the American choreographer Trisha Brown once said, “The body solves problems before the mind knows you had one.” It is that pure instinctual behaviour that allows me to feel most human when dancing.
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