Vanessa Goodman & Caroline Shaw

Cemeteries are gardens. Something grows. Someone dies. “Everything returns to the earth,” we are told at one point in this polyphonic performance GRAVEYARDS AND GARDENS. Canadian dancer and choreographer Vanessa Goodman created it together with New York musician and composer Caroline Shaw. The premiere was in January 2021 (online due to the pandemic). Vanessa Goodman dances a solo in a space that is defined by a circle of antique lamps, like heirlooms, alongside green plants in earthen pots and technical equipment, old and new. Cables. Connectedness. The sounds have a life of their own. Are they placeless? Sea, song, organ, piano, violin, clacking and snapping, speech. They hint at their sources, where they were recorded, and they switch something on in the brains of the audience. Bach, Chopin. Return. Some sounds are also made on stage, feeding the floating web of traces in the air. Add the dance that listens to the grass growing, then becomes more violent, as if nudged by gusts, like echoes or something mechanically toggled, click, click. This is how remembering works.

Pulitzer Prize winner CAROLINE SHAW works for films, music ensembles, dance companies, opera houses and releases her own CDs.

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Co-creation: Vanessa Goodman & Caroline Shaw

Choreography: Vanessa Goodman

Composition: Caroline Shaw

Audio designer: Eric Chad & Kate De Lorme

Lighting design: James Proudfoot

Lighting director: Eric Chad

graveyardsandgardens.com

FOKUS KANADA is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada (Embassy of Canada).