The eighth edition of Fall for Dance North (FFDN) is happening now until October 8th. FFDN is Toronto’s premier international dance festival. The lineup includes 15+ world premieres from movement artists, musicians, and filmmakers, presented at six venues across Toronto, in partnership with more than 13 arts organizations. This year the festival will expand its programming to present a series of full-length and double bill presentations, both indoors and outdoors, while offering digital engagements to enhance the experience of the organization’s fast-growing local and global audiences.
Artists in Residence Natasha Powell and Kimberley Cooper, with their respective companies Holla Jazz (Toronto) and Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (Calgary) will present a jazz-themed double bill presentation, Margarita & Family of Jazz on Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 at the Theatre at the Creative School. The presentation celebrates the history and future of vernacular jazz and its sister dances. Margarita features an all-female cast and is inspired by the lives of chorus girls from the early 1900s.
Speaking about why the history of jazz dance and music is important Natasha Powell says that in her opinion for decades what jazz dance means, its aesthetics, and its presentation has often been Eurocentric and white presentations of a jazz dance. The historical roots in African American culture and specifically African aesthetic are rarely acknowledged. Her interest, particularly through her company is reminding people about jazz dance and its aesthetics and roots and what other families of dance styles that have evolved out of that like hip hop dance, and other street dances or social dances that are done in African American communities. Jazz is a part of that fabric as well. As a young dancer, she was told that it was important to have ballet technique, and a more Eurocentric aesthetic. She never questioned why during jazz dance classes they danced to pop music and never jazz music. Later it became a curiosity, and she would wonder why there was no connection to jazz music in a jazz dance class. Around 2009 she met her mentor Moncell Durden, who is based in The United States. He was creating a documentary that looks at the lineage of African Americans social dances, including jazz dance. She was fascinated and excited because she also does other street dance forms like hip hop and house dance. When Durden showed black and white clips of people doing jazz dance, it looked more familiar to her and nothing like what she had been taught most of her entire dance career. It was important to her to share that information with the community more broadly through performance.
Prior to the residency program FFDN artistic director Ilter Ibrahimof approached Powell about creating a jazz work for a future festival. Knowing that the festival creates or presents works on larger proscenium theatrical stages she had questions for herself, as her interest is in more intimate and smaller scale venues. The first thing that came to her mind for this future show was showgirls and variety performance. Those performance styles in the 1920s and 1930s often had 20-40 dancers on stage. Powell says she can’t afford that, and she doesn’t necessarily want to do that, but Margarita has been an exploration of how to use these larger venues while still creating intimate experiences. Margarita reimagines what that tradition of the 1920s could look like now, 100 years later. In her research she unsurprisingly found that a lot of the choreography that was placed on women was done by men. A lot of the presentation style and gaze is from a male perspective. In the process of creating this work, she asked herself about what she wanted to hold on to and what she wanted to let go of. What parts of the tradition in chorus work was she interested in exploring more and what parts did she want to reject?
Rehearsal. Dancers L - R, Ashley “Colours” Perez, Caroline “Lady C” Fraser, Chinese Mitchell, Tereka Tyler-Davis, Madelyn Miyashita. Natasha Powell in foreground. Photo Credit: Kendra Epik
She hopes that the performance evokes an emotion or a feeling for audiences, whatever that feeling is for them, even if they hate it. Everyone's experience will be different. While there are no immediate plans for a tour or other presentations for this work after FFDN, Powell does imagine there would be a continued life for the project in the future and she would love to share with other cities and countries.
Get your tickets for Margarita & Family of Jazz here.
Interview by Glodeane Brown
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