Choreographer asks audiences to Forget-Me-Not

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This article was published 21/11/2024 (606 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last year, choreographer Aria Evans tried a new move.

After building her career in Toronto, the Vancouver Island-raised artist decided to split, leaving to join the University of Winnipeg’s faculty of theatre and film as an assistant professor.

“I hadn’t uprooted my life like that since leaving Victoria for university. It felt vulnerable, but I was very much embraced by the artistic community. The relationships that are now filling my months are abundant, but it was lonely for a long time,” says Evans.

Evans was at a midpoint between seasons of her life, an idea explored in the solo piece Dead Ends and the duet Forget-Me-Not, both of which will be shared this weekend (today to Saturday) as part of the Art Holm performance series in Room 201 at The Forks.

Evans conceived of Dead Ends first and with local dancers Zorya Arrow and Emma Beech developed Forget-Me-Not, a piece that explores a relationship as it crumples.

That relationship could be between the self and others or between different versions of the self, Evans says.

“When I created Dead Ends, it was a very intense time in my life. In 2020, I grew a grapefruit-sized tumour I needed to get removed.”

A friend told Evans they had a vision of her giving away flowers to the point where they were dried up and depleted.

“I was grappling with how to regrow those flowers for me, and as I was healing, I was working on the piece. There was a mirroring of my body healing and my emotional healing,” she says.

The resulting piece finds Evans in a twisted apartment surrounded by desiccation. It’s a visual indication that the character Evans played couldn’t force preservation through sheer will, an acceptance that time heals some — but not all — wounds.

For Forget-Me-Not, Evans, Beech and Arrow worked together to imagine a prologue where the flowers are still alive, but distance is beginning to reveal itself along a tilted corridor.

“The name for the duet is a cheeky remark, of both the flower and the idea of grasping and trying to hold onto something,” says Evans, who sits on the board of the Young Lungs Dance Exchange and runs a collective called Political Movement.

A recurring series, Art Holm will also feature performances by deaf multidisciplinary artist Natasha (Courage) Bacchus and Filipino Canadian singer-songwriter Louie Sanchez, who will be accompanied by violinist Ana Gold, guitarist Gabriela Ocejo and bassist Lindsay Woolgar.

Alex Elliott, the director of Art Holm, says the three participants weren’t given any guidelines for their performances, only space to experiment and share.

To select the participants, Art Holm and its co-presenting organization U ’N I Together Productions, calls on curators from underrepresented communities to suggest performers within music, theatre and movement disciplines.

Evans, Bacchus and Sanchez will perform Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with a Sunday matinée at 2:30 p.m. All three performances will include ASL interpretation and audio description will be offered on Sunday by Vocal Image Ensemble Winnipeg. Tickets are available for a donation at artholm.ca.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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