Workshop: "Becoming and moving" with Alexandra Gelis, Victoria Mata and Maxyne Baker, Saturday, July 29, 1 to 4 p.m., Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
"Becoming and moving" is a plant-based movement improvisation in response to the “Migrant Superpositions: convertirse en” installation by Alexandra Gelis. The work is a collaboration between dancer and choreographer Victoria Mata, artist/designer Maxyne Baker, and Gelis. It explores themes of migration, discrimination, transformation, and the control of both humans and plants, and raises questions about human control over life in the vegetal and ecological spheres.
The movement improvisation incorporates components of the installation, such as mechanical sounds mixed with a soundscape that highlights two spaces: recordings of nature portraying biodiversity and sounds of highways. The wearable piece created by Baker is made with fibres from the Phragmites plant (considered invasive in Ontario) mixed with Cattail plant fibres (considered local). This inter-relation of movement, plants, and people becomes a costume that challenges ideas of the local and the foreign.
"Becoming and moving" relates to plants as the position of enunciation, a meeting place in which questions and answers can be formulated through movement. It conveys the concept that plants are not just passive objects but rather active participants in the creative process and that their perspectives and movements can inform and shape the overall work.
Victoria Mata Venezuelan-Canadian settler in T’Koronto. Poly-lingual choreographer, dance artist and activist with a background in expressive arts therapy
Maxyne Baker is a Canadian Cinematic Story Teller who expresses herself in fibre, cloth and haberdashery.
*Please note the plant-based movement will include partial nudity.*
Tickets are limited. Register here: https://bit.ly/3rg5g9b
