unmoored

May 20 — 21, 2022
Field:

Performance

Location:

EDAM studio

Time:

8:00 p.m.

Description:

While touring Western Canada with unmoored (2018), dance artist Peggy Baker spent a few days in residence at Western Front where she taught at EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music) and presented two performances of the work. 

Of unmoored, Peggy writes:
“In 2003, I turned to the extraordinary dance artist Sarah Chase to make a work for me. Sarah creates in a genre she describes as dancestories, and preliminary to working together she set me the task of writing two stories for every year of my life. When the time came to go into the studio together, I told Sarah that there was one aspect of my life that I hadn’t written about, and could not share in the public sphere. Sarah agreed to my caveat, and we went on to create a piece titled The Disappearance of Right and Left (2004). In March of 2017, I sat down at a desk, in a small room, in a huge house in Bogliasco, Italy to remember and write the stories I had not been ready to share. Over the next months, Sarah and I worked together to distill my writing as a dancestory titled unmoored. The episodes I recount in unmoored describe events during the twenty-year arc of my marriage to the musician, composer, and disability rights activist, Ahmed Hassan.”

unmoored was choreographed and directed by Sarah Chase, with sound design by Debashis Sinha and lighting design by Marc Parent. 

Each performance was followed by a post show talkback.

unmoored was created with the support of a fellowship with the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy; and through subsequent residencies at Tiamat House, Hornby Island (through the generosity of Judith Lawrence); and Ottawa Dance Directive, artistic director Yvonne Coutts and associate director Lana Morton. 

Presented in partnership with EDAM, with the support of the Government of Canada.

Western Front is a non-profit
artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.