Deep End Week: Full Immersion
This past July, Nova Dance hosted Deep End Week at the Theatre Centre, with Keynote Speakers Vivine Scarlett and Denise Bolduc. Dance artist, Shivani Joshi reflects on her experience.
Shivani’s experience
Deep End Week at Nova Dance brought together a small group of artists to explore the body, the breath, and movement in an intimate setting. Together, we all slow down and settled into a deeper state of being.
In the mornings, Neena guides us through muscle activation techniques to ease us into our bodies and develop a ritual of being together and caring for each other. We give each other massages and help one another stretch out the pain and tension that we hold onto in our upper body. We learn to welcome comfort, slowly brushing out knots and leaning into the safety of physical touch in the space.
“The week was full of reminders: yes, we are meant to expand and contract, no, we don’t have to rush through everything, and yes, we are meant to be together. ”
During Sonia’s vocal exercises we chant together. As one voice, we explore our musicality and attend to our vocal chords as a part of our movement practice. Connecting with our breath, we remind ourselves that each inhale keeps us alive and with each exhale we harmonize together.
In combination with our rhythm practice, we practice projecting our chants into space. We try going up in scale, chanting at one note, and different variations while moving in space. One day, we end up on the patio, singing to the streets. I’m sure those walking by enjoyed being serenaded. Throughout the week, we sing to each other, with our eyes closed.
When we move together in the afternoons, it is with our own voices. Each group takes turns singing for each other. We create movement with the live sound, allowing it to change, to shift, to melt into something else entirely. We explore each other’s minds through the steps we offer to our group and then we unravel the movements together.
Nova shares her old performances with us at movie night. It answers so many questions, and we get to talk about the history of the pieces we have learned. Through this exchange, the piece becomes our own in some ways, because we witnessed what it was and have seen what it has now become. Nova guides our movements in the coming practices. The texture of the dance evolves through our time travel to the past; I feel the difference from then and now. I can understand the intention of pulling apart the form when I see Nova’s journey through her own movement practice.
On Friday, our special guests Vivine Scarlett and Denise Bolduc teach us what it means to let go of things that don’t serve us. They share their stories and give us hope to continue to learn and grow through this process. They tell us to focus on how the art makes us feel.
This weeklong offering of movement exploration gives us a chance to disconnect from the demands of producing and immerse ourselves into intimacy and care to shape our movement practices. The week was full of reminders: yes, we are meant to expand and contract, no, we don’t have to rush through everything, and yes, we are meant to be together.