Pam Tzeng: SHED | knowing each other as different and the same

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Pam Tzeng, " SHED | knowing each other as different and the same," 2022

Movement workshop with TNG Main Space Artist Pam Tzeng

Date / Wednesday, May 4, 2022 4PM to 5:30 PM

The New Gallery is thrilled to announce a movement workshop with TNG’s Main Space artist Pam Tzeng  on May 4th, 2022 from 4-5:30 PM. ⁠

We require those interested in joining the workshop to register in advance through the link below. Space for this workshop is limited!⁠

This workshop invites participants to awaken their senses through gentle therapeutic exercise. With a spirit of ease and play, we will ground and invigorate the body through a series of embodiment practices and holistic circular-spiral movements. No previous experience is required. Wear comfortable clothing to move in. We will be moving in bare feet and/or socks. Bring water.

Under the bright yellow glow of SHED, time suspends for an alchemy of movement, sound, animate costumes and light. Featuring a collection of time-based moving portraits, SHED | knowing each other as different and the same holds space for the multiplicity and humanity of bodies of culture1. The immersive performance installation invites pause.  A slowing down and an enlivening into presence for an otherworldly experience.

a seeing

a feeling

a being with

a sensorial unravelling 

a conjuring of ancestral love and grief

a shedding of what holds us from knowing each other as different and the same.

SHED is an invitation to notice the subtle ways our bodies perceive, receive and relate to an “other”.  To witness the assumptions and imaginings that consciously and/or unconsciously colour our experience of difference. To remember that every body inhabits an internal life as vivid and complex as our own.

The collection of choreographies by Tzeng includes a duet created and performed with experimental musician FOONYAP, and five solo portraits created for, with and danced by Cindy Ansah, Cory Beaver, Kara Bullock, Alèn Martel and Mpoe Mogale. Sound, costumes and light manifest as energetic extensions of the body, spirit and land. The design elements of each work emerged from tender and nurturing exchanges with sound designers FOONYAP, Jiajia Li, Num and Darren Young, costume collaborator Alison Yanota, sodium light designer Nicolas Brunet-Beaulieu and lighting designer Jonathan Kim. 

Each portrait draws from the intimate and vast inner landscapes of the performers’ embodied values, memories and lived experiences. Each exists as a testimony of the beauty and resilience of bodies of culture.  

Footnote:

• From Pam: I replace the language and idea of  “People of colour” with “Bodies of Culture” as reclamation of the inherent wisdom of the body and the pieces of  the experiences of racialized people that have been stolen, stripped away, and invisibilized by white body supremacy. Bodies of Culture comes from my practice in Somatic Abolition guided by the work of author, therapist and racialized trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem. 

SHED is made possible with the support of Dancers’ Studio West Artist in Residence Program, The New Gallery 2022 Main Space Program, Canada Council for the Arts,  Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development, Calgary Animated Objects Society.