Now in its fifth year, Dance Victoria’s LOLA Projects pair a professional dance artist from Vancouver with local dancers to act as a mentor or “outside eye” during the development of a new work. Andrew Barrett is one of this season’s LOLA Project artists – he shared some thoughts on his experience with us…
This choreographic mentorship has been one of the most challenging aspects of my creative career so far. Not due to differing opinions or lack of balance, but because this is the first instance I have agreed to put myself alone in a room and create. This challenge has been intensified by Su-Feh’s gentle, but challenging guidance. Using her own aesthetics and interests to guide me, I’ve been pushed into a place where I have abandoned many of my habits and support networks. It feels as though I have been left vacant with little pieces of interest that are stuck in the room with me; who are trying to whisper to me, but I cannot, or do not, want to follow them.
I am a sponge by nature. My prior work has been highly collaborative, exercises or images when used with other artists spur us in new directions. The artists fashion the raw materials for the pieces from their own interests and pasts, which we then transform under my own aesthetic into something we weren’t necessarily expecting. This synthesis moves the work into something universal. The Fox God is solely myself. I have to transform my own kernels. How do I take the fragments and pieces of myself and transform them into something universal? How do I surprise myself? We shall see.
Andrew Barrett
Artistic Director, Impulse Theatre
impulsetheatre.ca / facebook.com/impulsetheatre / @impulse_theatre
