Katherine Semchuk + Tia Ashley Kushniruk - 12 Small Deaths
A Free Write before We Indite...
How do we choose what to reveal?
What do I decide to disclose? With Tia; this person in an illuminated square in front of me.
Tia and I have known each other and parts of each other for more than a decade. We’ve known each other from afar and close up as competitive dancers, witnesses of each other's performances, phone call makers and receivers, roommates, schoolmates, collaborators, confused artists, and as dauntless people. And Tia and I have been in a pretty consistent dialogue throughout the pandemic, which seems like a big chunk of life at this point. I feel like we’ve aged five years within the past 16 months, and we have still kept up with each other enough to remain quite familiar with one another. But right now, she just sees the white walls and the white floors of the basement I’ve cleared space in to fill ideas with. She asks me questions and I answer, as honestly as I can…
As much as I think I know Tia, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with this collaboration. I feel even in life with Tia— the day to day kind of life— I don't know what I’m getting myself into.
For some context, here’s an excerpt from Tia’s Catalyst Theatre Confluence Fellowship message: “My own creative inclinations lean towards Dance Theatre making. I usually start processes with Theatre Improv Games, then from building scenes and characters, diving into movement motifs and setting up additional relationships from there. Remixing and adding artefacts, habits, and questions to imbue the scene with, just more.”
I don’t watch fictitious TV, I fall asleep during movies and it takes me approximately 1.5 years to finish a book of fiction. In short, character work scares the crap out of me and it is one of the reasons why I approached Tia and talked her into making a solo on/with me. And to my surprise, it took a lot less convincing than I thought it would.
Our process began with a lot of dialogue; a question and answer period of sorts. We covered a lot of bases: what TV shows I had been watching, which artists I had been listening to, clothing and how we wear it, sexuality, our relationships to dance right now… the list goes on. I divulged as much information as felt right, in the moment, about myself, currently. She also asked what a day looked like for me. And at that time, what my day in my childhood home in Edmonton looked like. From the moment (or many moments) I woke up, to the moment I said a sweet goodnight to my parents and my partner who would lay down next to me each night.
How someone spends their day says a lot about that person…. Who woulda thought.
As people, we are constantly changing; inhaling information and ideas that shape our perspective and our character. We are a synthesis of an endless series of tiny, tiny decisions. What I realized during these preliminary conversations with Tia was that I am not factual. My being is not factual. I had this thought at some point that I wished there was a character description of me that lived somewhere in the public domain. I wanted to read a blurb that listed the ways in which I was and wasn’t so that I could feel more aligned while answering these questions sporadically. I didn’t know the immediate answer to a lot of the questions Tia was asking, and this was embarrassing sometimes to realize and notice in the moment...
I’ve been thinking a lot about the parts of ourselves that we bring into processes — the aspects of our lives that we choose to disclose with our collaborators, and how this curational delivery of self impacts the way we are received; in real time by our partners in the work, and later by ourselves from the outside. And it seems that I, specifically, do this immediately without thought. And all of a sudden the person on the other side of the conversation is speaking to a playful childlike version of myself, when before that, it was the me that was acutely organizing my thoughts, and then the space in order to be “ready” for the rest of what I thought the online rehearsal was going to be.
I think about that organized space I present online, the small fraction of my basement. The way in which I position the camera to expose only a blank wall and space in the background, and then the way I position myself in front and in between all of the blankness. What I’m wearing, what parts of myself I’m exposing visually.
I’ve also been reflecting on therapy a lot lately… probably because I’ve started “going” to therapy. The emergence of these subpersonalities in the context of art making reminds me of some version of Internal Family Systems. I suppose it really is… and sometimes these unique and discrete aspects of myself (my mind) expose themselves in play, without being summoned.
Trying to play a character has always felt like putting on pants that are one size too small and don’t, in the slightest, suit me. I have diagnosed myself as unimaginative and because of this, I can’t access character work. I have no idea how to become someone else, and I especially feel incapable of characterizing movement and still feel “authentic” in action and performance (authentic… a fad word of the early 2010’s contemporary community.) And maybe it's true that western contemporary dancers are terrible actors. But then sometimes, I am just a character: in my home with my partner, in a group of friends… A part of me becomes so exaggerated that the rest of me disappears.
“Dancers are the best method actors of themselves.”
Anyways, after all these conversations with Tia within the first few hours of our first creative period, she had come up with something— or someone I should say. She wrote out a character description and a synopsis of sorts, and she even sketched a set. All derived, in some way or another, from what I had disclosed. Our conversations were source material, as Dedra (our dramaturg) would offer.
Side note: after dancing alone for months, it was so nice to receive Tia’s voice while I was exploring. It had been such a long time since I had heard someone else’s reactions to my movement in real time.
That’s it for this free write… I’m excited to keep excavating this character and this piece. I am eager, for the first time in my professional creative life, to get to know this character B.W. Beeker, and adjacently continue to ask questions about and to myself.
Prospects: an evening of dance and discussion presents
12 Small Deaths
Choreographed by Tia Ashley Kushniruk
Thursday, June 3rd 2021
8PM
hosted on ZOOM
$25 General Admission | $50 Pay it Forward | PWYC
GET TICKETS HERE!