ONLINE 2021
Sparks!
Welcome!
2020-21. The massive push, perhaps tidal wave, to put our practices, processes and artistry online.
We ride the waves, each in our own ways. We sense artistic and aesthetic changes within our multi-dimensional movement arts forms as they are being pressed into 2-dimensional meeting places.
“onONline” opens time for considered response to a reactive situation.
As we go back into in-person studio and performance sites, and welcome this third work place, we ask ourselves: What is fundamental within each of our movement artforms? What is essential in my artistry? How do we nurture fundamentals and essentials while embracing evolution?
Conversations
watch, listen, read
catalysts to this Forum were 25 artists' conversations in November - December 2020
Invitation
Share and deepen knowledge for continuing artistry on online platforms for movement art creation!
Let’s be active, open, thoughtful.
Let’s be conscious within the work, and within the outer situations and environment we are now living.
Let’s consider what we know, are learning and may learn in this evolutionary time. Let’s try things out together.
Open Aug 11 - Sept 15, 2021
beginnings
“onONline” began with a movement artist contemplating a life's practice that seemed snatched away with the single word “lockdown”. How and what to practice, create, collaborate in what was being touted as new realities? Maxine wondered how were others coping.
The removal of shared space caused much upheaval, uncertainty, change. Some of us stopped in our tracks. Some leapt across the chasm, kept on working, adjusting with ever-changing situations. For all, the constant was change, questions and puzzles.
In the Spring of 2020, Maxine Heppner and Michael Caldwell put out investigative tendrils to their network of Toronto artists. Over 70 responded that they were grappling with having to accept a “new workspace” that from dance artists’ perspectives had no space in it at all and yes, sharing experience would be useful. The Choreographic Marathon picked up the thread. Maxine and Jessie Fraser had porch-conversations to create 'sparks' to propel dialogue between movement artists who stepped up for conversation with Maxine over video chat in November-December. The Forum onONline2021 extends our communal knowledge as it is expanding.