Confronting our past, with love.
Choreography by Michael Trent
Created with and performed by Robert Abubo, Amanda Acorn,Kate Holden, Benjamin Kamino and Simon Renaud
Music by: Christopher Willes and Thom Gill
Lighting Designer: Kimberly Purtell
Costume Designer: Vanessa Fischer
Photos by: Ömer K. Yükseker
The ADAPTATION PROJECT re-imagines a dance from the Toronto based contemporary dance company Dancemakers 100-plus repertoire, a body of work amassed over its 38-year history. Wanting to engage in a process other than a traditional remount, resident choreographer Michael Trent and collaborators have created a new dance piece through collectively responding to choreographer Mitchell Rose’s 1974 piece Following Station Identification, originally set to music by Luciano Berio and Lukas Foss.
Working collaboratively in the studio the participating artists have gone through a shared process of encountering a variety of archival materials (rehearsal films, reel to reel audio recordings of the original score, and interviews with members of the original Dancemakers cast) which Trent likens to an archaeological dig – uncovering the original choreography, and finding responses to it, layer by layer. The result is a fresh new work exploring the vary nature of adaptation as process and product.