Nova Bhattacharya premieres new work for Dancemakers

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I went back into the studio with the amazing Dancemakers gang on November 21, worked for five days felt good about where things were and then we went into residency week.  Michael Trent has implemented the residency as a way for creators to have time in the performance configuration of the space.  Its quite brilliant as time is such a valuable commodity when in creation.  Now, sometimes time can be a dangerous thing.  Wednesday was certainly a challenge for the dancers.  It was the first day they had to work on both pieces in the program (Jacob Zimmer has created a work for them as well).  On top of that, I suddenly asked them to blow the whole piece up by doing an improv with no music just to see what might happen.  It brought up a lot of questions that I was able to reflect on overnight.  I went back into the studio with a greater sense of clarity about decisions that had already been made and a plan to resolve the issues that remained. Simon Rossiter and I have played with lights and visual design.  Vanessa Fischer has been super graceful in the face of my costume demands.  The crew has also kept smiling at me all week despite certain elements of my work that make their jobs a little more challenging than usual.  The Dancemakers dancers (Rob, Kate, Simon, Pierre-Marc and Amanda) are making the dance their own and taking it to new levels.  And we open this week!  Here’s a sneak peak for you:

Ipsita Nova Dance Projects enters the blogosphere

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Welcome to the company’s fresh new website complete with this blog where I can share with you the ins and outs of the projects that I am so lucky to be working on.

November is off to a great start. Preparing for a presentation with long-time collaborator Ed Hanley at the Canadian Opera Company led to the surprising discovery that in all our years of working together we have never done the one thing that seems perfectly obvious for dancer and musician – improvising together! We still haven’t really done it, I’ve made a new solo and we premiered it live with Ed improvising. So the vocabulary was set but I did allow the rhythm of its delivery to be affected by Ed’s playing. So satisfying to continue to evolve our ways of creating together.

Another long-term collaborator, Louis Laberge-Côté and I went back into the studio to prepare an excerpt of our new work Akshongay for presenters. Akshongay is going to be a full-evening work that will be presented in Danceworks Mainstage Series (Toronto) in the 2012/2013 Season. Re-visting material we had first created in 2008/2009 was quite the experience, especially once our tag-team of fabulous rehearsal directors (Amy Hampton & Kate Hilliard) came into the studio. They asked us questions and shared their insights, which in turn made us go deeper into the work and our choices.

Now that those performances are done, I return to being completely consumed by my creation for Dancemakers! I spent two weeks with the dancers in October and created what seemed like an awful lot of material. When I left we had a skeleton in place, when I return we’ll work on the flesh and blood. This is my second commission for an ensemble and I’m loving every challenge and question it brings my way.