Ipsita Nova Dance Projects Blog

The Draupadi Project & a brand new adventure with Lucy Rupert

nova — Sat, 19 May 2012 15:38:49 +0000

Spring in the studio continued! Playwright Sharada Eswar pitched me this great idea for a one woman play about a contemporary woman on trial for alleged terrorist activities who could be interpreted as a modern day Draupadi (an iconic heroine from the epic Mahabharata). I thought it sounded great and was thrilled that she was asking me to choreograph for it. I found when she sent me the first project treatment that she wanted me to perform it too! We spent a couple of weeks last year working on it with Dan Wild as a facilitator between the emerging script and my choreographic instincts. This year with a showcase at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Buzz festival we worked with director Jennifer Brewin to push forward with the concept. Working with text as a score is a huge challenge but we managed to find a shape and structure and presented an excerpt where I just focussed on the movement and Sharada joined me onstage with the text. Its back in Sharada’s hands now to continue to develop the story and the character and then we’ll have another go at it later in June.

I also entered the studio with the beautiful and physically eloquent Lucy Rupert. Lucy has asked me to make her a solo. Its my first commission from a solo artist and wow is working one on one intense. You think I would know that given the number of solos I’ve commissioned, but being on the choreographic side was a whole new experience for me. I would be exhausted after a four hour rehearsal – and I wasn’t the one having to do things over and over again! So far we’ve just played around with movement research but it has provided rich food for thought and I’m looking forward to having some time to dream about where it will go and then getting back into the studio. Lucy will present the solo in March 2013.

Spring in the Studio

nova — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:13:57 +0000

April and May have had me in the studio with some fabulous artists and exciting projects.

Noam Gagnon (formerly of The Holy Body Tattoo and Artistic Director of Vision Selective) came to Toronto for a week and we were in residency at the glorious studios of the National Ballet School. We are working on project that investigating the notion that whatever lies between two familiar opposites is usually declared either taboo or sacred. It was intense and challenging on many levels. Noam and I are still figuring out each other’s rhythms and ways of working and our subject matter has us going to some pretty dark places. Thankfully, we make each other laugh too! We had a showing at the end of the process and were really encouraged and inspired by response to the work thus far. Our “peeps” at Eponymous and Meredith Potter Arts Management and working away behind the scenes to get this project on a number of stages across the country so I promise to keep you posted.

The week after that I went back to being a soloist, remounting three solos for Date with Dance that was presented at the beautiful Registry Theatre in Waterloo as part of the Ontario Arts Council’s Ontario Dances Program.

I’ll sign of for now but will come back tomorrow with info on some of the other spring projects that are simmering away involving people like Lucy Rupert, Sharada Eswar and Jennifer Brewin………

Access Ignites/Acces allume

nova — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:18:43 +0000

On March 28th & 29th I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the Ontario Arts Council’s Access Ignites event. A celebration of the Council’s Access and Career Development program it was an opportunity for anyone who ever received a grant from the program to network, take part in workshops, listen to inspiring speakers and have a chance to see some of our collegues’ work. It the kind of thing that is sometimes hard to make the time for because it conflicts with rehearsals, but I’m so very glad I was able to block off the time. Those of us who were there got to see the OAC’s new Director and CEO Peter Caldwell making his first official speech and hopefully we didn’t overwhelm him too much at the reception but it looked to me like EVERY artist in the room found time to approach him. Philip Akin gave an impassioned speech reminding all artists of colour that it is not the firsts we accomplish that are important, rather it is the 21st time that an artist breaks a barrier and the time when there are so many artists past the barriers that people stop counting that have the most impact. He also extolled us to remember that we will all die and our only legacy is in the art and the artists that we mentor. There were workshops on Audience Development, Collaboration, Mentoring and New Media. There were a full contingent of officers from the Ontario Arts Council there who LISTENED to what artists had to say. Malar Janagan who received support from the program to have me mentor her choreographic process was one of the artists who performed alongside Sharada Eswar the writer I am working with on the Draupadi Project. In all the discussions one theme did keep emerging – artists are not into labels. We don’t want to be considered “other” because of the colour of our skin or the country our art form originated in. In particular at the dance breakout group it was clear that there was a complete lack of interest in continuing to categorize dance by the term culturally diverse. Dance is dance said the panel. Wait a minute, didn’t I say that was the conclusion all the participants at the Rural Retreat came to in my April 18th post? Great minds really do think alike. It was an intense and inspiring day and a half. I loved meeting so many of my collegues who I only know by name or reputation. It was a great event and a great format and I tip my hat to Bushra Junaid and all of her colleagues at the OAC for making it happen. My passion was re-ignited and I loved being a part of a positive energy that gave constructive feedback to an institution that looms so large in our lives as artists.

Nova Bhattacharaya & Louis Laberge-Cote – is it ready yet?

nova — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:08:01 +0000

On my very first blog post I talked about going into the studio with Louis to prepare an excerpt of our full-evening work Akshongay for presenters. We now have our Danceworks dates and the Toronto premiere will be on April 11, 2013. Yes, 2013. Given that we started this work in 2008 it sure seems like its taking us forever to finish! The reality is though that we haven’t really been working on the piece for 5 years. In 2008 we were doing an R&D process with mentors Tedd Robinson and Menaka Thakkar, we had no intentions of making a new piece through that process. Then we were invited to showcase our work at the Kalanidhi International Dance Festival in 2009 and for the first time we looked at the material from the R&D process and thought “hmn, there’s the beginning of a piece in there”. We presented a 10 minute excerpt and then Louis moved to Germany to dance with Ballet Mannheim! In 2010 when Louis was back in Toronto we worked for two weeks. Then he went back! Finally last year Louis came back home for good, we did the presenter showcase in November and then in February of 2012 we went back into the studio for 3 weeks. (so really we’ve only worked on the piece for 6 weeks over 4 years.) The period of February/March work was interesting to say the least. Some days we felt that we moved forward, other days we felt completely trapped in the weeds or like we’d blown the whole thing up and no longer had any idea what was going on. What anchors us through this all is that we are together on this journey of discovery. Together, Akshongay is the Bengali word for together. Our work has always been about abstraction, the individuality of our backgrounds in classical bharatanatyam and modern dance, and the universality of our art form. We look forward to sharing this work with you so keep an eye out for the official announcement!

Bad Blogger

nova — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:56:51 +0000

I’ve been admonished for not having posted since last year! How did it become April 2012 already? So here’s the plan – for the next few days I’m going to post short bursts each day to get caught up on what’s been happening so far this year – and then I will become much more diligent and become a better blogger!

So first up, those of you who are super dance geeks may have seen Michael Crabb’s blurb in the Toronto Star yesterday about Canadian born Tamara Rojo taking over the leadership of the English National Ballet. Tamara has been looking towards artistic leadership for a while, having taken part in the UK based Dance East’s Rural Retreats for future dance leaders in 2007. So, what’s the connection? Well, in January of this year yours truly was one of 26 dance professionals from around the world selected to participate in the Rural Retreats program! There was a strong Canadian contingent, Emily Molnar (Ballet BC), Jorden Morris (Royal Winnipeg Ballet) and hardest working man about town, Matjash Mrozweski were all in Suffolk with me for four intense days of focussing on the role and challenges that face us as artistic directors and creative producers in dance.

We were awestruck and inspired by incredible guest speakers including Daniel Topolski: writer, broadcaster, World Championship Gold Medallist Rower and former Olympic Coach; Kathleen Soriano: Director of Exhibitions, Royal Academy; Alistair Spalding: Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Sadler’s Wells; David McAllistair: Artistic Director, Australian Ballet – also an alumni of the Rural Retreats program; Carrie Cracknell: former Co-Artistic Director of Gate Theatre and currently the Genesis Fellow at the Young Vic and Sir John Hegarty: Worldwide Creative Director, BBH Global – who put Levis back into play with all those cool music video commercials back in the 80′s.

We were led through challenging exercises and scenarios with regards to artistic leadership, we drew imaginary vehicles that represented our companies, we had heated debate on the topic of “Are leaders born? or made” and, perhaps most importantly we got to meet 25 other artists who are already leaders, aspiring leaders and create a network that will support and nurture us all into the future.

On the last day of the retreat we were bussed into London for a reception at the House of Commons. We were quite a sight, 26 of us with all our luggage going through security. The reception including speeches from Members of Parliament and Arts Council Officers and the Jerwood Foundation (a private foundation committed to supporting and nurturing excellence in the arts.) Believe it or not, even those speeches were inspiring. It was wonderful to hear from people who so clearly had tremendous respect for the art form of dance and those who give their lives over to it.

Two of our group Christopher Hampson (the new Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet) and Emily Molnar presented a speech that was literally crafted by all 26 of us with wine glasses in hand at 11pm the night before. A key point of the speech was that for dance to move forward we had to leave behind categorizations and barriers between forms. Dance is Dance we said and working together we can ensure its future.

And then there was the classic “once a dancer always a dancer” moment where we all piled into a board room at the house of commons where our luggage was being stored and without a thought to the fact that the door was wide open and House of Commons types were wandering the halls we all started to change out of our fancy reception clothes and into our travel wear!

The Rural Retreats are a one of a kind international think tank created to develop and nurture the leaders who will move our art form forward. It was a huge honour to be one of the participants, I came home inspired and feeling confident about my own role as a leader here in Canada. Huge thanks to Assis Carreiro the Executive Director of Dance East for dreaming up the program and her funders and board of directors who support it. I was able to attend with support from The Canada Council for the Arts Equity Office’s Travel Grants program and owe them a huge thanks as well.

If you are interested http://www.danceeast.co.uk/development/default.aspx is where to go. You will find information about the program and a comprehensive report on everything that took place. If you are an aspiring leader in dance, book mark the Dance East page and keep an eye out for the next Retreat. It will change your life. It certainly did mine.

(ok – this wasn’t exactly a short burst!)

Nova Bhattacharya premieres new work for Dancemakers

nova — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:53:09 +0000

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

nova — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:00:30 +0000

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.