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Final Savage Land

We will find the key to our Liberation only when we accept that what we once did to survive is now destroying us.” – Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

It is amazing to me to start with a simple inspiration and have its path take such bizarre twists and turns and end up somewhere completely unimagined at the beginning. The first inspiration of this work was a video I found online of Estonian composer, Arvo Part, teaching a class of students how to approach the playing of his beautiful and haunting piano piece ‘Fur Alina’. He explains how the two notes are neutral and seemingly not suited to each other, but the coupling of the notes creates a disturbing beauty, a duality that could not exist without each other. He tries in many ways to explain but cannot find the right words and eventually, he smiles and says, “This is a complicated relationship”. Although you will not hear the piece in this final work, all the vocabulary was choreographed to his piece with this lesson in mind.

In the studio we began to discuss examples of human relationships that we may be able to apply to his lesson. I then went on to seek out a relationship in literature that I could use as a base. I found one in the form of a popular Grimms fairytale. You may recognize some of the images, or perhaps not – but here it is-. Two separate entities on seemingly different paths; Arvo Part’s ‘Fur Alina’ and a Grimm’s fairytale. Without their coupling we would not have this work.

This work is dedicated to my late mother Gail Cummings who left us during the our first production run in January 2013.

Photos by Omer Yukseker and Joe Fuda

Premiered January 2013 , Oz Studios – Toronto Ontario
Performers
– Luke Garwood
– Linnea Swan
– Lyon Smith – Live Sound Design/Compostion
– Gabriel Cropley – Set and Live Lighting Design

Summerworks – August 2013, Toronto Ontario
Performers
– Luke Garwood
– Linnea Swan
– Lyon Smith – Live Sound Design/Compostion
– Gabriel Cropley – Set and Live Lighting Design

Canada Dance Festival – June 2014, Ottawa Ontario
Performers
– Luke Garwood
– Linnea Swan
– Lyon Smith – Live Sound Design/Compostion
– Joe Pagnan – Set and Live Lighting Design (based on Gabriel Cropley’s work)

Fluid Festival – October 2014, Calgary Alberta
Performers
– Bill Coleman
– Linnea Swan
– Lyon Smith – Live Sound Design/Composition
– Joe Pagnan – Set and Live Lighting Design (based on Gabriel Cropley’s work)