I am looking to achieve an attention to detail, a relationship between elements that resonates with aesthetic reflections. I am looking for sensuality and intelligence, a fullness that contains dynamically opposing forces and that sustains enchantment.
I make a practice of exploring an aesthetically broad movement vocabulary. In the case of a particular dance I define the movement qualities and vocabulary in response to a subject, a force, an area of inquiry. Often the dancers’ capabilities play a large role in my choices. I place limitations on the movement language as a means of focusing the direction of development but I am not interested in limiting my potential vocabulary. Some of my work stresses awkwardness, rawness, even stiffness; some of it stresses clarity of lines, directions in space, energy, and fluidity. I am equally interested in gesture and in full body expression, in movement limited and shaped by props or objects and in movement defined primarily in terms of space and time. Looking deeply within the movement, I find the keys that prompt phrasings, variations and developments.
I see contemporary dance in a larger context that also includes music, poetry, literature, visual art, theatre and philosophy. I look to these disciplines to learn what they have to reveal in terms of the refinement of craft, composition and performance. A deep appreciation of music is critical to my work. I am challenged to meet the artistry of the musical score by finding non-formulaic contrapuntal relationships that are germane to the dance. In this way I attend to the significant impact of the music on the whole, and increase my own sensitivity to choreographic expressions of and through time. The single voice and imagistic power of poetry has given me insight into the solo dance. I have learnt the value of the point of view sculptors, actors, writers and philosophers, not only in helping me to see my work more clearly, but also in drawing out of the dancers a more informed performance.
Other Research:
"Dancing Outdoors", The Eye in the Thicket, Sean Virgo, ed., Saskatoon: thistledown press, 2002.
"Agent Provocateur: Peter Boneham", This Passion, Carol Anderson, ed., Toronto: Dance Collection Danse, Press, 1998.
video: coulee, University of Calgary, 2000.
lyric, The Banff Centre, 2004
