Mirror Staging the Seeing Place is a choreographic project that exploits the mechanics of image construction within the theatrical apparatus to reconfigure cultural representations that are embedded in the female body. Dually informed by practice-based research and an 18 month-long intellectual courtship with feminist psychoanalytic theory, the project centres around the figure of the dancer.
“Ivanochko manages to intertwine the visceral with the philosophical, the ordinary with the extreme, and the mundane with the utterly thought-provoking.” – Beverly Daurio, Evidance Radio
Working with a movement base generated through a mimetic reproduction of North American pop-cultural icons from the 20th and 21st centuries and gender-specific stereotypes, the solo dancer performs a series of deconstructive actions that increasingly mutate the original forms. The scenography and sound are organized around this mimetic/deconstructive arc; the theatre space is captured and reflected in a long wall of mirrors, and the diegetic sounds are amplified, doubled, and displaced. The doubling and displacing of sight and sound troubles the reading of the body. The project plays with multiple perspectives on the female body, in order to revise (re-vision) how it can be seen.
Mirror Staging premiered at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (Vancouver, BC), June 1, 2017 and has since played at the visiBIe arts festival (Los Angeles, CA) and The Citadel (Toronto, ON).
60 minute solo
choreographer Sasha Ivanochko
dancer Kristy Kennedy
composer Matthew Ariaratnam
original lighting design James Proudfoot
costume design Tanya White
Kristy Kennedy
photo Tyler Pengelly