POITRAS, Robin

waters/edge
Saturday September 7 2 pm
Budapest Park, 1601 Lake Shore Blvd. W. (meet west of the Palais Royale, at the Sunnyside Boardwalk)
Sunday September 8 2 pm
Bathurst Quay (meet beside the public washrooms at the south end of Little Norway Park, near Little Norway Crescent)
Saturday September 14 8 pm
R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, 2701 Queen St. E.

waters/edge prelude sessions
Solar Stage @ Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie St., Suite 176 (enter from the east [Wychwood] side, south of the main doors, under the 3) advance booking recommended; email here for inquiries
Thursday September 5 6 – 8 pm (with guest artist Bill Coleman)
Friday September 6 6 – 8 pm (with guest artist Bill Coleman)
Thursday September 12 6 – 8 pm (with guest artist Ann Tutt)
Friday September 13 6 – 8 pm (with guest artist Ann Tutt)

PRELUDE
Bruce LaBruce TIFF party, Bovine Sex Club, 542 Queen St. W.
Friday September 6 11 pm

moon oh moon oh tide for the glow the incredible light forth go, stop spilling bulls blood in the spanish love streams

between the wave and the shore lies the pull of the moon

waters/edge invites participants to engage in group walks that result in making ensemble sound / bell songs, near various sites where the water’s edge meets the land. A sounding exploration and sonar reading, waters/edge invites an aural reflection of both the body’s own fluid systems and bodies of water. This work can be understood as a celebration both of being and of the water within and around us.

Opening a space for awareness between flow and structure, between softness and hardness, waters/edge continues from Bell Works—a body of work started in 2007 with a solo performance that became a trio, then an octet, then a group of 13. Bell Works took place  in Vancouver, Paris, Spain, Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as various urban and rural sites in Saskatchewan.

All are welcome to come and listen/observe, but for those wishing to participate as bell ringers, Robin will offer several prelude rehearsal sessions. Through a series of somatic based workshops with Robin Poitras, guest artists, and somatic practitioners, participants/public will be introduced to a walking, sitting, and bell ringing journey near the water’s edge. Those attending one or more of the prelude sessions are expected to commit to participating in at least one of the scheduled walks. If you cannot attend a prelude session but wish to participate in the ringing, email here to make arrangements with the artist.

Robin is grateful to artists, friends, and colleagues Bill Coleman and Ann Tutt, who will be sharing their unique practices in rehearsals leading toward the walks for waters/edge.

Robin Poitras is one of Saskatchewan’s most prolific dance and performance creators. Creating dance, performance and installation works, she has been actively engaged in contemporary dance practice since the early 1980s. For many years Robin has traversed the formal worlds of dance and performance art. She co-founded New Dance Horizons in 1986, with Dianne Fraser where she continues to act as Artistic Director. With an interest in research into diverse fields of artistic and somatic practice, she has developed a unique interdisciplinary approach. Robin’s works have been presented across Canada, in Spain, France, Germany, Mongolia and Mexico. She is a recipient of the 2016 Lieutenant Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2006 Mayor’s Awards for Business & The Arts’ Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2004 Women of Distinction Award for the Arts. In 2008, she was one of 7a*11d’s Éminences grises.

This residency is produced with the support of New Dance Horizons / Rouge-gorge, a project-based creation production company led by Co -Artistic Directors Robin Poitras and renowned visual artist Edward Poitras. Launched in 2009, Rouge-gorge is a foundation for research, creation, production, and touring. The company produces contemporary dance and performance works by Robin Poitras, Edward Poitras, and guest artists. Traversing between the fields of dance and performance art, Robin’s work brings elements of visual and performance art into an inseparable arena. Intense collaboration with artists in dance, theatre, visual, music, and performance art is a mark of Robin’s creative practice.

untitled: a work that draws on past works
Thursday October 30 8 pm
XPACE Cultural Centre

some times three
with Brenda Cleniuk and Leanne Lloyd
Friday October 31 12 pm
Outside the Design Exchange

My practice is rooted in a physical world comprised of choreography, dancing and actions/acts. My performance works often involve the use of found or formed objects, texts, images, sound and/or other media. I am curious about relationships and resonance among the worlds of art, science and nature and in exploring how these worlds feed back and forth in mythical, mysterious, elusive and sometimes obvious ways.

Robin Poitras’s practice is centred in movement and dance. She co-founded New Dance Horizons in Regina in 1986, where she continues to act as Artistic Director. With an interest in research into diverse fields of artistic and somatic practice she has developed a unique interdisciplinary approach. Her works have been presented across Canada, in Spain, Germany, and Mexico. She is a recipient of the 2004 Women of Distinction Award for the Arts and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the 2006 Mayor’s Awards for Business & The Arts in Regina. Robin will be joined in this performance by Regina-based artists Brenda Cleniuk and Leanne Lloyd.

Profile of Robin Poitras by Andrew James Paterson
Elaine Wong’s eyewitness account of some times three
Andrew James Paterson’s eyewitness account of some times three
Elaine Wong’s eyewitness account of untitled: a work that draws on past works
Andrew James Paterson’s eyewitness account of untitled: a work that draws on past works

Éminence Grise expanded biography

Robin Poitras is a Regina-based dance and performance artist. Actively engaged in contemporary dance practice since the early ’80s, she co-founded New Dance Horizons in 1986, where she continues to act as Artistic Director. In 2002, Poitras organized Stream of Dance, a three-day festival devoted to Prairie dance that featured an eclectic blend of styles from ballet and contemporary to Aboriginal and powwow dancing. She holds a BFA honours degree in dance from York University, and has performed as a solo artist throughout Canada, in Spain, Germany, Mexico and Mongolia.

For many years she has traversed between the formal worlds of dance and performance art, and her performance work belongs to a category of interdisciplinary work informed by the rigour and discipline of dance, and the imagistic and formalist qualities of visual art. She uses these disciplinary points of departure to delve into the social and cultural tropes that are classically contained by myth and mythology or obscured in the vernacular by fairy tales, or as dwell in the dynamics of psychoanalysis. Her work interrogates power and the paradigms of control that belie revolution or upheaval precisely because they operate at levels of unconscious complicity and acceptance. She is a recipient of the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 Mayor’s Awards for Business & The Arts in Regina, and the 2004 Women of Distinction Award for the Arts. During her residency Poitras will “look back and forth in considering my past works and making a new work. The residency marks a return to Toronto, a place and time where I worked and studied for five years and where I first encountered performance art.” Poitras’s residency is co-sponsored by Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie.

During her residency, Poitras will be joined by Regina-based artists Brenda Cleniuk and Leanne Lloyd in performing The Oval, a temporary installation of 24 chairs and 60 rearview mirrors that will be set up and dismantled in public spaces during the festival. They will also perform some times three and the walking women in various public spaces.