Making Marks
abc
Photo credit: Luciana Friere D'Anunciação A photo of seven seated and standing dancers wearing casual clothing in different facings on a black box theatre stage. They’re each holding long ragged paper shapes that look illuminated in tones of pink and yellow against the black. Each dancer is moving with the paper in their own way - swooping, swirling, small and large movements. One of the dancers is holding a large piece over their head, walking towards and looking directly at the camera.
Making Marks (2023)
Created: May 2023
Roundhouse Performance Centre, Vancouver, BC
MAKING MARKS is a multidisciplinary performance by Ready Dance Youth Project, a vibrant group of young artists with and without disabilities, in collaboration with facilitators from All Bodies Dance Project. The piece welcomes the audience into a kaleidoscopic, experimental dance world that combines movement, drawing and music.
Making Marks is a celebration of our creative work from over the past 5 years! It is a composition of ideas that we keep revisiting with new intentions, a collection of traces of who we are.
Made possible with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, The Roundhouse, Vancouver Parks Board and the City of Vancouver.
Dancers:
Morgan Booker
Vitoria Pacheco Gramani
Carla Pacheco Gramani
Melissa Kalla
Dahlia Levitt
Onni Niemi
Sebastian Ralphs
Amelia West
Austin Wong
Raymond Zhou
Facilitated by Harmanie Rose, danielle wensley and Ben Brown
The video opens with someone in a gold shirt, black pants and face mask, banging intently on a blue drum in their hand. “MAKING MARKS” appears on the screen. “By Ready Dance Youth Project & All Bodies Dance Project” There are now a dozen or so folks on screen, all wearing street clothing, some carrying various sizes of drums and other percussion instruments, as well as a bright pink guitar. They’re all moving around one another. At times they seem to be moving to entirely their own beat, and at other times they suddenly move in unison. There’s a friendly, experimental, curious feeling about it. We periodically get glimpses of the audience. Pairs of dancers begin moving along the length of a thick white line on the floor: rolling, sweeping, crawling. The people move together in some standing quick mini-duets The dancers are lined up and begin unravelling a long sheet of white paper, snaking it along the line like water. Then each dancer has a large piece of this paper of their own: leaping, rolling, lunging, eventually converging around a wheelchair dancer, their papers overhead. The screen goes black, and credits roll: Dancers: Morgan Booker Vitoria Pacheco Gramani Carla Pacheco Gramani Melissa Kalla Dahlia Levitt Onni Niemi Sebastian Ralphs Amelia West Austin Wong Raymond Zhou Facilitators: Harmanie Rose Danielle Wensley Ben Brown Music by: Ben Brown in collaboration with the dancers Video by: Soléne Pango Salas Arya Yazdani Biuki Project Funders and Partners: City of Vancouver Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation Canada Council for the Arts Roundhouse All Bodies Dance