Watching dance. Some say it might not be for everyone, but for legendary Contemporary artist Peggy Baker, going to see a dance concert is a big fun adventure -it doesn’t need to be something you need to do all the time and there’s no big mystery behind what it all means.

The Edmonton-born artist compares watching a dance performance to going for a day in the country, experiencing the weather, the scenery and just taking it all in. At the end of the month, her company, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, is presenting the sound and feel of it.

wanttodance.ca sat down with the dancer/choreographer to hear more about the inspiration behind the choreography, her take on contemporary dance and why dance is something for everyone.

To get us started right off the bat, what makes you want to dance?

I want to dance everyday! I am 59 years old and I have been dancing since I was in my mother’s womb -rolling around and kicking. I came to dance very naturally, I just wanted to do it. When there was music playing, I wanted to dance and it brings me in touch with who I am and how I feel. I get to listen to music with my whole body and I’m finding out who I am and what the world means to me by bringing myself back day after day to this art form.

Can you tell us a little more about Peggy Baker Dance Projects?

My company is a small ensemble company that's grown out of my own history and interest as a dancer and for many years I was performing mostly by myself. Now I have expanded to a group which expands and contracts from three to five people.

Your company is putting on a showcase near the end of the month called the sound and feel of it. What can audiences expect?

It’s three different works, with the first two works of the program as solos. Benjamin Kamino, who's from Montreal, dances the opening work in this program, a work of mine called In the Fire of Conflict. It’s not so abstract that opening work. Anyone who will know hip hop, for example, or any kind of rap music will recognize immediately the genre since he’s dancing to piece of music that includes a rap line as part of the score. It has a great deal to do with his character inside of the dance, and the subject matter has to do with the person who’s delivering the text -who is also the author of delivering the text- and their tremendous desire to change in ways that are going to be difficult to them. It's very exciting, very aggresive and [Kamino] as a dancer is very raw and rugged.

The second work of the program is a solo from myself called Portal. I dance it in silence and it happens on a big black stage that gets lit up in little tiny shards of light that I appear in different places on the stage. It's really a dance about being alone and being stranded, not quite knowing how I’ve arrived in that place or have any idea at all how I’m going to leave it. 

And the biggest piece on the program, which is 45 minutes long, is called Piano/Quartet.

Can you tell us a bit more about Piano/Quartet?

Piano/Quartet is a brand new work we started working on in September and plays with movement. It’s very unexpected, and beautiful, some of it is quite whimsical sounding even and I have a group of four really exceptional, beautiful dancers that keep dissembling and reassembling so it breaks down out into solos, duets, trios and keeps coming back to this quartet again.

I'm using great music for prepared piano from composer John Cage and the music will be really interesting because it’s a regular grand piano, but underneath the strings of the piano are different pieces of hardware that have been slipped underneath. So, when you play the keyboard of the piano the sound that’s coming out is nothing like an ordinary piano. It may sound like a gamelan, a Balinese gamelan, or 10 to 12 different people playing percussion instruments, pots or pans.

It’s lots of fun to look at, a little bit like looking at a kaleidoscope where beautiful patterns keep changing in unexpected ways. [Check out the rehearsal footage.]

Contemporary dance is always changing, where does your influence come from?

I am a dancer/choreographer working in Contemporary dance which means I am drawing from all kinds of influences. We now have a world of Contemporary dance that draws very freely from all the classical modern dance forms from classical ballet to all kinds of folk and ethnic dancing, and all kinds of street dancing, so social dancing, hip hop and break dancing, all that kind of social dances that are part of the popular culture. So that is now the world of contemporary dance and that is the world I am creating in.

What advice do you have for people new to dance or those new to watching a performance?

I know that a lot of people have preconceptions of dance, that it has to have some kind of hidden meaning. No. It’s about the movement. It’s about the beauty, the exhilaration of watching people do complex unexpected virtuosic things with their bodies. I think it can be treated as a sense of adventure and it’s not just for a group of people who know all about it. You can go on your own or with friends and part of the excitement is, "I wonder what this will be like, I wonder what I’ll think of it I wonder what I’ll make of it".


Performances of the sound and feel of it will be held in Toronto from January 20 to 29. Tickets start at $22 and can be purchased through here.

CONTEST ALERT

We’re giving away tickets to Peggy Baker Dance Projects' performance of the sound and feel of it! Tell us the three works that are being performed by commenting below for your chance to win a pair of tickets for Saturday, January 21 (8:30pm) or Sunday, January 22 (4pm)! Contest ends January 20 at 12pm. Winners must provide their own travel and accomodations.