Exquisite Pressure x Here For Now
Fri-Sat
October 13–14, 2023
7:30pm, 7pm doors
$10, No one turned away for lack of $
WHAT LAB 1814 Pandora Street
tickets online or at the door
Here For Now and What Lab are very excited to welcome you to back to Exquisite Pressure! ExP allows artists to try something new, to share their works in progress in front of an audience, gather feedback, and put their investigations to the test. It’s a night to experience new work in a beautiful, brave, and vulnerable early stage.
ExP x Here For Now features the work of:
Brynne Harper
Ellis Cheadle
Hayley Gawthrop
Curated and hosted by Here For Now. A few words from them, on this process:
"Here For Now loves experimental work that stretches notions of form, and we get particularly excited by artists who equally stretch their own creative process. These three artists are pursuing an expansion of what their practices can hold -- exploring new mediums, giving themselves challenges and taking risks, and creating in the truly Exquisite Pressure spirit of testing out new ideas. We can't wait to share with you the results of these exciting artistic experiments."
Questions? Email us at studio@whatlab.ca
Accessibility Info
What Lab is located at 1814 Pandora Street. There is no dedicated parking, only street parking. The venue is located on the second floor up one flight of stairs, but there is a ground level accessible entrance through the back of the building. Seating is typically informal, and will include some combination of chairs, floor seating, couches, and cushions. There is one single-occupancy, gender-inclusive washroom. The washroom is not big enough for larger style wheelchairs to completely turn around in while the door is open. We are a trans-inclusive space.
Knock Out
By Brynne Harper
Knock Out is an exploration into the distance and disorder that emerges in the pursuit of virtue. Playing with the intimacy of a dance performance, we explore how our bodies become charismatic vessels of absolute ideas ingrained in the madness of normalcy.
Created and performed by Brynne Harper in collaboration with Shana 愛 Ai Wolfe
Lighting Design by Maddy Woodley
Sound Composition by Toni-Leah C. Yake
Frankenkenstein
By ellis cheadle
How do we show-up for the monsters of our own making?
Frankenkenstein is the messy beginnings of a new theatrical round* loosely inspired by the story of Frankenstein’s monster. During this initial phase of research, we focus on choreographic, sonic, and dramaturgical loops, layers, and residues, asking: if the monster’s monster is the monster’s maker, is the real monster the monster’s-maker or the monster-made?
*A round is a musical composition in which the same melody is sung by 3 different voices, starting slightly off-set of one another. The three asynchronous melodies interact harmoniously, and the entire melody is cyclical, meaning the end of the melody fuses with the beginning forming an infinite loop.
Created and performed by Ellis Cheadle in collaboration with Aryo Khakpour, Ashley Aron, & Keely O’Brien.
Felt
By Hayley Gawthrop
“Felt” offers the viewer a window into one tired human’s relationship to the semiotics of femininity and productivity.
Music, Dance, Drag – “Felt” is all that, and a bag of chips.
Hayley Gawthrop – Director, Sound designer, Performer
about the artists
Frankenkenstein
Aryo Khakpour
Aryo Khakpour is an interdisciplinary performer, director, and dramaturg. He holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University. Born and raised in Iran, Aryo has been actively involved in numerous theatre, dance, and film productions in Vancouver since 2006. In 2013, he co-founded The Biting School, which was the company-in-residence at PuSh Festival and The Dance Centre 2018-2020. In his artistic practice, Aryo explores the dynamics of power, the implications of ideologies, the repetition of mythologies, and cultural adaptation. He identifies as an intersectional feminist and interrogates the patriarchy and its harmful effects on people. His practice is heavily physical and surrealistic; it moves from theatre to performance art to dance to film and back to theatre; it deals with pain and pleasure; it is sex-positive; and it aims to queer the status quo. He was trained in devised practices of non-hierarchical collective creations; that is his favourite way of creating.
Ashley Aron
Ashley Aron is an actor, vocalist, dramaturg and performance artist living as a white settler on the unceded Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh first nations in so-called “Vancouver”. Their work varies in style and content, and is grounded in the principles of collaboration, experimentation, absurdity, and resistance. Ashley hopes to create performance containers that rely on intimacy and spectacle in equal measure, inviting their audiences to sit with the intensity of our collective pain and the frivolity of a fart joke all at once. Ashley is slowly finding their way back to performing after a pandemic hiatus by waiting for their talented friends to periodically invite them into their projects – the stupider, the better.
ellis cheadle
elysse/ellis cheadle is a collaborative theatre-maker living and working on the stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh nations. Over the last decade, her focus has shifted from performance to writing and directing devised theatre. Increasingly, she is drawn to slow processes and malleable creations. She strives to make theatre that invites the audience into a shared game of finding links between seemingly incongruous images, texts, themes, and materials. She is unreasonably excited by uncovering connections where there aught’ not be any.
Keely O’Brien
Keely O’Brien (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her practice incorporates intricately handmade objects with innovative theatre creation. Devoted to a thoroughly DIY process, Keely’s work includes immersive installations, imaginative ephemera, and interactive experiences. Her practice is firmly rooted in collaborative, socially engaged endeavors, often inviting public contribution and exchange. Frequently site-responsive and engaged with questions of place, home, and belonging, Keely’s work aims to celebrate the potential for creativity and community in the place and people around her. Keely is Co-Artistic Director of experimental theatre company Popcorn Galaxies. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University.
Knock Out
Brynne Harper
Brynne Harper (she/they) is a dance theatre artist and youth educator. She is based in Vancouver, on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Holding a Dance Diploma from Arts Umbrella’s Post-Secondary Program and a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU’s School for Contemporary Arts, Brynne’s work spans performing contemporary concert dance, devising theatre, and instructing preschool dance. In an ongoing process of indexing, unsettling, and abstracting learned aesthetics of movement and expression in her own body, she is excited about cultivating studio practices and performances that play with the limitations of pleasure, comfort, and understanding.
Shana 愛 Ai Wolfe
Shana 愛 Ai Wolfe is a Japanese-Canadian dance artist currently based in so-called Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She joined Ballet BC as an apprentice for their 2017/2018 season performing “BILL” by Sharon Eyal throughout England an Gedrmany and in 2018 she attended Springboard Danse Montreal dancing with Margie Gillis. Since then, she has been freelancing with OURO Collective, The Falling Company and Company 605 as well as with artists such as Cindy Mochizuki, Justin Calvadores, Lisa Mariko Gelley and Anya Saugstad. Her own work has been shown through Vines Art Festival, the.response’s Dance Cafe, Co.ERASGA’s Winter Salon and The Dance Centre’s Reboot Program. She was recently a dancer for the Edmonton Opera’s performance of Orphée+ with choreographer Nicole Von Arx and directed by Joel Ivany. Shana enjoys recreational crochet blanket making and is a persistent monthly instagram poster.
Toni-Leah C. Yake
Toni-Leah C. Yake (European; Kanien’kehá:ka, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Turtle Clan) is a composer-performer and media artist residing on xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ territories. Her work extends to explore the land, memories, subconscious materials, world-building and embodied response. Informed by dream interpretation and Kanien’kehá:ka epistemology, Yake submerges into liminality with compositional practices illuminated by archival recordings, synthesis, and noise.
Toni-Leah C. Yake’s practices are influenced by the research of kanyen’keha (Mohawk language), the interplay between conscious and unconscious realms, symbolism, and experiences of sound that generate mnemonic experiences, relationships with unseen dimensions, and connections to archaic human memories.
Maddy Woodley
Maddy is currently going through her second year in Theatre Production and Design at SFU’s School of Contemporary Arts. She has been involved in shows, primarily as stage management, for 6 years. This will be her first show designing lights and she’s excited for the new adventure.
Felt
Hayley Gawthrop
Born and reared in Semiahmoo territory (South Surrey) Hayley Gawthrop It an independent artist residing in the unseeded ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil- Waututh Nations (Vancouver)
Hayley has been making songs and dances since early child. They received their professional contemporary dance training at Modus Operandi and have gone on to work with many people they admire, including: Peter Bingham (EDAM) Emmalena Fredriksson, Arash Khakpour (Biting School), Antonio Somera Jr, FightWith a Stick, Dumb Instrument Dance, Omer Keinan, Kelly Mc’Innes, The Response, MACHiNENOiSEY Dance Society, and has worked as a dramaturg/outside eye for Emmalena Fredriksson, Kelly McInnes and Marissa Wong.
Hayley makes art that is a consequence of their life. They are passionate about gentleness, bodily autonomy and listening with curiosity.
This presentation is funded in part by
