Bone Stories by Irèni Stamou

Part of Public Energy Performing Arts’ Pivot 2.0 Series

Choreography: Irèni Stamou
Dancers: Dreda Blow, Irèni Stamou

Costumes for Vignettes # 5 & #6: Martha Cockshutt

Outside Eye for Vignette #1: Kate Story

Pivot 2.0 Series Technical Director: Patricia Thorne

Main photo: Vicky Paradisis – Gaudreau

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Featuring performances from Irèni Stamou and Dreda Blow, Bone Stories is comprised of a series of dance solo performances from an intergenerational cast of women. It is a site-specific project at Millennium Park on the Otonabee River in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, Ontario.

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Music:

Mana Mou Kai Panagia – Maria Farantouri

Giati Pouli Den Kelaideis – Savina Yannatou, Primavera en Salonico

Me To Feggari Perpato (Live) – Savina Yannatou

Tissues (Cello and Piano version) – Philip Glass, Henri Demarquette, Vanessa Benelli Mosell

The Hours – Philip Glass, Henri Demarquette, Vanessa Benelli Mosell

The Shepherd’s Call – Djivan Gasparyan, Vachagan Avakyan

With Air with Sun – Michalis Koumbios

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Acknowledgements: The development of Bone Stories has been supported by a number of Peterborough arts organizations, including The Theatre On King’s Small Dances festival in January, 2020, and creative residencies with both Artspace and Public Energy in 2020-21. Also many thanks to the Electric City Culture Council for supporting the Bone Stories Film project, and Eryn Lidster for their filmmaking.

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From creator Irèni Stamou:

The influence of my artistic perspective lies in the bones of my ancestors and in my bones, bones with their own lived experience as a professional dancer in Montreal; a teacher, artist in the deep, Ocean-side, jungles of Costa Rica; and as a single mother and artist in the community of Peterborough, Ontario. My Greek heritage and upbringing draw me to the figure of the ancient mask and as well as the origin of the amphitheatre and its function as a community focal-point. If we reimagine the heartbeat of the river as the rhythmic drumming of our spirits in connection with the earth, the site with its rich history and the flow of the water as it invites people of all cultures and kinds to experience mindful awareness of the present moment. Dance becomes a form of healing meditation with the natural geography acting as an interactive stage; the formation of a mini-amphitheatre in the parks’ rocks, stones, pathways, gardens, trees, and flowing water facilitate my choreographing the audience through the location. Either while moving or by standing in precisely marked spots, the dance takes place interwoven amongst the audience—currently imagined as a socially distancing safe space—where proximity to one another and our environment allow us to reimagine dance as part of an ecologically sustainable life.

BONUS Dance Track: Tank Man

Performed by: Ryan Kerr
Created by: Deborah Kelly

Tank Man is memorial to the protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989, particularly the famous man who stood in front of the army’s tanks.

Deborah Kelly wrote this about the creation of Tank Man: “It was a memorial: it was for those who would remember; to give it shape, duration, experience and ritual. It’s a memorial for the protests, and for the murdered protestors, rather than for that one person, the symbolic tank man. The work pays homage to fighting tyranny; and god knows, all our governments are bad. It hoped to bring life to history – our lives, our history. Dancing the memorial was a way to be, toact, in a city or town, to make a public sphere, to be an agent in it. It sought to diminish the distances between people in space and time, to connect us, those who struggle, and to build culture around us. To give us strength! Which is to say, to construct even the most fragile metaphorical infrastructure around: love of the collective, anti amnesia, linked autonomies. The will to resist, to remember, to make art.”

Pivot 2.0 is presented with support from the Government of Ontario’s Reconnect Festival and Event Program and the Peterborough Downtown BIA