Photo: Afshin Odabaee

Breton Tyner-Bryan is a graduate of the University of Utah with a BFA in Ballet Performance. She received her training at the School of the Hartford Ballet and Ballet West Academy. Breton has performed with Hartford Ballet, Utah Ballet, Kunst-Stoff, Project Agora, Labayen Dance, DO NOT DANCE UK, and Deborah Slater Dance Theater. Additionally she has performed works by Marius Petipa, Kirk Peterson, Alonzo King, Robert Moses, Charles Moulton, Donald Byrd, and Cathleen McCarthy. She has had the pleasure of working with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In January 2010 Breton was invited to Norsborg, Sweden Cullberg Ballet. She joined PUSH Dance Company in January 2011. She has created a piece entitled “Break the Mold,” a phrase of which will be performed on March 30 as part of the 2012 dance anywhere®. “Break the Mold” was commissioned by Alonzo King LINES Dance Center and Jewels in the Square in October 2011.

How did you get involved with dance anywhere?

I actually met Beth Fein working as a photographer for Kara Davis’ company project agora back in 2008 when they performed at SFMOMA as a part of dance anywhere. I performed with Project Agora from 2006-2010 as well as worked closely with Kara as a photographer. Since 2008 I have worked with Beth photographing different artists for this event. I recently formed my own company in 2011, and this will be the first year I am joining the event as a performer.

What made you want to join in?

I believe in public art. Theaters are one of the most sacred places to me on the planet, but not everyone has access to the events there or can afford the price of a ticket. If art becomes only for other “artmakers” something is lost. dance anywhere is an opportunity for me to share what I do, what I believe in with the world, sans ego. It encompasses the basic generosity and shared experience that is truly Dance.

Photo: Afshin Odabaee

Do you have a concept for your dance?

I began working on “Break the Mold” in September 2011. At the time I didn’t realize it, but I think it was something I had to make, had to do to heal myself. I put together a group of dancers I really liked as people and respected for their individuality, and off we went. It just gelled. The piece just poured out of me. In retrospect I think “Break the Mold” is really about resurrection, the rebuilding of strength however slow and infinitesimally small.

You mentioned that “Breaking the Mold” helped you to heal. Can you elaborate on this? How is choreography a part of your healing process?

I don’t think choreography alone is specific to my personal healing process. Making art, putting beauty into the world gets me out of bed in the morning. Whether I’m painting, drawing, sewing, cooking, I’m telling a story. There’s great power in sharing. It allows for the negative charge associated with something to be transformed, purged, dissipated. Making beauty out of the mundane. It’s like sharing a dark secret, that no longer has any gravity once it’s spoken.

Story telling has always been an integral part of my choreographic process. For the past five years I’ve worked with dance theater companies as a performer. My fellow colleagues and I were expected to create our own movement, often derivative from poetry or text. In the early days this was tremendously challenging for me, as I prefer to work with sound. Our directors continually challenged us on the content and meaning of each movement. We had to qualify every gesture, shoulder, eyeball, with and emotional charge. We became actors. I am so grateful for that time “in the lab”, because it turned us all into choreographers. I became comfortable generating movement from any minute seed of inspiration. It taught me to trust my choreographic voice.

Currently sound is an integral part of my process. I hear music and my body can sing the sentiment of the sound. We work a lot with “emotional mapping”, to create a strong narrative. The meaning behind a movement is just as important to me as the line.

What is your background and what kind of dance training do you have?

I’m a classically trained dancer who likes to MOVE. I received my training at the School of the Hartford Ballet Pre-Professional Program and hold a BFA in Ballet Performance from the University of Utah. I’ve been very blessed to work with ballet companies, dance theater companies, and contemporary choreographers. I really like to work along side artists that have a completely different background than mine. I’ve been a photographer all my life, and used to make a living sewing and working as a chef. I currently teach for Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and choreograph for acrobats, athletes, and commercial ventures.

Where does your inspiration come from?

I like to paint with movement. I’m a very visual person.

You mentioned that you recently formed your own company. Can you tell me a little about it?

We are currently listed as Breton Tyner-Bryan and Dancers. We are gearing up for performances in March and April. We will be performing March 23rd as a part of PUSH Dance Company’s home season Benefit, March 30th for dance anywhere, and April 21-22nd as a part of RAW Dance’s “Concept Series”. We are also working on a premiere for WestWave in July, with hopes that the festival continues into its 21st season, despite setbacks in funding.

How do you feel public performance impacts the community?

I feel public performance is an extension of the generosity and inherent communication that is art.

What does dance mean to you?

Dance is my language and my science. It’s how I contemplate the world.

See an excerpt from “Break the Mold,” Jewels in the Square, October 2011:

See Breton Tyner-Bryan’s Performance Reel:

Improvizační skupina NAU is an improvised performance group founded by Markéta Vacková. Like Dance Anywhere, NAU seeks to inspire dance in every moment and bring people from diverse backgrounds together through movement. At a recent performance in Studio Alt@, Prague, CZ, dancers, musicians, and actors shared the stage (and at one point the audience’s seats) and improvised a compelling evening of unique and vivid performance. I spoke with Markéta after a rehearsal about her work with NAU and improvised performance:

How did you get into dance? Why do you dance?

I think I started at six years old with the folk dances. We have here a tradition of something which is called basic art schools and in every town there is one. I know in England for example or America, the afternoon activities for children like music or drama it’s included, it’s like part of the afternoon program at school. But here it’s divided, it’s two institutions. […] So I started with dancing as a little girl at such a school. And it was mostly folk dancing, and so I learned things about rhythm. And there was a little bit of jazz dance later, I suppose. But the most important for me there was to learn, to understand that I love it and I want to do it in my life. For example, I didn’t learn much of the technique there, [. . .] but when I was leaving the place knowing that I can not learn anything more there, I was crying because I knew I learned the most important thing there and it’s that I loved dance and I want to do it. So maybe it’s the most important, the energy to do it.

So what inspired you to start NAU?

This idea came to me, it was 2007, when I went on Erasmus to England. [. . .] just for one semester. I wished I could stay there longer, but I also felt I wanted to finish school and become independent from my parents, you know financially independent, so I rushed back home to complete my MA in the summer semester. So when I went there I was thinking already about writing my final thesis, and I decided for improvisation, decided to write about it. But I had to find out what kind of theme or topic to pick out from this wide field. And so I started going for improvisation lessons there. I had some experiences before, of course, it was not a new thing. But . . . the teachers I met there, how they approached improvisation really opened me and I fell in love with this way. Which was probably a mixture of what Ruth Zaporah does in her action theater—was the background from where it came— and more physical things and dancey things that Kirstie Simpson does. And Kirstie Simpson was the one who went regularly to teach at Artington. So I first met her there and meeting her was the impulse for me to start doing something in here when I came back home. I thought I want to continue in the practice of improvisation and somehow it’s my way where I am as an artist now, like what I should do. Or it’s just I felt too young, maybe, to do choreographies about things that would mean something or not. At that time I really thought I need some more life experience and professional experience to say like ‘this is my piece. I want to say this.’ So I thought it’s a really good way. And with Kirstie Simpson I saw that it could be also a way of life. That you can choose. It was a new thing for me that you can choose improvisation as your opinion or your expression as an artist. And I fell in love with her work and she just made me believe it works something so [she motions with her hand] like improvisation can really work and it’s very deep deep work.

Do you find you work toward the performances? Or is it mostly for yourselves?

Well, we are aiming to the improvised performance, the improvisation. Also, the rehearsals we use them mostly for practicing some skills which we need for the performance. It was always established . . . or most of the time we count on that there is an eye of the audience. It’s important for me that I don’t want to just do improvisation for myself, just. Also because . . . you need sometimes to dive into your cave and then practice things or look or research maybe, but it’s really the performance is something very important for me.

You spoke with audience members after your last performance, how was that?

We started with these discussions—we call them discussions but its like talking—since the beginning when we started performing. We set the situation like ‘it would be really nice if you would like to share your experiences’ or ‘if you have any questions about what you’ve just seen, we would like to explain or to really try’. And I think it’s a very good thing to meet the audience after the performance also verbally. Because with improvisation when there are a lot of personal explanations everyone can see something else. So then when people then go home, they may never talk about it with anyone. And I think this is very good also how to, maybe, educate the people. Because if you have some kinesthetic experience from the performance or maybe emotional or just didn’t understand why and you leave with these questions I think it’s not good. And when you’ve had the chance to talk about it, it kind of cleans up the air and makes a friendly atmosphere. So I can see in these discussions that there is a development in the questions the audience asks. So in the beginning it was more like, ‘was everything really improvised?’ and you know such kind of simple questions, and we’re like ‘yes, that’s what we do.’ ‘So there weren’t any cues like when you stopped at that moment?’ ‘No, it just happened.’ Really people are not used to watch improvised performances. And as we continue some people come regularly and some of them are there for the first time […] so the questions are more intellectual or complicated. Like they ask about the relationship with the music. Or, once someone asked about if we had something like a group consciousness and if we work with that. And it’s like woosh! questions that we’re not able to answer. And these things are developing slowly and as people let’s say leave the group or new people come to the group, this is changing.

Do you think people are more engaged with improvised performance? What are the differences between improvised and choreographed performance?

Well maybe I can start with how I feel. For me it’s different when I know it’s improvised performance or structured improvisation or it’s a set or fixed thing. I watch it with a little bit different eyes. For example, we were talking about this vulnerability. So in improvisation I am looking forward to these moments, that they would happen because I liked them. I think it’s part of the whole thing. They are the best, you know the cool moments when everything works perfectly, and then there are these transitions or struggles and I like to watch this humanity. But in set choreography for example, if there are such moments, I don’t feel it’s right I think that’s why you have chosen to do a set choreography to try to make it perfect. Or, if you choose let say that the performer would be struggling, but it’s prepared, so in a way it’s different . . . But in one way it shouldn’t be different, maybe the engagement with the audience. I think a set piece or improvised performance involves that the performance should be there present in a way that it’s alive and its no better improvised than if choreographed.

Have you done any site-specific work or dance for camera? Besides this improvised performance what other things you do?

Site specific…I’m interested in this kind of work. I have done one small project it was just for ten days but intensive workshop, intensive work in one garden in Bratislava. There was a coach. He was an American choreographer, we invited him. [. . .] I really liked how sensitive he was to the place and I understood it’s really the respect to the place and for me to spend time there listening what is the place calling for. It’s what I like about site-specific is that you. . . there’s not so much space for your ego. It really is, the conductor is the space and then you find how you can maybe show the audience a different view on the place or to see it with different eyes, and this is very fragile work which I like. With dance for camera I don’t have much experience, although I would like to do a film and I hope I can do it soon like in the next year or year and a half. But I need to work and I have a lot of teaching.

What are your future plans?

Well, I would like to do that, start working on that film I told you about. It’s quite a big project, so I need a lot of energy to put it to start because I want to shoot it abroad so we need to organize people and the camera. But I’m really looking forward to it, and I think this must happen really soon. It’s been growing in me for four years. It’s quite a long time and now I feel it’s the time it has to be born somehow. If I don’t do it in the next year, its dead. And I’d like to collaborate with [Pedro Prazeres] on that project because it will be working with landscape a lot and he’s into the landscape. He’s originally a landscape architect you know. And that’s one thing, and I’ll continue. . . I started this autumn dancing in a dance performance for children which is based on the story of the little prince. It’s a very nice performance, very what is the word. . . anytime it happens again and again you have tears in your eyes or you have red eyes because. . . it’s a duet between an adult man and a six year old boy and I’m a fox. Fox from the book who is kind of like the guardian angel of the little prince and helping him and watching when they are watching the sunset. And I’m enjoying it so much. And then I’m leading a workshop with the children who come as audience, so when the performance is over I invite them onstage. The stage is covered in sand and they play in the sand and we do different movement things and this is a very nice experience for me because apart from that I teach quite a lot of children, and this is when it’s a combination with the performance it’s something different. It’s interesting for me to see what are the differences and how it works.

More information about NAU, it’s projects, and upcoming performances can be found at:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002255487361

http://www.altart.cz/index.php/en/skupiny-v-rezidenci/262-improvizani-skupina-nau.html

Photo: Aleksandra Osowicz.

Dance Anywhere celebrates art happening in non-traditional space and in innovative ways, and the work of landscape architect and choreographer Pedro Prazeres certainly upholds these ideas. Originally from Portugal, he is currently based in Prague, CZ, and has traveled and worked internationally. He is a founding member of Homeless Kingdom, an art platform whose projects explore dance, photography, landscape architecture, and other media. I spoke with him about his unique artistic perspective and approach to dance. The following are excerpts from our conversation:

How did you get into dance?

One of my colleagues told me, ‘why don’t you start to dance? There’s these nice classes in Dundee in the theater,’ and so I started to dance. Because, I’ve tried in the theater a little bit of movement and it was alright. I liked it very much. As soon as I started to dance I understood this connection. Or, I couldn’t verbalize it or rationalize it but there was a huge connection between landscape, and between what I’d learned in landscape, and between dance. The use of body and movement. How the landscape moves as well or how it’s shaped. The shapes, the speeds, the times, it was related in this way.

You’ve done some site-specific work. As a landscape architect, do you like that very much?

Yes, very much. It inspires me a lot. Although I also like to create on the stage […] But what I wanted to say was, yes I’m very inspired by bringing landscapes into the stage and bringing dance into the landscape. Or movement. So it’s these two fields that I’m trying to combine and bring concepts of one to the other and the other into the one, and to connect them in this way. […] And also I think it’s the way that the space can be transformed. That’s what I really like in dance, is that you see the space, in site-specific things, is really to relate with the space in the way that it, the space, dances with us. As when we are transformed while dancing into something which is outside of the ordinary, extra-ordinary if I can say it like this, the space also should have this. . . it should have this effect on the space. By the way we move, the space will dance with us and will transform itself. There’s kind of a metamorphosis happening, that things become different into kind of a parallel reality, which is what I aim for. It’s very difficult of course, but well it’s a goal. It’s a process.

You’ve done some set choreography and some improvisation. What is different about it? Do you like improvisation more, Or…?

I like both. I find it very interesting although they belong to each other in a way. I think there’s. . . it’s only a matter of shifting the balance of things. There’s always a little bit of improvisation in the choreographies and there’s always a little bit of choreography or composition in a way in the improvisation. So I see it more or less in the same field, but if you can have something that moves from one side to the other. Maybe this will be more proximal to an improvisation performance, this will be more proximal to a choreography performance.

On a piece that explores this range, I can maybe call it structured improvisation. I don’t really know if I can call it yet cause I didn’t find the right meaning for it. But I think it fits into this category. And which I had created a landscape, if I can call it in this way, in which I knew exactly which points in time is fixed, and I just allowed myself to go through it. Although the quality of the movement was fixed, I knew the qualities I wanted to have in each section, and how to develop them in each section, and what would come after. The movement itself was improvised […] but there’s a rule and I have to follow that rule.

Where do you get inspiration for your work?

In terms of dance. What I did before, I tried to allow things to come and then to understand them. So basically not to force myself into a direction, but to understand which direction is driving me. And then I can recognize oh I got this from this place, I got this from that place, I got this from this place.

How do you create through improvisation? Interact with other dancers, musicians, the space?

It’s more a sensation or perception. That’s why I like to use the word listening, because you are listening to it and not watching it. So it’s also our state of being, is very different. We have one. . . I need to feel that I need to be extremely open to everything that can come from outside and from inside, so that I can actually react to it. Or, allow myself to react to it. If I’m closed, or if I’m holding something, if I’m thinking that I should maybe do this or I should maybe do that, it just doesn’t work. I lose the moment and I cannot grab, I cannot be in the moment. And it happens, of course. It happens sometimes. . . I missed it. . . shit I missed it . . . Ah! damn, okay. . . and now I miss it again. [laughs] But, it’s just I think it demands a lot of practice to reach a time when you can be fully in a performance without losing the moment.

How is it different improvising with a musician or a dancer?

If I can abstract it, maybe vibration would be a good word for it. There’s the food that I get from other dancers, and the food I get from music. Vibration could be maybe the word that could describe. . . not the differences but actually what is common between these two.

Do you think dance can communicate to an audience that doesn’t know anything about the art form?

I think yes. I think that dance would be made for that. . . As an interpreter and as a choreographer, in my opinion I should provide a product which is able to be understood by the biggest range of people. In this understanding I would mean that I would be giving a concrete message. And what I expect is that I have an abstract form of art that can be interpreted by as many people as possible. But this interpretation will then relate and depend on each one’s individual experience, obviously in a way. So this is how the combination of these tools should create something, which drifts from the reality which we live in into a parallel reality, but that communicates with the conscious and, maybe, hopefully, subconscious of the person who sees it or who perceives it.

On Homeless Kingdom and its projects:

So these relations can happen, which I’m really interested. Relations between landscape and dance, and also photography. So, we are trying to combine these three art forms into something, and to create a product out of it and create projects with it. And this is something I’m very interested in. We’ve created recently this project which is Kinetic Landscapes. […] so it’s the use of stroboscopic lights, y’know, these flash lights in photography. So you take one shot then tik tik tik tik and the light is kind of moving and it creates landscape out of the movement of the body in a way. It’s a very abstract image what comes out of it, but I feel it’s very deep. So the project is how to create these images, how to explore that, to really really explore. We just have this idea to create, we tested it a little bit and it works. So we really want to develop it into a series of works that we can do, a project. And also how to create a live performance out of it and how to understand to create these kinetic landscapes. And also, how to choreograph while taking the pictures; how to choreograph the movements in order to achieve some results. So it’s a complex project that is starting to grow a lot and I’m very excited with it.

On “Hotel Room,” performed at Axa in Action in Prague, CZ:

We had three characters which were sharing the same timeline and the same space line, but they don’t belong to the same story. So what the audience would see was three people interacting in one hotel room, but the inter motion of each character is displaced from each other. If I can call it like this. So they don’t relate to each other on a storyline, but they are of course having relations of energy and things that’s impossible because they are in the same small space and things do happen. And there can be contact and there was contact, and so that was interesting. But still the characters are out of each other, in a way. And so Vicente wrote these three characters. He explained more or less what he thought it could be, the motion inside. And the idea of the interpreters was to inhabit these characters, to understand what they are, and to improvise with it. So it was also an improvisation although with a character inside. […] and that for me was extremely interesting. Cause we had three days, and we planned it to be that we had the performance of fifteen minutes every hour, or something like this. But then it happened that it was not possible because people were coming in and out, and then they would come at the end, and so they wouldn’t see. So we just decided to, okay let’s just stay as long as we can hold it. And if there comes a time we need to go out, we go out, and we come in. So it was something that was always constantly looping and constantly on. […] This was another thing we had in mind was that we had to make a loop. So even if we were improvising, we had to loop it back into the same state […] go into the same motion, even if it was not the same movements, specifically, or the same things. . . but we had to show the same message in a way.

On a project currently in development:

And, another project I’ve started is the scaled landscapes […] which is to work with different kind of scientific things and with ecologists, mainly landscape ecologists, and geologists, or people who work with landscape and who understand the landscape, sociologists also. And to understand one object, what’s it’s motion? I mean object not as a physical object, but as something which is exists, if I can call it like this. For example, let me say we have a square where we zoom in and we see that there are these little little bugs that move inside. If we zoom in this table for example, microscopically we would understand that are little bacterias or little things that are moving there and how do they move? What is there motion? What is their will to move? They’ll go towards food, they go away from light. How do they move, and what is this movement? So to scale this little thing into something bigger, which can be interpreted then by us as humans, and to place it somewhere else to understand how the space can be then transformed. This is one example but there’s many more. […] on this idea of scaling things; scaling up, scaling down, and transforming them.

On “De Profundis” in Prague, CZ:

We did another one which was called “De Profundis” [...] which was here in Prague. This very simple project, but the outcome was very nice. It was a weekend in a house in the forest close to Prague. And in March, very very cold. And the idea was to have naked bodies in the landscape in the forest, and what came out was a very good result. It was basically improvised, so I asked some artist which I knew I’d like to work with, just to go and to explore the space. And how can we relate with each other? And how can we relate with nature? How can nature relate with us? And the sensation of the skin of the cold surface, the cold air and the naked body. It was very interesting, really magical weekend and the outcome was also very nice.

More information about Homeless Kingdom, it’s projects, and upcoming performances can be found at:

http://www.homelesskingdom.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Homeless-Kingdom/199870796716368