It's Body Break with Brandy Leary

I asked Brandy a bit about her self as an artist and to tell me about Body Brake 4.0.

Body Break 4.0

Saturday, February 28 at 10:30pm

Theatre Passe Muraille

16 Ryerson Avenue, Toronto

$12 cash

More dancing, more awesome. Produced by Anandam Dancetheatre in partnership with Theatre Passe Muraille Curated by: Brandy Leary

Brandy Leary is the Artistic Director of Anandam dance theatre (www.anandam.ca). Her work has been produced in Canada, Europe, India and the USA in theatres, urban environments, festivals, museums and isolated landscapes. She holds a BA Honours in Theatre with a specialization in Direction and Asian Theatre from York University's Theatre Program.

Q1: How long have you been doing circus arts and which circus arts do you do?

I have been working with circus arts for the past 13 years. I am a rope artist, dancer and choreographer.

Q2: Describe your work as a circus artist? Trad, Cirque, Contemporary?

I consider my work post contemporary, aligned with a form of questioning that filters across physical performance disciplines, situating the body as material over a singular technique as a primary reference. I value improvisation, bricolage, DIY aesthetics, horizontal collaboration and group creation. In my artistic practice I create live performances that explore the body as a curious and shifting filter for diverse viewpoints and practices. Performances are created from dissonant sources, in often alternative spaces or re-visioned traditional ones, the entry point is the body and the aesthetic interest is polyculutral. I create work from a broad spectrum of influence, drawn from over a decade of diverse and rigorous practice in both eastern and western performance forms explored from both traditional and post contemporary perspectives. I strive to create work that is highly physical but moves away from a definition of virtuosity that involves the repetition of a technique through fully pre-determined/pre organized relationships, rather, favoring places of un-decidability and un-knowingness in the creation and performance of circus. I value working from a place of “not knowing”, in states of almost pre awareness to create processes that displace the moment before the rational brain makes any kind of judgement about what is evolving, working always from a place of emergence and using improvisatory techniques to continually shift the exploration deeper. This constant oscillation of knowing/not knowing/pretending roots my creative process (thanks Jassem Hindi).

Q3: What’s your weirdest gig?

I think I find every gig weird, sometimes the phenomena of performance is just a strange thing in and of itself… but I love it…here are some snapshots For the King and Queen of Seraikella in a private showing at their palace in India. Creating Psychic Choreography with friend and collaborator Laura Stokes. In Caluctta when the lighting board caught fire (but I thought it was my silks). Braided to Sabrina Pringle for an intense aerial duet. Off the sides of buildings. In museums and art galleries. In durational work for 12 hours with 65 aerialists. On the surreal, beautiful and isolated landscape of Iceland. Rolling through the streets of Cape Town, Cologne, and Toronto (in Feb) as a human glacier. Being a flying witch in a coven, naked covered in fake blood……..

Q4: What is Body Brake?

Body Brake is part cabaret, part performance installation, part immersive environment. It is a late night art party of performance from a broad spectrum of what I consider Toronto’s finest creators, all at different places in their careers. Body Brake manifests an incredible energy (it feels like a rock concert) through its diverse programming (burlesque, next to ballet, next to post contemporary dance, next to tap, next to Indian, next to African……) and unique approach to working with the space and audience. It is fast, furious, inclusive, celebratory, irreverent, fun and filled with talent.

Q 5: What was your motivation behind creating Body Brake?

I was invited to create the evening by Theatre Passe Muraille as part of their late night programming. They were interested in welcoming the dance, circus and alternative performance community into the space and have been so generous in their support and production of the evening (huge shout outs to all at TPM). I was interested in creating an evening that brought together a number of performance forms that generally, would never be in the same room/show together and combined this with asking the artists to approach the space from a site specific perspective rather than a “traditional theatre” set up. This was the proposal: dissonant work, fluid and porous audience relationship, malleable space, incredible talent and a party atmosphere. We were not sure if it would work, or if anyone would show up but it has been a smash success from the start, selling out every edition and gathering more and more momentum and interest.

Body Break 4.0 will Feature the awesomeness of Karen Kaeja Allen Kaeja Kaeja d'Dance Half Second Echo Knicker Kickers Dew Lily Wrong Note Rusty Anandam Dancetheatre Marie France Forcier Allison Toffan Suki Tsunami and Dante Inferno Emily Gualtieri Zita Nyarady Mary-Margaret Scrimger Andrew Gaboury Jessie Garon Vazari Dance Projects

Part cabaret, part performance installation, part immersive environment, completely fun! Get your art on with this diverse and